170 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



74. Colinus virginianus (Linn.). 

 Bob-white. Quail. 



Permanent resident, sometimes abundant. 



NESTING DATES. 

 June 20 — 30. 



In the region about Cambridge, as at most northern localities, Quail vary 

 greatly in numbers from year to year. They breed so rapidly that whenever they 

 are favored by a succession of mild winters they soon become abundant despite 

 their numerous enemies. But a single severe winter accompanied by deep snows 

 and icy crusts will often reduce them to the point of extinction, as has happened 

 several times within my experience in this neighborhood. During the years of 

 their greatest abundance I have started as many as five or six bevies in a single 

 day in autumn, in Arlington, Belmont or Waltham, or heard, in June or July, 

 the ' bob-ivJiite' of three or four males coming from as many directions at once. 

 Within these towns the best quail grounds, since time immemorial, have been the 

 crest and western slopes of the long ridge that extends from Arlington to Waver- 

 ley and the country lying immediately about Rock Meadow. Here the birds are 

 still more or less common at all seasons, frequenting the outskirts of cultivated 

 fields in summer and autumn, haunting wood edges and pastures grown up to 

 cedar and barberry bushes in winter and early spring. They depend largely for 

 subsistence on the fruit of the cedar and barberry when the ground is deeply 

 covered with snow. 



Until comparatively recently Quail were always to be found in autumn and 

 winter in the Fresh Pond Swamps, and also in the region between Mount Auburn 

 and the Watertown Arsenal ; but such instances of their near approach to the 

 confines of a populous city were quite eclipsed by the presence of a bevy during 

 the greater part of each autumn for several successive years, in the immediate 

 neighborhood of Harvard Square. It usually contained eight or ten Quail, and 

 its habitual range included Norton's Woods, Jarvis Field, and the gardens and 

 cultivated grounds lying along Kirkland Street and the western portions of 

 Broadway and Harvard Streets. On one occasion several of the birds alighted 

 on Cambridge Common in the midst of a number of boys who were engaged in 

 playing baseball ; on another my neighbor Mr. Walter Deane was surprised 

 beyond measure by flushing the entire bevy from a grass plot within fifteen 



