LIST AND DESCRIPTION 73 
FAMILY ODONTOPHORID. BOBWHITES, QUAILS; 
PAMILY TETRAONIDA’, GROUSE 
These families include such well known birds as our Prai- 
rie Chicken, Prairie Sharp-tailed Grouse and Bobwhite or Quail. 
They are of great economic value, not only as excellent game 
birds, but because during the summer months a very large part 
of their food consists of injurious insects. 
Quails or Bobwhites followed the farmer westward. The 
first record of these birds in the State, as far as known, was in 
1872 when Dr. Elliott Coues, the noted ornithologist, took speci- 
mens at Fort Randall. They are non-migratory, and many per- 
ish if caught in severe snowstorms without artificial feeding and 
protection. Whole coveys have been found frozen or starved 
to death upon the melting of snow in spring. In summer they 
feed on insects, and usually upon those that are injurious to 
crops, such as grasshoppers, chinch bugs, crickets, etc. 
Prairie Chickens, which were formerly native to the Mis- 
sissippi Valley States farther south, also followed the farmer 
into the northern prairie States, where they were very abundant 
until a few years ago. They are rather scarce today, because 
the land has become thickly settled and they have been per- 
sistently hunted. 
After the grain is cut they resort to stubble fields, where 
they feed on insects and the fruit and leaves of the wild rose. 
Very little grain is eaten until winter. When the ground is 
covered with snow they resort to corn fields, where they eat 
only a portion of the extra corn that the farmer has been per- 
mitted to raise because they reduce injurious insects to the 
minimum, 
On December 27, 1915, the crop and stomach of a Prairie 
Chicken was examined and the contents consisted of timothy and 
red clover leaves and a few weed seed, but not a single kernel 
of grain was found. There was no snow on the ground. The 
same week the crop and stomach of a Ring-necked Pheasant 
taken in the same locality was examined and the following found: 
132 kernels of corn, twenty-five kernels of oats, and a few seeds 
each of wild sunflower, pigeon grass, and smartweed. 
Although Prairie Chickens gather in flocks in the fall, 
