MASKED BOBWHITE. 
Colinus ridgwayi. 
The masked bobwhite is very little larger than the 
Virginia bobwhite. It has the whole under side of the 
head black and the white stripe over the eye is very 
narrow or sometimes disappears entirely. The neck 
and chest below the black throat is uniformly cinnamon 
or reddish, like the other lower parts. The female is 
almost exactly like the female of the Texas bob- 
white, but usually has a strong band of cinnamon color 
across the upper part of the chest. 
There are no special differences in habit among the 
various forms of bobwhite quail, except those which de- 
pend on their surroundings—the character of the coun- 
try which they inhabit. The masked bobwhite, or Ridg- 
way’s quail, was described by Mr. Brewster from speci- 
mens sent on from Mexico by F. Stevens. Previ- 
ous to that, however, Herbert Brown of Tucson, 
Arizona, had sent on specimens which were erroneously 
identified as Grayson’s bobwhite, a Mexican species not 
known to occur in the United States. 
In a paper entitled “Arizona Quail Notes,” published 
in Forest and Stream in 1885, Mr. Brown writes about 
this species in the following words: 
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