CONSERVATION OF GAME BIRDS. 581 



fond of young and tender grass and grain. If a field, near a 

 pond or river, is sown with winter wheat or winter rye, the 

 young plants will attract Geese, because such plants offer 

 them a supply of green food later in the fall and early in spring, 

 when other green vegetation is not plentiful.^ 



The Wood Duck sometimes may be attracted to nesting 

 boxes made to resemble hollow limbs. 



Attracting Upland Game Birds. 



The Bob-white prefers a rich farming and grain-raising 

 country to all others, but it is also very important to furnish 

 this bird good cover, and in a thrifty truck-farming region, 

 where clean cultivation prevails, there is little cover left for 

 the Quail. Thickets along fences, bushy swamps, weed-grown 

 fields or thick growths of cane, corn or other grains furnish 

 desirable cover, but winter cover is most important. Grain 

 raising helps fatten Bob-whites, as they pick up much waste 

 grain in the fields, but weeds where plentiful will take the 

 place of grain, as the birds will thrive on weed seeds. 



Severe winters are so destructive to the Bob-white that it 

 will pay the game farmer to feed this bird well in winter. A 

 Pennsylvania plan is that of catching coveys and keeping 

 them confined during the severest part of the winter. This 

 has worked very well. In Connecticut and Massachusetts 

 shelters have been put up for feeding places, and goodly 

 numbers of birds have been brought through the winter by 

 this means. 



Nothing attracts this bird more surely than a field of 

 buckwheat. The following list of food plants eaten by Bob- 

 white is drawn largely from the publications of the Biological 

 Survey, and shows what a wide range of food plants it affects. 

 In addition to these, it feeds on dried grasses in winter and 

 on the leaves of certain weeds which remain intact during a 

 part, at least, of the inclement season. 



1 Valuable additional information on the food of wild-fowl may be found in the following publica- 

 tions: Circular 81, Biological Survey, Bulletins 58 and 205, U. S. Dept. of Agr. 



