GAMBEL'S PARTRIDGE. 



\A/HILE disputing the palm for beauty of dress and 

 gallant appearance with its relative the California 

 Partridge, the present species possesses all of the same 

 disagreeable traits when he is regarded in the light of 

 a game bird. In his legs does he trust, and the rocky 

 cafions and hillsides are his delight, and when met with 

 at the base of these often lofty and steeply ascending 

 cliffs, instead of flying as any well-mannered Quail would 

 do, he runs with all his might, leaping from stone to 

 stone, dodging behind one bowlder after another until 

 he becomes a mere speck above one, or disappears 

 altogether. The range of this handsome bird extends 

 from western Texas, through New Mexico and Arizona 

 to California, where it meets the Valley Partridge in San 

 Bernardino County, the Colorado desert proving an 

 effective barrier to its extension farther westward. It is 

 also found in southeastern Utah, and was introduced at 

 Fort Union in northern New Mexico. It also crosses 

 our southern border and is a resident of northwestern 

 Mexico. Any kind of a locality within its dispersion 

 seems to be perfectly satisfactory to this bird; whether it 

 be a dry and sandy stretch blistering in torrid heat, or a 

 place rocky and bare of leafy covering, or tracts hidden 

 by the densest and most impregnable thickets — they are 

 all the same to Gambel's Quail. From my experience, 

 however, in hunting them, I should say, if they had any 

 choice of locality it lay between dense clumps, matted 

 with vines and bristling with thorns, into and through 



62 



