Bobwhite 67 



This leaves the fields foodless as soon as the pigeon-grass and other weed 

 seeds are exhausted, which is by December. 



During the critical winter months the game must come to the barnyard or 

 starve. The foodless condition is aggravated by the scarcity of fallow fields or 

 weed patches in dairy country. 



Scarce as brush cover is in dairy districts like south central Wisconsin, it is 

 possible to visit covert after covert in winter without seeing a quail track, and 

 only a few rabbit or squirrel tracks. Find a covert with adjacent corn, however, 

 and one finds a concentration of game. 



As Errington (1930) has suggested, game conservation under such condi- 

 tions almost boils down to the formula "Leave a Shock of Corn." 



Favorable Changes. We come now to the favorable changes in agri- 

 cultural practice, the most important of which is the introduction of leguminous 

 plants. These include clovers, alfalfa, soy beans, and lespedeza or Japan clover. 

 They have benefited not only farm game but even forest species as ruffed 

 grouse and deer. 



The history of Japan clover (Lespedeza striata) in Missouri will serve as an 

 example. Sauer (1920) states that it invaded southwest Missouri in 1896 and 

 was introduced in southeast Missouri about 1900. It has now spread north be- 

 yond the Missouri River to Callaway and Warren Counties, and possibly farther. 

 Its value as a quail food has been thoroughly demonstrated by Stoddard in 

 Georgia. Its establishment as a wild plant in both woods and fields makes the 

 future supply more or less independent of whether or not it is artificially culti- 

 vated. 



No single plant has more profoundly affected the landscape of the north 

 central region, its economic prosperity, and the environment offered to game, than 

 Kentucky bluegrass. Sauer states that this was not found in Missouri pastures be- 

 fore 1850, but by 1870 it had become common in pastures and roadsides. Today 

 its dense sods constitute the mechanism by which grazing is crowding out quail 

 coverts throughout the Agricultural Belt. It must not be assumed, however, that 

 the spread of bluegrass is per se inimical to game. Ungrazed bluegrass is a 

 favorite quail nesting ground. Game environments are a matter of balance be- 

 tween environmental elements. A partial interspersion of close-cropped blue- 

 grass sod in brushland may even be beneficial to quail, as bluegrass nesting 

 grounds certainly are. 



Many upland soils in the Agricultural Belt, but south of the glacial boundary, 

 are from the game standpoint deficient in grit and gravel. The now universal 

 graveling of secondary highways has abolished this deficiency, and thus brought 

 about a fundamental betterment in the environment for quail and other game. 

 The grit requirement of gallinaceous game does not seem to have been measured. 

 The amounts eaten seem to be large. William F. Lodge, of Monticello, Illinois, 

 showed me his feeding station which in March was being frequented by forty- 

 one quail, thirty-nine pheasants, and a larger number of small birds. The station 



