10 GAME, AQUATIC, AND RAPACIOUS BIRDS. 



Grain was found in 133 stomachs and constitutes 6.4 per cent of 

 the food. It was distributed as follows: Corn in 14 stomachs, wheat 

 in 15, oats in 13, barley in 89, and rye in 2. The principal complaints 

 against the quail on the score of grain eating are that flocks some- 

 times visit newly sown fields and eat large quantities of the seed. 

 Walter E. Bryant says on this point: 



Two males which I shot one evening as they were going to roost for the night after 

 having been feeding on a newly sown field contained the following, mainly in the crop: 

 (a) Two hundred and ten whole grains of barley, 6 pieces of broken barley, 3 grains of 

 " cheat," and 1 of wheat, besides a few barley hulls, some clover leaves, and alfilaria; 

 (6) 185 whole grains of barley, 5 broken pieces, 4 grains of "cheat," and 2 of wheat; 

 also barley hulls, clover, and alfilaria. The flock numbered nearly or quite 20 birds. 1 



Only one report accuses the bird of eating grain from the harvest 

 field. Mr. W. T. Craig, of San Francisco, writing to the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, says: 



I have observed the quail enter a field of wheat to the number of thousands, and had 

 they not been driven away they would have destroyed the whole crop. 



Stomach examination does not indicate any month in which grain 

 is eaten in excess of other food. January shows the highest percent- 

 age, 12.4, but November is nearly as high, while December, although 

 between the two, shows less than 3 per cent. A little more than 3 

 per cent was eaten in February, and none at ail in March and April, 

 though the newly sown grain would be accessible in one at least of 

 these months. June and July, the harvest months, show, respectively, 

 4.1 per cent and 10.7 per cent. In fact the stomach record plainly 

 indicates that the quail does not make special search for grain, but 

 being naturally a seed eater takes grain when it comes in the way. 



The seeds of a multitude of plants which have no apparent useful 

 function except to increase by their decay the deposit of humus in the 

 soil constitute the staff of life of the quail. In this particular inves- 

 tigation they aggregate 62.5 per cent of the food of the year. They 

 appear in stomachs taken in every month and reach a good percentage 

 in each, the only months that show much diminution in quantity 

 being January, February, March, and April, when new forage partly 

 replaces seeds. The percentage is highest in June, 85.9, but shows no 

 great faUing off from July to December, inclusive. Seventy-three 

 kinds of seeds were identified, at least generically, and more than half 

 of them were determined specifically. Many more were ground up 

 so as to be unrecognizable. 



Bur thistle, lupines, bur clover, and turkey mullein appear to be the 

 favorite seeds; that the others are not distasteful is shown by the 

 quantities found in some stomachs. For instance, mayweed was 

 identified in ouly 27 stomachs, yet one stomach contained at least 

 2,000 of these seeds; pigweed (Chenopodium) in but 11, yet 1 con- 



i Zoe, IV, pp. 55-56, 1893-94. 



