60 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



During their earliest youth the young quail feed al- 

 most exclusively on soft insect food, but as they grow 

 larger they eat more and more seeds, and when autumn 

 comes, fruit of one kind and another and grain. In 

 New Jersey barrens, where grain fields are few and 

 far between, I have taken quail that seemed to have fed 

 exclusively on the acorns of the scrub oak. 



Most carnivorous reptiles, birds and mammals are 

 enemies to quail, and yet against the mammals and rep- 

 tiles they are fairly well able to protect themselves. 

 Occasionally a snake devours the eggs in a nest or may 

 destroy a few of the very small young, but the depreda- 

 tions they commit are slight. Hawks are the enemies 

 from which the quail have most to fear, and of these 

 the goshawk, Cooper's hawk and sharp-shinned hawk 

 are the most destructive. I have more than once seen 

 a marsh hawk stoop at a quail, but I never saw this 

 hawk catch one. I have also seen a marsh hawk stoop 

 at a crow, and even at a great sage grouse that would 

 weigh many times what the hawk weighed. The grouse 

 seemed alarmed and ran away, but the crow merely 

 threatened the hawk with its beak and seemed not at all 

 disturbed. 



