24 BOBWHITE AND OTHER QUAILS OF UNITED STATES. 



one-tenth of the food had been animal matter, the remains of which 

 consisted of ants, the tibias of grasshoppers, the spotted cuticle of sol- 

 dier bugs, and the cow-horn-like mandibles of spiders. So far as 

 could be made out, the remains of vegetable food consisted of the skin 

 of kernels of corn, fragments of the akenes of ragweed, and pulverized 

 bits of sumac seeds {Rhus copallina), partridge pea {Chamwchrista 

 fascicvlarls) , milk pea {Galactia volubilis), and crownbeard (Ver- 

 hesina), besides unidentified leaf material. The weather had been 

 severe for more than a week, but the birds were in good condition. 



On the Marshall Hall farm, a short distance back from the banks 

 of the Potomac, is a swamp that has a steep bank with a southern 

 exposure where there is usually more or less bare ground in patches. 

 For several years bobwhites have made a winter haunt of this warm, 

 sunny bank, and here some interesting observations were made Feb- 

 ruary 18 and 19, 1902, when the snow was from 2 to 4 inches deep 

 and the minimum temperature was 4° F. above zero. A covey had 

 spent the night of February 17 not on the warm bank, comparatively 

 bare of snow, but on the level above the bank, where they had squatted 

 on the snow under a dewberry bush among broomsedge. Their feet 

 and droppings had melted the snow, and subsequent freezing had 

 formed an icy ring. The birds had not flown thither, but had walked 

 from the swamp up the steep bank and through the broomsedge 

 level. The next morning they had flown from the roost to the steep 

 slope, had run along the edge of the swamp to a bushy, tree-bordered 

 stream, then up its north bank for 300 yards and back on the south 

 bank, and thence to the steep, sunny slope again. On their journey 

 they had gone under every matted tangle of cat-brier vines — possibly 

 for berries, but more probably for protection. At one point they 

 had fed freely on sumac berries. The tracks of a fox were found 

 with those of the birds for about 100 yards. On the morning of 

 the 19th they traveled not more than 200 yards, this chiefly among 

 outstanding willows and alders of the swamp and along the belt of 

 land 5 to 20 yards wide between the boundary fence and the reeds 

 of the swamp. In one place two pairs of birds had walked so near 

 together as to cross one another's tracks; two single birds had 

 made clear lines of tracks on one side of them, and a single bird had 

 walked alone on the other side from 1 to 4 feet from his nearest 

 companion. All had evidently eaten rose hips, mutilated remains 

 of which still clung to the bushes. The covey might have been 

 expected to range far and wide in the open fields for seeds and even 

 to straw ricks for grain, but except when traveling to their roost 

 they had never gone more than a rod from cover. Apparently fear 

 of enemies restrained them. 



An article in the American Field, February 25, 1899, by the well- 

 known sportsman John Bolus, gf Wooster, Ohio, illustrates the hardi- 



