36 BOBWHITE AND OTHER QUAILS OF UNITED STATES. 



available for examination, probably the percentage of fruit would 

 have been lower. The December percentage is evidently character- 

 istic, for it was based on the examination of about 200 stomachs. 



In early spring wild winter-cured berries, in May strawberries, 

 later the Ruhus fruits — thimbleberry, dewberry, and highbush black- 

 berry — and in late summer and autumn an endless profusion of the 

 year's wild harvest yield the bobwhite an accessible and abundant 

 food supply. In late fall and winter, when snow covers the seeds, 

 fruit doubtless keeps it from starving. In December it forms nearly 

 one-fifth of the food for the month. Sumac, wax-myrtle, rose, and 

 bayberry are the main Avinter supply. Poison-ivy berries are eaten 

 occasionally. Rose hips often project from the snow and furnish 

 timely food. At Falls Church, Va., and at Cabin John Bridge and 

 Marshall Hall, Md., tracks of coveys in deep snow led up to rose 

 shoots to which partly eaten hips were clinging. Sumac and other 

 plants of the genus Rhus form 1.60 per cent of the annual food, and 

 during December the proportion of Rhus alone is 10.50 per cent. Of 

 12 birds shot during December at Porters Landing, S. Dak., near the 

 bobwhite's northern limit, by W. C. Colt, each had eaten from 100 to 

 300 of the carmine sumac berries, and altogether the sumac had 

 furnished 90 per cent of the food they contained. Bayberry and 

 wax-myrtle are as important along the coast as sumacs are inland. 

 Berries of jvax-myrtle were found in the stomachs of 15 out of 39 

 birds collected during November, December, and January, 1902 and 

 1903, in Walton County, Fla. One hundred and twenty bayberries 

 had been eaten by one bird taken in July, 1901, at Shelter Island, 

 N. Y. Both these fruits last through the winter and well into May, 

 affording excellent provision just when it is most needed. 



In spite of its frugivorous tastes and constant association with 

 orchard crops, the bobwhite is not often known to injure cultivated 

 fruits. M. B. Waite reports that near Odenton, Md., it sometimes 

 picks ripening strawberries. Yet birds that were kept in captivity 

 several months refused strawberries when they were hungry. Cul- 

 tivated cherries were found in a few stomachs, but the bobwhite is 

 not an arboreal feeder and does not damage this crop. During June 

 at Marshall Hall it was repeatedly observed feeding greedily upon 

 the fruit of running dewberry vines. It probably does no serious 

 harm, however, to cultivated bush varieties of Ruhus, such as the 

 thimbleberry, the raspberry, and the blackberry. It is fond of wild 

 grapes, and a number of crops each contained as many as 25 frost 

 grapes {Vitis cordifolia). Hence it might be expected to injure 

 cultivated varieties, for its relative, the California quail, sometimes 

 plunders vineyards ; but, so far as the writer knows, vineyards in the 

 East have sustained no appreciable damage from the bobwhite. 



In summing up the frugivorous habits of the bobwhite, it may bs 



