54 PROPAGATION OF WILD BIRDS 



is largely one of providing enough broody bantams at the 

 right time. 



Mr. Shaw kept his breeding-stock of forty pairs in an en- 

 closure, wired overhead, which contained, he writes, only 

 about i,ooo square feet, having two stunted trees for roost- 

 ing. The hens laid mostly in nests, but dropped some eggs 

 around the pen. Several pairs, at last writing, were incu- 

 bating their eggs in the pen, but these are liable, he says, to 

 get broken up before hatching, owing to fighting. He keeps 

 each brood with the bantam in a small coop or run till three 

 or four weeks old. The ground is sandy and bare, and he 

 moves them occasionally. Then he releases hen and brood 

 in a large enclosure. These birds get very tame, almost 

 domesticated. Some hand-reared birds, which he released 

 this spring, stay about the dooryard. On twenty acres of 

 land he estimates that there are about 400 of these quails, 

 and they are rearing a swarm of young. 



The feeding system used by Mr. Shaw has been one feed 

 of ants' eggs each day, chick-grain twice or three times, and 

 clover clippings in the middle of the day. The old birds are 

 fed entirely on chick-grain, with one feed of clover daily. 

 They winter in the open, with merely a roof over the roos ting- 

 place to break the heavy rains. Temperature in winter is 

 never below 20 degrees above zero. The normal egg-laying 

 season of wild birds is from about May i to June 15. 



Comparison. From what I have seen of the birds in 

 captivity on the preserve of T. A. Howell, the habits of the 

 Gambel's quail are similar to those of the valley quail. 

 Mountain quails kept and bred on the same estate, in similar 

 enclosures, seemed wilder and did not lay so well. One in- 

 convenience about the species for artificial handling is that 

 the sexes are almost identical in appearance, though the male 

 is apt to have slightly longer plumes on the head. 



