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 seerned 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. 
