The Valley Quails 



the nest, are the staple diet of every power that preys, — snakes, coons, 

 weasels, squirrels, skunks, badgers, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, jays, ravens, 

 Cooper hawks, and horned owls. Think what an ungodly crew is arrayed 

 against these gentle fowls, and you will cease to wonder at the fearful 

 toll they have to pay in their efforts to perpetuate their kind. So terrible 

 are these imposts, and so delicate the resulting balance of nature, that the 

 deciding vote as to whether the Quail shall go or stay is cast by man. 

 In particular, it is incumbent upon him, if he too is going to take toll, to 

 see to it that his fellow depredators are deprived of their normal share. 

 Bobcats and Quail cannot coexist, and as for the gopher snake, that much- 

 lauded "friend of the farmer," I have seen his belly knobbed with Quails' 

 eggs too often for him to expect forgiveness or immunity at my hands. 



The Valley Quails are so essentially sociable, that neighboring flocks 

 begin to draw together while the youngsters are still in their infancy. 

 It is no unusual sight, therefore, to see a school of, say, three ranks, at- 

 tended by half a dozen parent-teachers. With such conditions of aug- 

 mented danger, they are likely to keep near the densest cover; and I have 

 seen them threading the tules of Laguna Blanca with the agility of rails 

 or marsh wrens. Two such aggregations of two and three families, 

 respectively, I watched at one time from a reed-blind, as they deployed 

 over the bare ground adjacent to the reeds. The count showed that one 

 male of the quintette was posted on guard. The others led their flocks 

 about warily, pausing ever and again rigidly, and as upright as soldiers. 

 Again and again an American Kestrel (Cerchneis s. sparverius) passed over- 

 head unfeared, but as often as the companies heard the "sharp-shin 

 chitter" of the Bush-Tits in a distant live oak, they scurried for cover 

 instanter. The joke of it was that there was no Sharp-shinned Hawk 

 about, and that the Bush-Tits were making all this fuss over the re- 

 current passage of this same Kestrel. 



Associated thus from childhood, contiguous flocks are likely to form 

 permanent coveys numbering from twenty to sixty individuals. In such 

 fashion they maintain themselves throughout the autumn and winter, 

 learning flock tactics and cunning under the discipline of gunfire. They 

 do not lie well to a dog, and those who hunt them use only retrievers. 

 When approached, the flock scatters somewhat before hiding, and it 

 rises in wisps and scattered bevies instead of with a single burst like the 

 Bobwhite. This favors the hunter in allowing him successive shots; 

 but the winging of these speedy bomb-shells is no easy matter, and we 

 give the sportsman the credit of earning what he gets. The escaping 

 birds often take to trees where, of course, no gentleman will shoot them, 

 and the detection of their cowering forms, shrunk to the smallest capacity, 

 is none so easy either. 



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