40 
IOWA BIRD LIFE— XI, 1941 
on the same tracts in several southeast counties. Such numbers were 
sufficient to warrant an open season, although had the weather been 
more favorable the bags would not have been tilled as easily and 
quickly as in 1939. rmc the sport would have been very satisfactory, 
The winter of 194G-'41 was open and with little sleet, ice and snow 
in the quail region. Protective cover and food conditions were very 
good for the medium population, and farmers on the Decatur- Wayne 
County area reported no discernible winter loss of Bob-whites. The 
1941 seedstock as reported by the farmers and checked by the writers 
on portions of the area numbered higher than in the spring, 1940. 
Observers in all parts of the quail region, who were much alarmed 
at not finding the birds readily in the hunting season in the spring, 
1941, reported that the quail “had come back”. Those observers meant 
that they were seeing the Bob-whites in larger numbers, and that there 
was a good seedstock. 
Literature Cited 
Reed, C. D, 
1940. Climatological data. U. S. Dept, of Commerce, Weather 
Bureau, Iowa Section. 51:87-100. 
Sanders. Earl 
1940. History and Development of an Experimental Bob-white 
Management Area in Southern Iowa. Iowa State College 
Jour. Sci., 15:98-100. 
XOTKS 
OX WIXTK R-KILLIXG OF CENTRAL IOWA 
BOB-WHITES 1 
By PAUL L. ERRINGTON- 
Despite all that has been written on the subject of winter-killing of 
Bob-whites fColinttx virf/iuin«Mxj in north-central United States, the 
literature gives few details as to just what happens when a covey meets 
with lethal crisis. Details in most cases are simply not to be had, so 
the history of mortality suffered in January, 1940, by three coveys 
northwest of Ames, Iowa, may perhaps be of unusual interest. 
All three coveys were made up of birds that fed regularly in corn- 
fields. Cornfields may furnish excellent winter feeding for central 
Iowa Bob-whites, but the harvest by man and livestock had been in 
many places very clean during the prolonged, dry “Indian summer'* 
of 1939. The ground was more or less covered with snow throughout 
the following January, often to the extent of making unavailable what 
little food remained in fields frequented by the birds. Then, on the 
night of January 17, the air temperature fell to 25 s below zero (F.). 
Field studies were conducted according to techniques evolved in the 
course of previous winters and described elsewhere (Errington, 1933: 
6-11; Errington and Hamerstrom, 1936; 317-333). Working condi- 
tions were exceptionally favorable. 
By December 27, six of a former covey of 17 were living by them- 
selves near a farm yard and a field of soy beans, and the others were 
remaining in cornfield quarters that had been occupied earlier by the 
entire number, It could be perceived by January 15 that the cornfield 
birds were weakening, and. on the night of January 17, the covey of 
11 went to roost in a roadside ditch, huddling in typical formation 
1 Jo urinal Paper No. J-71>7 ihe Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station. Project No 
■_ r [oufi State Pnllege in cnii|ier;itirm iciTh The I’. S. Tim'nsciiiil Survey, the Americnn 
Wildlife Institute ami the Iir.Vii State Conservntiun Commission. 
