52 Dr. E. Coues— Field Notes on Lophortyx gambeli. 
With the exception, perhaps, of thick pine woods, wanting 
in undergrowth, these birds frequent every sort of locality. 
They seem, however, to be particularly fond of the tangled, 
briary undergrowth and thick willow copses of the creek-bot¬ 
toms, and the heavy “ chaparral ” that fills the mountain-gorges 
through which flow little streams. But they are also very plen¬ 
tiful on broken, rocky hill-sides, among the thick scrub-oak*, 
mezquite, and manzanita bushes that almost invariably cover 
such situations, as well as in the patches of heavy dry heath 
[Artemisia, Larrea, and the like) that converts extensive plains 
into chaparralf. But I have so often found them in every situ¬ 
ation, that I can hardly say that they have any special prefe¬ 
rence. In laboriously climbing among huge bare granitic or 
old-red-sandstone boulders, hunting for Salpinctes obsoletus , I 
have often found them; and once a bevy whirred up from a 
little dry knoll in the midst of an extensive reed-marsh, where I 
was wading in water up to my middle, trying to detect an Agelceus 
tricolor or A. gubernator among the thousands of A. phceniceus 
all about me. 
Like all its tribe, GambePs Quail is chiefly graminivorous and 
frugivorous, though insects form no small portion of its food. 
Seeds of all kinds of grasses, berries of all sorts, wild grapes, 
all the numerous small plant-infesting beetles, with flies and 
other soft insects, are all to be found in its crop. Doubtless, 
should Arizona prosper in an agricultural sense, wheat, barley, 
and other cereals will become acceptable to it; but it has hardly 
as yet had an opportunity for the cultivation of a taste for these 
productions. In early spring it feeds very extensively on the 
tender, fresh buds of young willows; and then the salicine in 
these communicates more or less of a bitter flavour to the flesh, 
just as, in Labrador, I have found the flesh of the Canace cana¬ 
densis and Lagopus albus greatly injured in flavour by the 
resinous buds on which they feed during spring and summer. 
I have heard three distinct notes from Lophortyx gambeli, and 
* All the species of Quercus that I have met with in Arizona, with 
one, perhaps two exceptions, are rather scrubby bushes than trees. 
f u Chaparral,” a generic term, very indefinitely used to designate 
tracts covered with any sort of thick, scrubby bushes ; u brush” is our 
nearest equivalent. 
