BOB-WHITES AND QUAILS: MEARNS QUAIL 227 
almost stepped on one of a small bunch when feeding. As he stopped 
and remained quiet, they all “got up from their diggings and uttering a 
low note of alarm sneaked down the hill into a gulch, and squatted” 
(MS). A pair that Mr. Bailey started at the head of the Mimbres at 
about 8,000 feet had been scratching under the pine trees. “In the 
freshly scratched ground,” he says, “I found a quantity of membrana- 
cious shells of a little bulb—probably Cyperns —and several of the 
bulbs. I ate one of these and found it good, starchy, juicy, crisp, and of 
a nutty flavor. The Quail had dug two or three inches deep in the hard 
ground and seemed to find plenty of bulbs, but I could not find one by 
digging new ground, nor could I find the plant which bore them” (MS). 
Unlike the Gambel Quail the Mearns Quail does not gather in large 
flocks. Though well distributed, as Mr. Ligon says, the birds are nowhere 
abundant. He thinks there are usually about six in a bunch, though 
they range from two to twelve. He says that the number of birds that 
may be found at any point in their range varies more than is the case 
With any game bird that he knows; food, character of breeding season, 
and deep winter snows, probably combining at times to reduce them to 
the verge of extermination over great areas. For several seasons they were 
said to be very abundant on the Mescalero Indian Reservation but then 
as the result of bad winter weather during a term of years almost disap¬ 
peared, the same being true in other districts of the Southwest. A variety 
of natural enemies affect their abundance. The Cooper Hawk Mr. Ligon 
considers the worst enemy, responsible for their small coveys. But the 
predatory animals are also important factors in their abundance. In 
the center of the Mearns’ distribution in the Black Range in 1915, while 
they were protected by the rank vegetation of a good season, Mr. Ligon 
says they were also profiting by four years of active trapping of skunks, 
bobcats, and foxes. One trapper had a record of forty-five foxes in 
four nights, and forty-one bobcats in a year. As the birds increased in 
numbers, the ranchers and cowboys said they were “coming back.” 
“Often in midwinter,” Mr. Ligon reports, “I observe two of the birds 
—a pair—together. By May 15th they are generally paired but I 
believe it is late in June before they lay, as young are always late in 
hatching” (MS). As late as the middle of September, half-grown young 
have been found. On August 21 (1901), in the Guadalupe Mountains 
we flushed a family of old and half grown downy young. The parents 
flew with their quavering call and also a single nasal note, leaving the 
brood so well hidden that in tramping all around the place we found 
but one, and that only by nearly stepping on it. 
When on the Wheeler Survey in the White Mountains of Arizona, 
Mr. Henshaw, under date of August 10, wrote—“while riding with a 
party through a tract of pine woods, a brood of eight or ten young, 
accompanied by the female, was discovered. The young, though but a 
