Show QUALITIES OF LITTLE QUAIL food consists Con sitta largely of seeds do ot of noxious or troublesome Trouble tomo plants eaf scales by F 19 U I 1 DEAL BEAI the natural food ot of the quail con slats fists of the seeds of the vast number ol of plants known at as weeds with a little foliage ot at the same especially lix in w inter when the leaves aro are young and tender considering how bow small la Is the amount of 0 fruit usually found in the stomach of this bird it la is a surprise to learn that it sometimes does serious damage to vineyards investigation however shows that as aa in most other similar cases the injury results only when too many birds gather in a limited area nearly all the complains against the quail for eating fruit are that it visits vineyards in immense numbers and eats grapes when thousands visit a vineyard even it if only occasionally and each bird eats or spoils rt at least ono one grape crape tho the result is i arous trous I 1 in the laboratory investigation cg the food of these quail stomachs stomach were examined animal food principally insects amounted to 3 per cent ot of the food and 97 per der cent vegetable food this latter consists of seeds of plan plants to most of which are of noxious or troublesome species ants appear to be a favorite animal food but the quail will eat caterpillars beetles grasshoppers flies files spiders enalls and scale insects in this connection the following extract from a letter from dr W 0 chambers of los angeles Is interesting last may during the hatching batching season one of my female quail died a week prior to completing the batch an incandescent light eight candle power was substituted the result being 15 baby quail very wild at first not understanding human sounds or language but finally becoming as a V W K 42 ile di k I 1 xv IM alt tf california quail docile as pet chickens they were raised in my back yard running at large after the first week A number of marguerite bushes which grow in profusion in tho the yard were so BO infested with black blacki scale that I 1 had decided to uproot them and had postponed doing so BO as the little quail worked so persistently among tho the branches upon investigation I 1 discovered them eating the scale and twittering happily they would swallow the fully developed scale and thoroughly clean the bri brancheau bran chea of all those undeveloped |