The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

It is indeed strange that the very bird which practices such fine and successful strategy in leading an intruder away from its helpless young, by playing wounded, should fail so seriously when before the guns. A hunted quail covey should learn to post a sentry to watch for danger and give the alarm in time for a safe flight. But I know one quail species that is a glorious exception. It is Gambel's quail, of southern Arizona. I saw a good wing shot, Mr. John M. Phillips, hunt that quail (without dogs) until he was hot and red, and come in with more wrath than birds. He said, with an injured air: "The little beggars won't rise! I don't want to shoot them on the ground, and the minute they rise above the creosote bushes they drop right down into them again, and go on running." It was even so. They simply will not rise and fly away, as Bob White does, giving the sportsmen a chance to kill them, but when forced to fly up clear of the bushes they at once drop back again. [Footnote: A very few quail-killers of the East who oppose long close seasons contend that quail coveys "breed better" when they are shot to pieces every year and "scattered," but we observed that the quail of the Sonoran Desert managed to survive and breed and perpetuate themselves numerously without the benevolent cooperation of the "pump-gun" and the automatic shotgun.] While the study of avian mentality is a difficult undertaking, this is no excuse for the fact that up to this date (1922) that field of endeavor has been only scratched on its surface. The birds of the world are by no means so destitute of ideas and inventions that they merit almost universal neglect. Because of the suggestions they contain we will point out a few prominent mental traits in birds, chosen at random.