A Summary and Reclassification of Bobwhite Foods

Abstract

A great many plants are known to furnish food for bobwhite (Colinus virginianus). Most of them will respond to some form of agricultural management; but only a few of them are sufficiently useful to bobwhite to justify agricultural effort in their production. For successful management of land and vegetation to benefit bobwhite, therefore, it is important to know the relative value of these food plants. (Plants supply about 85 per cent of the bobwhite's food, the other 15 per cent being animal foods-beetles, bugs, caterpillars, centipedes, crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, leafhoppers, snails, spiders, walkingsticks.) This paper presents an evaluation of bobwhite food plants as to their quality and acceptance, and classifies them as choice, inferior, and unimportant. This is a departure from conventional classifications, but is similar to the one we have made of deer and turkey foods (Davison and Graetz, 1957). The range of this paper's applicability has no geographical bounds. Neither is it influenced by seasons nor field conditions. It simply classifies plant foods qualitatively for the species, bobwhite. Any local management plan should, of course, select (from the foods) only those that are well adapted to the climate, soils, seasons, managerial desires, and related field conditions. Many previously published classifications determined preferences in the light of only locally available sources of food, and failed to weigh the evidences of digestibility, nutrition, and (foremost exceptions: Nestler, et al., 1945; Michael and Beckwith, 1955; Davison, 1940 and 1942). The author has studied the evident free choice of foods selected