Fall and Winter Food Habits of the Bobwhite Quail in the Sandhills of North Carolina

The contents of 4,157 quail crops from the Sandhills Wildlife Management Area were examined. The crops were collected from hunter harvested quail during the open hunting season (mid-November through late February) for seven years, 1961 through 1967. Items of primary importance were the seeds of longleaf pine, red bay, shrub lespedeza, rye and beggarweed. A temporal examination of the data indicates that red bay was important as a source offood in late winter and during periods ofpine mast scarcity.