In brief, the criterion by which the effec- 
tiveness of winter quail cover in Wisconsin 
may be judged boils down very nearly to 
its utility against Accipiterine hawks- 
Cooper's hawks in mild winters," and gos- 
hawks sporadically or about once a decade 
when grouse and rabbit disease in the 
northern wilderness regions wipes out the 
normal prey of these swift, powerful rap- 
tors and drives them southward, fierce and 
hungry. When the Cooper's hawks stay 
through the months of snow or the gos- 
hawks come, that's when the quail need 
cover. 
For protection from redtailed hawks- 
the big hawks most commonly seen-practi- 
cally any kind of shrubby cover has been 
observed to suffice, provided that the quail 
had enough to eat. The past winter (1930- 
31) quail were repeatedly watched from 
concealment on the University Hill Farm 
experimental area (Madison) and to some 
extent elsewhere, while redtails perched in 
plain view, sometimes less than 100 yards 
away. The Hill Farm quail displayed no 
alarm concerning the redtail, keeping to 
the open hazelbrush and wild rose canes, 
or perhaps moving on a short distance or 
working across to the opposite side of the 
woodlot, frequently pecking at miscellane- 
oUs objects en route. The 47 birds (2 
coveys) on the experimental area suffered 
no mortality from January 6 to March 17, 
the period of accurate censusing. 
Of course, the quail are not in the habit 
of asking for trouble, but they seem to real- 
ize that the ordinary large hawks are noth- 
ing to worry about unless those hawks get 
too close. And hawks as comparatively 
slow and clumsy as those of the Buteo 
group (redtails, roughlegs, et cetera) and 
as much at a disadvantage in brush are not 
apt to get unduly close to top-notch quail- 
quail amid surroundings at all favorable. 
The starved, the crippled, the diseased, the 
inept, the culls generally, and the birds 
striving to hang on under hopeless living 
conditions-these are the ones we can ex- 
pect the redtails to pick up. 
It has been extremely difficult to gather 
winter data on the reactions of the bobwhite 
to the marsh hawk, on account of the in- 
frequency of that predator wintering this 
far north. Late fall and early spring field 
observations indicate, however, that the 
quail are slightly more apprehensive of the 
marsh hawk than of the redtail, but employ 
somewhat similar tactics ' against both, with 
somewhat similar success. The marsh hawk 
is considerably more dexterous in the air 
than the redtail but seems equally unhandy 
in brush or tall weeds. Since the marsh 
hawk is not remarkably speedy in straight 
flight, he cppears unlikely to catch a well- 
conditioned, well-situated  quail except 
through sheer surprise. And quail that are 
what they ought to be are not the easiest 
creatures to take unawares. 
The Wisconsin investigation as yet has 
little reason to consider any of the resident 
 
predacious mammals serious winter ene- 
mies of the bobwhite, irrespective of cover 
conditions."2 They, along with the owls 
(of which the great horned owl is the only 
one to capture quail save on very rare 
occasions, and he doesn't get so many) are 
not adapted to overtake sprint-flying game 
like normal, mature quail by direct chase; 
thus, against them one type of cover may 
not differ much in efficacy from another. 
The exact bearing of cover upon quail loss 
from nocturnal predators is obscure, and 
the topic may be dismissed for the present, 
pending accumulation of additional data. 
To reiterate, ordinarily good winter food- 
cover combinations safeguard bobwhites 
from the redtail and probably from the 
marsh hawk, and these two have several 
times been noted to do no damage to quail 
coveys even where the cover was distinctly 
deficient. 
The Cooper's hawk, though, round- 
winged darter of the woodlands, stronger 
and cleverer flyer than the quail themselves, 
is a problem quite apart from redtails and 
marsh hawks. The species is one the resi- 
dent numbers of which are very hard to 
estimate on account of its usual elusive tac- 
tics and one that has demonstrated its 
capabilities of holding its own, or gaining, 
in spite of gun and trap. Its most for- 
midable known predacious enemy, the 
horned owl, has suffered infinitely more 
than it has by association with man. Fur- 
thermore, one can only conjecture as to the 
effect on the Cooper's hawk's numerical 
status of the unthinking human persecution 
of other possible native enemies, including 
those harmless or beneficial to human in- 
terests. 
Probably, it may be postulated, one of the 
greatest single agencies to force the phylo- 
genetic perfection of the bobwhite's terrific 
initial spurt, the Cooper's hawk is a test of 
fitness which even fit birds in a fit environ- 
ment do not always get by-but they are by 
no means helpless.' Where the quail 
"freeze" a few minutes at the approach of a 
marsh hawk or a redtail, they stay "frozen" 
when the newcomer is a Cooper's hawk. 
Should flight be resorted to, the birds go-- 
into the rankest brushy growth within 
reach. No longer are oak suckers and open 
hazlebrush adequate-if contrast with snow 
renders next to worthless the quail's pro- 
tective  coloration-when  an  Accipiter 
flashes in among the branches and follows 
on foot. A quail once marked must im- 
mediately find either a most excellent place 
to hide or find cover in which it can get 
around with greater facility than the raptor. 
Though conceivably too exhausted to fly, 
the quail may still be tireless runners in 
cover dense enough to impede the progress 
of a pursuer more than their own. 
For the sake of clarity, a few specific 
examples illustrative of the ways by which 
bobwhites escape the Cooper's hawk may 
be given. The examples are typical and 
are written up from field notes. 
 
Example I-West of Prairie du Sac, Wis- 
consin. 
February 16, 1930, was mild and clear. A 
fresh snow covered the ground. A Cooper's 
hawk (the only one seen all winter) surprised 
20 quail feeding about a farmer's corn crib and 
hog-lot. The bobwhite singled out for pursuit 
saved itself by ducking into a roll of woven 
wire behind a shed. The 19 dropped in scat- 
tered formation in a grapegrown fencerow, 
along which they ran until they reached some 
creek brush (willow, alder and dogwood) 1,000 
yards distant. 
The Cooper's hawk, first noted waiting in the 
farmyard at 1 P.M., became alarmed and left, 
returning to take up his watch an hour later. 
At 3:30 he again departed, after which the lone 
quail was flushed by myself from the wire. 
The quail dove into a woodpile 50 feet away. 
The following day at 3:30 this bird was still 
in the farmyard, the others at the creek. 
Example li-Wingra Wild Life Refuge, 
Madison, Wisconsin. 
The Cooper's hawk was seen on December 20, 
1931. The previous day, a recent 4-inch snow 
revealed, he had attacked a covey of about 25 
(uncensused at this time) feeding on tick 
trefoil in open woods. One bird had been eaten 
at the edge of a small brush pile near a marsh 
and 30 to 150 yards from the usual covey feed- 
ing ground. 
At 9:45 A.M., December 20, the quail were 
in a sumac and red raspberry roadside growth 
en route to the trefoil from their night roost in 
the marsh. The Cooper's hawk flew up at 
10:35 A.M. from a partly eaten kill in the 
sumacs. He perched in a tree nearby for about 
half an hour, then, presumably aware of my 
presence, slipped into the woods. The covey 
had sneaked off 20 to 55 yards to hide, mostly 
in the marsh grass, every bird for itself. One, 
hiding under a roadside bank about 15 feet 
from me (11:25 A.M.) was noticeably uneasy 
because of my nearness, but respected too much 
the other menace to flush. 
This jolt-two kills--changed the habits of 
the covey entirely. They stayed in the marsh 
grass for the next nine days, subsisting mainly 
on seeds of jewelweed (Impatiens biflora) 
which they were able to scratch from beneath 
heavy canopies of herbaceous vegetation with- 
out exposing themselves.  The jewelweed, to 
which formerly they had not been noted to pay 
more than scant attention, remained an impor- 
tant supplement to their trefoil diet after cau- 
tious feeding in the woods was resumed. Al- 
though careful check-ups of the situation were 
made until spring, no subsequent mortality due 
to Cooper's hawks was disclosed. The quail 
apparently had learned. 
Example Il-East of Prairie du Sac, Wis- 
consin. 
Two closely adjacent coveys, A and B, with 
19 and 29 birds, respectively, were the most 
harassed by Cooper's hawks of all coveys 
studied,' yet a loss of only one bird could be 
determined from December 21, 1930, to March 
14, 1931, when censuses were discontinued. 
The one quail was caught just after covey A 
had got off its night roost under a fallen dead 
tree (January 24). There were several inches 
of clean, wet snow. The actual killing of the 
bird was not witnessed, but the sign was "hot" 
at 10:30 A.M. Three birds had run into a hole 
at the base of a grubbed-out stump, the others 
had gone for the brush, grass tufts, and bare 
spots beneath overhanging banks. In late 
afternoon all birds came out of hiding and flew 
without feeding to a large brush pile, where 
they spent the night. The morning of January 
25 they fed hastily on ragweed seed within 30 
to 50 yards of the brushpile, retiring to the 
same with no avoidable delay. There they re-