Gambel's Partridge, of which comparatively little is known, is a
characteristic game bird of Arizona and New Mexico, of rare beauty,
and with habits similar to others of the species of which there are
about two hundred. Mr. W. E. D. Scott found the species distributed
throughout the entire Catalina region in Arizona below an altitude of
5,000 feet. The bird is also known as the Arizona Quail.
The nest is made in a depression in the ground sometimes without any
lining. From eight to sixteen eggs are laid. They are most beautifully
marked on a creamy-white ground with scattered spots and blotches of
old gold, and sometimes light drab and chestnut red. In some specimens
the gold coloring is so pronounced that it strongly suggests to the
imagination that this quail feeds upon the grains of the precious
metal which characterizes its home, and that the pigment is imparted
to the eggs.
After the nesting season these birds commonly gather in "coveys" or
bevies, usually composed of the members of but one family. As a rule
they are terrestrial, but may take to trees when flushed. They are
game birds _par excellence_, and, says Chapman, trusting to the
concealment afforded by their dull colors, attempt to avoid detection
by hiding rather than by flying. The flight is rapid and accompanied
by a startling whirr, caused by the quick strokes of their small,
concave, stiff-feathered wings. They roost on the ground, tail to
tail, with heads pointing outward; "a bunch of closely huddled
forms--a living bomb whose explosion is scarcely less startling than
that of dynamite manufacture."
The Partridge is on all hands admitted to be wholly harmless, and at
times beneficial to the agriculturist. It is an undoubted fact that it
thrives with the highest system of cultivation, and the lands that are
the most carefully tilled, and bear the greatest quantity of grain and
green crops, generally produce the greatest number of Partridges.