Game Birds and Game Fishes of the Pacific Coast - Harry Thom Payne

THE MASKED BOBWHITE

(Colinus ridgewayi)

A smaller species of the bobwhite, known as the masked bobwhite, were reasonably plentiful along the border of southern Arizona and south through the state of Sonora, Mexico. Like the typical bobwhite they were strictly a field and grass bird. But through the heavy pasturing of that section, together with a series of dry seasons denuding the whole country of such cover as would be necessary for their protection from hawks and vermin, they have become nearly if not quite extinct. They differed from the eastern bobwhite in that the male had a black throat instead of a white one and a bright cinnamon breast. The female differed also in having a light buff throat, and generally of a lighter color.

Order, GALLINAE
Family, TETRAONIDAE
Subfamily, PERDICINAE

Genus	Species	Common Names	Range and Breeding Grounds
Oreortyx	pictus	Mountain quail	Coast Range of California from Monterey Bay north into Western Oregon.
	pictus plumiferus	Mountain quail	Both sides of the Sierra Nevadas from Central Oregon south. Coast range valleys south from San Francisco Bay into Lower California.
	pictus confinis	Lower California mountain quail	Peninsula of Lower California, inter-grading in the northern part with the pictus plumiferus.
Lophortyx	californicus	Valley quail	Coast Range valleys of California from San Francisco Bay north into Oregon.
	californicus vallicola	Valley quail	Both sides of the Sierra Nevadas from Central Oregon south. Coast range valleys south from San Francisco Bay into Lower California.
	gambeli	Gambel quail Arizona quail	Southern Nevada, Southeastern California, Western Arizona and Northern Mexico.
Callipepla	squamata	Scaled quail	Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico.
Callipepla	elegans	Elegant quail	Southern Sonora, Mexico.
Cyrtonyx	montezuma	Montezuma quail Messena quail	Southwestern Arizona and south into Mexico.
Colinus	ridgewayi	Masked Bobwhite	Northwestern Sonora, Mexico.
Colinus	virginianus	Bobwhite	Introduced and acclimated in Washington and Oregon and the islands of Puget Sound.

THE WILD TURKEY

If there is any member of the feathered tribe entitled to the designation of royal game bird, it is the wild turkey. This magnificent bird, whose size and cunning challenges at once the admiration and the skill of the sportsman, is a native of North and Central America, and found in its wild state in no other part of the globe. The ocellated turkey, the Central American species, is even more gaudy in plumage than the peacock, but as it is not found within the territorial scope of these articles, I shall leave its resplendent colors to scintillate in its own tropic sun, undescribed.