The various members of the Grouse family, while belonging to a grain-eating group, are certainly quite prominent as insect destroyers.  Especially is this so with respect to the Quail, Prairie Hen, Sharptailed Grouse, and Wild Turkey, all of which are occupied most of the summer months in capturing and destroying vast numbers of such insects as are found on the prairies.  Grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, caterpillars, and similar insects comprise the bulk of their insect food—­forms that are all among the most numerous as well as destructive species.  In writing about these birds as insect destroyers Prof.  Samuel Aughey writes:  “I happened to be in the Republican Valley, in south-western Nebraska, in August, 1874, when the locust invaded that region.  Prairie chickens and quails, that previous to their coming had a large number of seeds in their stomachs, when dissected, seemed now for a time to abandon all other kinds of food.  At least from this onward for a month little else than locusts were found in their stomachs.  All the birds seemed now to live solely on locusts for a while.”  In winter and at other times of the year when insect life is scarce and difficult to obtain, these birds feed more or less extensively upon seeds and other kinds of vegetation.  Some even enter cultivated grounds and seek food that belongs to the farmer, thereby doing more or less direct injury.  The extent of such injury, of course, depends upon the number of birds engaged in the depredations, and also on the time over which it is allowed to extend.  If corn and other grain is harvested at the proper time, but little damage ensues; but if allowed to remain in the field throughout winter, much of the crop is liable to be taken by the birds.

[Illustration:  QUAIL.]

Perhaps no other bird that frequents the farm pays higher prices for the grain it eats than does the Quail.  Living about the hedgerows, groves, and ravines, where insect enemies gather and lurk during the greater part of the year, this bird not only seizes large numbers of these enemies daily during the summer months when they are “abroad in the land,” but all winter through it scratches among the fallen leaves and other rubbish that accumulates about its haunts seeking for hibernating insects of various kinds.  Being a timid little creature, the Quail seldom leaves cover to feed openly in the fields, and therefore does but little actual harm in the way of destroying grain.  In fact it only takes stray kernels that otherwise might be lost.  This bird is one of the few that feeds upon that unsavory insect, the chinch-bug; and the number of this pest that occasionally are destroyed by it is really astonishing.  No farmer or fruit-grower should ever kill a quail himself nor allow anyone else to hunt it on his premises.

Our domestic fowls, save ducks and geese, from which so much direct income is derived throughout the year, belong here.  It would be folly on my part to assert that they are useless to the farmer.  Besides furnishing eggs and meat for the table, they are great aids in keeping down a variety of noxious insects during spring, summer, and fall.