Back in the 'seventies I'd hired my brother to pump a lease for me. During a real bad cold spell, he got to picking up dead doves all over the place. Seems like he wound up with 20 or 30 of 'em, which he dressed,cooked, and ate.
Bobwhites will rustle up something to eat, while a dove will just sit on a limb until he freezes to death.
After a prolonged ice and snow storm years ago, I took one of my bird dogs out just to get an idea how many quail had survived. To my surprise, we got into lots of birds, so I killed a couple to see what they were eating.
Their craws were full of a strange looking "grain" that I couldn't ever remember seeing before. I called TP&W and described it to the guy on the phone.
He said it was grasshopper eggs!
I was hunting alongside the Little Wichita River and the banks of the river weren't frozen hard. The quail had discovered they could scratch down and find the eggs laid by the grasshoppers.
