I go to school about 50 miles from here. I was coming home today about 1:00 and was on straight stretch when I saw something in the road. I don’t see well so I slowed down to identify it. I got real close and I was surprised. There in the road, on the yellow line, stood a lone quail and running around her were about a dozen baby quail each a little smaller than a golf ball. They would run around an in and out but never more than a foot from their mother. I stopped and walked up to them. I got about ten feet away and just stood there and watched, they didn’t care. I felt really good, as if I had been touched by the hand of God. After a few minutes, I chased them off of the road and headed home. Some jackass might have mowed them down. Thanks for letting me share.
Boy, they really *are * tiny (check out the last two pictures). What a neat experience, hlanelee!
Many years ago, I was drving home one afternoon through Southern California suburbia. A family of California Quail ran across the road, moving like little wind-up cartoons. Cracked me up.
I forgot - for the full multimedia experience of bobwhitetitude, here’s their call (49 k)
I hear these all the time as we house several bobwhite in the mosquito research labs.
Back where I’m from in South Georgia, there are many of what we call “quail hunting plantations.” Basically they’re large tracts of land, mostly forested through which paying customers are guided by employees to take a crack at killing them some birds.
Anyways… real quail like to be way under the bushes and can be difficult to track down even with good dogs. So to ensure that the hunters (and huntresses) get their money’s worth, tame quail are often released in specific areas around the plantation. In fact it is not uncommon to walk up on a quail who is so tame as to not fly away without a little gentle nudge from a boot (can’t shoot a bird on the ground, you see…ain’t sporting)
Of course occasionally some of these quail escape the wily preditors and remain at large.
A fun pastime when coming upon such a quail in the middle of a dirt road is to see how far you can get the quail to walk down the road before it gets too skittish and flies off to the bushes. Longest I ever saw was several hundred yards by PeterWiggen who hopefully will be along shortly to back me up.
But does their call echo??
: ducks and runs :
I’ve worked on a quail farm. We used to put them in a croaker sack and swing it around our heads before we let them go. There were feeders nearby and at night we would go collect the survivors to put back in the pen for later. NOTE:farm raised quail will nest but will not tend the eggs.
Well, I’ve heard about the ducks, but do the runs echo?
Ewwwwwww…
[hijack] Rassin’ frassin’ threads with a buncha exclaimation points in the title causin’ my pop-up blocker to close the IE window grumble grumble grumble…[/hijack]
hlanelee - Can you please translate what you just posted? What does it mean?
StG
StGermain Please forgive me, I forgot that I was addressing an audience of such a diverse background. I will translate my post from hick. "We would go to the pen where the quail were raised, catch them, and put them in a BURLAP sack. We would then take them to a location that looked like “natural quail habitat”, spin the burlap sack of quail around our head (to disorient them??? to amuse ourselves???), then we would release them. Later, the experienced guide would bring the hunters to the area where we had released the quail. The guide would say something like, “Be alert men, this looks like a good spot.” The dogs would then point and flush out the numerous quail. In the evening the quail that had not been shot would generally be at the feeder. We could catch them and put them back in the pen where they could be hunted another day.
The same plantation hosted “duck” hunts. My job was to get up in the morning and chase the ducks from the field where they were fed and maintained. They had to fly out into the “duck” ponds where the hunters could shoot them. If the “hunters” missed the ducks flying out towads the ocean, they would get a second chance when the ducks would fly back to the field where they were fed.
Any questions?