40 Fun Facts About Bobwhite Quail

Newly hatched northern bobwhite chicks, ready to leave the nest within a day, are often said to be the size of what?

Bumblebees are the usual comparison for the downy hatchlings, which can walk and feed themselves almost at once. Both adults watch over them.

How does a group of northern bobwhites arrange itself to sleep through a cold winter night?

A ring, heads outward and tails together, likely saves body heat while the birds watch every direction at once. Now and then a group roosts up in low vegetation instead.

What is the traditional name for a flock of bobwhite quail, usually around a dozen birds in winter?

Covey is the word for these flocks, which break up each spring when the birds pair off to nest. Through fall and winter the members feed and rest together.

What trick do adult northern bobwhites use to draw a fox or raccoon away from their chicks?

Faking a broken wing, an adult flutters and drags itself along so the hunter chases what looks like an easy meal. Birds reared in captivity rarely do it, so the act seems to be learned.

The saucer-shaped nest that a northern bobwhite pair digs is about as big as which piece of sports gear?

A softball is the usual yardstick for the shallow scrape, which is about six inches across. Both birds dig it and line it with grass.

Northern bobwhites explode into the air when flushed, but roughly how long does their average flight last?

About 5 seconds is the average, just long enough to reach the next patch of cover. Bobwhites would rather walk or run, and they spend most of their lives on foot.

What does a northern bobwhite usually do first when a predator comes near, before it takes flight?

Crouch and freeze is the first move, trusting mottled brown feathers to melt into the dead grass. Only when the threat is almost on top of it does the bird flush.

Many songbirds fly south each autumn; what does the northern bobwhite do when winter arrives?

Stays in its home range all year, which is why deep snow and long cold snaps can kill many birds at the northern edge. Bobwhites are sedentary birds that seldom wander far.

Northern bobwhites seldom need a pond or stream; where do they usually get enough water to drink?

Morning dew on grass and leaves usually supplies all the water a bobwhite needs. Open water therefore plays little part in where the birds choose to live.

Adult northern bobwhites eat mostly seeds and leaves, but what makes up nearly all of a young chick's diet?

Insects give fast-growing chicks the protein they need, and they remain the staple for six to eight weeks. Laying hens also eat far more of them than cocks do.

Northern bobwhite numbers have fallen by about 80% since the 1960s; what do biologists blame most for the decline?

Habitat loss is the chief suspect: tidier farms, fewer hedgerows and spreading suburbs all removed weedy cover. Bobwhites return quickly where that cover is restored.

The endangered masked bobwhite, a subspecies with a dark face, has been reintroduced at a refuge in which U.S. state?

Arizona's Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge received 1,000 captive-bred chicks by road in 2019 alone. The subspecies had died out north of the Mexican border by about 1900.

Northern bobwhite eggs take about 23 days to hatch; which bird sits on them through that time?

Either parent may take the job, and a hen sometimes leaves her mate on one clutch while she starts another. That helps a pair raise two or three broods in a good summer.

What do northern bobwhites often weave from weeds and grasses to hide their eggs from view?

An arched roof of woven stems covers most nests, leaving a single entrance at one side. One classic field study found about 85% of nests were domed this way.

A male northern bobwhite has a bright white throat and eyebrow; what color are those patches on a female?

Buff, a pale yellowish tan, replaces the white on hens and on young birds. That one difference is the easiest way to tell the sexes apart in the field.

What distinction does the northern bobwhite hold among the quail of the eastern United States?

The only native species in the East, it is the bird most people there simply call 'quail'. Texas, by contrast, has four kinds.

Which state, known for the quail plantations around Thomasville, named the bobwhite its official game bird in 1970?

Georgia lawmakers passed the resolution in March 1970. By the 1920s about 300,000 acres of Red Hills farmland had already been turned into private quail-shooting estates.

Which research tool overturned the old belief that northern bobwhites take only one mate each year?

Radio tracking showed that hens and cocks alike may take several mates in one summer. Biologists gave the arrangement a mouthful of a name: ambisexual polygamy.

The clear whistle that gave the northern bobwhite its name comes mostly from which birds in spring?

Unmated males do most of the whistling, advertising for a partner from a fence post or low branch. The sound carries so far that a bobwhite is usually heard long before it is seen.

New World quail such as the northern bobwhite were once lumped into which bird family beside the quail of Europe?

Pheasants and their kin, the family Phasianidae, held the bobwhite until it proved only a distant cousin of Old World quail. American quail now fill a family of their own.

Which naturalist gave the northern bobwhite its first scientific name in 1758, grouping it with the grouse?

Carl Linnaeus called it Tetrao virginianus, borrowing a grouse genus for the bird. It was moved to a genus of its own, Colinus, in the following century.

Under what name did English naturalist Mark Catesby illustrate the northern bobwhite in his book on Carolina wildlife?

American partridge was Catesby's label, and 'Virginia partridge' survives as an alternative name. His plate became the basis for the first scientific description of the bird.

Which practice did biologist Herbert Stoddard champion to keep Southern pine woods open enough for bobwhite quail?

Prescribed fire clears the thick brush that crowds bobwhites out, and the fresh growth that follows feeds them. Florida's Tall Timbers research station still builds on Stoddard's work.

Northern bobwhites were released for hunters in 1927 in which European country, where small flocks still survive?

Italy still has a few bobwhites in its northern plains and hills, kept going only by fresh releases of captive-bred birds. Breeding success in the wild there is low.

Some 1,300 northern bobwhites were shipped from America around 1900 for release in which Southern Hemisphere country?

New Zealand's acclimatisation societies hoped for a new game bird, but nearly every release faded out within a few years. A small wild population turned up again near Wairoa in 1952.

Which Caribbean island has its own long-established subspecies of northern bobwhite, found across the whole country?

Cuba's bobwhites may descend partly from birds carried over centuries ago, by Spanish colonists or even earlier by the Taíno. From there they were taken on to Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.

The northern bobwhite lives all year from the Great Lakes south through Mexico to which Central American country?

Guatemala marks the southern limit, where a local subspecies lives in the Rio Chiapas Valley. Farther south, other bobwhite species take its place.

Canada's last self-sustaining wild northern bobwhites live on Walpole Island, which lies in which province?

Ontario sits at the cold upper limit of the bobwhite's world, and the bird has all but vanished from the rest of the country. Harsh winters hit these edge populations hardest.

The rare masked bobwhite was last known in the wild in the desert grasslands of which northern Mexican state?

Sonora held the last wild birds, and a 2017 survey there found none at all. Heavy cattle grazing on grassland that is slow to recover gets the blame.

The only extinct subspecies of northern bobwhite is named for which island city at Florida's southern tip?

Key West gave its name to a small island bobwhite that was described in 1904 and is now gone. Bobwhites are still missing from the far south of Florida.

In 2023 the endangered masked bobwhite was pictured on which everyday item, using a photo from Joel Sartore's Photo Ark?

A postage stamp in the Postal Service's Endangered Species set carried the portrait. The Forever stamps were dedicated at a grasslands visitor center in Wall, South Dakota.

Northern bobwhites grow heavier toward the north of their territory, an example of which principle of biology?

Bergmann's rule says warm-blooded animals tend to be bigger in colder places, since a larger body holds heat better. Mexican bobwhites weigh about 5 ounces, northern ones 6 or more.

Which woodland raptor, a specialist hunter of other birds, is listed among the main predators of northern bobwhites?

Cooper's hawk lives mainly on small and medium-sized birds, caught with a burst of agile flight. Raccoons, opossums, skunks, foxes and snakes take a share of bobwhites as well.

U.S. pesticide safety tests on birds have long used the northern bobwhite alongside which common wild duck?

Mallard and bobwhite are the two birds that federal test guidelines are written around, a duck for waterfowl and a quail for upland game. It helps explain why the bobwhite is so heavily studied.

Oklahoma has two birds in the bobwhite's family: the northern bobwhite and which species of the dry western panhandle?

Scaled quail, nicknamed blue quail or cottontops, take over where the country turns drier. The two species have even produced hybrid chicks in captivity.

Which Midwestern state, whose state bird is the eastern bluebird, named the bobwhite its official game bird in 2007?

Missouri lawmakers honored the bobwhite 80 years after choosing the bluebird. The state had worked to rebuild its quail numbers back in the 1940s and 1950s.

More than 700 fossils of the bobwhite genus have been unearthed; at least how old are the oldest of them?

2.5 million years is the minimum age of the oldest finds, which come from sites between Florida and Mexico's Yucatan. That puts bobwhites on the continent long before the first people.

Predators and hard winters take a heavy toll; how long does a typical wild northern bobwhite live?

About ten months is typical, and roughly four in five bobwhites die before their first birthday. The oldest wild bird on record reached six years and five months.

Field guides describe the plump northern bobwhite as roughly the same size as which familiar backyard bird?

A robin is about as long as a bobwhite, though the quail looks far rounder thanks to its very short tail. Adults measure about 10 inches from bill to tail tip.

Northern bobwhite chicks leave the nest within a day, but how soon can they make their first short flights?

At 1 to 2 weeks the chicks can already flutter out of harm's way. They are not fully grown for several more weeks.