We are fortunate to have a lot of wildlife in our backyard, which is actually a canyon. On any given day we can look out and see finches and hummingbirds squabbling over their respective feeders, jays trying to steal whatever they can, and hawks either swooping through the brush or soaring overhead. The soundtrack of afternoons around here is punctuated by the sharp high-pitched “teek” of towhees and the chickadees can be heard just about any time of day. And every once in a while a mockingbird tricks me into thinking that I’m hearing something that I’m not.
Among our favorite birds is our state bird, Callipepla californica, or the California quail.
In our canyon we have quail year-round, and we call them collectively the “dudes.” The males, with their typically gaudy male plumage, are the dudes and the females are dudettes. In the winter, the quail form a covey of anywhere from 15-25 adults of both sexes, banding together for safety.
Once the days begin to lengthen in the spring, however, the males begin squabbling for territory and females, and the covey breaks up. After that we see the quail in male-female pairs. Interestingly, the pairs will forage in more or less the same area, but when one of the males crosses some invisible (to me) line the other will get all bent out of shape. Females seem to forage wherever they want.
Nesting occurs in the bushes somewhere, and in July we see the babies for the first time. Usually it’s the dads who bring out the dudelets; I think the females may be incubating a second clutch of eggs at this time.
Needless to say, the dudelets are very cute. The youngest we’ve ever seen were little speckled fluffballs. It’s hard to see in this photo, but at this age the dudelets already have tiny plumes.
Like most baby birds, the dudelets grow fast. After a couple of weeks they’ve grown more feathers and begin to look more like their parents. This year (2013) we missed the fluffball stage and today we saw the dudelets for the first time. They were brought up by both parents; we saw two males, one female, and 4-5 dudelets. It’s hard to get an exact count because these birds are so good at melting into the shrubs and becoming invisible. Even though there was a dudette present, it was the dudes that were watching over the dudelets.
Eventually the dudelets will grow up and the males will have to disperse to find and defend their own territories. The winter covey will re-form, and next spring we will be on the lookout again for the next generation.