Bobwhite Quail Facts

The bobwhite quail, also called the northern bobwhite, is a game bird that occurs in much of the eastern United States. The bird, with its loud call of “bob-bob-white,” is easily identified when seen, resembling a small plump chicken. The bobwhite quail has a varied diet and the bird has specific habitat requirements. Bobwhites stay on the ground foraging for food and hiding from enemies, taking flight when they need to while escaping danger.

  1. Identification

    • The bobwhite quail, according to the “National Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds,” is about 8 to 11 inches in length and has a brown-white combination of colors on its body. The faces of the males are black and white, while those of the female birds are a buff color combined with white. The bobwhite quail has a white strip above its eye and a whitish patch on the throat.

    Habitat

    • The bobwhite quail needs what ecologists describe as an early successional habitat, meaning the birds reside in pastures, abandoned fields, crop fields, grasslands, brushy areas along forest edges and shrubby meadows. The bobwhite favors areas such as the right-of-ways to power lines and forests that loggers have cut over, says the United States Department of Agriculture site. When such settings are close to each other, the bobwhite quail has the habitat that it can find food within, breed in, raise a family in and escape from any potential dangers.

    Diet

    • Bobwhite quails search for food in the early portion of the morning and then again in the hours before nightfall. The juvenile quail’s menu is 85 percent bugs and other types of animal matter. This trend reverses in the adults, who feed upon 85 percent vegetation. Seeds of many plants such as ragweed and foxtail are edible and the bobwhite is highly dependent on seeds in the fall and winter months. The bobwhite will go into cultivated fields and eat the waste grains it discovers. Wild fruits like blackberries, hackberries and huckleberries are parts of the quail diet.

    Nesting

    • Male bobwhites start singing in early spring in an effort to attract mates. Mating season will not start until May and it runs though August, with the nesting season going from May through September. Male and females contribute materials to the building of the nest. When cover is not plentiful, as many as three females will share a common nest. The females can lay as many as 20 eggs and it takes up to 24 days for the eggs to hatch. The little quails are agile and by the end of a week, they have the ability to fly.

    Considerations

    • The Quail Forever website says that the bobwhite quail offsets the death of many birds each year by having high rates of reproduction. Although as many as 70 percent of the eggs do not hatch, as many as 75 percent of the females will wind up producing chicks. The death rate for the chicks is 30 percent, with most of these little ones perishing in their first two weeks, usually due to the effects of the weather.