A look at the California quail, our state bird

One thing I like about California is our choice of official state bird: the California quail. Most sports teams and schools pick rather fierce and aggressive animals for the mascots. The United States puts bald eagles everywhere. Benjamin Franklin famously advocated for the wild turkey as a better national representative than the eagle, and something of that same spirit is evoked by California’s choice — we would rather champion a peaceful, social bird than one of imposingly aggressive appearance. Quail are wonderful creatures, and now is the best time of year to enjoy them.

That’s because it’s the baby season! That is true of birds in general from April to July or so, but from the casual observer’s standpoint, the childhood of most songbirds is a rather negligible event. Most neighborhood birds have what are called altricial young: they are helpless at birth, unable to fly or thermoregulate and spend their first weeks of life confined to the nest, where we rarely even see them. By the time they are ready to fly, they are dimensionally full grown and largely identical to their parents.

Quail, in contrast, have precocial young — babies that hatch from the egg ready to run, see and peck around for food (though they may have only a rather fuzzy idea of appropriate food immediately upon emergence). As with the young of ducks and shorebirds, this means we get to actually witness quail childhood and family life. Instead of growing up stuck in place, high up in a tree, quail babies run around after their parents, a dozen fluffy tots whose legs blur as their little whirring dynamos endeavor to keep up with their mother, who attempts to corral her adorable wayward walnuts, and their father, who cuts back his own feeding to act as the family sentinel, constantly scanning for threats.

Part of quails’ appeal lies in their simple visual delightfulness. The young, like ducklings or domestic chicks, are fuzzy, clumsy, round, and small. The parents are also rather round and clumsy — contributing to their endearing sense of gentle harmlessness — but also strikingly elegant. Male quails are in truth one of our fanciest birds in appearance, featuring a chestnut cap and a rich black throat, boldly swooping white lines across their face, a gorgeous geometric pattern of white chevrons on their belly, and an extravagant plume that extends forward from their head, bobbing as the run.

I might like the females even more, birds that trade in most of that gaudy exterior for a simple undramatic niceness, their colors still rich and subtly varied, but with their mild and sweet expression no longer concealed under the exaggerated blacks and whites.

Another large part of the human sense of affection toward quail stems from their intense sociality. It’s nice to see a string of quail trotting merrily across the street and then disappearing into the blackberry thicket one after another. While many birds flock, their groupings can often feel like a fairly anonymous and impersonal affair, a merely practical assemblage that helps each individual find food and avoid predators. Quail flocks feel more familial — as they are from late spring to early fall — and exhibit more obvious cooperation. Most visible is their practice of posting male sentries to watch out for threats while others forage, a habit that can be seen both among the two-parent family groups and among the larger multi-family flocks that form in winter.

Quail social cooperation can probably be heard even better than it is seen. With a wide array of calls (15 different vocalizations with distinct meanings have been identified), quails are always chatting to each other to communicate useful information. “No bird has a more varied and pleasing language,” wrote the old-time ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush. Different pitches and intensities of clucking serve as contact calls, warnings to stay still until a threat departs, or summons to scattering children. Most familiar of all is their loud assembly call, the vibrant yet gently rounded bugle of “Chi-CA-go!” or “Where ARE you?” that summons the dispersed flocks or families back together.

We are social creatures, too, and can hear the quails’ anxiety, plaintive in that note: they do not wish to be alone.

Jack Gedney’s On the Wing runs every other Monday. He is a co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Novato and author of “The Private Lives of Public Birds.” You can reach him at jack@natureinnovato.com.