The California quail is a prized game bird and it is found along the coastal western U.S. It is also called the Valley Quail.
This quail lives in a flock of 20-100 birds (called a covey) until mating season when they pair off. Like most quail species they spend time on the ground but easily scare into flight.
It is short and plump. The male has a gray chest with a brown back and wings. Its black throat has white stripes and it has a brown cap on its head. A white stripe crosses its eyes and forehead and it has comma shaped crown feathers that are larger than the females’. The female has a grayish brown head and back with a speckled chest.
These birds prefer grasslands with lots of brush. They mostly eat seeds with an occasional insect or plant bud. They feed in flocks.
The quail pair are monogomous and can raise 1-2 broods a season. The female lays 1-28 eggs in a hollow on the ground. The eggs are incubated for 3 weeks, both parents sharing this duty. After the eggs hatch the chicks leave the nest immediately. They try flying after they are 10 days old. Once they can fly they roost in the trees with the flock.
The California quail became the state bird in 1931.
Here is a printable color sheet .
So as I said yesterday I thought today might be more “birdy” than usual since we had our fun day at the park. We started off our day looking through National Geographic’s “Field Guide to Birds of North America”. Just a bit off light reading before breakfast. I must say the bird guides are getting better at showing the underside of birds!! I was quite impressed with the number of “in-flight” pictures of ducks, shearwaters and gulls. Now I can be sure the kids and I will be even more proficient naming the birds since what we usually see is their bellys (as they fly away from us)!
So the birding did not end there. We took our usual 20 minute walk about our neighborhood which by chance is also bird related- Quail Creek. Kids are natural birders (kind of). They are quick to see, point out and then scare away all birds that happen by our happy group. We saw Mourning Doves and House Sparrows aplenty. We walked home to “Mom did you see that bird”, “Mom I saw another bird”, “Mom SEEEEEEEE”
So just when I thought perhaps we had our fill of birds I turned on our pre-lunch TV show “Build a Word” and lo and behold they were talking about birds. It was the cutest thing. The star of the show was an egg. The other animals on the show picked the most motherly and fluffy animal to care for it while its mother was away (the sheep of course). The egg wouldn’t stay where it was put- it would jump and hop around until they solved that problem with a nest (or if you want to stay with the theme of this blog- a birdhouse). So after a night in the nest the sheep awoke to the horror that the egg had a crack in it. All the animals gathered around trying to figure out what had happened. The duck of course just laughed and said that the egg was ready to hatch and voila it did. Oh happy day- the little bird emerged just as mother bird swooped in to claim its baby. And all the while these characters are teaching young ones to spell. GOSH I am tired just writing this.
Well I couldn’t let all this good bird training go to waste so my 3 year-old and I sat down after lunch and did a fun bird craft. We took muffin cups and flattened them out and snipped away at the muffin cup to where it had tail feathers and wings. Then we glued these partial birds onto paper leaving the wings free. With a marker we made necks and heads and eyes. Pretty cool craft =)
So that was just the first half of my day. What did you do today?
Build a birdhouse, save a bird!
