Hi Tweeters,

Friday, 2-Jun-05 we had an unusual quail running around in our back yard.
It had a gray back, with a small white area on the rear part of the wing.
The belly was brick red and the legs were bright yellow. The neck was gray
with a white neck band separating the neck area from the brick red belly.
The head was mostly gray with a white spot on top between the eyes and bill.
The bill appeared black. A small area of the upper neck and back had a brown
spot. It had almost no tail. It had no head plumes. It kept running and
appeared to be trying to find a way out of the area (which it finally did).
We believe it was fairly young.

It would run but did not flap it's wings. It did not seem to be afraid of
us. We did not hear it make any sounds.

We live in a gated community of 60 house about 2 to 3 mile south of
Puyallup. Our back yards all have wood fences but there are enough holes
for the bird to go from house to house. Our development has a acre or so
catch basin which is fenced and has been dry. We were able to follow it to
our neighbor's yard and obtain some pictures which were not really good,
but I think could be used for ID. We do not have a home page set up such
that we could post the pictures. We will be happy to e-mail a couple of
pictures to anyone who would like to help us ID the bird.

We believe it to be a young bird but it was fully feathered and had no down.
We can not find a picture in any of our books that would let us definitely
ID it. Our altitude here is about 400 feet and we do not know of anyone
that might be raising quail in our area.

We would like to call it a Mountain Quail but location does not favor that.

John & Cecelia McLafferty
Puyallup, Washington
jjmc9212 at comcast.net