Out here in the North Mason area of Mason County I've been observing mountain quail nesting and behavior for over 15 years now. The quail adults tend to mate for life, share nesting and chick-care duty. Once the little ones are about 2-3 weeks old quail families tend to blend together making for multi-adult parenting and chick care with upwards of 12-15 kids in one lot. While nesting the paired adults take turns brooding and will feed alone before changing brooding duty.

The one-parent chick care in the first couple weeks is similar to their brooding behavior in that one parent will have the kids for several hours then switch off. So it's not unusual to see only one parent with the chicks. Depending on their change-off schedule you may only be seeing whichever parent has the duty hours when you see them.

Unfortunately for my yard this year it does not appear that either set of adults are breeding. One couple had an additional adult female with it while the other couple is a standard 1 male/1 female. They have not shown any sign that they've nested and there's been no time the adults have been here alone.

On a better note I did see a family of very young (2-4 day old) chicks scoot across a driveway elsewhere in my subdivision yesterday. Maybe it's just the weather we've had this season but they are back to a nesting/hatching time from several years ago when the babies didn't show up until mid-July. The past 3-4 years the hatchlings have come out in mid-June. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that my yard bird mountain quail will have some little ones. Glad I got so many photos of their growing up last summer.

Mary Hrudkaj
Belfair/Tahuya

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From: Tweeters <tweeters-bounces at mailman11.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Denis DeSilvis <avnacrs4birds at outlook.com>
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2020 12:39 PM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Tweeters] Quail parenting

Tweeters,
Has anyone in Tweeterdom had the following observation concerning California Quail? Or any ideas about whether this is a relatively common occurrence?

About 10 years ago, we had a male California Quail raise two chicks from very tiny size to adult birds. Since then, on most years we've had at least one family group that's had just a lone male as the single parent.

This year, one "family" of 8 young has been shepherded by a single male (the female quail disappeared about 2 weeks ago), and one group of 8-10 young has two male quails as "parents." We may have another group with both parents, but I need to confirm that.

My thought is that the female quails might be more susceptible to predators because of breeding stress. However...?

Any ideas about this parenting aspect for California Quail or quails in general?

Thanks, and may all your birds be identified,

Denis
avnacrs4birds at outlook.com

Avian Acres 🦉
Roy, WA
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