Subject: [Tweeters] Interesting Mountain Quail Behaviour
Date: Sun Jun 7 07:50:09 PDT 2020
From: mary hrudkaj - mch1096 at hotmail.com

The past couple weeks there's been a lone male (lost its mate to predation about 2 weeks ago) who has been wandering all over the immediate area calling and calling and calling. In the past I thought the calling was more for declaring territory. However, there has been a mated pair here all along in addition to the one I calle'lone male'.

There have been interactions with the lone male and the mated male with the mated male chasing off the lone male successfully every the time. Sometime in their interactions lone male lost all his plume feathers, only growing them back fully in the past couple days. Today the lone male showed up to feed and shortly along came a new female.

They fed for a moment when in came the mated pair. The two males chased around the yard with the mated male causing the formerly lone male to fly up into a low branch in a poplar on the south side of my property. He stayed up there for about 10 minutes before coming back to the feeding area where the mated pair and new female were. When lone male was feeding again I noticed he was missing his tail feathers. Oh the indecencies of two indignities to his plumage in one season!!!

Over the next hour the pairs came and went together or alone in various permutations. Once the Band-tailed Pigeons came in both pair had had enough (who can forage against those big beaks?) and have wandered off.

So now I am thinking the male quail calls in Spring are both territorial and to announce to the unattached females there is an available male. The formerly known as 'lone male' stopped his constant calling yesterday morning. I heard him once before 8am while out watering and didn't hear him in the afternoon while reading. For those who have hear male quail calls you'll know how loud and piercing they are and that the call carries a long distance and can be heard indoors with the windows closed.

Now it's just a matter of waiting for babies to show up in a few weeks. The quail are quite late nesting this year compared to the past two years when babies were out by the middle of June (Father's Day in 2019). Better late than never.

Mary Hrudkaj
Belfair/Tahuya
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