ABCs of Birds - Q

[dale]

I figure several people might post QUAIL, so I'll stick with…

BUTTON QUAIL, which I go to visit regularly here in the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

They have assorted button quail, including silver morphs, running around like crazy in the butterfly habitat. The chicks look like fuzzy grapes with wings.

Hey! You can mail order yourself a mess of button quail and let them dash around your house, too:

http://www.zebrafinch.com/quail_kit.html

dale

[gayle]

California Quail

As a Californian, I must post our state bird, the California Valley Quail!  It is also my neighbor as a covey of them live in the hedge behind my house.They are pretty birds that scurry about eating seeds and berries.  The male has an outrageous top knot.  And he is the father protector.  While the females (yes, he has more than one) and the chicks feed, he sits atop the hedge keeping a vigilant lookout.  When the doors and windows are open, I can hear them.

http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/50185

Here is Sibley's drawing, a female with nearly grow chicks,  the male with a female behind him and the male as sentry.

Gayle

[Annette]

Quetzal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzal

[anneintoronto]

Q  is for Quail (in this case, Mountain Quail)

The Mountain Quail is a large quail with an exclamation mark atop its head, the Moutain Quail is found throughout the mountains of the far western United States.

Adult Description
•Large quail.
•Runs on ground.
•Small round head with long plume sticking straight up.
•Round body with short tail.
•Reddish face.
•Bold white bars on flanks.

(Information from http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mountain_Quail/id)

A group of quails can be called a "battery", "drift", "flush", "rout", and "shake" of quails.

Anne in Toronto

 Distribution Map

 Mountain Quail

[dale]

Anne, hahahahaha! What's the story behind that mountain quail arrangement!?! That's so very odd!!  I wonder where his "battery", "drift", "flush", "rout" or "shake" is...

Annette - one of the things I love about the Resplendent Quetzal (Quetzal is a Nahuatl word, I think) is the way the eye is positioned - kind of right in the middle of the head. Of course all that stuff on the other end of the beast is pretty amazing too-

dale

[Donna]

Q is for our lovely little wanderer Quest.

Pics taken by Ian Davies and Jim P

[Patti from Kentucky]

Here is my Gambel's Quail, which looks very similar to Gayle's California Quail.  I took this photo in Southeast Arizona, where they would come creeping cautiously out of the desert brush to feed on the ground below a set of feeders.  You had to stay very still, because they spooked easily.

[dale]

Singing QUAIL.
I found them on the internet and like the look of them:

The song (worth 20 seconds of one's life, I think):
http://www.xeno-canto.org/sounds/uploaded/NYTXYAQSTH/R092_0213%20Singing%20Quail%20song.mp3

Knut Eisermann photo below from this site:
http://ibc.lynxeds.com/photo/singing-quail-dactylortyx-thoracicus/pair-singing-quail-nocturnal-roost-site

dale

[anneintoronto]

Anne, hahahahaha! What's the story behind that mountain quail arrangement!?! That's so very odd!!  I wonder where his "battery", "drift", "flush", "rout" or "shake" is...

Well, since its eyes are so bright and shiny, I'll assume that it's just pinioned on the arrangement by its pinions. That's just an old Mountain tradition for Mountain Quail in the Autumn!!    Got to admit it's a pretty arrangement and it doesn't look taxed(ermied) at all!

Two definitions for pinion -- the 1)noun and the 2)verb at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pinion?show=0&t=1291458783

Oh come on! -- you've got to think that that's a pretty cool pun creation for 6am!!

As far as where its "battery", "drift", "flush", "rout" or "shake" is...well it's more where it was:

In the Mountains, where it was captured, the hobbyists flushed out its old battery with a slight drift to the right, then a good rout to the left, in order to shake it out, so that they could put it up on its Autumn arrangement!  Of course!!  

PS  The hobby referred to is not the small old world falcon (Falco subbuteo), but the craft!!

Hope that is some help, Dale.  And now I am going to bed, before I cause any more damage!

Anne, still yawning, in Toronto