Thread: Californian Quail

Cool photos we have a small family around our house , mum dad and 3 chicks, been watching them grow up, they looked so hard case when they were first born, big heads on legs, should have gotten some pics. We feed them and they are getting used to us, we can get pretty close now. Any body no where they nest or if you can build nesting boxes for them, the wife pretty fond of them and wants to try and encourage them around.

Originally Posted by rusl

Cool photos we have a small family around our house , mum dad and 3 chicks, been watching them grow up, they looked so hard case when they were first born, big heads on legs, should have gotten some pics. We feed them and they are getting used to us, we can get pretty close now. Any body no where they nest or if you can build nesting boxes for them, the wife pretty fond of them and wants to try and encourage them around.

Yeah me too - I'd like to build nesting boxes for our residents as well

I have seen lots of Quail families with young chicks - bumble bee size from December to almost full grown right now
Quail nest in warm, dry, safe areas - to be successful they need to be predator free - no cats, rats, hogs or mustilids - in that order
Year on year - they breed in the same areas - around the Park where I control predators - I am currently seeing family groups - often six to eight chicks per Mum or Dad - clever birds as they seem to nest several times and the family look after the chicks
I have only ever taken pics of one nest site - it was in a garden near a farm shed so they were accustomed to humans - 16 December 2015
They are very mobile and often used the driveway to move around - I might see them down the bottom in the morning then 400m up the drive to the shed by lunchtime and heading on up further

Saw a hen pheasant in the vineyard with five well grown poults yesterday ... she has done them well ...

I had 14 of a mixed buch, young old, in front of my shed in Kinloch the other day, it's been a good season for them down there!

Our local quails vanished this, we saw a male a couple of times but then nothing, then my boys spotted a stray cat so I got a trap. Caught and dispatched 2 big nasty cats so far keeping it set because the neigbors tell me there are more. Hopefully if I thin the predators they Wil come back.

The rain id one thing but in CNI it has been drought. Last time this happened the grubs burrowed so deep the pheasants starved but quail were ok.
Great pics @time out.

Predator Free BOP is working well round our street - 20 odd traps - 39 pests are dead in two months - 1 ferret, 1 weasel, 12 hedgehogs and 25 rats - so we should get the Quail numbers up again next breeding season. I see Quail most days around the subdivision - I saw two with 10 chicks a couple of weeks back but the next day I saw a cat in the same place - a neighbour told me yesterday that he had 13 almost fully grown on his lawn a few days back - so they are around - but they can’t stand predators.
We are getting good numbers of Quail in the Quarry Park now - one area that has very low rat numbers is holding about 50 birds. I had to build 9 new doc200 traps to control hedgehogs around our internal roadways and garden areas as lots of Quail live in the gardens - but Quail cant nest where there are hedgehogs. We have plenty of rabbits so they should feed cats and stoats - but the gardeners soon complain about rabbit damage and that will cost us another contractor night shoot - expensive! and then the predators look for easy bird life. Our predator trap kill last year was 470 and another 73 so far this year - I find that the Quail only live in areas where rats and hogs are hard to find.

Nice work time out but you must pull your hair out after all that work and then the sub division cats come in and clean you out

Originally Posted by Pengy

They do well at my place. I regularly see families of 8 to 12 on the driveway.

We see cubbys on tracks this time of year had 1 cubby the other day was prob 70-80 birds

You guys might be interested in “A Shooting Mans Creed” by Sir Joesph Nickerson
He had a grey partridge shoot here in the uk. What he did to increase there habitat would work well for quail.
Had shelters every 100meters. Just some corrugated iron on legs with a few bits of wood our bricks on top to weight it down.
Then he would put cold ash from his fires under this to great dust baths. Also a feed station and his traps near by so that you can check the lot as you do your rounds. Good read for any body that wants to improve your birds habitats.
Interesting read on hedge maintaining. Such a shame to see these have nearly all be pulled out in NZ. I understand why farms don’t want the maintenance costs of hedges. But for anyone that still has them, don’t pull them out but have a read on how to cut them properly so that they improve the birds habitat and help protect birds form being taken by magpies and such.

@Padox do you mean Covey?

Thanks Sideshow - I believe that cats are the greatest threat to our Pheasant and Quail - but it is not yet PC to manage them in the Predator Free programs - wouldn’t it be simple to have a collar and bell on a pet cat
Quail are clever birds - they love to live around orchard shelter belts where there are years of mulched hedge trimmings on the ground - it almost seemed that they knew about my predator control systems - a Victor Pro in those boxes and entrance large enough for the hedgehogs

Originally Posted by Sideshow

@Padox do you mean Covey?

Sorry yes I did slideshow