Nature’s production of wild food, which is at its natural low in February, has by April shifted into second gear. Warm nights and warmer days unlock pollen and release to the wind a pale, green mist. Oak trees stand behind gossamer veils of budding leaves, the pubescent flowers of the wisteria vines mantle fences and host trees, wild grasses stretch out of the lukewarm earth to accommodate and protect the insect hatch. Redheaded woodpeckers drill into the trunks of pine trees, delivering them of sap, which flows like an apron of lava, a girdle of glue retarding the progression of snakes to the birds’ nests.
I watched an osprey pluck a rat snake off a limb at the very crown of an eighty-foot loblolly pine. A mockingbird took offense and pestered the hawk until it dropped its catch. I searched for it, but the snake’s bungee cord body had absorbed the fall, and it was gone. I then looked straight up to where it had fallen from and delighted at the resolve of an appetite that would shimmy that far for an egg.
The ratio of male to female bobwhite quail is six to five in favor of the males, thus encouraging competition for breeding rights; numbers good for perpetuating the gene pool, less good for one out of six males. The hens, who are not as anxious to breed as their counterparts, concentrate on gaining the weight and building the strength necessary to fashion nests, lay and incubate a dozen or more eggs, protect and rear the broods, and survive the process, which begins as early as March and ends as late as November, when family groups disperse and intermingle with each other.
It is April, and the bobwhites have been singing for two weeks. I see them on every log, eyes glazed, beaks open, singing out in an unconscious world of moist dreams, chattering nerve cells, and female cloacas. The hens in turn display a soft spot for those bobwhites that exhibit a strong paternal instinct, as incubating the clutch and caring for the hatchlings is the ticket to nirvana. Quail are about as monogamous as humans. If the opportunity for a little aside presents itself, pourquoi pas? But in general the couple work out whatever differences birds encounter and raise their brood together. One would assume that a hen grants a male access to her favors because of his strength, his beauty, or his aggressiveness, and I’m sure that it happens, but last spring I watched three cock birds jousting with one another while the object of their desire stood demurely in a thicket, a few yards away, seemingly paying no attention to the goings-on. One bird was being bullied by the other two, and after having been run off half a dozen times, took refuge under a pine top and resigned himself to the role of spectator. The two remaining birds faced off, blew up their feathers, lowered their heads, and chased each other like billy goats. The contest eventually took them out of sight behind a large oak tree, a signal for the spectator bird to emerge from under his branch and run to the thicket as fast as his short legs would take him. There, he stood inches in front of his paramour, tilting his head this way and that, showing off his colors. To his utter joy and astonishment, I’m sure, the hen squatted on the ground, twisted her tail feathers out of his way, and allowed him to mount her. Or so I think, because all I saw of this adherence of organs was a momentary flutter of wings. When the louts returned from battling each other, the chosen one ran them off.
I like to think that my seven-ounce hero charmed his hen by using his wits, but regardless of my fantasy, studies indicate that once a male successfully covers a hen, his confidence is such that he will successfully defend his tenure from all interlopers. Although the consensus of opinion is that couples are monogamous, I have also observed some less-than-devoted conduct on the part of hens openly encouraging display behavior from males other than their mates. It seems that if promiscuity there is, it originates with the female of the species. However, in this day and age, polyandry is a state of affairs best left alone.
In the case of the single male, his lusting and pining continues. For those unchosen males the priority is still to con a hen the only way they know how: by whistling one up. But as the season progresses and hens become scarce, the bachelors can only covet what they don’t have and hope for the death of a rival. The birds that sang so longingly in March forget the refrain by September.
For those birds that have found each other, the consideration is to pick a site and build a nest. In the first instance, and I assume after much bird talk, some couples merely fill a depression in the earth with grass, pine straw, and leaves, while others add a roof and an entranceway to their home. In either case, quail like to nest on the edges of unrelated habitat, such as next to a road or field or a freshly harrowed firebreak, preferably close to food. A good management practice is to leave a hundred-foot-wide strip of rough on either side of all dirt roads for nesting cover. Later, when the breeding season is over, those strips of rough can be left as is, mowed, or harrowed-in and planted in a late season cover crop such as clover or rye.
The loss rate of hens during incubation is higher than at any other time of the bird’s adult life, and it is this vulnerability to predation that accounts for the lopsided ratio of five hens to six males observed the rest of the year. A pair of skunks working a fencerow at night will eat every single egg they come across, as well as what birds they catch napping. Studies show that 50 percent of quail nests are destroyed by weather, predation, or man, and although bobwhites do rebuild their nests until they are successful or run out of time, the clutches grow progressively smaller with each attempt.
The average clutch for a bobwhite quail in the Southeast is fourteen eggs, of which most hatch, but only 50 percent of the hatchlings celebrate their two-week birthday. From that original clutch of fourteen eggs, six will live to see the leaves turn. Not a percentage to brag about, but one that does explain why such little birds lay so many eggs.
When the weather is good, hens lay an egg a day until the clutch is complete. During that time I see pairs of bob-whites all over the farm, and I know that somewhere, hidden under a pine top or inside a clump of dead grass, a nest awaits its daily deposit. I follow paired birds to their nest sometimes and, careful not to touch anything, return when they are feeding elsewhere. Every day I count a new off-white-colored egg, but I have never seen a bird of any kind lay one, except a chicken once, when I was young and lived on a farm in France. The hen grunted (or so I like to remember) and pecked at my hand when I removed her investment from the straw. I wiped the egg on my shirt, piped two small holes at opposite ends with my knife, and sucked the slippery warmth down my throat, like all farm boys did in those days.