Out of failure comes a greater appreciation
We weren’t always on good terms. I tried to shoot one once, during a boyhood attempt at being a hunter. Gripping the stock of my Daisy lever-action BB gun, I went down on my stomach into the dry grass.
The little covey was pecking through sunlit fallen leaves, like miniature rhinos, with their thick necks and plump gray bodies moving in sync. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. After about five minutes of crawling, stopping, and squinting down the gun sights, I was getting closer.
It’s a strange thing about hunting. The adrenaline. Even though the prey wasn’t dangerous, it somehow still felt dangerous. My pulse was up as I pulled myself along, trying not to snap a twig. So far, they seemed oblivious to my presence.
When quail get startled, they flush from cover into the sky and branches above, sending a wave of surprise back to the observer. I’d felt it a few times before, while hiking along, just enjoying the scenery, or daydreaming about girls. Suddenly there would be a burst of beating wings from the understory in front of me, and it would be some time before the hair on the back of my neck returned to normal.
I was getting closer now. My long sleeve shirt was damp at the elbows, and it was getting harder to keep quiet. Both arms were aching from holding up the gun and alternately pushing it through the grass ahead of me.
And they were constantly moving, these crazy quail, with bobbing heads and a quick, almost robotic, movement that made it very hard to keep sights on them for long. I wanted to take a trophy male if possible, as most hunters do. With black and white face markings, head plumes (topknot), and reddish feathers fading into gray, the males were unique. They were also bigger, of course, which meant more to eat. I was planning to take one home and cook it up, while my family watched in awe.
Finally, I got my chance. One of the males paused in the sunlight. I’d already chambered a BB, so I snicked off the safety and pulled the trigger.
“Didn’t even flinch,” I thought. I worked the lever-action again as quietly as possible and chambered another round. Plank, I fired again. Nothing.
“Was my aim really that bad?” I knew I could easily shoot a camouflaged grasshopper from 20 feet. These birds were much bigger. I tried again, this time firing directly into the tightest group in hopes of hitting one of them, any of them, trophy be damned. To my amazement, nothing again.
Although I was inexperienced, I knew that chances come and go quickly for hunters. It was no different now. Just one of them caught a sound of me and up into the sky they all went. There was no raised heartbeat now, only sinking disappointment. I got up and checked the ground where they’d been, just to be sure.
During the walk home, I questioned what I’d been doing anyway, and began to worry that I might’ve just wounded one of them and it would now be left to a slow death, gasping in the dirt until some lucky predator could come along.
I didn’t want to be that kind of hunter anyway, causing unnecessary suffering. But there was no way to follow them up, no blood trail or tamped-down grass. When quail are gone they’re just gone. And I wasn’t even sure I’d hit one. Maybe, after all that crawling and squinting, I was just a bad shot. Or maybe the gun had failed me, lobbing the BB like a grenade instead of sending it straight, which it had been known to do occasionally. Regardless, I had failed.
Seeing them better
A few years later I learned that using a BB gun to hunt quail (as opposed to a shotgun with birdshot) would’ve been difficult to say the least. And eating them probably wouldn’t have been the delicious experience I had hoped for, certainly not with my prehistoric cooking skills. There was no guarantee it would’ve tasted good at all, being so exotic. I tried eating pickled quail eggs on a salad once at a fancy Brazilian restaurant, and the experience left me questioning whether I’d ever eat eggs again.
There are two subspecies of quail that have very similar appearances in the West. The California Quail occupies the coastal regions including Oregon and Washington, with range stemming into parts of northern Nevada and Utah. The Gambel’s Quail, its southwestern cousin, ranges through southern Utah and Arizona into Mexico. The Gambel’s has a lighter gray plumage with more reddish tones on its wings and less distinctive black scales on its belly.
While there are many scholarly descriptions of quail, I found the Cornell Lab’s to be the most eloquent:
“The California Quail is a handsome, round soccer ball of a bird with a rich gray breast, intricately scaled underparts, and a curious, forward-drooping head plume. Its stiffly accented Chi-ca-go call is a common sound of the chaparral and other brushy areas of California and the Northwest. Often seen scratching at the ground in large groups or dashing forward on blurred legs, California Quail are common but unobtrusive. They flush to cover if scared, so approach them gently.”
(The Cornell Lab,https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/California_Quail/overview#)
Making Amends
Nowadays quail are just for watching. Their distinctive presence occupies some of the best types of habitat–where cleared land meets shrubs or treeline. It could be said that quail announce where the wilderness begins. Somehow their calls reassure me there’s still variety in the landscape.
But they aren’t just ambassadors of the chaparral. They’re, thankfully, a backyard and garden bird too, often seen scuttling across roadways or patios from one shrub to another on those blurred legs and sometimes blurred wings. Like special warfare operators, quail can utilize both terrestrial and aerial environments.
One thing for sure is they like to move quickly, and they often can’t be watched for long without binoculars.
Either way, it’s just enough time to be satisfied with the sight, and to be reminded of how life rolls on, from old failures to new understandings.
The Desert Toad 