Dinner and a Nice Bath

Roadrunner may be more famous as a cartoon character, but Gambel’s Quail, elegantly plumed and coiffed as they are, are every bit as wacky and weird.

Usually content to gobble down the birdseed, this time of year the quail shift to eating green things–any and all, from tomato leaflets and pea seedlings to hackberry leaves and salvia. Here in Tucson, they seem to find special delight in what I guess must be the tender new leaves of mesquite, and small gangs of quailish lumps perch, grouse-like, in the higher reaches, munching away.

Their stomachs compete with other organs this time of year, of course, and the males continually interrupt their feeding with display. Chew. Crow. Chew. Crow. Chew. You can almost smell the barbecue on their breath as they shout at each other from tree to tree.

Having eaten their fill for the moment (and harrowingly close to stripping our trees in the process), they flop down into the yard for their post-prandial ablutions.

The dust flies, and the birds roll and roust extravagantly.

They leave the yard pockmarked with shallow forms scratched out in the sand.

A little soft music, some stenchotherapy candles, and all’s right with the odontophorid world!