Bobwhite Quail –
These beautiful quail got their name from their whistle call that sounds like “bob–white…bob-white”. I can make their sound pretty good myself. This bird is really shy and it lives on the ground. Bobwhites live in most of the southern half of the U.S. and Mexico. They eat almost everything; snails, grasshoppers, potato beetles, wild berries, grass seeds, farmer’s grain. The bird in the photo is a male which is called a rooster.
One time when I was 6 years-old I was exploring with my BB gun. I had the safety in the off position and I was walking in a grass cow pasture. There was a bunch of bobwhite quail right on the ground in front of me and I didn’t see them. What bobwhite quail do is they crouch down in the grass and use their feathers as camouflage until the last second and then they spring up into the air and fly away. That’s called flushing. So I was walking and then the birds flushed and I accidentally pulled the trigger on the gun and shot a tree.
That taught me to always put the gun on safety. You should always have the safety on.
