Profile
In flight
Game Birds
California Quail
Callipepla californica
- common
- 28 km/h
- Starter
- Least Concern
Topknot bobbing, covey of twenty trotting through the chaparral. Delivers messages in a parade.
- Population
- ~5.8 million mature individuals (2019 estimate); population trend increasing (~1.1%/yr, 1970–2017)
- Habitat
- Chaparral, scrubland, foothill woodlands, and Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation; also grasslands, hot deserts, temperate forest edges, and agricultural/pastureland, favoring dense low cover near open ground for foraging; occurs from sea level up to about 2,800 m elevation.
- Fun fact
- The comma-shaped head plume that gives the California Quail its jaunty look isn't a single feather but a cluster of six overlapping feathers.
- Range
- Native to the Pacific coast of western North America, from southern Oregon and western Nevada south through California to Baja California, Mexico. Sources disagree on the species' status in the Pacific Northwest's northern fringe: BirdLife/IUCN's country-level native range includes Canada, but detailed ornithological sources (Wikipedia, Animal Diversity Web) describe the British Columbia (and, by extension, western Washington) population as established via 19th-century human introduction rather than natively occurring — the latter, more specific literature is treated as authoritative here, so BC/Washington are described as introduced/naturalized, not native. Widely introduced and established elsewhere, including Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, New Zealand, Australia (incl. Norfolk Island, King Island/Tasmania), South Africa, Hawaii, and parts of the US Southwest/Intermountain West outside its native range (Nevada, Utah, New Mexico). Non-migratory (resident) throughout its range.
- Diet
- Primarily a ground forager on seeds, grains, and leaves (e.g., lupine, clover), supplemented with berries (e.g., toyon) and insects; obtains most moisture from succulent vegetation and food, needing free water mainly during sustained heat.
- Size
- 0.255 m
- Wingspan
- 0.345 m
- Lifespan
- 7 years
