Montezuma Quail
QuailRare breedAlso called Mearns
The Montezuma Quail — Mearns's Quail to most who hunt it — is the oddest-looking quail in North America — the male's face is a bold black-and-white harlequin mask, and his flanks are deep chestnut spotted with round white dots. It lives in oak and juniper grassland in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico, where it digs for bulbs and tubers with outsized claws rather than scratching for seed. It sits extraordinarily tight, letting a walker pass within a few feet before flushing. Laying is modest by quail standards — a wild hen produces somewhere around ten to twelve eggs in a season, and as few as two or as many as sixteen depending on how the weather runs — but a captive hen will keep going if you keep taking them, with cumulative totals of over 40 in a year. It is difficult to keep and breed in captivity, needs a specialised diet, and is a permitted native species.
Weight
How to spot it
- Plumage
- Male chestnut-sided with bold round white spots; back mottled brown, buff and black
- Sex differences
- Striking — the male has the black-and-white clown face; the hen is plain mottled brown with no mask
- Call
- A soft, descending, ventriloquial whinny
- Look for
- The male's black-and-white facial mask and white-spotted chestnut flanks — nothing else in North America looks like it
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