Mountain Quail

From sierraforestlegacy.org

Spotlight on Species: Mountain Quail (Oreortyx pictus)

The Mountain Quail, with its rich feathering in earth tones consisting of a chestnut throat-patch, a brilliant slate-blue head and neck, white side bars, and a long slender plume composed of two feathers atop of its head, is easily recognized once seen. Males and females look essentially alike; the females plumes are smaller. But consider yourself lucky if you do see one. Although their call is frequently heard by visitors to the Sierra Nevada between the months of April and August, they are more often heard than seen (a loud wook or crow). Indeed, John Muir called the Mountain Quail "the very handsomest and most interesting of all American partridges ... That he is not so regarded, is because as a lonely mountaineer he is not half known." Extremely secretive, they do not perch in trees, but are always low to the ground. They do not flush, but instead tend to run off quietly into the underbrush, which is always nearby and where they are typically feeding. In the fall, they begin migrating on foot from their mountain forest home to the oak woodlands and chaparral habitats in the foothills where they will remain until spring, when they will migrate again back upslope. One author noted altitudinal migration distances range up to 50 miles in the Sierra Nevada, but little data exist.

Although Mountain Quail is the largest quail in North America north of the tropics, and a widely hunted and prized game bird, there is a lack of information about the ecology of the five recognized subspecies that range from Vancouver Island in British Columbia to Northern Baja, Mexico. Some populations, north and east of California, have been introduced. However, it is most abundant here in California. Some of the populations where it has been introduced are in decline, or extirpated. It has been said that less is known about this bird than any other upland game species in the United States.

In California, Mountain Quail are residents of the Coast Ranges, and Cascade, Klamath, Sierra Nevada, Transverse, and Peninsular mountain ranges. In the deserts of eastern California, uncommon and isolated populations occur in the White, Inyo, Panamint, Grapevine, Coso, and Argus mountains, usually near desert oases above 5,000 feet. The habitats most associated with the species in California include upper montane (up to tree line, at 9 to 10,000 feet) and mixed-conifer forest, mountain and foothill chaparral, oak woodland, pinyon-juniper, and coastal forest. According to several authors that have studied the Mountain Quail, the most essential habitat components are tall, dense shrubs—from which they are never far—and access to water.

Life History

Mountain Quail are unusual and difficult to study because of their altitudinal migrations, the difficulty of distinguishing males from females, and their general secrecy. There are no definitive data for estimating the average home range for Mountain Quail. Mountain Quail in four study locations in California (Modoc Plateau, Klamath Mountains, North Coast Range, and Northern Sierra Nevada) were found to occur at densities ranging from 9 to 30 birds per hundred hectares.

The diet of adult Mountain Quail is more than 96 percent vegetable matter, and approximately 4 percent insect or animal foods (mostly ants and grasshoppers), although young birds eat a higher percentage of insects than adults. Mountain Quail utilize a huge variety of plant foods, enabling them to exploit seasonal foods such as leaves and buds in the winter and spring, and more nutritionally dense foods the rest of the year. In the summer and fall their primary foods are seeds from a variety of plants, including acorns, pine nuts, flowers, fruits from a variety of shrubs, bulbs, fungi, and animal matter.

A sampling of the foods that Mountain Quail eat in California include the acorns of oaks and chinquapin, pine seeds, seeds of Ceanothus spp., manzanita, silk tassel bush, toyon, poison oak, lemonade berry, service berry, snowberry, currant, and numerous grasses; they also eat the bulbs of wild onions and other bulbs as well as California onion grass (Melica spp.); and the leaves and seeds of a variety of clover and other legumes, chickweed, and storksbill. Over a hundred species of plants have been documented through examining the birds' crop contents.

Nests are a shallow depression on the ground lined with grasses, leaves, pine needles, and feathers. They are well concealed and are found primarily under shrubs or ferns, but have also been found beside rocks or logs, beneath brush piles, beneath low branches, or in grass. The clutch size averages 10 eggs. Both monogamous parents rear the young after they hatch in late June or early July, and the family groups remain together in the winter. Winter coveys average 5 to 10 individuals.

Mountain Quail require daily drinking water during the hot weather, and young birds need water soon after hatching to survive. In the Sierra Nevada, the average distance of the birds from water was reported at 310 feet.

Threats

Habitat loss is the primary threat to this species, occurring from livestock grazing, dams, agricultural cropping and other human developments, cheatgrass and other weeds, brush clearing, fire (directly from deaths and loss of habitat), as well as fire suppression that reduces habitat; and any activity that reduces shrub habitat in their breeding and wintering habitats, including type conversion of chaparral and shrub habitats. Spring logging in the Sierra Nevada has resulted in substantial nest losses. Reforestation after fire that eliminates natural post-fire regrowth in early successional forests is likely to be another threat to Mountain Quail in California.

Predators that have been documented to prey on Mountain Quail include Cooper’s Hawks and other accipiters, Great Horned Owl, coyote, bobcat, gray fox, weasels, and domestic cats. Nest predation occurs from a variety of animals. Poison grain set out for ground squirrels or rodents may also be a threat to Mountain Quail; although anecdotal accounts from early in the 1900s claimed that the birds were immune to strychnine, this has never been verified. Diseases are not thought to play a significant role in declining populations.

Early observers (early 20th century) also believed that hunting was not a threat to this species, because of the difficulty of hunting this secretive bird. Nevertheless, in 2015 the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s permitted and reported 118,957 Mountain Quail successful kills of this species by licensed hunters in California.

A model developed by the National Audubon Society analyzes climate change impacts on bird species. For the Mountain Quail, the model “projects a contraction within current ranges during both seasons, with a loss of 58 percent of current summer range and 44 percent of current winter range. As a result, this species will especially need assistance in weathering climate change's effects on its remaining core range within northern California and southern Oregon.”

3/25/2022 - https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/NR_SFVoiceNewsletter/2018-12-10_V11N4.php