I didn’t know there were different species of quail?! I thought all males had the silly (cute) forehead feather. If you want to tell us all about quail, I would love to hear, but I also possess the Googles. Anyway, your birds make me smile. Thank you for posting about them.
oh there's like a million species lol I don't know much about any of them, just names and I can recognize a lot of them. I raised Bobwhite quail (my favorites) for wild local release since they're native to michigan.
I'm raising Celadon quail now, which are coturnix with the celadon (Ce) gene, which strips their eggs of the splotchy bloom coating, leaving them blue.
Here's what the wild type looks like:
There's a species of coturnix called a rain quail:
The ones with the little head doot you're PROBABLY thinking of are valley quail (California quail, I think they're also called?).
And the really similar Gambel's quail:
blue scaled quail which have a crest, not a doot
Montezuma quail which honestly may be a very big hoax I mean look at these fuckers:
Which are different somehow than the ocellated quail which are just as ridiculous:
Mountain quail which couldn't decide if it wanted a crest or a doot I guess:
there's a bunch more too, but. yeah quail come in all sorts of Shapes and colors. they're neat little birds. I think the bobwhites, valley, gambel's, scaled, mountain, and uhhhh montezuma quails? are native to the US, but not all of them are in every state.