If you are like me, you remember reading stories as a kid in which bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) were mentioned, but you have never actually seen one. These little quails were once common in Massachusetts but are seen now only occasionally in Cambridge and Somerville.
Settlers in the 1600s encountered and wrote about these birds. In 1632, Thomas Morton (author of the first book banned in the United States) wrote that he saw 60 from his house in Quincy. In Morton’s era, these birds lived in coastal areas and along Massachusetts rivers. As more and more colonists arrived, they cleared the land, creating the perfect habitat – a mix of grass, brush, woods and bare ground where bobwhites and their chicks could both forage and hide from predators. By the mid-1800s, around 80 percent of Massachusetts land was used for farms, and bobwhites flourished.
Some people call bobwhites firebirds because the quails thrive in areas that have been burned: open areas where the understory is not thick. It is the spring call of the male that gives the bird its name, though. The call is described, perhaps unsurprisingly, as sounding like bob-white or bob-bob-white. The males call throughout the summer.
Unlike in most bird species, the male builds the nest. He scoops out a shallow depression in thick vegetation and lines it with dead grass. Then he weaves an arch over the nest, concealing it, except for a side opening just large enough to enter and exit. While incubating the eggs, the parent looks out this opening.
Females lay about 14 to 16 eggs. For about 23 days, the male and female take turns keeping the eggs warm until they hatch. The young leave the nest soon after hatching and grow rapidly. Within a few days, they can fly several yards and are fully grown after only 49.
While up to 16 eggs may sound like a lot, nesting on the ground makes for high mortality. Raccoons, skunks, possum, hawks, snakes and foxes all prey on young bobwhites or their eggs. According to Bent, if a brood of young is flushed, they “will buzz up like so many overgrown grasshoppers, fly a short distance, then dive into cover” to remain motionless until the danger has passed.
Well-heeled hunters using dogs found they also make bobwhites freeze in place, and hunting became a fashionable sport for wealthy men after the Civil War, when technology improved guns and made them lighter in weight and more reliable.
No shock that during the day bobwhites forage in groups (called coveys) and during the night roost in a tight circle, tails pointing inward. In this way they can be alerted to predators coming from any direction. The circle also helps keep them warm. Lynds Jones (1903) described this formation:
First one stepped around over the spot selected, then another joined him, the two standing pressed close together, forming the first arc of the circle. Another and another joined themselves to this nucleus, always with heads pointing out, tails touching, until the circle was complete. But two were left out! One stepped up to the group, made an opening, then crowded himself in, with much ruffling of feathers. One remained outside, with no room to get in. He, too, ran round and round, trying here and there in vain; it was a sold mass. Undaunted, he nimbly jumped upon the line of backs, felt here and there for a yielding spot, began wedging himself between two brothers, slipped lower and lower, and finally became one of the bristling heads.
Massachusetts is already at the northern edge of the range for these birds, which do not migrate, and these little birds have difficulty surviving when there is too much snow or ice on the ground. If snow is deep, the birds cannot find seeds on the ground. In addition, the birds might get buried in a snowstorm. According to 20th-century ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent, “At the approach of a snowstorm, they huddle together in some sheltered spot and let the snow cover them. This gives them good protection from wind and cold; but if the snow turns to rain, followed by a severe freeze the birds are imprisoned and often perish from hunger before they can escape.” Severe winters in the late 1800s wiped out most of the bobwhites from New Hampshire down to the Cape.
Over time, the population rebounded partially in southern parts of the state where winters are warmer and milder. In 1910, Massachusetts became the first state to start raising and restocking them. According to state ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush in 1912: “The Massachusetts commissioners on fisheries and game have their various game farms in full operation … The greatest success with native game birds has been attained with the bobwhite, hundreds of which are now being reared by the commission.”
From 1920 to 1947, the commission released more than 73,000 of the farm-raised birds that were not as hardy as natives and most likely did not survive the winters. Any natives probably hybridized with the farmed birds, weakening the native stock even more. Today, MassWildlife restocks bobwhites for hunters in Plymouth and Falmouth each year, but it has not led to a population increase. And, in fact, these birds are threatened due to habitat loss.
Since 1970, northern bobwhite populations have dropped by 77 percent, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We will probably never again see the days described by William Brewster in 1906:
[Bobwhites] were always found in autumn and winter in the Fresh Pond Swamps … but such instances … were quite eclipsed by the presence of a bevy during the greater part of each autumn in the immediate neighborhood of Harvard Square. [The bevy] usually contained eight or ten, and its range included Norton’s Woods, Jarvis Field, and the gardens and grounds lying along Kirkland Street and the western portions of Broadway and Harvard Streets. On one occasion several of the birds alighted on Cambridge Common in the midst of a number of boys who were playing baseball.
Reader photo
Elizabeth Wardle spotted these cabbage white caterpillars on Aug. 14.
Have you taken photos of our urban wild things? Send your images to Cambridge Day and we may use them as part of a future feature. Include the photographer’s name and the general location where the photo was taken.
Jeanine Farley is an educational writer who has lived in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She enjoys taking photos of our urban wild things.
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