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An Incubating Male California Quail

John B. Price

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It is well known that in the California Quail (Lophortyx californica) usually the female alone incubates the eggs. The fact that sometimes a male quail is found incubating was noted by Grinnell, Bryant, and Storer (Game Birds of California, 1918, p. 529) who wrote: “The male bid will assume the duties of incubation if the female is done away with, but otherwise seems only to perform the duty of sentinel.”

But such instances do not seem to be common, for E. Lowell Sumner, Jr. (Calif. Fish and Game, vol. 21, 1935, pp. 217, 254) in the course of thirty months of intensive field work on the California Quail never observed the male incubating and he only mentions one such case, that of a nest observed by the writer and others on the Stanford University campus in 1933.

It was with interest, therefore, that in 1936 on approaching a quail nest for purposes of photography I found the male incubating the eggs (fig. 30). Thirteen eggs were in the neat which was in a field just west of the Stanford campus. This nest was Observed several times each day, on June 29, 30, July 1, 2,3. Only the male was found on the eggs and nothing was seen of the female. On July 4 the nest was found broken up. Four of the eggs were missing, and many scattered feathers indicated the capture of the bird by some nredatorv Fig. 30. Male California Quail incubating. animal.

At neither nest, in 1933 or 1936, was the female observed at any timeThis fact tends to confirm the suggestion of Grinnell, Bryant, and Storer that males found incubating are not sharing the duty with the female but have taken it over after she has been killed.

Stanford University, California, November 29, 1937

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