The Blob?

I saw what I think was a covey of blobs in September, 1987 southwest of Hollis, Oklahoma. However, subsequent visits to the location during the hunting season that December failed to produce any hybrids.

In my files, I found four published accounts of blobs. One of the incidents was of blobs conceived in breeding pens; the other three were of specimens in the wild. These included specimens from Concho, Stonewall, and Motley counties, which at the time would have been generally the eastern edge of the blue quail's distribution in north Texas.

Apparently both crossings (i.e., bobwhite cock and blue hen, and vice versa) can occur. In 1991 I learned of a rancher in Gray County, Texas who had a covey of blobs frequenting his ranch house. I visited the site in December of that year in an attempt to collect some of them, but couldn't locate them. According to the rancher, the hybrids were a product of a hen blue and a bobwhite cock.

As far as I know blobs are true hybrids, i.e., infertile. George Wint, who managed Oklahoma's game bird hatchery for many years tried several matings of hybrid quail. Mating of a hybrid cock with a hybrid hen produced 170 eggs, but none were fertile. Pairing a hybrid cock with a bobwhite hen produced 23 eggs, but none were fertile. Wint describes how "the cock became dissatisfied with the hen and killed her." In a record of captive breeding producing six blobs, the mating was between a bobwhite cock and the blue hen. Actually, a pair of bobwhites and a pair of blue quail were contained in the same cage. According to Elmer Hansen, the bobwhite cock courted both hens and drove the scaled quail cock away from the hens.

Typically the blob looks like a dirty-faced bobwhite with a crest. However, the crest is not white-tipped as is the blue quail's crest, hence the name "cottontop."

If you've hunted quail all your life and have never seen a blob, then don't share your tales of woe to Paul Melton of Roby. Melton shot blobs on two separate occasions over the last month. Both came from Melton's hunting lease about 20 miles west of Jayton (Kent County). And if anyone can lay claim to "Blobslayer", it might be Melton. The two he shot recently were numbers 9 and 10 over his hunting career. I had the pleasure of hunting with Melton on this same lease a week ago, and I'll offer one observation. Melton has probably never missed any blob he ever shot at; i.e., he's probably the best shot with whom I've ever hunted.

Speaking of weird quail, back in 1979 I received a call from an acquaintance in Tipton, Oklahoma (Tillman County) about what was believed to be a blob. I drove to Tipton and photographed the which had been "stuffed" alongside a blue hen and a bobwhite cock. This specimen, if it indeed was a blob, was unlike any other specimens that I've seen. This bird had the squamate (i.e., "scaled") feathers of the blue quail all around the back side of the bird. I am not convinced it was a hybrid, and appeared to be just aberrant plumage of a blue quail. When I sent the photographs to a renowned ornithologist (Dr. George M. Sutton at the University of Oklahoma) he wrote back that it looked like a hybrid between a blue quail and pheasant. I didn't buy that either, as there were no pheasants within 150 miles to my knowledge.

Finally, during the recent Blues Brothers quail hunt in Pecos County, I noted one blue quail that had five or six white wing feathers. I tried to buffalo the guys around the cleaning barrel that it was a cross between a blue and a white-winged dove. They didn't buy it either.

Records of blobs are likely quite common. If you've got a tale or photograph of a blob (or other weird quail) to share, drop me a line at TAEX, 7887 U.S. Hwy. 87 North, San Angelo, 76901, or e-mail me at d-rollins@tamu.edu.