Halloween for Quail

Halloween's over for us, but not for quail. They live a horror film every day of their life. A Chinese proverb warns that "when you live next door to a dragon, it doesn't pay to leave him out of your plans."

This past Sunday morning (Oct. 30) found me perched in a deer stand with my muzzleloader in SW Oklahoma. I typically heard between 5 and 12 coveys giving their early morning covey calls. But on this Sunday morning, I heard 3 different encounters with what a bobwhite must consider to be Freddie Krueger, Jason, or Leatherface (for fans of various horror flicks), i.e., a Cooper's hawk.

I only witnessed one of the raids. The Cooper's hawk shrieks like a banshee in an attempt to flush the covey (the members of which were taking refuge amidst a bois d'arc tree row. The Cooper's hawk (a male best I could tell based on his size [male accipiters are the smaller of the 2 sexes]) continued his threats until at least the more nervous of the covey flushed out of my sight. The flushing quail give their own screams. I couldn't see the outcome, but Cooper's hawks are the F-16s of the raptor world, i.e., designed for air-to-air combat.

I'm guilty of being anthropomorphic when it comes to quail and likely give quail too much credit for thinking. Caveat emptor. But I'd wager that a quail would rather face a Benelli with an extended magazine than a Cooper's or sharp-shinned hawk. And probably for good reason.