Northern bobwhite

Getting into the weeds with "the bird"

Photo by Andrej Chudý, via Creative Commons

A few weeks ago, I was driving through some Illinois bottomlands with several biologists. As we passed a certain stand of forest, the talk turned reverent. Whispered, a rumor spread: wild bobwhite quail were known to live amid these trees.

The northern bobwhite, Colinus virginianus, is the sole species of quail in eastern North America, though its range is a bit wider: it lives from southern Mexico to southeastern Wyoming to New England. The northern bobwhite, though, is particularly associated with the U.S. South, where it was once so commonly trapped that if you talked about “Birds,” with no further designation, everyone knew it was quail on your mind.

Bobwhites were hunted, too—by aristocrats lodging at fine plantation homes, by farm kids walking fencerows sporting hand-me-down guns. Acclaimed North Carolina chef Bill Neal once told a reporter that quail was his favorite food. “My father always hunted. I remember reaching into his pockets to…