The Dance of the Quails

One mid-morning winter day at Laurelledge I just happened to glance out across our garden plot—now barren except for a few soybean stalks still standing against the elements. A light snow had fallen. Into that scene fluttered a covey of quail, quite visible against the background of new fallen snowflakes..

As I watched those little birds I witnessed a strange sight. A quail would hop up into the air and then fall back to earth, followed by another bird going through the same dance step. I continued to view, spellbound, wondering what was going on.

Could this be some sort of weird ritual of the quail family? Was it a mating dance in mid-winter? Had this covey found a batch of sour-mash from some moonshiner’s cove? What could it be?

Finally I realized what was happening. Earlier in the summer when we harvested the soybeans we had left some of the not-fully-developed pods on the stalks. The hungry birds were jumping up into the air, plucking those pods from the plants and then falling back to the ground to eat the precious morsels.

This was no weird ritual or dance. It was no inebriated birds. Just a covey of God’s creatures enjoying a winter feast!