A striking male Gambel's Quail in profile fills half the frame while leaning over the edge of my fence.

Yesterday I was clever,
so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise,
so I am changing myself.
~Rumi

🕉️

📸 Gambel's Quail 🪶

#TopKnotTuesday
#EastCoastKin
#Photography
#BirdLovers
#Quail

Gambel's Quail #191, a male in profile heading into the afternoon sun with some odd green stuff in the background...odd for the desert, I mean.

🪶Gambel’s Quail begin nesting early in the spring and need adequate late winter rains to green up the desert. The water helps produce cover and forage full of vitamin A to help with reproductive body condition.

🌿🚿Now you...and the neighbors know why I watered that empty lot. 🤘😶‍🌫️

#TopKnotTuesday

I mean...right?! A male Gambel's Quail in profile sticks his topknot plume right between two bokeh balls. On purpose.

🤘😶‍🌫️ Good morning peeps! Happy St. Patrick's Day! ☘️

This morning I caught a quail with his topknot between two bokeh balls...🫧🪶🫧

...surely that means something. 🤔

📸 Gambel's Quail, today's #birding! 🌿

#Quail
#BirdLovers
#Photography
#TopKnotTuesday

A young-ish male Gambel's Quail is facing into the sunlight but with his head turned to look back over his left shoulder against an oddly white background devoid of any detail created by my neighbors' white garage. Let's call it negative space. Now you know.

You have two lives.
The second begins
when you realize
you only have one.
~Confucius

🕉️

#TopKnotTuesday 🪶

The cholla patch sure seems less harsh and much more friendly in bokeh as a background for this male Gambel's Quail standing watch on a weathered fence post.

🌿Quail post🌿

🪶 #TopknotTuesday

Two lovebirds...er, Gambel's Quail appear to cross topknots, canoodling. It's a word.

Love is the bridge
between you
and everything.
~Rumi

🕉️

📸 Gambel's Quail 🪶🌿

#TwosDay
#TopKnotTuesday
#Photography
#BirdLovers
#Quail

The Gambel's Quail I showed you last week...looking at you. Look it up.

When someone asks you
"what's wrong?"
but nothing's wrong,
that's just how your face looks

#TopKnotTuesday 🪶
#LookingAtYou
#Quail

You gotta try to make at least one look good...

...when you get the whole covey over for a visit. I count 23 quail in this frame, so there's a slight chance you'll believe me when I say there were more...

🪶🐦🌿 Quail peeps! Ima show you two frames from today's #birding... 🤘😶‍🌫️

...since we had quite the covey this morning! 🥰

📸 Gambel's Quail

#TopKnotTuesday
#Photography
#BirdLovers
#Quail

Peek-a-boo! A male Gambel's Quail hiding up in the tree peeks around the trunk to stare down at me...

...which I did, but had to thread a tight window in the bare branches for some topknot in profile.

🤫 Quail don't actually like to be photographed.

🪶🪶🌿 So you get a couple thread-the-needle clicks for #TopKnotTuesday because today's birb made it to the neighbors' tree before I even got my lens cap off. 🤘😶‍🌫️

#Quail
#Birding
#BirdLovers
#StickHappens
#Photography
#BirdOfTheDay
#StareDown

Turns out the fence line is a super place to catch a full view of a beautiful male Gambel's Quail in sunny profile with nothing but distant mountains in bokeh for a background. Zen birding.

🪶 Quail peeps! Feels like a two quail #TopKnotTuesday...

...it's only fair, since I gave you two of Mr. Cooper last week, and I just met this fella yesterday. So we'll call this today's #birding!

Got that straight? 🌿

📸 Callipepla gambelii, #184, riding the fence

#Quail
#BirdLovers
#Photography

A close up profile of a male Gambel's Quail with his beak open. Note the serrated, or "saw-toothed," edges are for efficiently gripping and breaking up seeds and vegetation, rather than for powerful cracking.

Meh...

⏰ I'm late to the #openbeak party with the #BirdOfTheDay peeps...

...but early for #TopKnotTuesday! 🤘😶‍🌫️

Yours truly,
Even Steven

📸 Gambel's Quail 🪶🌿

#Quail
#BirdLovers
#Photography

A proud papa Gambel's Quail looks on from the wildflower patch as his borby chick glares back at its first human...probably. Look at that little ball of fluff!!

Timeline cleanse...

🐥🌼🌿 Baby #borb... #LookingAtYou!

...and #TopKnotTuesday! 🪶🪶

📸 Callipepla gambelii, aka Gambel's Quail

#BorbAlert
#EastCoastKin
#BirdLovers
#Photography
#TinyTuesday

Male Gambel's Quail feature a distinctive black face and throat, a reddish-brown cap, white border lines, gray body, chestnut sides with white streaks, and a central black patch on a buff belly, topped with a prominent black topknot (plume). Like this one.

When I am silent,
I fall into the place
where everything is music.
~Rumi

🕉️ ...do you hear it?

📸 Gambel's Quail 🪶🌿

#TopKnotTuesday
#BirdPhotography
#Photography
#EastCoastKin
#BirdLovers
#Quail

A relatively gregarious male Gambel's Quail is walking toward the camera but with his head turned to the side to keep a good eye on things...

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
~Henry David Thoreau

🕉️

📸 Gambel's Quail... #lookingatyou 🪶🌿

#TopKnotTuesday
#Photography
#BirdLovers
#Birding

When a skittish male Gambel's Quail peeks at you through a 'window' in the bare branches with the Mojave Desert as a background you call it natural framing.

Natural framing... 🫶

...meets #TopKnotTuesday! 🤘😆

Have a sweet one quail-peeps!! 🌿🐦🌿

📸 Callipepla gambelii, aka Gambel's Quail 🪶

#Quail
#Birding
#BirdLovers
#Photography

You know how hard it is to find a quail on a bare aluminum pole? Nevermind... this borb is a male Gambel's Quail facing away from the camera but with his head turned around backwards. So he looks funny.

Me (*yelling): "...AND AFTER THE 'AIRING OF GRIEVANCES', WE COME TO THE FEATS OF STRENGTH..."

🪶 (*inner monologue): "...does he think this is a Festivus pole?"

🌿 A #Festivus for the rest of us, quail peeps! Have a sweet #TopKnotTuesday and Happy Holidays!! 🤘🎅🤘 See ya in 2026!!

📸C. gambelii #borb

From topknot to tailfeathers, a male Gambel's Quail shows off his gorgeous plumage while strutting across my fence in morning light.

🌿 Quail peeps! #TopKnotTuesday is the same birb I showed you last week, but different. 😏 Look it up.

📸 Callipepla gambelii #119 🪶

#Quail
#BirdLovers
#Photography
#BirdPhotography

What I call the 'racing stripes' on full display... with a happy male Gambel's Quail showing off his beautiful plumage with the rusty crown and topknot plume topping his head looking one way while his body is walking the other way, into the morning light...

Why should I be unhappy?
Every parcel of my being
is in full bloom.
~Rumi

🕉️ Have a bloomin' #TopKnotTuesday peeps! 🤘😶‍🌫️

📸 Callipepla gambelii 🪶🌿

#LookingAtYou
#BirdLovers
#EastCoastKin
#Photography
#TalonTuesday 🧐

A Gambel's Quail hen in profile turns her head to look right at you from the skeleton of a cholla cactus.

🪶: "Who, me??"

Me: "Yes, you..."

🤘😶‍🌫️ CyberMonday, my ass. Goin' riding! Have a sweet #TopKnotTuesday quail peeps!! 🌿🐦

📸 Callipepla gambelii, #LookingAtYou

#BirdLovers
#Photography
#EastCoastKin

A male Gambel's Quail looks a little surprised he got caught this close up.

Me: "Ya know...some humans eat quail for Thanksgiving, bud..."

🪶: "..."

Me: "Not us. Lighten up, Francis..."

🪶: (*inner monologue) "...I'm sooo pooping on your patio furniture..."

🌿 Off early! Have a sweet #TopKnotTuesday! 🤘😶‍🌫️

#LookingAtYou 👁️
#BirdLovers
#Photography

Two frames of my sweet backlit hen, both in 16:9, as they came off the camera, first in profile with her topknot facing forward and her crown highlighted in afternoon light...

...and then with her head turned to look back, giving me a backlit crown and topknot plume the other way. Zen birding.

🫠 TFW...a beautiful Gambel's Quail hen gives you the ol' 'get-my-good-side' head turn...while backlit. Both ways.

🌿 Have a double-sweet #TopknotTuesday peeps!! 🤘😶‍🌫️

📸 Callipepla gambelii 🪶🪶🌞

#BirdPhotography
#LookingAtYou
#BirdLovers
#Photography

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.”
~John Donne

🕉️ Did you hear that?? 🌿🪶🍂 #AutumnVibes

#Autumn
#FeelingFall
#TopKnotTuesday
#Photography
#BirdLovers

Surrounded in a sea of scrub oak leaves just turning color for Fall and a dreamy bokeh background, a male Gambel's Quail standing sentry, but daydreaming until a second ago, looks back over his shoulder to finally spot me sneaking through the forest. Zen birding.

And the sun took a step back,
the leaves lulled themselves to sleep
and #Autumn was awakened.
~Raquel Franco

🕉️ ...actually, I called him 'Bob' ...but close enough. I feel seen. 🌿

📸 Gambel's Quail 🪶

#FeelingFall 🍂
#TopKnotTuesday
#AutumnVibes
#GreenTherapy
#EastCoastKin
#Photography
#BirdLovers

That's Cinnamon again...sticking her pretty face into frame right in front of her beau, so you get a male Gambel's Quail in bokeh as her background and another good look at her crown and topknot in profile.

Nature and truth
are one and immutable,
and inseparable
as beauty and love.
~Anna Brownell Jameson

🕉️ Have a sweet #TwosDay quail-peeps! 🪶🪶🌿

📸 Callipepla gambelii 💞

#TopKnotTuesday
#BirdLovers
#EastCoastKin
#Photography
#Birding

Sometimes, when you're lucky, you get a hen with her crown feathers raised so you can see the cinnamon color hiding in those feathers right around the topknot plume, which seems oddly erect in this Gambel's Quail profile in morning light.

So, I named her 'Cinnamon'...😍

🐦🌿 That time I found out Gambel's Quail hens DO have some color on their crown, a plain gray-tan or brownish-gray color, duh, but sometimes with a "slight cinnamon" wash! 📖🧐

🤘😶‍🌫️ Now you know.

📸 Callipepla gambelii♀️

#TopKnotTuesday 🪶
#BirdLovers
#Photography
#Birding

Besides those Ravens, we met some Quail over in the cholla patch. This male in the foreground is perched on a cholla 'skeleton' in profile, and I like the Mojave Desert backgound in bokeh.

“There is something about the desert.… There is something there which the mountains, no matter how grand and beautiful, lack; which the sea, no matter how shining and vast and old, does not have.”
~Edward Abbey

🕉️ ...is it #TopKnotTuesday? 🌿

#Birding 🪶
#BirdLovers
#EastCoastKin
#Photography

Gambel's Quail, a cock and a hen, walking away from me warily while still eyeballing me ...which backlights them in golden hour light.

When your Gambel's Quail are backlit together...✨

...you get twice the highlighted crowns! Am I right, quail peeps? 🪶🪶 #TwosDay

🌿 Have a sweet #TopKnotTuesday! 🤘😶‍🌫️

#BirdLovers
#Photography

A mated pair of Gambel's Quail backlit on a boulder in the Mojave Desert.

Two quail, one rock...

...because it's #TopKnotTuesday and #RockinTuesday! 🤘

📸 Gambel's Quail lovebirbs 🪶🌿

#BirdLovers
#Photography
#EastCoastKin
#Birding

After many tries, I figured out how to manipulate the Gambel's Quail into coming over the fence on the north side of the yard in sweet morning light, and this cute male was the first one to fall for it. Zen.

Don't just stand there ffs...

...it's #TopKnotTuesday! 🪶

🌿 Off early, and heading for the hills! Peace!! ✌️

It's the desert...how cold can it be? Just cold enough to get a Gambel's Quail in full on borb mode, apparently... Zen birding.

🚨 #BorbAlert... on #TopKnotTuesday! 🪶

📸 Gambel's Quail ♂️

#BirdLovers
#Photography