Northern bobwhite

Bobwhites walk on the ground looking for food.

They eat seeds, leaves, berries and bugs.

Bobwhites find their food by walking on the ground with their heads down, looking for it. In fall and winter they mainly eat seeds, such as ragweed, foxtail and sunflower seeds, seeds of wild plants in the pea family, leftover grain and acorns.

In spring and summer they eat many more insects. Insects are especially important for the chicks, which may eat mostly insects at first. Bobwhites also eat leaves, buds, berries, spiders and snails.

The IUCN gives a diet principally of seeds, with insects an important part in summer (del Hoyo et al. 1994). Audubon lists many seeds, especially of legumes, plus leaves, buds, berries, acorns, roots, insects, spiders and snails, with mostly seeds in winter and young birds perhaps eating mostly insects at first; it forages by walking on the ground, head down, searching by sight, sometimes climbing into vines or shrubs.

The Missouri Department of Conservation names fall and winter seeds of ragweed, foxtail, pigweed, sunflowers and wild legumes such as beggar's ticks and partridge pea, plus waste grain and acorns, and says insects dominate in spring and summer and are particularly important to chicks.

In winter, bobwhites live in groups called coveys.

At night they sleep in a circle on the ground. Their heads point out.

From fall until spring, bobwhites live in groups called coveys, often of about a dozen birds. At night a covey roosts on the ground in a circle, tails pointed in and heads pointed out.

In spring and summer bobwhites whistle a clear bob-WHITE! In the fall bobwhites give a different call, koi-lee. To court a female, a male turns his head to show off its pattern, droops his wings, fluffs his feathers and makes short rushes at her.

Coveys form in fall and winter: the IUCN gives 8 to 20 birds with a home range of about 10 hectares, Audubon an average of about a dozen, and the Missouri Department of Conservation 5 to 30. Audubon describes coveys roosting on the ground in circles, tails inward and heads outward, and feeding in coveys most of the year but alone or in family groups in the breeding season.

The 'bob-WHITE!' call is given in the mating season and 'koi-lee' in the fall (MDC); other species can mimic the bob-white call (MDC). In courtship the male turns his head to the side to show its pattern, droops his wings, fluffs his feathers, makes short rushes at the female and walks slowly around her with his tail fanned (Audubon).

Many people know the bobwhite's whistle.

In Missouri, the bobwhite is the state game bird.

The northern bobwhite is a popular game bird, hunted in North America. In 2007 the state of Missouri named it the official state game bird.

Many farmers welcome bobwhites because they eat weed seeds and insects that harm crops. Landowners, farmers and ranchers can help bobwhites by leaving the right mix of shrubs, wildflowers and open ground on their land.

The IUCN notes that the species is hunted in North America and under high hunting pressure in the USA, and that its socio-economic importance as a game bird has resulted in range-wide declines (Pardieck et al. 2018; Terhune et al. 2019), adding that poor management of populations can cause declines. Missouri made it the official state game bird in 2007, and the Missouri Department of Conservation says farmers welcome it as a destroyer of weeds and harmful insects.

The department stresses that bobwhite numbers now largely depend on land-management decisions by landowners, farmers and ranchers, and that brood-rearing habitat needs shrubby cover, open herbaceous cover with bare ground, and growing forbs and legumes.

There are fewer bobwhites than there used to be.

People are working to bring back the bushy, open land they need.

The northern bobwhite is listed as near threatened. Its numbers have dropped quite fast in recent decades, mainly because its land has changed: farming has become more intensive, with more weedkillers and single crops, and dense tree plantations have been planted. A 2020 estimate put the number of adult bobwhites at about 5.8 million.

In the United States, a program called the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative helps restore bobwhite habitat in most of the states where it lives.

BirdLife International assessed Colinus virginianus as Near Threatened for the IUCN Red List (assessed 22 March 2021, published 2021) because of moderately rapid declines, mainly caused by habitat conversion and agricultural intensification; the population of about 5.8 million mature individuals (Partners in Flight 2020) is decreasing, and generation length is 2.6 years. Agricultural intensification, herbicides, monocultures and dense tree plantations can quickly cause declines, and less frequent prescribed burning has fragmented the open habitat it needs (IUCN, after Brennan et al. 2020).

The National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative coordinates habitat restoration in most US range states, and small-scale translocations have had varying success (IUCN). Audubon's field guide text (Kaufman 1996) said that the 'masked bobwhite' of the Sonoran race, then endangered, was being reintroduced into southern Arizona with only limited success, and the IUCN notes that subspecies ridgwayi is on CITES Appendix I.