ON THE TRAIL OF BOBWHITE

Long before I ever saw one I heard the bobwhite quail and learned to differentiate between the male and the female – while the male simply called and said “bob – white”, the female’s answer was a flirting four-syllable “who-who-bob-white”, with extra emphasis on the WHITE!

While not as rare as the whippoorwill, the bobwhite’s conversations were rare enough to intrigue a young boy’s mind. I wondered where they hid, how the moved about in the fields, and what they were really saying.

I was finally introduced to a whole host of quail when our next-door neighbor, an avid hunter (and Big Dixie’s daddy), began to raise them from eggs given to him by the local game warden. I got to stand up close to the raised white cage; about four feet off the ground, and watch through the wire the different stages of their birth and growth. Finally, in the fall of the year the neighbor released them to fill the surrounding fields for hunting season.

I watched them rise high in the air, circle the owner’s yard, and then head off to a sagebrush field about a quarter mile away. I often played in that field during the summer months alone. I rarely walked, but rather crawled slowly along the network of trails made by the quail and rabbits that lived there.

I remember I became quite accomplished at crawling up to quail nests in the sage grass and looking at the little white eggs, sometimes as many as a dozen in each nest. Later visits were rewarded with the wondrous sight of the chicks starring back at me. The momma would round them up and herd them off down one of the paths for protection. I loved to watch them scurry down the paths just ahead of me and then disappear around a turn.

Often times I would spook a rabbit that would somehow jump straight up and turn in the opposite direction before coming down on his big hind legs and run off.

Sitting down in the grass, I was hidden from the world and perceived myself as part of the field and a member of the local wildlife community. I would crawl for hours around the field until I knew all the interconnecting paths, dead ends, and shady spots under the dogwood trees. If I lay on my back and looked up through the grass at the sky, I felt even more connected to the field and the world. Once while watching white billowy clouds against a deep blue sky, I dosed off and slept until the sun reached across my face – such peace is rare today.

As I said, I often visited that field as a child, a field on which my future in-laws would build a large tri-level house some ten years later. I do not know where the bobwhite went to after the home was built, but while I lived and visited there, I often thought about how free I was during those days. I remembered the smell of it, the beauty of it, and the serenity of it.

This photo is of my son, nearly thirty years ago, swinging on one of the many dogwood trees that dotted the field where the quail and I played, but now they are part of the landscape in the yard where his grandparents now live.

I often wish I could go back to that innocence – a place where I felt as if I was one with the animals, nature, and my own soul. I know I can never go back, at least in that full sense, but it is comforting to know that I did learn what they were saying when they whistled their bob-white tune and they still call me today, from a distant field, saying – "COME PLAY, COME PLAY"!