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Listen to the Button Quail crow

The Button Quail

The button quail are the adorable goof balls of my aviary. They don't fly, so they reside solely on the floor of the aviary. They require a tall enclosure, however, because when frightened, they will hop several feet straight up in the air, flapping their wings madly, and creating chaos in the aviary. They spend their time pacing the aviary back and forth obsessively, scavenging for seed and bits of food. They will walk through food dishes and water bowls, rather than around, and sometimes slip in ceramic food dishes sending food flying in all directions.

They don't bathe in water, but instead prefer a sand bath. I provide a dish of play sand for this purpose and they use it regularly several times a day.

Males crow, kind of like a rooster. When we first got them, they got into the habit of crowing at 3:00 am in the morning. By doing so, they didn't endear themselves to Tom, and because of this he won't let me ever get any new button quail, which makes me kind of sad, because they really are characters. They outgrew this behavior, but only after a few months.

I've heard that two males should never be housed together because they will fight, but mine have never fought and are very closely attached to each other. They follow each other around, share food with each other, bathe together, and sleep cuddled up in one big fluffy ball. Perhaps they get along so well because they were brought up together and had they been introduced at an older age, they would have had problems.

Because the quail live on the floor, they do not affect the total bird count that the aviary can hold comfortably. They have only caused one problem in the aviary so far: harassing the newly fledged baby societies. Because the fledgelings could not fly well, perhaps the quails saw them as invading their floor space. Whatever it was, they cruelly attempted to pluck the feathers from the babies, leaving one tailless and bleeding before we knew they were a threat. So I would be cautious if you are breeding finches in an environment that also houses button quails.

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