Quail really don't mind body contact. In fact, bumping, cuddling and squeezing in is a major part of life in the covey. If two quail are drinking wing to wing at the water bowl, a third one would just as well squeeze in between them than find an open spot. Same when they are grazing seed under the butterfly bushes. They cluster and continually bump into each other and, except when they are chest bumping and chasing each other in dizzying circles, they act like one big soft gray feathery body sharing a single mind.
Nobody else who comes to the Bird Park does this. The magpie swoop and dive each other in a semi-congenial fashion, the lordly crows and ravens have the breakfast table to themselves, the little birds either battle or ignore each other all together, and the starlings gobble like they are competing for scraps in a madhouse. Only the mourning doves and pigeons eat together without boast or incident.
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The mourning doves always fascinated me because another trait they have is when they are approached, either by a human (me) or a cat (my cat, Roscoe) they just keep eating until the very last second before they swoop away. That is, human or cat can get much closer before they retreat to safety. Apparently they have a very good sense of distance and of their own well-being and the "alarm line" a predator must cross to make them fly off is a very small radius circle.
Perhaps their small personal space is related to both behaviors.
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