Learning from quails

The bird sagas at our house continue. Last year we bought some more quails to replace those that had been lost (escaped), and ended up with a few babies. This year we had four females and two males, and one day all four were ensconced on separate nests that were absolutely bursting with eggs. OMG, was there going to be some serious overcrowding or what?

One day I came home from work to find seven babies (five yellow and two white) and three mothers on nests. There were also a few scattered eggs that were half-hatched: obviously the effort of getting out had been too much. Quail chicks are not like canaries or many other baby birds in that they don't sit in a nest and wait to be fed. They're like tiny hen chicks: up and running from a very early age.

Over the next few days, I observed some interesting things. The next day, one had died -- it looked like someone had pecked its head. But the really strange thing was that one of the other mothers had adopted them: so she seemed to be sitting on the babies and her eggs, and was having trouble keeping them all warm. Now and then, the real mother would run up to the nest to try to get her chicks back (or so it seemed), only to have the adoptive mother fight her off.

I assumed this was an accident: that maybe she had strayed too close to the nest, or wandered past while the other quail was off the nest. In any case, over the next couple of days, the adoptive mother abandoned all her eggs -- she didn't need them: she already had her babies. But over the next few days, both other mothers abandoned their nests too, all taking on the care of the shrinking numbers of survivors. We're down to three now (two yellow, which will become grey, and one white, which will become light brown). The chicks don't seem too fussed who the huddle under, and I'm left whether this whole situation arises out of some innate biological desire to prevent overpopulation and stress on the food chain. Fascinating stuff.