How long it has been since I have posted here! We've gone all the way through winter and are now just starting with spring, though I suppose there could still be a freeze. There's been a lot of rain and a couple of freezes, so my garden looks awful. I have some pots of petunias and pansies that have done very little so far, and my beautiful vines and flowering shrubs have all frozen back.

This picture is of the turkey that has free run of the patio at a vegetarian restaurant we go to for Thanksgiving dinner. It always looks very thankful, and I've been meaning to post it for a while.

But what about the quail, you ask? It's been a very long time since I've watched them roost in the tree by the front porch. I don't actually know if they are still doing it. It's been too cold to stand out there and watch.

But I watch them in the back yard and around the neighborhood. They've been in large coveys for a while--usually I see at least six, eight, or more quail together at a time. A lot of them gather around the quail block by the pond (I will have to stop putting those out soon because the white wings will be back in March and they are just pigs. A block that should last for a month is gone in a week. (A quail block, to answer the question posed earlier, is a compacted, dense block of seeds held together with something sticky but I don't know what.))

What I've been noticing is that the quails are starting to appear more in pairs. Today I watched two male quails harrassing a female who clearly wasn't in the mood for sex yet. But that is coming. All kinds of baby birds are coming! I can't wait!

The female with the missing tail that I watched in the fall eventually regrew all her tail feathers. I also watched a female with an apparently broken wing. Her covey-mates were very solicitous of her. I lost track, though. Either she healed or died.