What is the California state bird?

How did California choose the quail?

Bird lovers voted first. In 1927 a member of the Cooper Ornithological Club, Mrs. Bicknell of Los Angeles, raised the question of a state bird in the club's journal, The Condor. “Kansas has the Meadowlark, Texas has the Mockingbird,” the journal noted, and the editor invited members to vote by postcard.

The result came out in 1928. “A total of fourteen species was designated,” and the California Valley Quail came first, ahead of the California Condor, the Wrentit, the Western Bluebird and the Western Meadowlark (The Condor, May–June 1928). The writer added that “a State Bird must meet the ideals of the bird-loving public at large.”

The Legislature followed in 1931. Assembly Bill 776 was sponsored by Assemblywoman Eleanor Miller of Los Angeles and Assemblyman Charles Fisher of Oakland (The Condor, March–April 1931), and on June 13, 1931, “Governor Rolph signed the bill” making the quail the “avifaunal emblem” (The Condor, July–August 1931). It became chapter 777 of that year's statutes (California State Capitol Museum).

The Legislature's handbook later summed it up: “A large number of societies and clubs voted to determine the selection,” and the quail “was found to be the popular choice” (2005–06 handbook). Since the Government Code was enacted in 1943, the law has been Government Code § 423, which still names the “California valley quail (Lophortyx californica).”

Why did California pick a game bird?

The handbook calls the quail “a fine game bird especially noted for its hardihood and adaptability,” widely found across the state, and says the quail and the golden trout together “represent her abundance of wild game and fish.” No source we found gives the club members' own reasons for their votes.

Can you hunt California's state bird?

Yes, and some hunters feared that would end. In December 1930 the San Francisco Chronicle reported sportsmen's worry that, once the quail was the state bird, “sentimentalists” would “have the bird taken from the game bird list,” as The Condor quoted it.

It never happened. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife still sets quail seasons: for 2026–27, zone Q2 runs from September 26 to January 31, and zones Q1 and Q3 from October 17 to January 31. The state's 2002 quail guide says the California quail makes up “most of the annual quail harvest.”

Where can you see California Quail?

Across most of the state, where cover meets open ground. The state's guide to hunting quail says California and mountain quail are “found from one end of the state to the other,” and that the California quail is “the most widely distributed of the three” native quails. Look for brushy cover next to weedy or grassy openings with water nearby; it avoids dense forest and thick chaparral.

Expect a group: the guide says California quail spend most of the year in coveys. In 1910 the Department of Agriculture found them “common and generally distributed over the State west of the Sierra,” and at home in “orchards, gardens, and cultivated grounds” wherever people had settled (Beal, 1910).

Listen before you look. The call most often heard in fall and winter is the assembly call, which the guide writes as “Chi-ca-go” or “Chi-wa-ka.”

Why did fruit growers worry about quail?

Grapes. Our painting is the frontispiece of F. E. L. Beal's Birds of California in Relation to the Fruit Industry (1910), a federal study of California's birds and its fruit growers. Beal quoted a report from the San Diego County foothills, where quail came down to one vineyard and “destroyed annually from 20 to 30 tons of fruit”; in 1891, “130 dozen were trapped on his ranch.”

Another grower saw “as many as 5,000 feeding upon Muscat grapes.” Yet when Beal's laboratory examined what quail had eaten, 97 percent of it was plant food, mostly weed seeds. Louis Agassiz Fuertes painted the bird for the bulletin's Plate I and labeled it “California Quail.”

Audubon painted it too, as the “California Partridge,” on plate 413 of The Birds of America.

Does any other state have the California Quail?

No. California is the only state with the California Quail as its state bird. Its neighbors chose others: Oregon the Western Meadowlark, Nevada the Mountain Bluebird and Arizona the Cactus Wren.

Questions about the California state bird