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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
handmade_ghost@sunny.garden ("handmade ghost") wrote:

My daughter and I watched a pair of California quail lead their sixteen gawky juveniles through the shadows along the back fence near sunset yesterday. Here are a few that just barely stepped into enough light for pictures. 🥹 #quorb

Shadowy, photo of three juvenile California quail--brown and quill-marked with colorblocked slate grey faces and tiny pull-tab doohickeys curling up from their foreheads just like the adults they'll become--sneaking like tiny, plump, animated toy bowling pins across a grassy, scrubby stretch of yard. A patch of fading sunlight falls across the foreground but not the little birds, though their pull-tab crest are subtly limned with light.
Zoomed-in photo of the leader of the tiny pack (the little trio pictured above that trailed behind the more clustered family group). Eir body is inclined a little forward, about to break into another furtive little jog forward, the creamy, quill-like markings showing on eir plump, bulb-like brown and grey body and eir sweet, wide-eyed face catching a little more of the sunset, which glints and glows along the outlines of the tufts of grass and the young quail's jaunty crest feathers.