Dr. Dale Rollins, executive director of the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch, has been hunting quail for 50 years. He had never bagged a hybrid bobwhite/scaled (blue) quail in all of his time afield. That changed in late December on a lease near Big Spring.

“When a nice covey of bobwhites flushed, I dropped one, and another guy dropped one. I walked over there and looked, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I had a real trophy, in that it was a hybrid between a bobwhite and a scaled quail, or blue quail as we call them in West Texas. I generically refer to them as ‘blobs,'” Rollins told the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network. “They’re pretty rare. In 50 years of quail hunting, I’d never shot one. It was a special day for me, for sure.”

Rollins said there is a particular area of Texas that seems to produce a higher number of quail hybrids for some reason.

“Any time that you’ve got bobwhite and blue quail where the ranges overlap, you’ve got the potential for hybridization, and again, it’s a rare situation. I’m going to say between Sweetwater and about Childress seems to be the epicenter of where I see the frequency of those occurring at,” Rollins said. “It can happen between the bobwhite male and the blue quail hen, or vice versa. They are true hybrids. It’s a dead end. It’s like a mule. They’re not going to reproduce. And they typically look like a dirty-faced bobwhite with a crest on it and a top knot on it.”

Rollins said he will have the bird prepared by a taxidermist so he can remember the special day and also show others a rare “blob” hybrid. He said he’ll also head back to the area of the lease where the bird was taken in hopes of finding more hybrids, but odds are probably not very good in finding another.

Hear more with Rollins on the TFB Radio Network.