California Quail

awww these are sweet!

We love having them around but my friend who grows vegetable garden does not. They like to "bathe"in the dirt and therefore destroying her perfect garden..

smashing little birds, wish we had them here!

:-)

Pretty birds.Do they eat your neighbours veg or just make a mess? Difficult to guess their actual size from the photo.

California quail is mainly a seedeater but it eats leaves, caterpillars, beetles, mites, millipedes, and snails. Diet is typically about 70 percent vegetarian.

One of their daily communal activities of these birds is a dust bath. A group of quail will select an area where the ground has been newly turned or is soft, and using their underbellies, will burrow downward into the soil some one to two inches (from Wikipedia)
So I can imagine what they can do to her garden.

Another tidbit:
•California Quail nests can contain as many as 28 eggs. These large clutches may be the result of females laying eggs in nests other than their own, a behavior known as "egg-dumping."

They are larger birds, Feverfew. I would estimate that the male is about a foot (or maybe even little more) long.