A desert quail whose male has a black belly patch and whose males and females have a dark head plume.
Both sexes have a black topknot. The male has a black belly patch that helps distinguish this species from the California Quail.
During hot summer days in the Sonoran Desert, Gambel’s Quail use shaded sites and cross sunlit ground briefly between patches of cover. They can inhabit valleys away from surface water, obtaining moisture from vegetation and insects.
A 2015 paper studied heat responses in nineteen quail captured in north-west Tucson, Arizona, during July 2013. On the capture day, researchers gave them water and measured body temperature and evaporative water loss while progressively warming a chamber supplied with dry air.
Average evaporative water loss rose from about 0.7 grams per hour at an air temperature of 35°C to about 2.5 grams at 48°C. Body temperature also rose. Evaporation carried heat away, but cooling required an increasing expenditure of water.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The study identifies heat regulation and water balance as essential to understanding future bird distributions. Its authors suggest that extreme heat could restrict quail foraging and potentially their range. The measurements provide a physiological baseline for investigating heatwave risks and conditions that allow birds to avoid severe heat.