California Quail (Callipepla californica) Expanding Poleward

Naima Jutha wrote:

Saw a pair of California Quail wandering in a neighbour’s yard this AM. Is this normal?

Tom Okey, LEO Network BC coordinator, added:

Black Creek, just north of Courtney, is the most northward coastal observation of California Quail (Callipepla californica) in the eBird database. These eBird observations are shown at this link. Nanaimo, which is 112 kilometres southeast of Black Creek, is therefore near the northward (coastal) expanding edge of the current known range for California Quail. There had been almost no observations of California Quail in the Nanaimo Area before 1990, but observations of this species has exploded in the Nanaimo area since the turn of the 21st century. California Quail is thus an example of the poleward expansion of species (e.g. Hickling et al. 2006, Chen et al. 2011, Brommer et al. 2012, Virkkala and Lehikoinen 2014).

Literature cited

Brommer, J.E., Lehikoinen, A. and Valkama, J., 2012. The breeding ranges of central European and Arctic bird species move poleward. PLoS One, 7(9), p.e43648.

Chen, I.C., Hill, J.K., Ohlemüller, R., Roy, D.B. and Thomas, C.D., 2011. Rapid range shifts of species associated with high levels of climate warming. Science, 333(6045), pp.1024-1026.

Hickling, R., Roy, D.B., Hill, J.K., Fox, R. and Thomas, C.D., 2006. The distributions of a wide range of taxonomic groups are expanding polewards. Global change biology, 12(3), pp.450-455.

Virkkala, R. and Lehikoinen, A., 2014. Patterns of climate‐induced density shifts of species: Poleward shifts faster in northern boreal birds than in southern birds. Global Change Biology, 20(10), pp.2995-3003.

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