Outdoor animals

These are a two of North Carolina's animals.

This is a Northern Bobwhite.  Bobwhite are related to Turkeys and Chickens.  These little birds are 10 inches long and somewhere around afoot wingspan and weighs 6-8 ounces.   They like to eat seeds, insects, fruit, and tender leaves.  This bird loves the grassy areas and nests in groups called coveys.  The male and female can be distinguished by the feather coloration on their heads.  The males have white and black head feathers and the females have a brownish head feather color on their heads.  If they need to get away from predators then they will either freeze in place and let the predator pass them or they might try to outrun them.  But they may also take flight.  When they take flight the flapping of wings and the explosion of birds is loud if you stumble upon them and they take flight.  The usual flight lasts near 5 seconds and covers close to 150 ft. 
Quail live short lives, which is around 5 years, and usually less than 20 percent live to a year.  To be 3 years old in quail standards is a well lived life.  A 5 year old quail in quail standards is very old.  The usual loss of life is because of predation.  Even the eggs are hunted.  A rat snake will eat eh eggs and if it catches the adults it will eat them too.  To counter this, Quail are high productive breeders, which is God's way of designing them.

This is, as you probably know already, is a Whitetail Deer.  These deer are strong swimmers and fast runners.  They also can run up to 30-40 miles per hour to get away from something if they need to.  Some of their favorite foods are grasses, vegetables in gardens, and acorns.  They like creek and river bottoms, woodland, and grass plains.
The breeding season (or the "rut") happens in autumn when the bucks start to mark off their territory and challenge any bucks that stray into their territory looking for does.  By the way, bucks don't have horns but they have antlers.  Horns stay there forever on the skull while the antlers fall off yearly and grow back the same year.  After the rut things on the deer calender quiet down and in January - February the bucks lose their antlers and in the spring does give birth to 1 to 2 fawns.

For more information visit: http://www.ncwildlife.org/