The fact that Mikki Young had to consult books and online sources to learn what a quail looks like underscores the importance of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s quail habitat conservation stamp.

Young, 20, of Fayetteville got it right. The Game and Fish Commission chose her painting of a northern bobwhite quail to grace its 2026 Quail Conservation Stamp.

The commission created the Quail Conservation Stamp in 2019 to promote awareness for upland bird habitat. The northern bobwhite quail, once ubiquitous in Arkansas, symbolizes the state’s suite of ground nesting birds. Its distinctive, two-note “bob-WHITE” song was once common throughout the South. The bobwhite is also a gamebird noted for its sudden flush from cover and its thunderous flight. It is delicious to eat.

Young, a junior at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, studies in the university’s painting program. She said that a friend saw a post on Facebook about the Game and Fish Commission seeking entries for the quail stamp competition.

“She said, ‘You might be interested in this,’ and she was right,” Young said. “I have been looking into conservation lately, especially in terms of supporting our national parks. Conservation is a really important issue that everyone should be aware of. It’s nice to contribute to that program in, I don’t want to say a small way. It took a lot of work to do this painting, It’s nice to see my work is going into something so meaningful.”

Young said that she has never seen a quail. She combed the internet and library books for photos of bobwhites.

“I think that speaks to how much their numbers have declined over the years,” Young said. “At one time I had 50 tabs on my computer open with pictures of quail. I looked at them from every angle to get their markings right.”

Contest rules require the image to be on a 13-18 inch format. Bobwhite quail are obviously the focal point, but the rules require other elements in the frame, as well.

“The other half of that is the environment they are in because the program focuses heavily on habitat conservation,” Young said. “Portraying birds in an area like you would see in Arkansas is important.”

For that, Young researched the composition of upland bird habitat in Arkansas, which led her to closeup images of native plants.

Finally, the painting had to be aesthetically appealing. Hearing a bobwhite quail really sets a mood. Young wanted her painting to capture the power that such a small bird wields.

“I wanted to have serene quality with sunset with pretty colors,” Young said. “I thought it would complement the birds, too.”

Young’s image depicts a male and female bobwhite in low light hours stepping through low grass at what appears to be a meadow’s edge. The female, with her buff face patches, faces right and is jammed a little too close to the edge of the frame. The male quail, identifiable by its white face patches, relieves that tension by looking over its shoulder and drawing the eye to left of center. He is also subtly framed between a few wisps of taller grass. He faces the sunrise, represented by a bright splash of gold to the left. We want to believe that the light is a sunrise, representing optimism for the bobwhite’s future.

Interestingly, muted light shadows the quails’ bodies. That is appropriate as the sun is behind them. It illuminates their edges, creating ascending, curvy shafts of light that give the birds a logo-like quality. This sidesteps the lack of “catch light” in the eyes, which is essential to wildlife photography.

Also, instead of highlighting the birds, the muted light seems to highlight the camouflage qualities of their plumage. That is one of a quail’s remarkable characteristics. Up close, a quail feather is a mortar burst of intricacy, but it is invisible against a natural background. This is conspicuous with the hen quail, which creates a dark hole to the right that directs a downward path for the light to the left.

Young’s award for her winning submission was $2,500.

“My rent money,” Young quipped.

All that’s left is to see a live specimen of the species Young memorialized.

“I would love to go and visit where they have numbers, “Young said. “I would love to go and see them! It would be kind of weird to see something in real life that I’ve been looking at (in photos) for so long.”