Need advice mummy quail left daddy on the eggs!

I have had a couple of what I believe are bobwhite quails (male with white and back head, female all beige and brown) since mid June...they are in a 4'/3'/3' cage on our deck with some shade... it took a while to get them confortable and not afraid of us...the female has been laying eggs since the first week and I have been leaving them in the cage to see if they would hatch and then removing the old eggs as she was still not sitting on them...the female escaped a couple of times before she finally made herself a confortable nest in the wheat straw...she was sitting on some eggs on the 23 of August when we returned from out of town...a couple of days later, she escaped again ( don't know how this time???) and never came back...since then the male took over and has been sitting on 10 eggs...he seams confortable and really serious about his parenthood...he goes to eat for 1 minutes and come right back to the nest, it now has been there for at least 17 days...maybe she was on the eggs longer before she escaped...we are not sure...we had been checking the old eggs before to see if they were fertilized and they were...we are pretty excited and hopping that the male will be able to raise them...does all this sounds quite normal for a male to hatch? how long does hatching takes naturally without an incubator? they have pine straw, dirt, tomatoes, cracked corn and bird seeds and clean water everyday. the nest is sitting higher up than the rest of the cage? can the babies fall off if they do come? any suggestions anyone? should we look for another female now? also, I had never seen white quail eggs before, we are from Europe and there the eggs are specled black and beige which quails are those?...does the white egg confirm that we have bob whites? lots of questions, hopping we are doing everything we need to be doing.
Thanks, Manon