Quail

[Jogeephus]

I don't buy your argument about the timber companies for two reasons. I'm in the thick of pine country and have plenty of quail and turkeys. Secondly, it doesn't matter what they do on their property if YOU have the proper habitat since a covey only needs forty acres of suitable habitat to thrive. If you think back to how the land used to be managed when you had a good quail population then you will see little things that are different - the things you did to run them off. These little things are deemed "better agricultural practices" but for quail it is their enemy. If you start addressing these little things and take note of where you do have quail you can see what works and what doesn't. I can't stress how important the little things are. From the timing of mowing to the herbicide you use. Then like CF said, sometimes the weather is just bad and like Hook said the barn cats can do a lot of damage and believe it or not - your deer will eat quail eggs as well.

 

[Caustic Burno]

I don't buy your argument about the timber companies for two reasons. I'm in the thick of pine country and have plenty of quail and turkeys. Secondly, it doesn't matter what they do on their property if YOU have the proper habitat since a covey only needs forty acres of suitable habitat to thrive. If you think back to how the land used to be managed when you had a good quail population then you will see little things that are different - the things you did to run them off. These little things are deemed "better agricultural practices" but for quail it is their enemy. If you start addressing these little things and take note of where you do have quail you can see what works and what doesn't. I can't stress how important the little things are. From the timing of mowing to the herbicide you use. Then like CF said, sometimes the weather is just bad and like Hook said the barn cats can do a lot of damage and believe it or not - your deer will eat quail eggs as well.

I beg to differ with you as I have seen the plantations of Ms and Al. and they are nothing like ours.
I know you are an expert in this area, Jo I will try and get some pics of our plantations tomorrow.
When they came in and first cut in the 70's they left native forest along the creeks and streams out about 200 feet.
We were still teaming in game, they came back in the 90's and cut to the stream banks and the game vanished.
They are managed completely different and teaming with game. I was amazed the first time I went to Ms and
seen the plantations there. Didn't even look similar to ours with grasses and other plants.
They plant the pines so close together a turkey can't even take flight here.
Here are my fence lines as I have put up fence over from the old fence letting it grow up.
I have spot sprayed the pines as I want it to become brush.

 

[M5farm]

":3hje3wu6]I haven't heard a Whiporwill in years. [/b]

Florida guys, when I am there and working night shift there is a bird that just at dark will sit in a high spot in a dirt road and call. It sounds just like a whipperwill to me but I hear them called a night hawk. Is this the same bird?

Seems like I remember a discussion a while back and it was determined to be one in the same. I had never heard them called anything but whiporwills.

 

[Brute 23]

http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2012/jul/ed_1_quail/index.phtml

Just finished reading the article we are screwed.
What few are left don't have a chance with the land management practices here.

Pretty much. It takes quite a bit of land to maintain a healthy population.

Your probably like us. We can maintain a little covey or two but no more because of the neighbors.

 

[Caustic Burno]

http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2012/jul/ed_1_quail/index.phtml

Just finished reading the article we are screwed.
What few are left don't have a chance with the land management practices here.

Pretty much. It takes quite a bit of land to maintain a healthy population.

Your probably like us. We can maintain a little covey or two but no more because of the neighbors.

Got about a dozen in the covey, they like to come up and go through the Mrs. flowerbed.
She has it planted with native flowers and shrubs along with bird feeders everywhere.
I can't much tell the difference in rooster and hens looks like more hens through.

 

[highgrit]

CB, if you have any Bahia grass let it come to seed. As soon as the seed starts getting hard mow a strip and leave the rest. If you have any quail they'll be in the Bahia you didn't mow. And they will raise their young there also. Some folks know way less than they think.
But that's another story of make believe.

 

[bear]

":2xbrnjlm]I haven't heard a Whiporwill in years. [/b]

Florida guys, when I am there and working night shift there is a bird that just at dark will sit in a high spot in a dirt road and call. It sounds just like a whipperwill to me but I hear them called a night hawk. Is this the same bird?

Seems like I remember a discussion a while back and it was determined to be one in the same. I had never heard them called anything but whiporwills.

Whippoorwills and nighthawks are not the same. They are from the same family (Family Caprimulgidae) but they are not the same.

 

[Jogeephus]

CB, you are missing my point. Your blaming the timber companies for what they do on their land is like some crack head blaming you for him not having a pot to pee in. I understand what the ecological deserts are. These big corn field, or cotton fields or pine pulpwood plantations but that has nothing to do with your land and that is all you can control and if you give the birds the habitat they need you will have quail on your property. A covey doesn't need but 40 acres so if you don't have quail on your land its because of what you are doing or neglecting to do and it has little to nothing to do with your neighbors.

Take the photo you posted, it shows a pasture I assume you mowed. Looks good for cattle but you really mucked it up for quail. You mowed the whole thing and now there is no cover, no diversity so where is the bird to hide when it goes bugging. Fence row is clean so it can't hide there. Mowing a third of it in three separate mowings would have benefitted the quail. Given them cover they could use while bugging. Its little things like that that make a huge difference. And what do you do when you get locusts or army worms. Spray? 85% of what the quail eats during summer is bugs so you may have just poisoned your birds if you sprayed the wrong stuff. All this stuff intermingles and unfortunately its not readily noticeable.

What would help you to see what I'm talking about is to ask Santa to get you the book The Bobwhite Quail: Its Habits, Preservation and Increase by Herbert Stoddard. Its dated but still sound information. It will help you look at the land in a different light and it will definitely make you adjust your everyday work on the property and you will begin to see improvements but it takes a conscious effort on your part.

The good thing is quail and turkey benefit from cattle being on the land as long as you have diversity in the pastures and run the cattle in the woods some. I have neighbors who have little to no quail or turkey on their property but I have plenty. I keep saying its these little things you do .... and it is.

 

[kenny thomas]

Florida guys, when I am there and working night shift there is a bird that just at dark will sit in a high spot in a dirt road and call. It sounds just like a whipperwill to me but I hear them called a night hawk. Is this the same bird?[/quote][/quote]

Whippoorwills and nighthawks are not the same. They are from the same family (Family Caprimulgidae) but they are not the same.[/quote]

Thanks bear. I read about both. We have the whipperwill here and the way they call is almost the same but never seen one on the ground here. Traveling the woods and swamp roads near the FL/GA line I seen these every night for an hour or so and then they were gone.

 

[Hook]

":3nv2nluw]I haven't heard a Whiporwill in years. [/b]

Florida guys, when I am there and working night shift there is a bird that just at dark will sit in a high spot in a dirt road and call. It sounds just like a whipperwill to me but I hear them called a night hawk. Is this the same bird?

Seems like I remember a discussion a while back and it was determined to be one in the same. I had never heard them called anything but whiporwills.

They are 2 different birds. The whippoorwill call everyone knows. The night hawk is more of a croaking sound

 

[TexasBred]

I haven't heard a Whiporwill in years.


CB, what's up with that crack on Sky's ancestry?

TT some mornings here in the summer it seems I have 3 or 4 calling back and forth to each other. Guess it's a seasonal thing.

 

[HDRider]

 

[greybeard]

We have quail here. Had a whole lot more back when I had 18-20 big burn piles sitting waiting for 2011-2012's burn bans to lift, and all the junk plants that grew up around the piles.
They loved it too, back before I got rid of all the goatweed. Still there are Bobwhite here. I hear them in late spring every year and flush a covey or 2 out when I drive around looking the fences over.

another article.
http://www.ammoland.com/2012/04/the-dec ... thern-usa/

 

[Jogeephus]

Good article GB. I like the term they used - "messy". Very descriptive of what they need.

 

[inyati13]

I hear Bobwhite Quail when I am on the farm. I have not encountered a covey. In the 1960s, Bobwhite Quail were abundant on everyone's farm. It was not difficult getting 6 coveys up in a 4 hour span. That was before fescue became the dominant vegetative cover. There was lots of diverse grasses and forbes before fescue. Lespedeza and Korean clover was abundant. Including all the other clovers. There were blackberry briar patches, snakes, rabbits, frogs, woodchucks, whip-poor-wills, night hawks, owls, etc. Landowners shot every hawk they could in those days because everyone had a bunch of chickens and a henhouse. Everyone had at least one milkcow. Some farmers who had boys in the family always kept a couple ewes.

In the 50s and 60s, I did not know what a rotary mower was. So pastures if they were cut at all, were cut with a sickle. Hollers were choked with shrubs, weeds and ground plants. Plenty of hay fields with seeding plants. There was all the essentials (1) diverse cover or messy cover as the article called it. (2) Diverse plants and forages many of which produced the right seeds to fill a quail's crop. (3) Weather seemed to have less extremes. (4) No rotary mowing on a regular basis to destroy nests and cut down seed heads.

 

[jedstivers]

I've heard but haven't tried stacking old pallets for cover. Have been told just stack one of top of another and also make a teepee out of two. No idea if either is any good.

 

[Commercialfarmer]

Brood structures for pheasants seem to help, I bet providing structure for quail would help.

I think the article tip toed around the impact of birds of prey by saying that nothing could be done and there is no data to support them having an impact. I'd like to see data saying they for sure don't before accepting this as unimportant.

Does controlled burning remove the under growth making it easier for new weeds to get light and grow? Or does it allow easier mobility or what is the major benefit?

I accept that it works, but on the surface, I would think that it would destroy the brush/thickets making the terrain less productive. Just trying to figure out why it helps.

I wonder how much the crp program has impacted populations?

 

[Bigfoot]

This is according to my dad, so don't shoot the messenger. He says the quail in our area are not the same quail he hunted as a boy. He says the KDFW released quail that were smaller and less hardy. According to him, the quail that were released were homozygous dominat for every bad trait a bird could have.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Brood structures for pheasants seem to help, I bet providing structure for quail would help.

I think the article tip toed around the impact of birds of prey by saying that nothing could be done and there is no data to support them having an impact. I'd like to see data saying they for sure don't before accepting this as unimportant.

Does controlled burning remove the under growth making it easier for new weeds to get light and grow? Or does it allow easier mobility or what is the major benefit?

I accept that it works, but on the surface, I would think that it would destroy the brush/thickets making the terrain less productive. Just trying to figure out why it helps.

I wonder how much the crp program has impacted populations?

Lot has changed here the native forest is gone as well as he family farms dotting the wood's.
The woods were burned every year as everyone ran their cattle in the woods.
Feral hogs are rampant as well. The fire ant is icing on the cake.

 

[greybeard]

Maybe that's why I still have some--the woods here are Natl Forest. They do burn sometimes, but have never burned within a couple miles West of my place, and even further away in other 3 directions. (I do have no shortage of fire ants tho--worse right now than I have ever seen them.)