The TeamQuail e-newsletter is an every-so-often update of quail happenings in west Texas. Feel free to forward to your quail-addict friends, or reply with their e-mail address and I'll add them to the e-covey. Comments, questions, or ideas for future topics? Please e-mail me at d-rollins@tamu.edu. See the TeamQuail website (http://teamquail.tamu.edu) for additional information about quail management.
A. Quail Odyssey Tour Marks Maiden Voyage - This past October marked the voyage of a "quail odyssey" with ranch tours each Thursday of the month. Counties (ranches) included Scurry (Wild Wings Ranch), Fisher (Aiken Ranch), Coke (rained out; 5 inches worth; no crying about it!), Coleman (Brown Ranch, Big 6 Ranch), Stonewall (Snipes Ranch, Box P Ranch), and Shackelford (Rio 42 Ranch, Ramsey Ranch, Hailey Ranch). A total of 165 quail nuts were in attendance. A hearty thanks to all the landowners who hosted their respective tour, and to the sense of collegiality among all participants. John Goen of Seminole won the over/under shotgun graciously donated by Abilene New Holland. Look for a Quail Odyssey '04 next October.
B. How Was I Supposed to Know About .... various quail happenings in west Texas?? Well, you might try checking periodically the TeamQuail website (http://teamquail.tamu.edu), the TAMU Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences Department's website (http://wildlife.tamu.edu), or subscribing to the Livestock Weekly (call 325-949-4611 for subscription details); I write a weekly column there, and many (about half) have something to do with quail.
C. Texas Quail Plan Being Incubated - The Texas Quail Plan, a state version of the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (you can read this one online at www.qu.org), is getting close to being hatched. Representatives from TPWD, various universities, and several NGOs, are formulating a recovery plan whose goal is to restore Texas quail numbers to 1980 levels. More details as the plan "pips." Look for the official Texas version to be released sometime in '04.
D. Key Quail-Deer Plant Book Available from Texas Brigades - The Texas Brigades, which includes the Bobwhite Brigade, has a limited number of "Key Plants for Quail and Deer" to sell as fundraisers for the wildlife camps. An example of the book's pages is attached. Two editions are available: North Texas and South Texas. Each includes about 40 species of plants and includes photographs of the plant, a pressed specimen, and a close-up of seeds where applicable. The books are available for a minimum donation of $250. They'd make the perfect Christmas present for the quail hunter or ranch manager who has everything but this coffee-table compendium of Colin cuisine. The author of these books is Garrett Anderson, a Bobwhite Brigade cadet from Menard (currrently a freshman in Engineering at TAMU). Plant books can be customized to individual ranches for a minimum donation of $1,000. Contact me for additional information or to place your order; supplies are limited to the books on-hand (about 25 copies).
E. Texas Quail Book "In Press" - Texas Quails: Ecology and Management is the title of a new book that should hit the bookstores next summer. It will be worth the wait. Containing over 25 chapters on quail biology and management, it will be a welcome addition to the quail manager's library. The book is edited by Dr. Lenny Brennan at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute and will be published through TAMU Press.
F. Texas Quail Index Winds Up Second Year - The Texas Quail Index, a 5-year demonstration effort by Texas Cooperative Extension, was initiated in 2002. A total of 42 counties signed up last year, and an additional 12 sites were brought online this year. Cooperators conduct various indices on quail abundance (e.g., spring call counts, early morning covey call counts), habitat features (e.g., nest site availability, forb diversity), and related variables (e.g., predator abundance) to see if any have predictive capabilities for (1) number of covey flushes per hour of hunting effort, and (2) percentage subadult birds in the bag. You can view a spreadsheet with the current results at http://teamquail.tamu.edu. If you're interested in becoming a cooperator for next year, check with me; we'll be hosting a training session next April. It's a lot of work, but there's much to be learned from being involved. Kind of goes along the line that "the best fertilizer is the footprint of the farmer."
G. Just How Good a Season IS It? Members of the Texas Independent Bird Hunter's Association will be asked to keep hunting records this fall on numbers of coveys flushed and percent young (i.e. subadult) birds in the bag. These two production variables are measured in the Texas Quail Index. Quail can be aged as adults (more than 1 year old) or subadults by examining their "primary coverts", located on the top side of the wing. See the Texas Quail Index for information on how to make the distinction; it's easy. To download a data sheet for such observations, check out the TeamQuail website.
H. What's That Seed?? There will probably be more wild quail shot this season in Texas than in any since 1987. Do you know what the Top 10 seeds important to quail are for your ranch/lease? If not, why not? The quail are dying to tell you. As a student of quail, I always encourage hunters to make a quick inspection of the birds' crops to learn a bit about their foraging activities. My introduction to botany back in 1978 was a back-door approach. During my Master's study of bobwhite and blue quail in southwestern Oklahoma, I learned about 50 plants by their seed (many of them I had no idea of what the plant itself looked like). If you don't know buffalobur from broomweed, learning about key quail seeds could be very enlightening. An online source for many of the seeds you're likely to discover can be found at http://teamquail.tamu.edu; click on the "Key Plants" item on the left menu bar, and then on "Key Seeds for Quail Diets in Texas." As you find seeds that aren't listed here, I hope you'll send me a sample for identification. If I don't know it, I'll ship it around to other colinophiles until we find someone who does know it. And for those of you in South Texas (especially) we could use crop samples for next summer's South Texas Bobwhite Brigade. The best way to catalog the seeds is in those cellophane coin holders that coin collectors use. You can also take a good close-up of the seed with a digital camera and e-mail it to me.
I. I'm Still a Student of Quail - Education is a lifelong process. Speaking of seeds, I've been trying to collect seeds of queensdelight, a perennial forb in the spurge family. But I can never seem to find a plant with any seed left on it. While on my lease in Coke County a couple of weeks ago, I came across a number of queensdelight plants with seeds almost mature; I opted to settle for them. I collected 15 or 20, and when I got home poured them into a plastic cup that sat on my pool table. A couple of days later, there were seeds all over the pool table . . . that darned cat! I gathered up the seeds again and put them back in the cup. Next day, seeds were again scattered on the pool table . . . here kitty, kitty, kitty. Then it dawned on me that the cup hadn't been overturned, and that the seeds had cast themselves out of their container like tiny hand grenades. So, that's why you're wasting your time to look under a queensdelight for its seeds. The name of the plant has an interesting story as well, but decorum precludes me from sharing it with you here.
J. Adopt-a-Quail - Back in 1998, I requested a partial research appointment with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station (I was 100% Extension at the time). My request was granted, and I now hold a 25% Research appointment. When I told my superiors that I wanted to work on quail, their reply was a magnanimous one: "you can work on whatever you want to work on as long as you can raise the money to do it." Much of my research since that time has incorporated "radio-collared" quail. But such radio telemeters are expensive; about $140 per unit. Hence Adopt-a-Quail. Interested parties can "adopt" a radio-collared quail by sending a (tax-deductible) check for $250 per quail ($2,500 for an entire covey!). We send to you a photograph of "your" quail and its vital statistics (age, whether it survived or not, how many eggs it hatched); you get to name it! Send your contributions to TAES Adopt-a-Quail, 7887 U.S. Hwy. 87 North, San Angelo, TX 76901-9714. The Fisher County Quail Project, currently underway, is the recipient at this time of Adopt-a-Quail sponsorships.
K. Ode to Broomweed, Verse 2. I take a lot of _ _ _ t ("heat") from some of my colleagues for espousing the virtues of common broomweed for quail . Perhaps I do praise it too highly; suffice to say that you show me a broomweed year in NW Texas, and I'll show you a quail year. Last year and this year are good examples. In my opinion, nothing "predator proofs" a quail population like a canopy of broomweed. And the seeds, about the size of No. 9 shot, seem to be a staple. I don't know that it's highly preferred, but I do see it more commonly (i.e., earlier) in quail crops than one would surmise based on availability alone. At Bobwhite Brigades that occur during a broomweed year, I have the cadets recite the "Pledge to Broomweed", i.e., "I pledge allegiance to common broomweed, and to the cover for which it provides. One canopy, overhead, continuous, providing usable space for quail."
L. Weird Quail? As you sample the quail bounty this year, keep your eyes posted for weird quail. Weird quail may include "blobs" (bobwhite-blue quail hybrids), abnormal coloration (e.g., bobwhites with "black throats"), or sick quail (e.g., their livers look like pickle-loaf). If it happens to involve a sick or parasitized quail, put the bird in the refrigerator and give me a call ASAP (325-653-4576). We know woefully little about the impacts of disease on wild quail populations. I'll get the specimen(s) submitted to the Texas Veterinary Medicine Diagnostic Laboratory for a necropsy.
M. Quail Newspaper Offers Free Subscription - Quail hunters may be interested in subscribing to "News from the Covey Rise." Subscriptions are free by e-mailing editor Kim Price at coveyrise@bellsouth.net. Covey Rise is a new periodical for "serious quail hunters and to those who seek to preserve the sport of quail hunting . . . " Currently it focuses on the southeastern U.S., but Price is interested in expanding its circulation in Texas.
N. Quail as State Birds - How many states feature a quail as their official State Bird? Two, maybe three, me thinks . . . depending on how you interpret their intent. Tennessee adorns the northern bobwhite as its state bird, and California the California quail. Georgia has the bobwhite listed as its state game bird. How many states offer speciality ("vanity") licenses that feature a quail? I know Oklahoma and Louisiana do, and I believe I've seen one from Georgia. Any others? Now, here's a tie-breaker; which county in Texas would you reside if you lived in Quail, Texas?
O. A Query for Ol' Timers - I need some insight from some of the quail elders who've hunted for years in the Rolling Plains. In your opinion/memory, has Texas wintergrass (Stipa leucotricha; a perennial wintergrass, also known as speargrass for it's awned, barbed seeds) increased notably during your hunting span? Seems to me it has in the 15 years or so that I've been watching it, but memory can be especially selective in how it interprets such things. While I'm extolling such incorrigibles as broomweed and prickly pear, I'm also chastising the cowman's winter favorite (Texas wintergrass). Seems to me it chokes out diversity and dominates sites that should have a greater complement of warm-season grasses and forbs. And recent weather patterns (dry summers, wet winters) likely favor wintergrass. And I wonder if desert termites, which have ravaged a lot of west Texas, don't cotton to wintergrass, thus giving it another advantage over the warm-season perennials. I did have to eat Stipa crow after graduate student Jason Brooks (Fisher County Quail Project) found that 21 of 35 bobwhite nests were situated in Texas wintergrass (notably 10 of those in cactus-wintergrass). Just curious.
P. How About That Ragweed??? - Western ragweed is likely the most common item in quail diets across northwest Texas in most years. But the previous two seasons it's been a bust. Now, most folks don't know where to look for the seeds; they see the male flowers atop the ragweed stalks and think that's the seed; tain't so. The seeds are borne below the male flower in the "crotches" of the stems. The good news is that this looks to be a bumper year for seed set. I was in Archer County about a month ago, and saw the most beautiful ragweed spreads I can ever remember. Beautiful??? Only a quail hunter can appreciate that adjective when used in conjunction with ragweed. And ragweeds offer another surprise. For those of you in the Edwards Plateau (as far north as Shackelford County), just because you see ragweed, don't presume it's western ragweed. Field ragweed is the Ambrosia du jour over most of this region. And that's a bummer; it doesn't produce a very useful seed for quail, just a small bur.
Q. Ten Quail Things You Can Ruminate Upon While Hunting Deer - Alas, quail have to struggle hard to maintain a second billing to deer hunting this time of the year. Here's 10 things that you can ruminate upon while sitting atop the tripod blind in the cold pre-dawn while your bird dogs question your intelligence.
1. How many covey calls do you hear while awaiting the sunrise? 2. How long (in minutes) did the quail that frequented your feeder hang around? 3. How many Northern harriers (i.e., marsh hawks) were visible patrolling the field or feeder over which you watched? 4. What structure in a deer is a functional equivalent to a quail's gizzard? 5. How quickly compound bows and deer feeders replaced pointers and pump guns in East Texas? 6. What woody plants on your lease are equally prized by quail and deer? 7. How many covey flushes per day would equate to a buck that scored 170 B&C? 8. Why the Edwards Plateau is a mecca for deer (and wild turkeys), but a mausoleum for quail? 9. Why no one ever speaks of "Deer Decline"? 10. Why you'll give your venison away to a "friend" while you won't even share your quail breasts with close family?
Q is a good letter to quit on. Have a great Thanksgiving and enjoy the quail bounty. Learn while you hunt.
Dale Rollins
Professor & Extension Wildlife Specialist
Texas Cooperative Extension
San Angelo, TX
d-rollins@tamu.edu