Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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Bobwhite Quail - Two in the Bush

I've lived more than 40 of my 60 years in Virginia and I have known a few bobwhite quail. I raised some under a bantam silky hen as a boy, and have met them in the fields around Norfolk, Staunton, Covington, Lynchburg, Waynesboro, Salem, Blacksburg, even Wise. I planted food patches for them when I was in high school and judged food patches planted for them when I as a biologist with the Virginia state wildlife agency. I've taught students about them at Virginia Tech.

There do not seem to be as many quail as in my "good ole days." It comes as no surprise to me, but apparently it is a big surprise and is of great concern to many people. The reasons that there appear to be fewer quail than there were 30 years ago are:

1. Few people live where they can hear or see them (70% of people now live in cities).
2. Even fewer people work where they can hear them.
3. More people than in the past have air conditioners so their windows and doors are closed and quail cannot be heard.
4. The TV is on all of the time. A distant quail-call is masked.
5. Many people spend less time hiking or hunting than in the past. Why hunt quail when you perceive there will be no success? The action feeds on the observation; the dragon consumes its tail.
6. There are fewer hunters, fewer quail hunters, and fewer people talking about seeing them
7. There are many quail but they are in inaccessible places. There have been many acres closed to hunting.
8. Car speeds are greater; car air conditioning, radios, and windows block the beautiful quail sounds once heard along country roads.

These are reasons why the birds are perceived as being not as abundant. Any one reason can be enough; 8 are plenty; there are 28 pairs of these reasons; any pair is enough to explain the problem.

A critic of my quail management recommendations claimed that average densities of more than one quail per acre are impossible. Past studies showed that this density was possible. The genetics of the bird may have changed, but not very much in 30 years! (Some now roost in pine trees, where no quail would ever be found in the past. New studies do show that genetic changes can occur very rapidly.) Such density is now possible on managed areas, but I acknowledge it is difficult to get. We do not change the standards for many things just because they are difficult or costly to obtain. On small areas it is possible to create the conditions for abundant quail. Abundant year-around food, open fields, brushy hedgerows, conifer clumps, nesting sites, fruits, crowing posts, predator control, grains, dusting sites... all mixed together. There are few places left where all of these are available -- arranged for easy access. When there are such places by chance or by management, there will be plenty of quail.

Quail in many areas have declined. It would be silly to deny the change. Why the surprise? I do not know. Quail have limited conditions under which they will live. There is a kind of biological-social contract they have with us; their criteria must be met. "Provide them, Society, and I shall be with you" saith the quail.

When there is no place to nest in the spring, they will not be around. When there is no place to hide from hawks, they will not be around.

• No grains, no birds.
• No weed seeds, no birds.
• Insecticides on all seeds, no birds...or only infertile eggs.
• Insecticide in every dew droplet... no deal!

Predators have always been a big problem for quail. Quail nests, or they themselves, were destroyed by crows, skunks, fox, farm cats, and snakes. After a failure, they would readily re-nest in another place. Only one bird per year out of 25 nests of eggs had to have survived each year for the population to appear stable. Over the eons the chances for survival were worked out: a pitifully small wager, only 1 in 25.

Now there are few alternative places to nest and predation is concentrated. Vast areas are now cultivated. There are no brushy hedgerows. Fence lines are removed for big equipment and herbicides "clean up" the remaining fencelines. Highway crews spray the road edges. New farm practices no longer plow but use herbicides to reduce erosion. The herbicides destroy weeds, the persistent food supply of quail. Quail eat trivial amounts of grain. They once ate the variety of weed seeds that were shed at different times of the year by different species of plants in the rows. That weed seed supply (varied and supplied throughout the year) has disappeared. For people who advocate "diversity" there is no greater example of how lack of it has harmed a bird species.

New interest in Virginia in raising cotton, a crop at great odds with quail, will further reduce the state quail population. Virginia cotton sales grew from 28,000 in 1992 to 130,000 in 1995. Foraging house cats range out at the edges of urban sprawl. Pastures, usually excessively grazed, replace unstable-priced grain fields and high-labor-priced vegetable field where quail once sleepily pecked around.

Large cultivated areas, intensive grazing, no field edges, clean fencerows, grassy roadsides, few grain acres, herbicides, and insecticides -- they all add up. The sum: no quail.

One of the few places where quail exist is on cutover forestland. The quality of these areas is not as great for quail as small fields, some of them being fallow, with brushy fencerows. There are quail. Stocking will not help (probably harm -- not the birds, but in wasted time and money that could be better spent on improving conditions for native quail).

Knowing I have spent 20 years doing various types of wildlife study, it may come as a surprise to some people that I do not advocate more study of the quail problem. Study will not solve this problem. Legislative study-money delays the announcement of the bad news: we can fix the situation but we wont, because we respect private property, we won't take property, and we don't have votes from quail-lovers because these are not the general public.

I recently heard a forest plan presented to a farmer who said he loved quail, hunted, kept dogs, and wanted timber on some of his ownership, a hay field on the remainder. As usual (in my experience) goals or objectives were as confused as the recommendations to achieve them. The decision matched neither of them. The experience prompted me to calculate how a person in a quail area would handle an area. Obviously (at least to me) a vast hay field, while it may have some quail for a short time, is not high quality quail space. I assumed the foresters would develop a rotation that would stabilize income and also quail habitat even if it was only good for about 7-8 years.

I pondered the hay field, and then did a little PC program for an area like that in the nearby figure. Triangles, as shown, are hedge rows, just uncultivated areas, often on the contour, often with rocks picked from the field, often with planted or volunteer shrubs, vines, or trees (crabapple, hawthorn, rose, grape, dogwood, sumac). If they are, on average 8 feet wide, and if a 15-foot mower passageway is open between each part of the field, then the following results were obtained.

	Length = 2 x Width		Length = 5 x Width
Field Acres	Acres in Hedge Rows	% of the Acres	Acres in Hedge Rows	% of the Acres
5 10 15 20 30 40 100	1.0 1.5 1.8 2.1 2.6 3.0 4.8	20.2 14.6 12.0 10.5 8.6 7.5 4.8	1.4 2.0 2.5 2.9 3.5 4.1 6.5	27.9 20.0 16.5 14.3 11.8 10.2 6.5

Of course the exact pattern shown here is not recommended. Fitting triangular areas onto the landscape is. The hedgerows (let's call them "quailrows") are for quail and other songbirds, for other wildlife, and for many species of insects that prey upon insects eating the hay crop. (Studies of this benefit from the birds, done 50 years ago, have been forgotten). These quailrows are money-saving erosion blockers and they can be incorporated into provisions for waterways.

I do get tired of the hand wringing and casting around for someone to blame about quail. Yes, there are fewer quail. It is our own fault, not the result of some alien mist or mysterious disease. The cause is not some genetic glitch that needs human intervention.

When you change land use and the perception of quail, then the evidence stacks up: no quail. We can have more quail in places where we want them with intensive, sophisticated management. We'll keep them where we continue to farm as we did in the past. We'll maintain a few here and there and small, scattered, well-sequenced clear-cuts will stabilize some local populations. We're raising a whole generation of people who have never heard the call of a male bobwhite on a spring morning. They'll never miss the bird. How sad for them. We cannot bring quail back to former population levels because land use has changed. More important and massive than this profound change in the landscape is society's perception of this beautiful bird.

"What's the bottom line?" Dad would ask. "Why did you write it?" he would impatiently ask (if he had read to this point). Never confident, I'd answer:

1. Because a curious landowner asked me where the quail had gone. (I figured that more than one was interested.)
2. Because a lot of money can be spent on quail studies better spent on other studies... or on quail themselves.
3. To reduce frustration; to suggest to some people to relax. The loss is inevitable. To help people understand their future is to reduce some frustration.
4. To encourage intensive quail management on some areas, perhaps little "museum displays."
5. To reduce my guilt in not being able to do more to reduce the loss of this resource and a part of the quality of life of Virginians.

A native of Lynchburg, the author, R.H. Giles, Jr. has taught in the wildlife department at Virginia Tech since 1967.

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Last revision January 18, 2004.