Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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Intensive Bobwhite Quail Resource Management

The management of bobwhite quail consists mainly of controlling or managing food and cover. Although disease, predation, and weather conditions can affect quail populations, efforts to control these factors are ineffectual, expensive and largely impractical. Knowledge of these factors can, however, allow management to be centered on the least risky and most beneficial areas. Preserving year-around habitats, reducing use of herbicides and insecticides harmful to the birds or their food supplies, and controlling domestic cats are important actions to be taken.

See supplement "Two in the Bush."

With the exception of very young quail that eat insects, the diet of the bobwhite consists mainly of seeds, some tender leaves and fleshy fruit. Providing abundant insect food (diverse insects feeding on diverse plants) in that very small period in spring for the first nesting period is key to success.

Common quail foods in the southeastern United States include the seeds, buds and young leaves of such low-growing plants as lespedeza, beggarweed, milkpea, paspalum grass, partridgepea, cowpea, ragweed, bullgrass, soybean, corn, wheat, wildbean, panic grass, vetch, sorghum, sunflower, Japanese honeysuckle, violet, blackberry and clover, and the fruit of some tree species such as dogwood, sweetgum, pine and black locust. Oak acorns are only eaten after they are broken by other animals or people. Cold and wet spring weather, which limits the numbers of available insects, can have a dramatic effect upon the number of young surviving each year.

Normally, food is a limiting factor to quail populations only during winter months, and this problem may be alleviated by establishing food plots. Although past practice has been to use lespedeza (both common and Korean) and corn for this purpose, recent work indicates the optimum method of preparing an annual food plot consists of planting one-third to one-half of the available acreage in an early maturing seed source, such as brown millet, and the remainder in soybeans. Many small scattered plots are best. Perennial shrub lespedeza plots (Lespedeza bicolor) have been effective as well.

For intensive management, quail fields have to set into a rotation like that for timber. A field with good edge and coverts, needs to be plowed, disked, or burned every four years. Thus a system of treating each field every 4 years, in rotation, is needed. Call these "brushy areas or fallow fields".

4 x 4

Both diversity of cover types and the proximity of these types to each other are very important. Four types of cover are used by quail during normal activities: grassland, cropland, brushy areas, and woodland. Just imagine the planned configuration of the rotated brushy areas or fields ... a 4 x 4 strategy.

Grasslands are used for feeding, nesting, and occasionally for roosting during good weather. Fallow fields, clover, lespedeza, alfalfa, grasses, and mixed legumes are the preferred cover types in this category.

Croplands are used for feeding, loafing, dusting and some roosting. Corn, wheat, soybean, garden and agricultural crops, and wildlife food plots are in this group.

Note: Many of these recommendations have been adapted from WRAP, the Woodland Resources Allocation Program of the Division of Forestry, Fisheries, and Wildlife Development, TVA, Norris, Tenn. 37828, now discontinued.

Brush areas, hedgerows, vine tangles, thickets of shrubs, briars, isolated clumps of small trees and tall forbs are used for escape cover, roosting, and feeding.

Woodlands are used primarily for roosting and escape cover and occasionally for winter and fall feeding.

Ideal quail habitat will have the maximum mixing of the following four cover types. Optimum percentages of the management area which should be devoted to each type, as well as minimum areas needed, are given:

Land Use Patterns For Quail Management
Cover Type	Percent of Management Area	Minimum Area
		Hectares	Acres
Grassland	30 - 40	2 - 8	5 - 20
Cropland	40 - 60	0.4 - 2	1 - 5
Brushland	5 - 20	0.1 - 0.4	0.25 - 1
Woodland	5 - 40	2 - 8	5 - 20

A bicolor lespedeza field-border food plot for quail. Competition for sunlight and root moisture can be extreme.

Although less brushy area is required than any other cover type, this is the most important component. Studies have shown that quail depend heavily on these areas and will not venture far from them in the course of feeding or other activity. Because of this, only the peripheral areas of large fields and croplands will be utilized by quail. However, if these are subdivided into smaller units by means of hedgerows, or if small islands of brushy cover (coverts and corners) are well interspersed, quail production can be greatly increased in such areas.

The development of cover lanes in large areas of cropland and connecting cover types also aids in improving quail habitat. These lanes provide safe routes of travel for quail traveling between habitat types and enable the birds to utilize better the different areas of food and cover.

Fence rows can be used very efficiently in developing cover lanes. Through artificial planting or natural regeneration, food and cover crops may be allowed to grow along fence rows providing excellent protection from predators.

Eroded gullies and draws can also be utilized as cover lanes if they are planted with soil-holding plants such as black locust, wild plum, and snowberry.

Small food patches established near cover lanes are also beneficial to quail. These plots can be less than 0.4 hectares (1 acre) in size and should be planted adjacent to the cover lane with the same plant species mentioned previously.

Several agricultural practices are detrimental to quail habitat and should be avoided whenever possible. These practices include:

1. Opening up or clearing large areas of land without leaving necessary cover between fields;
2. Cutting out isolated groves or groups of pines or other trees between cultivated lands;
3. Cutting out pine saplings or brushy cover on hilltops;
4. Cutting out isolated oaks, wild cherries, sweetgums, persimmons, sassafras and similar growth to make way for cultivation;
5. Cutting out important food-bearing trees or shrubs when opening up woodlands;
6. Plowing abnormally large areas of broomsedge without leaving thickets and patches that are usually productive of bush clovers, beggarweeds, and perennial legumes (intensive liming of areas (e.g., to improve pastures) will also reduce such food plants);
7. Generally destroying dense patches of thickets; and
8. Planting cowpeas or other crops for quail in areas where the food supply is already supporting desired quail populations.

The detailed steps for increasing quail population density:

1. Decide on the benefits ... for whom, where, over what period, and in what seasons.

2. Potential Benefits (stressing opportunities)

1. Family pleasure from calls and sightings
2. Family breath
3. Insect reduction
4. Hunting
5. Photography
6. Art object
7. Bird watcher attraction
8. Photographer attraction
9. Dog kennels, training, trials, shows, contests
10. Partial game preserve unit (natural quail)
11. Research (profit oriented)
12. Falconry
13. Organization
14. Publications
15. Consulting base (demonstration of procedures)
16. Equipment and clothing sales
17. Land visitation permit sales
18. Predator-related work
19. Horses and horse use and trails

3. Keep an account of all costs

4. Remove hawk-owl perches

5. Place crowing (5-6 foot) posts at corners of all 1/3 acre triangles. Number these posts and make GPS map for ease in reporting observations

6. Develop triangular hedge rows throughout the area. (There are many complex cover relations.)

7. Vary the hedge vegetation in soft mast producing shrubs: privet, viburnum, crataegus, rose, honeysuckle, serviceberry, elderberry, blackberry, raspberry.

8. Make some hedges of conifers. Use low growing types: mugo pine; Fitzer juniper or be sure to prune to keep dense, low form for winter cover.

9. Use a portable electric fence. Graze interior triangles on a 4-6 year rotation.

10. Work for high insect populations in spring.

	The Key Continual Multi-Season and Multi-Year Management of ...
Seasonal Foods Seasonal Nesting and Resting Cover Protection Area Transition Year-around Use               of the Quail Resource

11. Provide water sources, 1/acre, for special periods.

12. Provide grit, one spot per 2/3 acre.

13. Provide superior dusting areas, one spot per 2/3 acre.

14. Mow pathways or trails for hunters or observers throughout the area.

15. Use crowing posts (each having been numbered) to record birds seen and covey density.

16. Develop pyramidal brush piles in the "hedgerows or in difficult-to-work areas."

17. Place old fence and brush in pyramidal form in "waste areas."

18. Develop one "snow shelter" (any type) per 1/3 acre (e.g., at the corners of all triangles).

19. Plant each triangular "quail field" (a suggested "crop field" suggested above in the 4 x 4 strategy) into a different crop and rotate them: millet, corn, ladino clover, Korean lespedeza, grain (wheat, oats, buckwheat, barley, etc.)

Management requires maintenance.

20. Fertilize and lime inside each field in strips to avoid an even pattern to increase insects.

21. Have one of every 6 triangles in high grass nest cover. Mow pathways in these areas in spring.

22. Keep records of sightings, especially cumulative maximum.

23. Develop and use an available computer program for surveys.

24. Create a permanent census route for trend studies (e.g., modified King method).

25. See if maximum of 3.1 birds/acre can be surpassed.

26. Weigh all recovered birds; record weights and watch trends. Try to improve weights.

27. Observe sex ratios; calculate chi-square to detect when significant differences occur.

28. Remove key quail predators, especially feral cats and crows.

29. Encourage mammal trapping.

30. Develop wire-covered standing-grain areas.

31. Develop emergency feeding "roofed" areas near roads (easy access by jeep, etc.) for severe-winter supplementary feeding.

32. Develop horse trails.

33. Develop fire breaks.

34. Use cool-soil burns in small select areas if hedge rows are not to be used. Rotate burns every 4-6 years.

35. Avoid insecticide use.

36. Fertilize and lime fruit trees (e.g., cherry) in hedgerows.

37. Develop paths for bird watchers.

38. Develop a guide service.

39. Develop a kennel.

40. Develop a stable; use tethered horses for grazing regulation of vegetation in triangles.

41. Reduce groundhogs (that build dens for predators).

42. Build a blind for photographers.

43. Develop a quail-related organization with fees, newsletter, etc.

44. Improve soil conditions of all types; eliminate erosion; add organic matter to `scalds'. Areas that "will not produce anything" will not produce many quail; such areas increase the divisor in "Quail/Area." Map and subtract their area.

45. Develop an "activity" with a bread-and-breakfast, a game preserve, or a motel-hotel.

46. Take quail samples to a veterinarian or lab to get a base-line condition on health and disease. Collect liver, brain, and fat samples annually as baseline in the event of radical change in populations.

47. Put snow fence in sparse hedge rows for wind protection.

48. Conduct spring call-count routes to establish trends and population change / $ invested.

49. Invite press coverage. Report successes.

50. Managing for quail, as for any other farm or forest products, requires annual activities such as replenishing brush piles, mowing to prevent hedgerows from becoming weedy, and fertilizing food areas...and cleaning up after litterbugs and other users of the area.

Additional notes on quail are available.

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Last revision January 18. 2004.