Wildlife By Design

By Dale Rollins, Ph.D. 

If you stood tall in the saddle at six inches, weighed in at six ounces, and were tasty to just about anybody or anything, maybe you could better appreciate a quail's daily dilemma: to avoid becoming supper for someone else! Woody Allan perhaps personified a bobwhite's psyche when he proclaimed "you'd be paranoid, too, if someone was out to get you!"

A quail's life is dictated by the threat of predation. Death from above in the form of hawks and death in the tall grass in the form of bobcats, foxes, house cats, and a host of others. A recent study using radio-marked quail west of San Angelo found that about 80 percent of bobwhite mortalities were attributable to predators. About one-third of those was due to raptors (hawks and owls) while two-thirds was due to mammalian predators. Two quail were killed by snakes; one by a rattlesnake and one by a black rat snake.

Quail have evolved under the threat of predation and do an admirable job of surviving in a sea of predators. But there are times, and perhaps now is one, when predation stifles the quails' ability to "bust out" of their current doldrums. The effect of a predator on a prey species is most pronounced when the predator population is high relative to the prey's, and that's where we're at in West Texas at this time, in my opinion.

Before we go any further, let me state that I believe the biggest threat from predators is their collective effect on nest survival. When a raccoon or skunk attacks a quail nest, he takes out 14 potential quail in one fell swoop. While quail are strong "re-nesters," the odds of them hatching any particular nest are low, perhaps 20 percent. In spite of the fact that most predators will kill every quail they have the opportunity to catch, I do not believe predation on adult quail to be the factor limiting quail populations.

Some hunters and landowners point a finger at hawks, so I'd like to make some points about raptors and quail. First, hawks and all other birds of prey are protected by both state and federal laws. It is illegal to kill them under any circumstances.

Second, hawks and owls do kill quail. While our study in West Texas suggests they are responsible for one-third of the mortalities, other studies in the southeastern U.S. implicated hawks in about two-thirds of the kills.

Third, some hawks are harder on quail than others. There are three basic groups of hawks: buteos, harriers and accipiters. I like to use the analogy of military airplanes to explain the differences.

The buteos are the B-29s of the raptor world, big and lumbering. They hunt by either soaring or perched atop a highline pole. The most common buteos in Texas are the red-tailed hawk and the Swainson's hawk. You see them sitting along fenceposts, on hay bales, or atop highline poles. They catch some quail, but they aren't efficient bird predators; they're just not agile enough to catch birds on the wing. Rodents are the mainstay of their diets.

Next are the harriers, which in Texas are represented by the northern harrier (you and I know it as the marsh hawk). Harriers are the A-10 Warthogs of the raptor world. They aren't particularly majestic and they hunt from low altitudes at "subsonic" speeds. They glide lazily about 20 feet from the ground looking for rodents, but will also pester a good many quail. I've sat in a deer blind and watched them patrol food plots and make short dive-bomb attempts at quail. I've also seen them "harry" blue quail under a lotebush. In fact, I've sometimes used marsh hawks as bird dogs to locate a covey of quail, not unlike a sandbass fisherman uses gulls to locate his quarry. I have found only one quail that I can say was conclusively killed by a marsh hawk, as I actually disrupted the feeding harrier.

The final and by far the most efficient bird predators are the accipiters. The most common accipiters are the Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks. These are the F-16s of the raptor world. They are fast, agile predators that feed primarily on other birds. They were designed for air-to-air combat. I am convinced that most quail would rather take their chances with someone toting a 12-gauge than to challenge a Cooper's or sharp-shinned hawk. A quail in the air with a Cooper's hawk is about like an Iraqi fighter going against an F-16 over Baghdad in Desert Storm.

Accipiters are also a bit like the F-117 "Stealth" fighter; they're rarely seen sitting out in the open on highline wires. Watch closely and you'll see them darting in and out of the mesquites. Some people refer to them as "blue darters," not to be confused with the Mississippi kites that we called "blue darters" in southwest Oklahoma where I grew up.

Quail managers interested in decreasing quail losses to predators have two options: offensive or defensive. The options vary with the predator(s) involved.

"Offensive" tactics (i.e., direct control) might be used to decrease the number of mammalian predators. "Defensive" tactics (i.e., indirect control) are mandated for raptors due to their legal status. Basically, this means providing the quail with the best cover situations possible to minimize their vulnerability to raptors. Nature does this about every five years when the ground is blanketed with broomweed. Unfortunately, she also brings drouth conditions about two out of every five years, which plays into the raptor's hands (er, talons).

At the Bobwhite Brigade, we play a game called "Run for Your Life," which simulates the relationships among quail, hawks, brush cover and brush control. Using hula hoops to simulate loafing cover (i.e., a plum thicket), quail can evade hawks as long as sufficient coverts are available and accessible. But if too many of the thickets are cleared, the hawks "clean up" on quail.

I recommend that there be at least two suitable coverts per a basketball court-sized area. Good candidates for such "quail houses" are lotebush, sandplum, littleleaf sumac and algerita. They should be at least as large as the bed of your pickup truck. The amount of grass cover present also helps quail by providing them with escape cover from hawks.

If your quail populations aren't what you think they ought to be, don't take it out on the red-tailed hawk on the telephone pole, take a look at your habitat conditions. If you were a quail, would you be paranoid on your place? If so, think about what management practices (e.g., brush management, grazing practices) might be implemented to ease your anxieties.