Cesar Kleberg information

[BirdNut]

Since we are about to enter breeding and nesting season now at the close of hunting season, here is some research out of South Texas...we all know drought is bad for quail, but here some facts show that drought is like a double whammy in nesting / predation; reduces the nesting season significantly and increases avian predation (I would imagine due to poor overhead cover).

From :
http://ckwri.tamuk.edu/research-pro...e/the-new-south-texas-quail-research-project/

The New South Texas Quail Research Project

It’s been nearly 12 years now since we first radio-collared a bobwhite on the Encino Division of King Ranch. What initially began as shop talk over lunch with folks from the South Texas Chapter of Quail Unlimited subsequently blossomed into a 10-yr study on South Texas bobwhites. The study, called the South Texas Quail Research Project, spanned from 1998 to 2008 and involved more than 2,000 radiocollared bobwhites and >300 nests.
Thanks to generous funding from dedicated supporters such as Quail Unlimited Chapters in Texas (South Texas, Houston, Alamo, East Texas, and Texas State Council; now Quail Coalition, Inc.), several foundations, and many private donors, we were able to monitor bobwhite populations under a wide variety of weather and habitat conditions during those 10 years of study, including a hurricane, harsh drought, and even snow. We learned many interesting things about bobwhites during the study, some fortuitous, some unexpected. For example, we learned that:
• The longest lived banded bobwhite that we recaptured was about 4.4 years of age. The longest lived radio-collared bobwhite lived to about 4.1 years of age.
• We observed several accounts of prolonged incubation (the phenomenon of hens incubating an infertile clutch well past the hatching date). The longest prolonged incubation was a hen that remained on the nest for 3 months!
• The typical nesting season in South Texas occurs during May-August, with a handful of hens commonly nesting into September and October. The earliest nest we found was 8 April, and the latest nest hatching was 5 December.
• Drought can shorten the length of the nesting season to about 2 months (May-Jun) and result in fewer hens nesting (50%). Annual survival also is about 1/3 lower during drought compared to wet conditions.
• Bobwhite mortality is not related to the abundance of raptors in general but to the abundance of raptors capable of preying on quail (e.g., Cooper’s hawks). The strength of this relationship varies as a function of aridity, becoming stronger as conditions become drier.
• Coyotes are the most common nest predator of bobwhites in South Texas, accounting for about 1/3 of nest failures. This is in contrast to the Southeast, where snakes are the most common nest predator.
• Bird dogs find only about 56% of the radio-collared coveys present. Also, the average distance dogs hunt away from the truck is about 50-75 yards with an average speed of 5.5 mph in dense cover and about 6.5 mph in open habitat.
Indeed, we learned much about South Texas bobwhites. So, when the South Texas Quail Project came to a close in late 2008, we wanted to continue our long-term approach to studying bobwhites. However, we wanted to apply the knowledge that we gained over the past 10 years now in a management setting. We spent the next year or so at the drawing board, meeting with King Ranch and the South Texas Chapter of Quail Unlimited, as well as landowners, managers, hunters, and quail enthusiasts, to help refine our approach. Finally, after months of consultation and deliberation, we homed in on the future of the South Texas Quail Research Project.
The new South Texas Quail Research Project will be a collaborative project with King Ranch, Inc. and will be located at the Santa Gertrudis Division. This new study area will not only permit us to study bobwhites in habitat that is distinctly different from Encino, but it will also afford us the unique opportunity to study bobwhites in an area with a rich history of quail research—the former study area of Val Lehmann. The Project also will focus on management, specifically, quantifying bobwhite response to habitat management. We wish to answer questions such as, how much do bobwhites increase following habitat management? For how long? Can good habitat, provided year round, override the effect of weather? That is, if we intensively manage a pasture for bobwhites using the best science available, how effective is habitat management at maintaining bobwhite numbers year in and year out? We also are interested in building on prior research to gain a better understanding of hunting behavior (e.g., space use of quail hunters, efficiency of bird dogs). We will use radiotelemetry and global positioning systems (GPS) to tackle these objectives. The study will be conducted on the Laguna Larga Trap (1,454 acres). We will monitor radio-collared bobwhites during the first year of study to obtain baseline measures of survival, nest success, and bobwhite density prior to any management. We will then implement a variety of habitat-management practices (e.g., prescribed fire, brush control, discing, etc) during year 2 to saturate the area with usable space and provide it year-round to bobwhites. We will compare bobwhite response pre- and post-management, as well as to a control (unmanaged) site.
We are extremely excited about this next phase of the South Texas Quail Research Project. Our continuation of this research is only possible due to generous support from Quail Coalition, Inc., King Ranch, Inc., and you, our many donors. Matthew Schnupp, quail biologist for the Ranch, will be a lead collaborator and will be intimately involved with all aspects of the research. We look forward to the future!

 

[Setter Jax]

Did they say how they were going to account for the weather, drought years, and non drought years. It seems the weather would be a hard variable to account for in the study. Thank you for sharing, hopefully I will get to the point where I can either purchase some land or a long term lease. All the info I have read over the last year on GON has been very useful.

SJ

 

[Jim P]

That's a good read.

 

[Sam H]

and a little surprising to me....Even though it didn't happen as much in south Texas....No one has mentioned the historic wildfires that have happened in the panhandle area , central and southeast central Texas....add that to the drought and you've got a triple whammy for habitat....we say burning is good...but i don't think this is type of uncontroled fire is exactley what we were thinking!

 

[BirdNut]

There are a lot of parts of Texas that are about as hospitable to quail as your local Wal-Mart parking lot.

In south Texas they have a type of soil called Caleche which is a hardpan, made of calcium carbonate (I think). Its caused by water leaching minerals from the soil, and then they collect in a layer. It can sometimes be almost like concrete.

Just at the end of this season, a friend hunted a 50K acre ranch on the border, that has both caleche and also sandy soils. The bobwhites are all over the sandy soil-they moved 17 coveys in one day of hunting, in a supposedly "bad" year. The bobwhites don't frequent the caleche that much, but the scaled quail do. The bobwhite hunting is so good on this one ranch his neighbors come and pay to hunt there since they have mostly caleche.

 

[coveyrise]

I ask Dale the other day how far he had ever known a radioed bird to travel in Texas and he said 35 miles. They had to track it with a helicopter. Why it moved that far they really did'nt know. I ask Bill Palmer the same question about a radioed bird on Tall Timbers and he said about 1.25 miles. Amazing what a difference cover makes. I know of a Male Bobwhite in New Mexico that traveled 15 miles during mating season and he eventually returned home after a few months.
We know through radio telemetry that birds will leave a place and travel if they are harrassed too much. If they find something better across the fence they sometimes never return.