“Amidst toils and troubles though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

Br’er Rabbit had his briar patch. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had the Hole in the Wall for a refuge. Storm-wary west Texans have their storm cellars. So where do quail go when the going gets tough?

We often speak of “escape cover” but I’ve tended to write it off in a generic sense. This grass, these broomweeds, a scattered stand of mesquite—all fit my generic definition of a place where a quail could “escape.”

I’ve always been an advocate for prickly pear as quail habitat, but my thinking at the time was restricted mostly to nesting habitat. A cadence from Bobwhite Brigade notes:

“Many ranchers do declare,
They’ve got too much prickly pear.
It’s a thorny plant that they despise,
But it sure looks good through a quail hen’s eyes.” 

And then I met Vinney. Vinney is a Finnish goshawk under the tutelage and care of Jimmy Walker of Amarillo. Walker, whose hobby is falconry, escorted Vinney to RPQRR to assist Dr. Clint Boal, Texas Tech University, and me in a pilot study.

One of the running arguments in quaildom is whether putting a radio collar on a quail  "radiohandicaps" it, i.e., does it predispose the bird to higher levels of predation? If survival estimates derived from radiomarked quail are bogus, our recommendations for harvest management might also suffer. Vinney was brought down to serve as an in vivo test of the hypothesis.

After watching Vinney make a dozen or so attempts at quail, with and without radio collars, I gained a new appreciation for hideouts. This was my first time to be with a falconer, and it was a hoot. Falconry got its start some 6000 years ago in Persia (Iran). That’s a long time before bobwhites knew about Pointers and Bennellis.

If you’re a student of quail, knowledge of raptors is a prerequisite to “graduation” (i.e., survival), especially during the winter months. During summer months, the raptor community at RPQRR is mostly the “B-29s”, e.g., the buteo hawks (almost entirely red-tails and Swainson’s). But in October, the neighborhood gets less friendly. The “F-16s” (accipiters, mainly Cooper’s hawks) and the “A-10 Warthogs” (e.g., northern harriers) move in, the latter en masse. Our winter raptor counts are mostly (about 80 percent) northern harriers.     

As Dr. Boal and I pondered various possible experiments, one was to test if radio-marked quail were more vulnerable to hawks. Boal said he knew of a falconer in Amarillo who hunted with a goshawk. A goshawk is a Cooper’s hawk big brother, but hunts quite similarly to a “Coop.”  In preparation for Vinney’s arrival, my crew at RPQRR trapped and radiomarked additional quail. Our goal was to radiomark about half of the covey. In that way, when we released Vinney in pursuit of a covey, he had an opportunity to select among various members of the covey. Would he, by whatever cues might be present, be able to zero in on those wearing a radio?

To date, we have flushed 21 coveys of quail in front of Vinnie. The goshawk captured 3 quail for a success rate of only 14%. Forty-six percent of quail chased were radio-tagged, and 2 of 3 captured quail were radio-tagged. Additional trials will take place this winter.

When a quail flushed, Vinney was off in a heartbeat and in hot pursuit. The quail upon whom Vinney’s attention is locked-in flies low and hard. A flight might be 200 or more (up to 600 yards), but the endpoint was similar in each of the 10 attempts I wtnessed — a motte of taller growing prickly pear or a hawk-resistant “quail house,” typically an acacia the size of a dual-cab pickup truck.

When we would catch up with Vinney, he would be hopping around the cacti, or on the ground beneath the acacia looking at a maze of packrat tunnels. Therein was the bobwhite — safe as a pea in a pod.     

Indeed, Vinney, and his handler, left the RPQRR frustrated. In this case the habitat, and the quail, won. I wonder if the score would have been in the quail’s favor in more open country.     

Now, let’s summarize these observations. First, hawks may not be as efficient in catching quail as I’d assumed. But keep in mind that Vinney wasn’t a pro at catching quail in habitats like we have at RPQRR; perhaps a more seasoned (wild) hawk has a few tricks in its talons.     

Second, Vinney always locked in on the first bird that flushed, which is rarely a radio-marked bird; had he been more patient, a more tempting target might have presented itself.     

Third, quail being pursued by hawks have an adrenaline overload; their flight speeds may be higher than “normal.”     

Fourth, quail seem to have an uncanny sense of where the nearest suitable “safe house” is when being pushed by a hawk. The prudent manager should be able to identify such shelter and seek to preserve their integrity when planning brush control or prescribed burns.     

Finally, at the time of year these trials were conducted (mid-February), perhaps most of the quail out there had been tested several times by raptors and had their “game plans” well rehearsed. Those that did not are no longer with us.     

I walked away with another question, however. Upon reaching a thicket or pearmotte, most of the harried quail became fossorial, i.e., they went underground into a rat hole. Now, if you’d dug as many radio transmitters out of packrat middens and pear clumps as I have, chances are you wouldn’t appreciate either.     

I’d always assumed that a kleptomaniac woodrat found our collars from a nearby quail mortality and packed it off to its den for its war chest. But now, it makes me wonder if those quail didn’t burrow down deep into a hole, and then either get killed or just die without ever leaving the bunker. Additional pondering required.  So, to those who applaud relationships between quail and their habitat, I drafted another cadence, this one rated PG.     

“If an accipiter is on your *ss,
Head for dense pear; forget the grass.
Your only chance is to stay well hidden,     
Buried up deep in a packrat’s midden.”

Article by Dale Rollins
Rolling Plains Quail Newsletter