COLLEGE STATION -- While folks complain about the heat, cost of watering a yard or expected crop losses likely from this year's drought, another impact is being felt by perhaps less noticeable victims -- Texas quail.
Dry conditions translate into no hatch, no shelter and no food for the popular Texas bird, according to wildlife specialists for the Texas Agricultural Extension Service.
"The drought is most drastically felt on things like quail,"said Dr. Don Steinbach, Extension Service wildlife specialist in College Station. "There is no question that in South Texas this year, there will be a dramatic impact on quail."
Steinbach said that's because the quail's reproductive season has the mother quail making a nest on the ground in basketball-size clumps of grass to hide from predators in late-April, sitting on eggs in May, hatching the little birds hatching the first part of June and feeding them a lot of insects until they are old enough to start the cycle themselves. Lack of moisture causes three significant detriments to quail -- a lack of protective nesting sites, not enough moisture in the air for incubating eggs, and not enough food to raise the 10-14 babies typically in quail nests, Steinbach said.
"I very much appreciate what a quail hen has to do laying 14 eggs, incubating them for 23 days and not getting killed herself in the process," said Dr. Dale Rollins, Extension wildlife specialist in San Angelo. And quail can't go long distances in search of needs like some animals do, Rollins said. They are born and die usually within a space of no more than 40 acres.
In dry West Texas, Rollins noted, that one study this year put radio transmitters on 90 quail prior to the breeding season. Only 15 nests have been documented from those transmitters and only one had surviving quail chicks.
"So, that's a long way of saying that drought has an impact on quail. The most sinister manifestation of the drought is on nest site availability, which plays right into the predators' paws," Rollins said. Practically anything from cotton rats to feral hogs, he said, will eat quail eggs, especially when all species are competing for shortened food supply.
Steinbach and Rollins said one trait in favor for quail is that the birds will often attempt to renest several times. But, the wildlife experts said, only if rains begin to fall within the next few weeks will the plants be likely to grow to large enough heights and will enough insects emerge to support additional nesting attempts by quail to produce young.
"If that happens, when hunting season begins in mid-October, there will be small quail out there just barely learning to fly," Steinbach noted.
Rollins said a few places in the state -- notably from Abilene to the Red River and over to Fort Worth -- had rains at the right time in the season to allow for a better quail hatch there. Of some 110 birds that had radio transmitters placed on them, only 50 produced active nests, he said.
Steinbach said that though the animals are hurting, the reduced numbers will not likely cause a drop in hunting fees because hunters tend to continue leasing places on a continual basis because competition for such land is in demand. But there likely will be some disappointed hunters in the search for quail this year.
Rollins concurred. "There's still quite a few quail out there as a result of the good hatch last year and excellent winter survival," he said. But, "they'll be tough hunting, as now they're two year veterans!"
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