by Casey Swafford
With our spring trapping session wrapped up, we now will begin tracking our newly radio-collared birds. Some of the birds we are tracking were collared from previous sessions, although the bulk of transmitters are on new birds that were recently captured. Our numbers this spring showed a population consisting of mainly juveniles (188 juveniles; 72 adults) and more males than females (146 male; 114 female). We had a total of 260 unique individuals captured this spring session, which was down from both Spring 2020 (327 unique individuals captured) and this past fall (600 unique individuals captured). But, it was a tough winter to say the least. Despite the lower numbers, we have high hopes for our nesting season and are counting on the quail finding our brood rearing areas (i.e., “brood-patches”, 2-5 ac disked areas) well suited for chick survival. Now we’re just “waiting on a rain.”
There are many environmental factors that can influence a quail population, and we are still early in the year.
