Establishing habitat for wild quail

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Radio interview source: Craig Alderman, director of marketing, Quail Unlimited

When I was a kid, I remember my dad hunting Bobwhite quail. The past few decades have been harmful to these little game birds because of changes to farmland. Unlike deer and wild turkey, quail don't adapt well to habitat changes, so their survival is directly tied to conservation practices.

Craig Alderman is the marketing director for Quail Unlimited. He says if a private landowner provides the right habitat structures, the quail will find it.

"We concentrate on trying to remove fescue and putting in warm-season grasses," Alderman says. "Warm-season grasses are classified as prairie grasses. Big bluestem, little bluestem -- these are clump grasses. In other words, they grow in clumps and they allow significant amount of bare ground around them. Quail prefer to walk, and they need open ground and grasses to be able to get around. And they will actually nest in the clumps of these grasses."

Quail also need edge cover -- brushy areas where they can escape storms and predators. Alderman says an ice storm last winter broke off most of his tree tops, tossing them to the ground. He did some quail counts, and found they survived underneath the brush piles.

Photo: Conservation Commission of the State of Missouri