Chick Sightings?

I was checking some my stuff yesterday. I didn't see any broods, but I did hear quail and I saw pheasant tracks. I also saw some tracks that were smaller than adult pheasant, so perhaps quail or pheasant chicks. The cover looks great on my stuff, and no evidence of major hail. But I definitely saw some hail damaged corn on the drive.
 
Ran my first county brood survey this morning. First sighting was 4 hen turkeys. The second was a single male bobwhite. Did get to see 2 jackrabbits, not on the survey, but a nice rarity! Had a hen pheasant with 2-7 week old chicks. We couldn't find any more than the 2 and they could fly fairly well. The last sighting was 11 quail chicks that I also aged at 7 weeks. They flew out of the road and to the back side of a filter strip. We tried to flush them again and had no luck.
 
Just had 2 hen turkeys come by, not 50 yards from the house (Montgomery County, KS), with their combined broods. Nearly 20 poults between the two of them.
That’s the largest bunch of turkey poults I’ve seen in many years. Sure was glad to see them!

I will note that these birds were smaller than a pheasant, while I’ve already seen some poults that were nearly as big as their mothers.IMG_0097.jpeg
 
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BritChaser said:
Wheat harvesters in NW report few bird sightings
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There have been areas in the NW that unfortunately haven't had enough breeding birds to make a huge impact. I know this is not breaking news but I would imagine there are a few really nice broods out there on the landscape that could help the future for better breeding if the habitat and weather can work together for a change... If you know where the "pockets" were last year it should be much better in those areas as long as the habitat is there. In Colorado now it's rare to see large blocks of CRP now days and it wasn't long ago when even Colorado had solid pheasant populations.
 
Is anyone seeing pheasant birds in the southwestern part of the State. Farmers have started to harvest fall crops and was wondering if that has pushed some out towards the roads.
 
Keep it quiet. Thats probably a pocket of birds. In all seriousness I think my Kansas pheasant hunting is done. Gonna give South Dakota a try this year. Longer drive but I have the week of thanksgiving off so I’m gonna just get up there finally. Also, we lost our Kansas spot. Leased out. Didn’t kill too many off it anyway but was nice to have.
 
Was out running the dogs Friday and came across a hatch of young quail chicks, no bigger than golf ball size. "...newly hatched quail broods are also very vulnerable for the first two weeks of their lives because they cannot fly. " Seems as if these chicks were no more than a couple weeks old. Feels awfully late for a hatch of new chicks but I'm no biologist!

The Science of Bobwhite Quail Nesting Dates
 
One of the wing boxes in northcentral Oklahoma last year indicated an estimated hatch of September 19th. Small birds right now is a good sign of continued nesting.
 
I don't remember ever seeing this many grasshoppers. To bad we don't have many birds to eat them, maybe that is why I am seeing so many. Went out to all my deer hunting properties putting up stands today, walked through a lot of CRP, drove a lot of roads, and never saw one bird.
 
Same down here on the grasshoppers. Man your area was sure good back in the 2000s. A real shame.
 
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