First quail

Toad

Active member
This Spring has been the first one that I have heard quail whistling on my little farm, and Sunday I had the good fortune of seeing a few of them run across the trail ahead of me.:D

The place looks about as "quaily" as I can make it on my budget, but it's a tiny island in a vast sea of road-to-road farming. I have been hoping that somehow, some way, the birds would find it eventually, and it looks like at least a few of them have. I hope they do well.

Naturally, I've been telling my friends and family about my new tenants, but most of them don't really "get" why it makes me so happy to have a little covey at the farm. They just smile and nod. :laugh:

As a hunter/conservationist, it makes me really excited to think I'm helping the birds in some way. With my own 2 hands and a few "vacation" days every year I've managed to make a place for quail where they weren't before. There is always room for improvement, and hopefully down the road the place will be even better. But it's gratifying to see some results.

Just wanted to share my joy with a group of people who understand.
:cheers:
 
Awesome! It must be really cool to see your efforts bear fruit. It's landowners like you and many others on this board creating "islands" of habitat that willl be the key to retaining huntable populations.
 
Your place should vacuum up area birds when the population comes back.
 
That's a good feeling to have toad! Fruits of your labor. Keep us up to date on how thing progress out there.

Nick
 
That is great that you are seeing some reward. I have been hearing a bunch of them calling on my place. More than last year, which is a good thing, I have worked pretty hard this past year.
 
It is so nice to begin to see a bit of a comeback in the upland bird population. It lifts my mood at just the mention of success stories like this!
 
That is great that you are seeing some reward. I have been hearing a bunch of them calling on my place. More than last year, which is a good thing, I have worked pretty hard this past year.

That's great news, Steve. With the acres you have compared to me, I'm sure you did bust your rear out there. The first couple years at my place were like that. Now it's more of a marathon than a sprint for me. Just keep doing a little bit here and there, and eventually we'll both have some really special places!
:cheers:

Thanks for the comments, everybody.
 
I have a hundred or so hedge and large cedar tree to remove this summer, and plant a 3+ acre pollinator plot.
Just got my 6' rotary tiller for my tractor, so now some of those out of the way places are going to be made productive quail areas. That is after I get the garden in for my wife.
 
Happy wife, happy life!:thumbsup:

Where did you get the seed for the pollinator plot? Did you purchase that somewhere, or is it available as part of some NRCS or PF program?
 
The PF/QF biologist and the guy I am working with from the NRCS are getting something put together for me. Think I will be getting it thru the NRCS.

I will be planting it this winter.
 
Steve, I apologize, but when I read things my brain fires independently. You mentioned using the tiller on out-of-the-way parts of your kingdom. My brain spark was, if you are thinking about developing brood cover with the tiller, the best months to do that for the proper response are October and November here. Still plan to get up that way. With 1/2 a labor force the past 10.5 months, I am playing catch up! Newbie starts Tuesday, but that just brings me back up to 1/2. Short leash!
 
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Was down at the farm tonight after work. Put Tucker on a couple of pigeons.... he was pretty good.

But I drove the 4 wheeler around the alfalfa field and had two pairs of quail flush. Heard a lot of whistling too. Lets hope we have a good hatch and a high survival rate.
 
Heard the first ones whistling around here Monday morning. This morning I heard quite a few calling from various locations. Dang I hope this rain doesn't mess things up for them!
 
Its early enough that even if some of the nest are in trouble, there is time to re-nest.

I was down at the farm tonight after work. Quail were calling all around the place. My SIL said he was pretty sure that he saw a Prairie Chicken fly into one of our crop fields. It would be so awesome to see some PC around the place.

Deer and turkey were running around there tonight as well. It was muddy and there are a bunch of mosquitoes out, but a great night to see what is running around the place.
 
The quail that were staying in my yard are gone. We have had over 11 inches for the month on May. It has rained 22 out of the last 30 days. March and April were very wet to. I had 220 onions planted and over half have rotted. Even the grass in my yard has started to turn yellow. Funny with all the rain we have had the grass isn't really growing. Too cool and no sunshine.
 
I am not sure how much rain we have had the last 2 months, but its a lot.
But the cool season grass is growing fast, the Bermuda not much.
 
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