Pollinator Habitat

Well said. We frequently fall into a 5 year cycle where we get to a high and folks don't really find it until the following year. Year 2 they decimate the population in less than 3 weeks and we go into year 3 in the cellar. Year 3 folks find out we stink and go elsewhere, spreading the word. Years 4 and 5 we rebuild and go through the dance again. Unfortunately, you throw in 2 years of severe drought and the cycle gets extended on the down side.
 
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Troy

Does in matter what time of year I disk some strip on my place?

BTW, you ever getting up this way :D
 
Man question Steve, would you leave your wife with 2 litters of your pups while you go traipsing across the state doing fun stuff? Hmmm. It'll happen:)

You will get the maximum desired results disking in Oct/Nov. Later in the winter into spring and you generally select more for grassy weeds instead of broadleaf. Here that means grassy sandbur. There is nothing wrong with some of the foxtails, etc; but when you look at food value and the number of seeds needed by a quail to eat to fulfill their daily nutritional needs, and you will keep the birds feeding time down by providing the more nutritional/larger broadleaf seeds. The top four here are western ragweed, wooly croton, toothed spurge, and deer vetch. In some wetter spots you could include giant ragweed. I generally don't differentiate between western ragweed and common. Diversity is important too, but productivity is also needed. Try to associate your disk strips with cover. Exposure while feeding can lead to increased predation.
 
Thanks Troy, I think I will see if I can get my guy to do it over the next couple of weeks.

The pasture has really come back strong with the rain and nothing grazing it. It looked more like a pool table when we got it in February. I am going to have good nesting cover, but the Brooding cover is a problem.

I assume that I should try to disk close to the woody cover. I have a fair amount of plum thicket in some areas. In other areas I am going to cut down some trees and leave them lay, close to the disk strip. What I was thinking about doing is disking a wavy path around most of the pasture area.

How wide should the strip be. Is 15 ft wide enough?
 
15 is fine. You are trying to get a diverse broadleaf response where the plants canopy a foot or two above ground where birds can forage for insects and seed unseen from above. If you remember the mobility challanges for quail, design whatever you do so they can move directly from one cover type to the next without having to expose themselves to predators. Guthrie talks about the cone of vulnerability. Imagina a cone above a bird where any predator (avian) would have to be in the cone in order to see the bird. The taller and more dense the vegetation is, the narrower the cone. The narrower the cone, the less chance there is for the bird to be targeted. When I mention dense vegetation, that refers to the canopy. If birds cannot navigate underneath the canopy, it's too dense.
 
I did speak to a biologist about the PH for pollinator habitat. He said that PH has very little to do with the success of the plot. The pollinator's are adapt at thriving in the poorest soil known. The advice I was given was don't worry about PH and don't Fertilize.

Greatlawn
 
Prairie Drifter said:
15 is fine. You are trying to get a diverse broadleaf response where the plants canopy a foot or two above ground where birds can forage for insects and seed unseen from above. If you remember the mobility challanges for quail, design whatever you do so they can move directly from one cover type to the next without having to expose themselves to predators. Guthrie talks about the cone of vulnerability. Imagina a cone above a bird where any predator (avian) would have to be in the cone in order to see the bird. The taller and more dense the vegetation is, the narrower the cone. The narrower the cone, the less chance there is for the bird to be targeted. When I mention dense vegetation, that refers to the canopy. If birds cannot navigate underneath the canopy, it's too dense.
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I think what I may do is disk 15' wide this year and come back the next year and disk next to it to make it 30' wide. Then just disk one side each year or so.

Also looking at putting in 2 pollinator plots. One that is a 4 acre fallow field right now, and put in a smaller one up in the NE part of the land. There isn't much up there to help with the broods in that part of the land.
 
Sounds like a good plan Steve. The premanent brood habitat is important. Often you can lightly disk those if they senesce and get them back in good shape. Just watch what comes in in your disk strips and if they are too thin the second year you may want to move over further so there is cover on both sides of the new strip. You don't want to have a "killing" strip right next to where they want to be.
 
This summer we put in a small food plot, and I had about 50 yards of additional disking running close to the fence/plum thicket. It has been a quail magnet so far.
 
I have only shot 1 Bird on my place, it had weed seeds.
The bird I shot on a WIHA also had weed seeds. But there were no crops within a mile of this spot. (those are my favorite coveys to hunt, your really have to let the dog work as they are not right on the edge of the crop field.)
 
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