From Marfa Public Radio's Nature Notes:
"Tuck-too, tuck-too." Hearing a scaled quail's call, a West Texan's ears may prick up with pleasure, whether they're a hunter or not. Scaled quail forage in coveys, of often a dozen birds or more. Out on the lonesome prairie, such sociability feels unexpected and poignant.
Dr. Ryan Luna, of Alpine's Borderlands Research Institute, has been studying scaled quail in West Texas for more than a decade. In recent years, he and his students have learned how resilient, how adaptable, these seemingly vulnerable creatures are.
"They're able to make a living pretty much anywhere," Luna said. "They'll modify what they need to, but they can figure it out and still seem to be able to thrive in all these locations."
So-named for the scaly appearance of their breast and back feathers, and also known as blue quail and "cotton-tops," scaled quail are our region's dominant quail species.
They'll flush and fly to evade danger. But they can run 15 miles an hour, and their legs are their first line of defense. To exercise that defense, they need open ground. They favor the seeds of grasses and forbs for food. And they require a few shrubs, for shelter from summer's midday heat and winter's cold and wind. Scaled quail, then, are quintessential creatures of the arid grasslands.
But via historic overgrazing and other modern impacts, grasslands here have receded, to be replaced by creosote flats or mesquite thickets. Scaled quail may be paying the price: On average, West Texas loses about 3% of its scaled quail each year.
But these birds are survivors.
To learn how the quail were faring in the heart of the Permian Basin oilfield, Luna's team partnered with ConocoPhillips. On two company properties south of Midland, they tracked quail with GPS "backpacks." One property was relatively undeveloped, with a rich diversity of vegetation. The other was thick with well pads and dominated by creosote.
To the researchers' surprise, the quail were surviving, even thriving, in both environments.
"A grad student even got a picture of a scaled quail calling from on top of one of the pumpjacks," Luna said. "They were still utilizing that habitat, and it didn't seem to push them away like we were anticipating."
Not that scaled quail have it easy. Less than 20% of chicks survive to adulthood, Luna said; most are lost to predation.
But the birds are built to boom when they can. At Big Bend-area research sites, Luna's team found that after fortuitous summer rains, scaled quail populations increased by 600%.
Luna's team is using GPS tracking to understand quail habitat use, and to identify niches that are especially critical for the birds. Though it's a reference increasingly lost on his students, when it comes to conserving scaled quail, Luna invokes the film "Field of Dreams": "If you build it, they will come." If land managers remove brush and restore grasslands, the scaled quail will come.
"If you 'build' good habitat," Luna said, "when we get the right rainfalls and it produces the grain and the vegetation and the insects, then our populations will do really well. But we need to have the landscape primed and ready to go."
And though quail don't generate the same hunting revenue as big game, West Texas landowners want the birds on their properties, Luna said. It helps that what's good for quail is also good for pronghorn, grassland sparrows and livestock.
Because scaled quail are an "indicator species" for grassland health, Luna said. Their chirp-and-hum is the living sound of the West Texas prairies and plains.
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