Have a few quail

This is the first image from our Poison Water Spring series.

Remember that place?

I said staking a camera in the spring was taking a chance. 

Well, the camera filled nearly 2 gigabytes of memory with images in the first 8 days, and then something strange happened.

The Pelican case mysteriously popped open and the batteries dropped into the water. 

The camera remained perched within inches of water on its 1-inch aluminum shelf.

Not to worry -- Craig recovered the batteries from the water; they were intact and no damage was done.   

A lot of animals visited and emerged from Poison Water in those 8 days, and California quail took first place for sheer numbers. 

The population is doing well, as you can see.   

Fernandez Spring

Fernandez Spring was a clear shallow pool in the shade of a spreading valley oak. It was the only spring where I could set the camera for 24 hr shooting while I was in San Luis Obispo County. The reason is that passive infra-red sensors are easily tricked by puffs of warm air, moving vegetation, and dappled sunlight. The resulting false triggers can rapidly fill a memory stick with an exhaustive record of passing shadows. I didn't have to worry about that here at this shady spring.

The spring was about 50 yards from the water trough mentioned in the previous post, but it was a far more popular stop for thirsty animals. Here the camera's batteries lasted for 24 days, and 231 of 310 photos were of animals (a success rate of 75%). I could identify 16 species, but 2 additional birds remain a mystery.

A bobcat visited the site twice and both times it lingered. On this visit I got 6 pictures of it looking rather bored. It stayed for 34 minutes, probably waiting for birds.



It was too late. A covey of 22 half grown valley quail (and a flash-lit moth) had passed through 40 minutes earlier.



The spring was probably a productive hunting ground for the cat. Twelve species of birds visited to drink and bathe, including a Cooper's hawk.



One night a screech owl flew in for a bath a half hour before midnight.



The raccoon dabbled in the spring for a minute and half before going to the water trough.

Hail the Valley Quail

These are the four survivors of the clutch of twelve quail chicks we saw back in the summer. Looks like they might all be little hens, but maybe the one on the left is getting a macho face mask. Not sure.

I got a few chick pics back in the summer by putting the camera under foothill whitethorn next to the driveway. It was hit and miss, and none of the pictures were very good, so I started to bait with mixed bird seed.



Now they are as big as adults and filling in their adult plumage.



The parents are always nearby, and the male stands guard while they feed.



Normally the mother bird leads them about, but I haven't seen her lately, so she might have been picked off too.

California quail (the Valley quail is one of 7 subspecies) were a lot more common when I was a kid. Starker Leopold tells us that the species peaked between 1860 and 1895 in response to land use associated with settlement and crude agriculture. Grain farming and overgrazing by cattle and sheep actually improved quail habitat. In the decade after the gold rush, cattle are believed to have reached a million head, and by 1876 sheep numbered nearly 8 million. Heavy grazing fragmented the native bunch grasses, and made way for seedbearing Mediterranean forbs like filaree and clovers. Quail were better off then ever before.

The decline of quail (1895 - 1925) is blamed on intensive agriculture, habitat degradation, market hunting, and associated practices such as broadcast poisoning of ground squirrels. Hunters could bag 25-30 quail a day using dogs, a quail caller, and shotguns, and the selling price was $1 - $1.75 a dozen. In the San Joaquin valley poachers took as many as several hundred at a time using large nets at water holes. The poachers faked legal killing by hanging the dead birds in trees in bunches of 6, and shooting them with a shotgun at 30 yards.



Leopold's book is a labor of love worth having. I really must heed his advice about improving habitat so I can hear the mighty assembly call, a sound from old California. It sure beats the roar of the Harley Davidsons these days.

Reference

Leopold, A. Starker. 1977. The California Quail. University of California Press, Berkeley.