September 2008 Updates page 9
17 September
Covey flight as seen September 14.
The rest of the story about this covey.
It was a juvenile covey of short flyers giving more than a couple of chances for a picture while one of your MAHA staff was walking some land.
Quail hunters will recognize the set wings on the covey landing within range of a pocket camera typical of juvenile birds.
The soybeans in the background give good indication of the time of year and regional locality. Just happens to be one of those areas that suffered from heavy rains during the most dense nesting and brood period of May and June.
While this area did have a wet spring and a continuing wet summer, the summer period when these birds were under hen assuming 5 weeks to flight stage or earlier was a relatively good summer for reproduction.
The weed area in the near ground is example of a farm where the crop land was pushed beyond the waterway limits, eroded preventing tractor access and filled in with volunteer growth making for good quail cover next to the grain field.
Bobwhite Quail more so than pheasants are likely to re-nest, double nest or nest late. This is often the explanation when overlapping pheasant and quail regions have good quail and low pheasant numbers as happened in north central Kansas last year.
This picture and our on-the-ground presence during the entire year gives a continuing refinement of bird populations.
This covey plus others and that of landowner reports indicate that quail exist in fair numbers in pockets in north Missouri. The quail are not as widely disbursed like past years. There are sufficient coveys that those that travel to hunt through or near Missouri should consider making their drive a bit shorter with at least a day stop over in their favored areas for a hunt to determine whether to continue hunting in Missouri or traveling onto Kansas with its better bird reports.
