HUNTING AND FISHING: Tough Being a Quail

It is tough being a quail. From egg to adult you are constantly tops on the dinner menu. But what do we really know about the predators of quail? Based on covert photography at nest sites, we tend to assume that raccoons, coyotes, bobcats, skunks and a host of other small predators spend much of their time on search and destroy missions against hapless quail. Yet predator removal programs consistently fail to create an abundance of quail. Something is amiss in our perception of the effect of predation on quail populations?

At RPQRR, we have an abundance of coyotes, a modest population of raccoons, but skunks are uncommon, and none of us has ever spotted an opossum, nor its tracks. Dr. Rollins hypothesizes that the coyotes suppress smaller mesocarnivores, either directly (i.e., preying on them) or indirectly (i.e., by restricting them to certain areas [e.g., riparian areas]). So how do coyotes and raccoons use the RPQRR\’s landscape, especially during the nesting season for quail?

Recent technological improvements have allowed us to enter the nocturnal world of mammalian predators. Last May we captured 4 coyotes and 8 raccoons, fitted them with collars containing GPS units and then set them free again. The GPS units logged the animal\’s precise location every 5 minutes from dusk to dawn for 5 weeks, then the collars released automatically. We retrieved them and downloaded the information which allowed us to unravel the mystery of the nocturnal movements of these predators.