Carol Reese wrote: >> you will read that the most serious >> predator of adult quail is the Cooper's hawk. In fact, some articles >> speculated that the laws protecting raptors were part of the problem with >> diminishing quail populations. Owls were also a serious predator of adult >> quail, Since I spent about 15 years quail hunting and more years than that studying raptors and was an outdoors editor for many years, I would like to praise the Cooper's Hawks and owls for getting their jobs done well. The Good Lord made the hawks and owls for a purpose and that must be one of them. They are filling wonderful and important niches every time a quail is eaten :-) The only problem we have is that hunters (including myself for a good many years) want to see the fields full of quail every time we go out to prey upon the quail. We hunters never worry about whether the Cooper's Hawk and owls are eating too many meadowlarks or too many Whip-poor-wills :-) If we could limit the Cooper's Hawks and owl to the number that hunters would like, then hunters would become the major predator problem and we would have to stop all hunting of quail or take the protection off hunters so they wouldn't be limiting the quail population. Then quail could be as abundant as their habitat would allow --but you and I don't really want to get into all that, do we? With fields full of quail everywhere, then the house cat would be the main problem and we'd have to have a hunting season on house cats in order to reduce that population so it would not become the major predator on qauil. (Yes, I agree, there are good hunters and bad hunters out there and the bad guys shoot every roaming cat and dog they see in the fields. Pssst. Don't tell anyone but the wildlife officers "once' did that. Shhh. Not everyone knows that.......Shhh.) A recent research project learned that one significant problem with the success of ground nesting birds is that White-tailed Deer eat the eggs and young from bird's nests on the ground. I wonder if the White-tailed Deer is a major preadator on the nest and eggs of the quail ? Hmmmm. Surely not ;-( Well, we have a hunting season to limit deer herds but that isn't working either. The state deer herd is growing and growing and growing. I live right in the heart of town and there are more deer in my neighborhood (and wild turkey) than were killed in all of Northeast Tennessee during hunting season 30 years ago. Now what do we do? Soon our state wildlife agency will have everything in balance, so to speak, and we will live happily ever after. But one thing is for sure, the state is beginning to have a shortage of hunters and the numbers of quail hunters in Tennessee has declined to the point we will no longer need to worry about quail. Of course the explanation is that there are not enough quail to hunt. Maybe the reason the deer herd is growing so fast is because we don't have enough deer hunters. The explanation use to be that we didn't have enough deer because there were too many dogs running wild. Something went wrong. There are as many dogs running wild as ever but we still have many, many deer. Too many ? You know there is a rule in wildlife management: "we will admit what we did wrong 20 years ago but don't admit we are doing wrong now." That also is true for government foresters and many other resource managers. Shhhh. Thanks for fanning the flames of discussion. I think that TN-Birds can be a good discussion site for birds as well as just a "who saw what" bird net. but Let's go birding.... Wallace Coffey Bristol, TN =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to sign your messages with first and last name, city (town) and state abbreviation. ----------------------------------------------------- To post to this mailing list, simply send email to: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ----------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send email to: tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * TN-Bird Net Owner: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx (423) 764-3958 =========================================================