Syracuse.com - Great Swamp Conservancy volunteers raising bobwhite quail for release into the wild

[HuntingNY-News]

“We’re not doing this for hunting purposes, just trying to get them re-established here,” said Michael Patane.

Jim Commentucci/The Post-StandardA male and female bobwhite quail occupy an enclosure at the Great Swamp Conservancy. The up´land gamebirds used to inhabits the fields of Central New York.Michael Patane got the call at about 7 a.m. Thursday from the Canastota Post Office telling him the bobwhite quail chicks had arrived.

Patane rushed over to pick up nearly a dozen cardboard boxes containing 1,000 day-old birds. He then returned to the Great Swamp Conservancy nature center, where he gently took them out of the boxes in a heated, indoor “brooding room” — one handful at a time.

“I love bobwhite quail,” he said. “I used to raise them when I had my own private shooting preserve on my property. I just thought it would be a neat project for the conservancy to get involved in.”

Bobwhite quail at one time inhabited the fields and woods of Central New York and much of Upstate New York , but no more. Excessive hunting and radical changes in the habitat due to farming eliminated most of them more than a century ago.

Currently, the upland gamebird can only be hunted in a few places downstate. The DEC has established hunting seasons in Orange and Putnam counties and parts of Long Island.

Since 2004, Patane and a small group of volunteers assisting him have been buying quail chicks from a Pennsylvania supplier. They’ve been raising them during the spring and summer and releasing them in early fall on the 150-acre conservancy property. To date, they’ve had little luck getting them to survive and breed in the wild.

“We’re not doing this for hunting purposes, just trying to get them re-established here,” he said, squatting in the 15-by-15-foot brooding room, with its floor covered in fresh wood shavings and its sides lined with heavy plastic.

“They don’t stay on the property. I’ve had people call me (each fall) and say that they’re seeing them in Morrisville (some 20 miles away), Bridgeport, Chittenango, Sylvan Beach, Oneida — they’re spreading out.”

However, they don’t seem to be taking hold. Few, if any survive the winter. Hunters may be mistakenly shooting them, he said, but the majority are most likely falling prey to predators such as hawks, owls, coyotes, foxes and feral cats.

Bryan Swift, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said nearly all the bobwhite quail downstate are pen-raised and released at private shooting preserves. The DEC set a season down there so hunters could shoot those birds that escape and manage to make it in the wild. But the numbers that do, he added, are very few.

“The DEC back in the 1930s and 1950s experimented with introducing bobwhite quail but were not very successful,” he said.

Swift said there may be several private shooting preserves in the Upstate area that offer the chance for hunters to pay to shoot bobwhite quail. He said Patane’s program is the only one he’s aware of that’s trying to get a wild population re-established.

“He’s asked us to cooperate and assist, but we’ve politely declined,” Swift said. “We’ve allowed him to raise and release them. He’s not doing much harm, and his heart is in the right place, but we’re not encouraged by his results.”

Patane, who the other volunteers at the conservancy call “Quail Daddy,” is undaunted.

The day-old chicks received Thursday will be kept in the brooding room for several days at 98 degrees. Eventually, the room’s temperature will be dropped a degree as the chicks get bigger and stronger. They’re fed crushed gamebird pellets and water.

Thursday morning, McManus put handfuls of clover and grass in the brooding room to occupy the tiny birds, which at this point are about the size of your thumb.

“Baby quail are cannibalistic for the first couple of weeks,” Patane explained. “They’re just like kids. You have to give them something to do. Otherwise, they’ll peck at each other’s beaks, disabling some and making them unable to eat.”

In about six to eight weeks, the birds will reach adulthood, becoming the size of a robin.

With this most recent shipment of chicks, Patane is trying something new. He plans to raise and keep them through the winter months, releasing them in the spring.

“Hopefully, when we release this group in May, they’ll be a number of breeding pairs and they’ll go out and do what they’re supposed to do,” he said.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog