Friday, January 21, 2011

more on Bobwhites


Early in the week we had a little flurry of posts on Bobwhites, and I had a fair number of backchannel queries about this species.

The image here is the BBS trend graph for the entire central BBS region.

Here's a quote from the Birds of North America species account for the bobwhite:
"On continental scale, this species is declining significantly in most states in U.S. Texas is a notable exception, where populations show stable trends over broad areas, especially in southern part of the state, but not in eastern or panhandle regions. During 1965–1995, regional, statewide, and local declines of 70 to 90% were common and widespread in 80% of states with Northern Bobwhite. Numerous extinctions of local populations were prevalent throughout geographic range in South and Midwest."

This is from the following source:
Brennan, Leonard A. 1999. Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do you think these data are skewed higher because of all the birds that are released for hunting. I do 99% of my birding in SE wisconsin. I don't see or hear any. In central Wisconsin twice by sound I encountered them but I knew that one group was released birds.

I just took a break from writing this and read the account in the Atals of the Breeding Birds of Wisconsin. It confirms my experiences and thoughts. Seems nesting habitat is the key that managers are zeroing in on. I'll have to reseach if there is success with this further south.

I would so much like to see some someday. The California quail are such an intersting part of the landscape. Too bad we can't have something like that in suburban Wisconsin.
Bill Holton