Quail Haven at Shaker Village

It’s Management, Not Magic

Kentucky Creates a Quail Haven at Shaker Village

By John Doty NBCI Communications Director

If you’re still wondering whether or not habitat restoration – good, old-fashioned habitat restoration

with no “silver bullets” like predator control, supplemental feeding, release of pen-raised birds, etc. -- really IS the key to bobwhite recovery, maybe a few days of vacation will help you get your bearings. And the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI) can recommend the perfect destination – the 3,000-acre Shaker Village, a National Historic Landmark in central Kentucky’s Bluegrass region in the hamlet of Harrodsburg just 25 miles from Lexington.

As a tourist you can learn about the Shakers’ role in American religious history and its standing as the nation’s longest lasting communal society. You can take a riverboat cruise, bring your own horses and ride 33 miles of trails, explore 14 original Shaker buildings, watch costumed interpreters and skilled craftspeople demonstrating life in the Shaker tradition, dine on seasonal Kentucky dishes and stay overnight in one of more than 70 guest rooms, suites and private cottages spread throughout 13 restored 19th century buildings.

But as a quail enthusiast you will want to head out to kick around the fields to see for yourself what the Village and the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) accomplished for quail in just two-and-a-half years … and they’re just getting started.

As late as 2008, Shaker Village’s acreage was primarily a large-scale beef cattle operation. A few wild bobwhites, an estimated 8 to 10 coveys on and around the property, were there mainly because odd areas around the property were allowed to “grow up,” according to Ben Robinson, small game biologist. While not the best habitat for quail, Robinson acknowledged, areas untouched by cows and mowers provided enough space for quail to survive. When village management decided cattle operations were not meeting the property’s overarching goals they entered discussions with KDFWR, which soon had the opportunity to create potentially the finest quail habitat in the Commonwealth if not some of the best in the South.

In 2009, approximately 1,000 acres, the most thin-soiled, unproductive ground, were identified for management in the northwest and southwest areas of the property. The rest of the property was in either agricultural leases or forest or roads/village building. Biologists concentrated first on the northwest portion of the property with a focus on keeping the habitat connected to avoid fragmentation as they expanded their work.

The first step was to apply prescribed fire to the first 400 acres in preparation to kill exotic, sodforming vegetation like fescue and start “plant succession” over again. Fescue and other sodforming grasses (Bermuda, brome, ryegrass, etc.) are a bane to quail because they grow so thickly on the ground that the quail (especially quail chicks) can’t navigate it. But it’s become popular in the mid-South since the ‘60s because it can take so much abuse, either overgrazing or undergrazing by cattle, and still survive. (But because it’s a “cool season” grass what it can’t survive as well are long, hot, dry summers, which is why the news has been full of reports of cattlemen struggling to maintain their herds.)

They sprayed herbicide on another 200 acres to kill fescue and then left it alone to see what was in the natural “seed bank” in the ground. The latter resulted in what Robinson described as “a lot of good shrubby cover with wildflowers, ragweed and blackberry,” what would have been there naturally if not for the thick mat of fescue.

It provided excellent food sources such as ragweed, brood habitat and escape cover (blackberry).

Robinson said they planted a mixture of short stature native warm season grasses over much of the property, including little bluestem and sideoats gamma, accompanied by a mixture of six wildflower species. Other areas got taller grass species, including big bluestem, Indian grass, switchgrass and wildflowers. These provided nesting cover as well as good brooding areas.

By June of 2009, biologists had about 700 acres of quail habitat on the ground. There were 20 coveys of quail counted in the fall of that year. Habitat work continued into 2010 on 100 more acres that were burned, sprayed and planted to native vegetation. By October 2010, there were 35 coveys of quail counted on the property.

This year, another 120 acres were converted to native vegetation and biologists are encouraging shrubs and blackberries by letting fencerows go to break up some of the fields of native grass to provide loafing areas and escape cover, and the shrubs for excellent covey headquarters.

“This is really phase two,” said Robinson. “We started managing for nesting and brood cover adjacent to each other, now we will be adding more escape cover with actual shrubbery plantings. If we have enough of the right kind of cover, predators won’t be a factor.”

When 2011 work finishes, approximately one-third of the 3,000-acre property will contain high quality grassland habitat and biologists hope they will be able to count more than 50 coveys of quail on the property.

There are still 1,000 acres in agricultural production,

so Robinson said they have been careful to work around those areas while pursuing connectivity of the quail habitat across the village landscape. And the Village’s 3,000 acres are not the only acres being positively impacted. Success there has allowed KDFWR to create a much larger quail focal area with neighboring landowners covering 28,000 acres.

“The quail population is already expanding out to neighboring properties,” said Robinson.

“There are now quail in areas where they haven’t been seen or heard in 20-30 years.

This is a perfect example of how quail management can be integrated into a working farm and with neighboring landowners.”

Shaker Village Property Manager Don Pelly, a birder himself, is enthusiastic about the results, which include more than quail. “We have an awful lot of quail and rabbits out here now, and turkeys are all over the property. Our songbird population has probably doubled. We’ve documented 170 songbird species over a year’s time.” (Shaker Village, in fact, has become one of the best birdwatching areas in all of central Kentucky.)

Pelly says the village has worked with the state to help showcase the success there, including hosting a meeting of property owners within a three-mile radius of the Village to work on extending habitat management, and by providing information to all 25 adjoining landowners and to tours of cattleman groups, school groups, nature groups, college wildlife management classes and the Louisville parks department, which is considering large-scale plantings of native warm season grasses and wildflowers.

… Hunts Support Long-term Habitat Maintenance at Shaker Once upon a time, bobwhite quail were a natural byproduct of agriculture across its range. Now, with the advent of various modern farm and forest management practices, quail do not benefit. Maintaining good quail habitat comes at a cost.

Controlled burning is perhaps the most economical and beneficial practice in the quail habitat management toolbox. Quail VIDEO To watch a video of the habitat managers should shoot first hunt at Shaker Vilfor a 2-year fire rotation to help lage, please go to: contol woody (tree) encroachment and to create bare ground, http:// a key component for bobwhite. www.bringbackbobwhites. org/about-bobwhites/ multimedia-gallery/ Herbicide applications may be viewvideo/19/the-kentucky required on an annual basis to -bobwhite-theater/nativecontrol unwanted exotic invasive quail-hunt-in-kentucky vegetation such as thistle, Johnson grass, or serecia lespedeza. Annual strip disking is important to create bare ground and stimulate the growth of essential broadleaf plants which provide food in the form of seeds, and attract insects.

To offset those maintenance costs, Shaker Village and KDFWR tried a new approach. They sold tickets for two consecutive half-day quail hunts for one hunter and a guest, with meals and lodging provided and guide services, dogs and handlers available upon request. Tickets were priced at $20 or 6 for $100. While the first half-day was a washout due to heavy rains, on the second the lucky hunters moved 10 coveys of quail, all within a 150-acre area.

The event raised more than $15,000, which will be invested in habitat maintenance. The Village is expanding the event this fall to two hunting parties. Information is available at www.shakervillageky.org/quailhunt for this year’s hunt.

For more information about Shaker Village and the quail hunt, please visit http://www.shakervillageky.org/.

For more information about Kentucky’s quail management, please visit www.fw.ky.gov, http:// www.bringbackbobwhites.org/blogs/kentucky and Kentucky Bobwhite Battalion on Facebook at http:// www.facebook.com/KentuckyQuail. For more information about the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative, go to www.bringbackbobwhites.org.

… NBCI ‘conservation we can all get behind’

By Sunni Carr Wildlife Diversity Program Coordinator Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources The Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI) has been viewed as an important milestone. However, do not underestimate its real conservation value. To see a plan such as this developed and implemented is a conservation victory.

Individuals who have worked on avian conservation and management through the years have often changed positions or titles, but have remained within a close knit circle. As a result, the NBCI has the well rounded wisdom of many avian experts. I firmly believe that this wisdom has been the basis for the overwhelming acceptance and excitement regarding this initiative. Those involved know what quail need and also recognize those species that can and will also benefit from good land management.

In Kentucky, our Wildlife Diversity Program avian specialists have worked hand in hand with the Upland Game Program to develop management and monitoring components to measure the success of the NBCI. Information gained has allowed land managers to adapt and focus their work to achieve the best results for quail and other grassland songbirds.

The NBCI is about more than just quail, it is about managing a grassland system so that birds, such as Grassland Sparrows, Henslow’s Sparrows and Dickcissels, and other wildlife can thrive. That is conservation we can all get behind.