Northern Bobwhite!

 A few days ago I had a call from someone who photographed a bird in his yard, and didn't know what it was. The description over the phone sounded game bird-like, but there wasn't anything that jumped to my mind other than a female Ring-necked Pheasant. The observer was quite definite that it wasn't a pheasant. The bird had been seen several days earlier, and he didn't have a way of getting the photo to me, so I agreed to stop by in the near future. I did, and he showed me the photo, and it was immediately apparent that it was likely a female Northern Bobwhite!

I used my 'phone to take this photo from the back of Mr. Rivard's camera, just to look at it more closely on the computer at home. It was a female Northern Bobwhite, indeed.

How could it be? Where had it come from? Northern Bobwhite (NOBO) had been recognized as an endangered species in Ontario and Canada for at least a couple of decades. I remember hearing them occasionally on the farm where I grew up, just a bit north of Rondeau Prov Park. In checking the results on the Rondeau/Blenheim Christmas Bird Count, which began in 1939, they were seen somewhat regularly with a few gaps, between 1939 and 1977. In 1944, as many as 89 were observed! More typically half a dozen to a dozen were observed in any given year when they were seen, although the last year there were 32 reported on Dec 18, 1977.

It was a species whose numbers fluctuated considerably over the years, and that was a known trend. According to the account in the unpublished manuscript "The Birds of Kent County, Ontario" by A. A. Wood, it was stated that "in 1892, E. W. Sandys wrote that Quail were plentiful, River Road traversing Howard Township" and in 1896 Sandys stated that "Quail increasing in Southern Ontario near Lake St. Clair after being so nearly destroyed a short time ago."

While I was the park naturalist at Rondeau in the 1970s and 1980s, I came across this next photo in the slide files. It is that of a NOBO nest which had been found nearby in the 1960s, and photographed by R. D. "Dick" Ussher, the park naturalist at the time. Knowing how desperate the species was even then, I took the slide with me when I moved into my District Ecologist position in Chatham, and eventually had it scanned. The roundish nest with a dome of grass is quite distinctive.

Woods also described an interesting series of events in 1944, where eight tobacco moth traps had been set out around a two acre field of Burley tobacco. "A count of moths was made July 2 totaling forty-five moths but on July 6 all that remained in the traps was the bits of wings of the moths. The soil was smoothed in front of all trap openings to check for tracks and on the next visit Bob-white tracks were around and in all of the traps. They continued to eat the moths in the traps until July 21. The county seems to be well suited to this game bird but until more protection is given them there is little hope for much increase."

What has contributed to the demise of NOBO in Ontario? There are several main reasons, the first being the loss of good quality grassland. But in more recent decades, other things have factored in, mainly weather. It was in early March of 1976 that a major ice storm hit much of southwestern Ontario, and it was several days before the temperature warmed up enough to melt the ice. In late January of both 1977 and 1978 there were major snow storms. On the one occasion, the temperature started at about freezing, so not a big deal. But then came the rain, turning to snow and then the bitter cold arrived. Temperatures dropped to close to minus 18C. It was a recipe for disaster. I remember hearing about various birds such as crows and starlings dropping dead from their perch due to the rain, snow and bitter cold. With three severe weather events in three successive years, it spelled the end of NOBO in southwestern Ontario, other than at Walpole where at least they had some quality prairie to survive in.

Northern Bobwhite is a species that likes large tracts of tallgrass prairie, and when that isn't available, can adapt to grassland such as pasture or hayfield. And certainly the larger the better. Some people have suggested that the species can do well, or at least okay, in smaller tracts, which have shelter from severe weather by trees, hedgerows, and such. That might be true to a point. However this must just be the case when the population is doing well in the first place. It is important to realize that the main predators of NOBO are things like hawks, foxes, coyotes and cats. Where do hawks perch to search for prey with their incredible eyesight? On trees, which would line the prairie or pasture. Where do most four-legged predators travel as they roam the landscape? Along fence-rows and tree lines. So by forcing NOBO to spend a significant amount of their time in or close by fence-row type habitat, it only served them up as a food source for predators. If they have large areas of grassland, and ideally the native tallgrass prairie, they stand a much better chance for survival. Here are a couple of examples of large tallgrass prairies I've visited in Missouri.

Treaty Line Prairie

Wa Kon Tah Prairie

 Even with grassland, tallgrass prairie is so much better than a pasture or hayfield. To start with it has a greater diversity of seeds and invertebrates to feed on, and just as importantly, many of the grasses in a tallgrass prairie are bunch grasses. This means that the grass grows up in a clump, with the stems at the edge of the clump often falling over, leaving space at ground level for the birds to travel through, sight unseen by aerial predators. With the predominant species of a healthy prairie being made up of up to 75% bunch grass, such as Big Bluestem, the NOBO has lots of ability to travel throughout its territory without much danger.

Big Bluestem

 The only place I have ever photographed NOBO was in Missouri on one of my major forays to that state to explore the fabulous tallgrass prairies there. I had heard them regularly giving their diagnostic Bob-bob-white whistle, but seeing them was not easy. This one was in a leafless, thorny shrub of some type not far from where I parked, but the light was harsh and I couldn't get closer, so this heavily processed and cropped photo is the best I could do.

It was immediately adjacent to the Charles Schwarz prairie, shown below. Clearly this is a huge tallgrass prairie site and it is in very good condition. It is owned by the Missouri Prairie Foundation, which is an amazing not-for-profit organization with the primary goal of protecting and restoring the tallgrass prairie that is particularly well represented in the southwestern part of the state.

 Sadly, it seems that NOBO is almost, if not actually, extirpated from Ontario. Although good sized parcels of prairie used to occur, it is also very productive, so it was converted to agriculture many decades ago. Even pastures and hayfields are declining. The only naturally occurring population of NOBO left in Ontario, at least considering the map of Ontario, is the unceded territory of the Walpole Island First Nation. Even there, in spite of the continued presence of tallgrass prairie, NOBO is not doing well. They seem to have disappeared from parts of the island complex, probably due in part to the expansion of the needs for residential area, the decline in fire which would have kept the prairies in good condition and the increasing presence of predators such as coyote and cats. This site below, which we call Island Prairie, is one of the few fairly large remnants, and it was near here where I last saw NOBO during a visit about 5 years ago.

The observation of a single, female NOBO was described at the beginning of this post. And it still begs the question regarding its origin. Given that the species is not migratory, and the closest population is at least 15 to 20 kilometres away in a straight-line direction at Walpole, it likely didn't leave the best quality habitat there to arrive at the edge of a small village community surrounded by intensive agriculture. NOBO is sometimes kept as a game bird in private collections, and some in the hunting community even raise and release birds for hunting purposes. I am not aware of anyone in the immediate area doing this, but it could be happening. So it is likely that this is either an escaped or released bird, and in its wanderings ended up at Mr. Rivard's yard, at least for a few minutes, and it has not been seen since.