The Quest to Save Masked Bobwhite Quail
Story and Photos by Keith Crowley
When you hear the phrase “rare bird,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Whooping cranes? The California condor? The one bird you aren’t likely to think about is the masked bobwhite quail. In fact, it’s possible you’ve never even heard of them - and they’re native to the southwestern United States.
The masked bobwhite (Colinus virginianus ridgwayi) is a distinct subspecies of the bird we all know well, the northern bobwhite. Originally, masked bobwhites were considered a separate species, and one look at the mature males and you’ll know why. With their black heads and russet breasts, they don’t look much like their northern cousins. They could even be mistaken for an American robin at first glance. Female masked bobwhites look more like their northern counterparts, but they also have features akin to Mearns quail. In song however, male masked bobs are pure, onomatopoeic “bobwhite.”
Regardless of the exact taxonomy, masked bobwhites are so rare that they were considered extinct in the wild by 1950.
The masked bobwhite range is distinctly more arid than that of northern bobwhites. The country they historically inhabited stretched from central Mexico into the southwestern United States, particularly southcentral Arizona. When the bird was first described to science in 1885, they were thriving in the region, but by the turn of the 20th century major population declines were already evident. By the late 1940s they were gone - at least as far as anyone knew.
Then, in 1964, an Arizona taxidermist named Jim Levy heard that there might be a few birds roaming an area of Sonora, Mexico approximately 150 miles south of Tucson, Arizona.
Male masked bobwhite in flight pen prior to release at Buenos Aires NWR near Sasabe, Arizona. Note the leg bands.
Fascinated by the quail, he traveled to Mexico with his brother Seymour and learned that the rumors were correct. A few of those Mexican birds were later captured and released at likely places in the southwestern United States. It was a haphazard process, however, and not surprisingly the birds didn’t take hold. Things looked bleak and masked bobwhites were among the very first animals added to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973.
Those early efforts failed largely because of something dear to us all: habitat. Until the establishment of the 118,000-acre Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in 1985, there was no good place to reintroduce masked bobwhites in the U.S. With the creation of this refuge specifically for them, a captive breeding program began and continues today.
At first the results of this breed-and-release program were discouraging. The quail habitat at the refuge had suffered through decades of overgrazing and fire suppression when it was a working cattle ranch.
Enthusiastic wildlife managers also did too much burning. Masked bobwhites need native grasses, but they also need dense overhead cover. Burning and grazing removed the native grasses, shrubs, and trees and those were replaced by mesquite and the invasive grasses.
“People often think of frequent fire when it comes to bobwhites,” says Ron Leathers, QF’s Chief Conservation Officer. “But we can’t apply a one-size-fits-all model. As you move west, vegetation growth dynamics change. Rainfall patterns in the masked bobwhite range don’t allow for the same kind of rapid growth. Early successional habitat persists longer here, and we need to adjust our management regimes to the conditions on site to accomplish the same thing.”
Mesquite is native, but it wasn’t a dominant plant species in the region, and it doesn’t provide that ground-level cover the quail need to avoid predation the way native shrubs like lotebush and hackberry did. That brush, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), “is most desirable when it forms dense clumps that provide a closed canopy above the quail and bare ground beneath.” An early study into habitat also concluded that “dense stands of perennial grasses are an important component of masked bobwhite habitat.” Mature mesquite and invasive Johnson grass are a bad combination for masked bobwhites and survival rates were low.
Today wildlife managers at Buenos Aires have curtailed grazing and they burn the critical quail habitat far less often than they used to, only every 15-20 years or so. And they are restoringthemissingtrees, shrubs, and grasses. But first they must remove the ubiquitous mesquite, and the process is labor-intensive. Since fire doesn’t work very well on large mesquite, the solution is to mechanically remove the plants. Another tactic is to cut young mesquite branches half-way through, allowing the branches to fold over and provide the quail with overhead cover.
Biologists, field technicians and volunteers half-cut mesquite branches at Buenos Aires NWR so they fold over to provide necessary ground cover for quail and other species
From a behavioral standpoint, masked bobwhites act much like northern bobwhites. They roost under heavy cover and huddle together for safety and warmth. However, masked bobwhites mate and breed later than northern bobwhites. Late June through July is the peak of the breeding season and like Mearns quail, masked bobwhites need the annual summer monsoon rains for successful nesting. According to Buenos Aires Refuge Manager Richard Albers, “Their reproductive success is correlated to the monsoon season resulting in a shorter breeding season, than other northern bobwhites.”
This correlation appears to be key to masked bobwhites. A 1998 study “found that populations of masked bobwhite declined in 13 of 14 years whenthe preceding three-year average of June-August rainfall was below 20 cm (7.9 inches), and increased in 11 of 13 years when the preceding three-year average was above 20 cm.” In short, drought may be a significant limiting factor for masked bobs.
Masked bobwhites are also more thermally sensitive than scaled and Gambel’s quail also found in the region. Dense vegetation holds more stable temperatures for the quail, both day and night, than the open mesquite habitat does. And while the other desert quail species are notoriously fleet footed and prefer to run from danger, masked bobs are more inclined to hide and wait when predators are spotted, just like northern bobs. So, that low overhead cover also minimizes access for both avian and terrestrial predators.
Male masked bobwhites do much of the brood rearing; so much so that wildlife managers initially used sterilized male northern bobwhites as surrogate parents for recently hatched masked bobs. Sterilized, of course, to prevent diluting the already precarious genetics of the masked quail. Performing a vasectomy on a male bobwhite paints an interesting image. However, the sterile northern bobs did a remarkably good job of watching over their foster broods and that part of the program was a pleasant surprise to the biologists working on the program.
Understandably, quail hunting is prohibited at Buenos Aires NWR, even though there are scaled, Gambel’s, and Mearns quail present. In the heat of a covey rise it would be too easy to mistake masked bobs for one of the other quail species on the refuge. No one wants that kind of mistake to happen, but that doesn’t mean that hunters are being left out of the plan completely. In the past, USFWS has enlisted the help of local quail hunters with steady bird dogs to help locate the quail and acclimate them to terrestrial predators. They call it putting the “fear of dog” in them.
The goal for all species listed under the ESA is delisting. Creating enoughhabitatformaskedbobwhites to thrive and reproduce naturally is a work in progress and there are markers biologists need to reach in coming years to prove that the birds are back for good.
Forthesebirdsspecifically, delisting will only occur once four separate self-sustaining populations exist in the U.S. and Mexico, and those populations must average 1,000 birds per site over 10 years.
At Buenos Aires NWR, Refuge Manager Albers says, “our goal is one bird per four acres in each of three focus areas which would result in a total of 1,201 individual masked bobwhite on the refuge.” In addition to Buenos Aires NWR, masked bobwhites are raised in Puebla, Mexico, and at the Sutton Avian Research Center in Oklahoma.
With only about 600 masked bobwhites in the rearing facilities now, we are a long way off the necessary requirements for delisting to occur, but little by little the biologists at Buenos Aires NWR and the other sites are working it out.
There is still much to learn, and these quail need all the good press and boots on the ground help they can get. Personally, I look forward to the day when the entire Sonoran ecosystem will echo again with the call of the masked bobwhite.
When he’s not at home in northwest Wisconsin, author and photographer Keith R. Crowley is probably hanging out somewhere in the grasslands of the Dakotas or the deserts of southern Arizona following a bird dog. He has written several award-winning books, including Pheasant Dogs and Gordon MacQuarrie: The Story of an Old Duck Hunter. You can contact Keith, or see more of his work at CrowleyImages.com.
This story originally appeared in the 2024 Summer Issue of the Quail Forever Journal. If you enjoyed it and would like to be the first to read more great upland content like this, become a member today!