How implementing pollinator plantings can benefit both quail and pollinator species
By Rachel Holt
Wildflowers are what one might consider “more than just a pretty face.”
Apart from their exceptional beauty, wildflowers, or rather pollinating plants, provide a myriad of benefits for both pollinators and quail.
Pollinator plantings are a crucial component of brood rearing habitat for quail, according to Ciera Garner, Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) east pollinator coordinator.
Brood rearing habitat refers to an environment essential for the survival of young wildlife. After a quail hen successfully hatches her clutch, she needs a safe area with plentiful food to protect her brood.
Pollinator plantings make ideal brood rearing habitat. The variety of plants can provide overhead cover from aerial predators, create “tunnels” out of native bunch grass for movement and offer an accessible food source for chicks.
A quail chick’s diet is 80% invertebrate, according to Morgan Meador, WLFW east outreach coordinator. Invertebrates are a crucial source of protein and fat needed for growth and the development of flight feathers.
Pollinator plantings play a critical role in supporting quail chick diets by attracting a variety of insects, including native bees, butterflies, skippers, flies and beetles with their vibrant flowers. During the fall and winter months, when pollinating plants are no longer in bloom and insects are sparse, these plants bear seeds for quail to eat.
For a pollinator planting to be beneficial, however, it must also be diverse and native.
“I’ve always told landowners to think of what quail need as a buffet. They need diversity in diet like humans do,” Garner said. “Different insects provide different nutrients.”
Biodiversity benefits landowners as well. Meador said a variety of native plants can have numerous impacts on the land by preventing soil erosion and reducing sediment runoff into waterways.
Furthermore, Meador said native plants provide food, mobility and shelter for quail and pollinators that non-native plants cannot. Sod-forming grasses like Bermuda, Dallis and Fescue grow too thick for quail to move, reduce food availability and offer little cover from predators or weather.
There is a general lack of understanding of what constitutes good quail habitat and the role pollinators play in it, according to Garner. For this reason, she said one of the biggest challenges to establishing pollinator plantings is getting landowners to buy in.
"As a biologist, it's crucial to first figure out the landowner's objectives,” Garner said. “From there, you have to figure out how to get the landowner excited about managing their property. Whether that's showing them a cool plant you find on a site visit or pointing out the great potential their property has with some good management.”
One such example is Thomas Baldridge, a landowner in Romance, Arkansas, who initially introduced pollinator plantings onto his land to help his honeybee production. But as the wildflowers grew in his front yard, so did his quail numbers. Inspired by this newfound habitat, he implemented tree thinning and prescribed burning on other areas of his property, leading to a surge of wildflowers and pollinators, as well as a return of quail to previously uninhabited areas of his land.
“If we're focused on saving quail, then we’re saving insects, butterflies and hummingbirds, and it all happens in a pollinator planting,” Baldridge said. “It's almost like the Field of Dreams movie. If you build it, they will come.”
Garner said the general public’s fondness for quail makes them an effective rallying point in conservation. By selling quail conservation to landowners, it also protects the habitat of various other species, including pollinators like the Monarch Butterfly, a species the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed a listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Meador and Garner said they encourage any landowner looking to implement pollinator plantings on their land to reach out to their local biologists, whether Quail Forever or state agencies, to help as a guide through the entire process. Natural Resources Conservation Service has cost-share programs available that can help pay for implementing these practices.
For more information, please visit your USDA Service Center Locator or find a Quail Forever biologist in your area.