One thing that will surprise most folks was the lack of snake predation on the West Texas quail.
"We've monitored over 400 nests and never seen a snake at one," he said.
The reptiles do prey on quail nests in other parts of the birds' range. Rollins presented a series of still photos and video from remote-sensing cameras set to monitor quail nests at locations in other states. Rat snakes showed up to eat the eggs, as did coons, armadillos, possums, foxes and other nest predators. (One possum even caught the hen sitting on the nest, ate her, then ate the eggs.)

Yikes! But they do take care of the rats