Very good article and I agree with her but there are a couple of other factors which have affected the quail population. Feral hogs rooting and destroying nests/ eggs is one. The second being Racoons, possums, skunks which feed on baby quail and the eggs. With the loss of interest in trapping varmint numbers have soared over the past 30 or so years. Once the hogs, varmints and fire ants are controlled and in check you will see a return of quail.

Interesting especially about the flys that lay the eggs on the ants, like the screw worm issue back in the seventies I think it was.

My farm is loaded with them

I could buy into the fire ant thing except we have a big problem, especially here in west Texas,our quail population had damn near went to zero and we have no fire ants.

We were booming when fire ants were abundant.

I don't get it. Some places are good to go some are not.....

Dang near everything is working against the poor quail; drought, fire ants, eye worms, pigs, varmints, birds of prey, conversion of natural habitat to coastal Bermuda, development, and on and on. I'd hate to be a quail. The natural mortality rate is high enough as it is.

In the sixties S.E. Ks, lots of hedge rows, most plots of land was 100acres or less tilled, with some plots of tall grass mixed in, was great quail hunting, not saying is was as good as Tx., on a good day we would push 15 coveys, now the hedge rows have been bull dozed out and now what is not tilled is fescue. total loss of habitat.

Still plenty of cover in Texas but few quail.

Just wait till it starts raining again.

Here we go again.
I think we found out the last time that RAIN is the key.

Not in the coastal prairies.

I'm of the opinion that anything I can do to help is worth the try. I'll help pay for medicated feed, I'll drive around our pasture with fire ant poison. If it increases bird population I'm in. Rain will always help.