The Birds and the Bees: Keys to Pheasant Production
The 2016 National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic at the Kansas City Convention Center in downtown Kansas City on February 19-21 boasted a new twist. This event, hosted by the national conservation groups Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, is America’s largest trade show and convention for upland hunters, landowners, sport dog trainers, and wildlife habitat conservationists.
The event annually highlights the best management practices for America’s two favorite game birds, the Ringneck Pheasant and Bobwhite Quail. Usually, people trying to manage habitat focus on creating nesting or resting cover, perhaps in conjunction with food plots to insure ready access to seeds and grain.
These are keys to good habitat and are beneficial to game birds by the hundreds as well as other wild creatures by the thousands. Research has proven there’s another habitat practice that could or should rank up there with cover and food to ensure maximum pheasant production and this same management tactic has a side benefit that extends far from the acreage being actively managed for wildlife and hunters.
THE BEES
Honey bees, other types of bees, butterflies and insects, collectively called “pollinators,” play a critical role in pollinating the fruits, nuts and vegetables we eat every day. One-third of all crops rely to some extent on pollination from insects making it important humans do what can be done to promote the health of these pollinators. A large mix of factors have been working negatively on pollinators for decades. Commercial beekeeping operations have dwindled by more than two-thirds, driven by economics, disease and parasites. The disease and parasites have equally decimated wild populations. Another critical factor is the lack of food for the insects at certain times of the year.
Pollinators rely on a steady supply of flowering plants from spring through fall to keep the nectar flowing. Put a few hives in a cherry orchard in the spring and you’ll have well fed pollinators for a few weeks. Beekeepers can then move the domestic hives to new locations as different flowering crops bloom. The wild pollinators in the area go through periods of feast and famine.
THE BIRDS
In the spring, prior to and during the nesting season, adult pheasants and quail, particularly the hens, begin adding more and more protein rich insects to their diet to help them produce healthy, strong eggs. For the first several weeks of their life, pheasant and quail chicks don’t eat seeds and grains at all. They could starve in a cornfield. The chicks survive on a diet exclusively made up of protein-rich insects. Whether we call it brood habitat or pollinator habitat, the same mix of grasses and flowers critical to honey bees or nectar and pollen-eating insects is critical to pheasants and quail. The plants in this environment provide food for the insects and insects for the birds.
Making every acre the highest quality habitat possible, exponentially increases the benefits for pheasants and quail, meadow larks, other songbirds, as well as for pollinator insects, monarch butterflies and a wide array of wildlife species.
One of the mottos of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever is “We are the Habitat People.” The key to their new programs highlighted at this year’s convention focused on installing, managing or replacing existing habitat with lower cost, high nutrition seed mixes that include flowering species of plants with distinct blooming cycles. Honey bees, the pollinator workhorse of U.S. fruit and vegetable agriculture, and other nectar loving insects will have more blooms from which to collect nectar and pollen to sustain and promote colony growth and honey production throughout the growing season. The birds get more nutritious insects to eat.
Unlike some national conservation groups with a high overhead and a national agenda, more than 90% of the money raised by local chapters of Pheasants Forever or Quail Forever, is used to fund local habitat work and local initiatives.