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March 16, 2001

By Dale Rollins
Extension Wildlife Specialist

Windshield estimates of quail habitat...

Although my dad has been dead for more than eight years now, every so often something happens that makes me reflect on one of his many witticisms. I was returning from a visit to my hometown of Hollis, Okla., last summer when a big grasshopper smashed into the windshield of my pickup, leaving a blob of his protoplasm. Without thinking I relayed to my six-year-old niece what my daddy had said a hundred times to me at that age: "He won't have the guts to do that again."

As I drove from Hollis to Childress, some areas of the road were almost greasy from grasshopper remains. When I made it to Paducah, I stopped to clean my windshield, er, plexiglass canvas, that now looked like a Van Gogh collage of Rolling Plains anthropods. As I scrubbed the windshield, I reflected on how uncharacteristically clean our windshields had been over much of west Texas. The dry weather this last summer on much of the state's rangelands caused grasshopper numbers to wane. And the desert termites that thrived don't make it high enough to register on the windshield barometer of insect abundance.

But in other areas, including my corner of southwestern Oklahoma, June was very good to grasshoppers, and the windshields and bumpers of pickup trucks bore mute testimony thereof. Thanks to more than 10 inches of rain during the month of June, my old quail hunting haunts were awash with grasshoppers. As I drove down the edge of a CRP field that had grown up with kochia and careless weeds, the hoppers hit my windshield like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie or a biblical plague.

While I realize many of you won't share my sentiments, I couldn't have been more pleased about the Orthop-teran irruption. My first thoughts were of the high times being had by mama turkey and her fryer-sized poults...they were surely having a heyday. And I'm sure that when mom and pop bobwhite lead their bumblebee-sized chicks from the nest, the smaller hoppers will appease their voracious appetites.

Sure enough, about two miles down the road from the CRP field, I saw three turkey hens and an unknown number of poults scurrying from the roadside through a stand of black locust trees. The protein packets made available by the grasshoppers were being put to good use. The protein requirement of growing poults and chicks exceeds 30 percent, and nothing on the menu is better than insects for growing gamebirds.

At the Bobwhite Brigade we play a game called "Run for Your Life" in which pseudo-bobwhites (cadets) forage for various foods (candies). Generally the most popular food is wrapped in a thin exoskeleton (paper) and goes by the name of "Starbursts." I tell the cadets that Starbursts represent insects—the perfect quail food. In the quail's world, insects are a MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) that boasts of protein, energy, essential amino acids and water.

My knowledge of entomology has faded a good bit over the last 25 years. I can recall learning 10 different orders of insects when I was in college; I'm sure there were more. Of those, three are especially important cuisine to growing chicks and poults: Orthoptera, Homoptera and Coleoptera. Orthoptera includes the grasshoppers and crickets, and perhaps the most important order in terms of sheer biomass alone. Homopterans (leaf hoppers) are important for young quail and Coleopterans (beetles) will grace almost any quail's crop from September until New Year's Day.

There's one spot on the back side of my father-in-law's place north of Hollis that always prompts me to visit. It's 40 acres of sandy land that doesn't get grazed often, and it offers a herbarium hall of fame for bobwhites, and for me.

Standing in one spot last summer I could pluck four prime legumes (catclaw sensitivebriar, partridge pea, trailing wild bean and tephrosia) without taking a step. Within a stone's throw I could add tickclover, bigtop dalea and lespedeza. Little bluestem at densities that I estimated to be in excess of 400 per acre filled in the interspaces if a western ragweed didn't. Sounds like bobwhite heaven, eh?

As my four setters scoured the landscape for their favorite scent, I had them "whoa" several times for Kodak moments. The fact that they never pointed a quail that afternoon didn't surprise me. In all the times I've had my dogs afield, they have never, not once, pointed a quail on a nest. That's pretty phenomenal to me, as I contend my bird dogs are second to none (who doesn't?). And the dearth of points speaks volumes for the hen's ability to disappear into the landscape. Another adaptation that allows quail to stay afloat in a sea of predators.

But back to grasshoppers. I know of no other plant that produces grasshoppers like kochia. It grows just about anywhere the soil has been disturbed and there aren't too many cattle present, as it's sought by the cattle. Second to kochia for hopper manna is carelessweed (pigweed), another weed usually grazed heavily by cattle.

The clock of my life can be rewound easily by the sight of a plethora of those good yellow fishin' hoppers (I think it's correctly called the differential grasshopper). I've spent many a midnight tight-lining a yellow hopper in hopes of landing a mess of yellow cats from one of the many farm ponds that dotted the Harmon County landscapes.

One of my favorite silver bullets allows that "where you stand on an issue usually depends on where you sit." If you farm alfalfa or have a favorite garden, you'll likely not savor my views on grasshoppers. But if you long for covey rises in the fall, then tip your cap to bug-splattered windshields. It's a testimony to wetter, and better, times.