The California quail—our state hen, in addition to the official hen of San Francisco—is a first-rate influencer. Roads, trails, companies, and not less than one creek and park are all named for it, to not point out a Quail Pale Ale. But in a lot of the Bay Space, good luck truly recognizing one. Wild quail have not too long ago disappeared altogether from San Francisco, and populations have plummeted elsewhere. Now, plans are beneath strategy to carry again these iconic birds.
The Presidio, a former quail stronghold, seems to be set to be the testing grounds. In a 2022 feasibility report publicly launched this month, the nonprofit San Francisco Estuary Institute modeled a hypothetical quail inhabitants to suggest that not less than 50 wild-caught quail be reintroduced there over a span of 1 to a few years. To guard in opposition to inbreeding, 10 extra quail would possibly must be introduced in each 5 years. However in any other case the scientists decided that quail populations would doubtless persist on the former navy base—not like earlier than, after they winked out.
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What’s modified? For one factor, substantial habitat enhancements have added dozens of acres of the birds’ most popular shrub cowl. In the meantime, streets have been reengineered to sluggish quail-killing site visitors, and new inexperienced areas, comparable to Tunnel Tops park over Freeway 101, have improved habitat connectivity to the Presidio’s coastal parts. Lew Stringer, affiliate director of pure sources on the Presidio Belief, which has taken the lead on quail reintroduction, says quail seemingly “may thrive right here due to the restoration, if not for the truth that they will’t get right here on their very own.”
Maybe surprisingly, quail can also profit from the presence of coyotes, which repopulated the Presidio pretty not too long ago and prey on cats, rats, raccoons, and different quail and quail-egg eaters. (In truth, digicam traps within the Presidio have recorded them with rats of their mouths.) A 2021 SFEI examine that checked out greater than 1,000 city parks in California discovered quail are way more more likely to be current when coyotes dwell alongside them.
Offered they safe neighborhood help and corral the $50,000 to $100,000 it’ll price, the Presidio plans on bringing the birds again throughout the subsequent few years. California quail have been launched for hunters in lots of places, from South America to New Zealand, however this might be the primary city reintroduction, and the primary solely for the quail’s sake. “We’re taking our time on this,” says Presidio wildlife ecologist Phoebe Parker-Shames. “We’re nonetheless within the exploratory section. We wish to be actually acutely aware of the dangers we’re taking over.”
Ought to they pull it off, there are pluses to having quail round. These rotund fluffballs with comma-shaped topknots aerate the soil after they scratch for seeds, shoots, berries, and bugs, they usually disperse the seeds of native vegetation. On the identical time, their presence would foster an curiosity in conservation, in response to the San Francisco Estuary Institute. “Even individuals who know nothing about birds I really feel get a bit jazzed about California quail,” says Kelly Iknayan, an SFEI senior scientist and lead creator of the 2021 quail/coyote examine.
There’s some precedent for fulfillment. Since 2015, a number of animals have been reintroduced into the Presidio, together with western pond turtles, Pacific refrain frogs, rough-skinned newts, three-spined sticklebacks, and two butterfly species, and most seem like flourishing. And although no hen has ever been reintroduced into the Presidio, the western bluebird and wrentit got here again on their very own because the habitat improved.
Nonetheless, quail could be the most important problem up to now. Dominik Mosur, a San Francisco subject ornithologist and animal care specialist on the Randall Museum, factors out that reintroduced quail will doubtless initially die at excessive charges, as they battle to search out meals, water, and shelter, and he questions whether or not they’ll have sufficient foraging house and secure breeding areas. “What the Presidio is doing could be very a lot an experiment,” Mosur says, including that, though he’d like to be confirmed improper, he doubts “whether or not reintroduction could be very efficient in the long run with no fixed want to usher in extra quail.”
“They’re such charismatic birds they usually make cool sounds,” Mosur says. “They’re superb. However I don’t suppose they will hack it in right now’s world, sadly.”
They couldn’t hack it
California quail had been as soon as plentiful round San Francisco, roaming by patches of open woodlands, chaparral, and different scrubby areas. In 1896, a navy officer on the Presidio reported seeing “a number of coveys of gorgeous quail,” with 100 or extra birds in every covey. In sure metropolis places, quail remained frequent effectively into the twentieth century. “There are lots of people who bear in mind them,” Parker-Shames says. “These birds are very beloved.”
Step by step, nevertheless, quail acquired rarer and rarer. Data present that they disappeared from Ocean Seashore within the Seventies, from Bernal Heights within the Nineteen Eighties, from Sutro Heights, Lands Finish, McLaren Park, and Lake Merced within the Nineties, and from the Presidio round 2006. For a time, they held on in Golden Gate Park. However the final SF quail vanished by 2018. Since then, all quail seen within the metropolis—with the doable exception of 1 noticed at Lake Merced in June 2023—are presumed to be launched home birds.
In additional rural elements of the Bay Space, comparable to Level Reyes and Mount Diablo, California quail stay frequent. Daybreak Lemoine, co-compiler of the Oakland Christmas Hen Depend, recollects seeing so many chicks on a latest go to to Del Valle Regional Park, close to Livermore, that it “regarded like the entire floor was transferring.” (Quail are prolific breeders, laying as much as 16 eggs at a time.) Throughout their total vary, the inhabitants might even be growing. But their distinctive “Chi-ca-go” calls not growth out in lots of city and suburban parts of the Bay Space that when teemed with them. “Wherever massive densities of people abut open house, you’re not certain to see very many, or any, quail anymore,” Mosur says.
Information from the Christmas Hen Depend, an annual Audubon-administered census, present sharp declines throughout a lot of the East Bay. Within the Seventies, for instance, the Oakland CBC reported near 1,000 quail some years, however now could be fortunate to succeed in 100. Most of those seem to reside on or close to East Bay Municipal Utility District lands, the place human entry is restricted. Additional south, the Hayward/Fremont CBC reported solely 11 quail in 2022, down from 118 as not too long ago as 2007. And in San Mateo County, Mosur says just a few pairs stay in San Bruno Mountain Park and Edgewood Park. (The state of affairs is much more dire in southern California, the place quail have all however utterly disappeared from the San Diego and Los Angeles metro areas.)
Blame the cats (and raccoons, and roads, and …)
Along with habitat loss and fragmentation, research have fingered outside cats as a driver of the quail’s decline. Within the Nineties, when quail had almost disappeared from the Presidio, Stringer recollects witnessing “folks drive up in fancy vehicles, unload an unlimited quantity of [pet] meals, after which out of the bushes you’d see as much as 30 cats arrive.” (The park has since cracked down on such conduct, and its free-roaming cat inhabitants has diminished considerably since coyotes arrived.)
Although much less effectively studied, growing numbers of raccoons, Cooper’s hawks, and corvids might have additionally contributed to the quail’s troubles. As have roads. Mosur recollects coming throughout a quail chick that had been squashed by a motorized cart within the San Francisco Botanical Backyard, the species’ final bastion within the metropolis, and he’s seen useless quail on the drive to Level Reyes. (A 2014 examine estimated that 89 million to 340 million birds are killed by autos every year in the USA alone.) Mosur likewise believes that hikers, mountain bikers, and off-leash canine can push out quail, whereas inbreeding takes a toll as soon as populations grow to be small and remoted. “I believe the massive image right here is dying by a thousand cuts,” Stringer says.
Working as a part of the brand new nature alliance Reimagining San Francisco, Stringer and Parker-Shames hope they will help flip across the quail’s fortunes. In the long run, they envision a citywide quail mission, with the birds prospering in numerous SF parks linked by a community of wildlife corridors. Different municipalities might take be aware. “There are lots of different locations that wish to do what we’re doing,” Parker-Shames says. “We’re going to be studying lots of classes and sharing lots of classes as we go.”
