a a a a ea ae 
Oo} 
. 
Vesting cover in Calhoun County, table 1, can be classified 
according to four major types:. (1) roadsides and fencerows, (7°) ap- 
ple orchards, (3) hay fields and (4) grain fields. Roadside end 
fencerow nesting cover is furnished are aes be sueh plants as blue 
grass (Poa praetensis), ean lettuc (Lactuca ee) Gaisy fleavane 
Apple orchards, ranging in size from 1 acre to avout: 300 
acres, abound on the rolling hills and provide more acreage of quail 
nesting cover than any of the other three types.. Sincs most of the 
orchards are on rolling terrain, it’ is* common practice to retard 
erosion by seeding between the trees with a mixture of red clover, 
blue grass and brome grass. This practice has, Of course, @restig 
increased the quality of nesting covers in many orehares. In other 
orchards, where invasion of vegetation into bare areas is allcwsd to 
take place, forbs and Other coarse herbs predominate in the ground 
cover. To facilitate spraying and picking of oo Fruit growers 
generaliy cut the herbaceous undergrowtu in midsumner. During the 
1958 season, however, because of the poor crop of apples, less than 
sO per cent of the orchards were mowed; so poor in fact was the 
apple crop that many orchards were sprayed only once. 
On the 70 or more farms studied in the lower third of 
Calhoun County in 1938, hay was grown on 1,537 acres; rea clover, ‘he 
most important hay ercp, on 1,163 acres; alfalfa, the seccnd in imr- 
portance, on 249 acres; sweet clover, on 175 acres. Wheat. grown on 
Son arms, Comprasedi05) per seébns of the acreage of’ small grains. ~ it 
aggregated 1,568 acres. 
BOBWHITE QUAI 
Clean farming, as practiced in the Big Prairie district of 
Iilinois, has greatly restricted the range of the bobwhite quail. iE 
present, good quail territory aS Lound farce ly atone bac blues of 
the Tllinois and Mississippi rivers and in the hili and tight subsoil 
regions of southern Blodas Calhoun County combines many of the 
hapitat characteristics of the river bluff and the hill countries, 
making it especially favoreble to quail. 
Roadside Nesting 
Roadsides aggregating aporoximately 20 mites in length, 
about 25 acres in area, were cut by a local township commissioner be- 
tween May 27 and July 15. Cursory observation indicated that approx- 
imately two-thirds of this area, 16 acres, was suitable for nesting 
cover. Table 1 shows the relative density of quail nests in these 
16 acres of cut roadside cover as compared to the density in other 
cover types. No data on uncut roadside cover were obtained. 
Of the four nests found along the mowed roadside, three 
were in ciumps of blue grass; the other was in a patch of eweet 
clover. Two nests were deserted because of mowing; one nest hatched. 
Im one “instance the female returned to the nest only to have it 
destroyed by a predator, probably a dog. 
