December, 1958 



Scott: Wildlife Rlsearch 



189 



The co-operative research has involved 

 nearly all phases of quail biology and an 

 experimental habitat management pro- 

 gram. Among the important contributions 

 are two studies, one on the diet of quail 

 (E. J. Larimer unpublished MS) and the 

 other on quail populations on an unman- 

 aged area. The second study has empha- 

 sized once again the great importance of 

 undisturbed grassland to quail productiv- 

 ity and provided evidence of the amount 

 and distribution of undisturbed grassland 

 required to insure high quail productivity. 

 The quail investigations have received 

 outside financial assistance from Max 

 McGraw, A. E. Staley, the North Ameri- 

 can Wildlife Foundation, and the United 

 Electric Coal Company ; the coal com- 

 pany also has made available extensive 

 landholdings for experiments with habitat 

 management. 



The Ring-Necked Pheasant.— Al- 

 though the attempt to establish pheasants 

 in Illinois had gotten under way in the 

 1890's, this state's biological research- 

 ers were apparently unimpressed with it 

 as a subject for investigation. In a dis- 

 cussion of the animal resources of the 

 state, Forbes (1912Z':48) advised that he 

 had not had time to appraise efforts to im- 

 prove "the composition of our fauna by 

 the introduction of exotic species." Little 

 or no attention w^as given pheasants until 

 Leigh (1940:190) made his limited sur- 

 vey of the parasites of pheasants collected 

 during the hunting season in 1936. Dur- 

 ing the summer of 1938 Bellrose (1940) 

 made nesting studies and population esti- 

 mates of pheasants in the southern part of 

 Calhoun County, which is outside the 

 recognized range of pheasants in Illinois. 

 His observations (Bellrose 1940:9) ap- 

 peared to indicate that this population 

 had been maintained by repeated releases. 



Intensive investigations of the ring- 

 necked pheasant did not get under way 

 until April 1, 1946, when the Illinois De- 

 partment of Conservation, the U. S. Fish 

 and Wildlife Service (now the U. S. Bu- 

 reau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife), 

 and the Illinois Natural History Survey 

 entered into a co-operative project with 

 Federal Aid funds. Dr. William B. Rob- 

 ertson (1958) described the results of 

 this co-operative research from inception 

 to December 31, 1951, together with an 



account of the early history of pheasants 

 in Illinois and an analysis of the factors 

 limiting the pheasant range. 



His report constitutes the first com- 

 prehensive account of pheasant research 

 in Illinois. It is a valuable historical rec- 

 ord of early introductions of pheasants 

 and the development of hunting regula- 

 tions. Curves based on an annual aver- 

 age of over 300 dates of the hatching of 

 eggs in nests were constructed and ana- 

 lyzed for effects of photoperiod, weather, 

 and farming operations. Observations 

 made on the breeding behavior of marked 

 birds released in Kendall County are be- 

 lieved to be especially enlightening. Of 

 particular note to students of populations 

 and behavior was the observation that 

 adult hens tended to become associated 

 in the harems earlier than did juvenile 

 hens. One of the earliest attempts to 

 eliminate bias from evaluation of the 

 worth of artificial stocking is reported 

 upon in the paper. Robertson (1958: 

 129) concluded "that 35 to 50 per cent 

 of the cock pheasants in summer releases 

 in Illinois were bagged in the succeeding 

 hunting season. The recovery rate for 

 spring-released adult cocks, estimated by 

 similar methods, was only 6.1 per cent." 

 In Livingston County a release of 1,000 

 adult hens in September of 1948 resulted 

 in a survival of about 50 per cent to May, 

 1949; released hens made up one-third of 

 the hens on the area at the latter date. It 

 was found that about 33 per cent of the 

 broods seen the following summer were 

 accompanied by released adult hens. In 

 Kendall County the effect of a release of 

 500 adult hens in August and 1,000 ju- 

 venile hens in November and December 

 of 1949 was evident when it was seen that 

 25 per cent of the broods in 1950 were 

 accompanied by release.' hens. 



There has been much speculation as to 

 the reason pheasants have failed to be- 

 come established in southern United 

 States. During brood studies beginning 

 in 1937, Yeatter (1950:529) observed 

 that the hatchability of pheasant eggs fre- 

 quently declined in late spring in east- 

 central Illinois, which is on the southern 

 edge of the pheasant range. This observa- 

 tion suggested that high environmental 

 temperatures at the time of egg-laying con- 

 stituted a critical limiting factor. In 1948 



