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MONTHLY V/ILDLIFE RESEARCH LETTER 
Department of Conservation and Natural History Survey, Cooperating 
Glen C. Sanderson and Helen C. Schultz, Editors 
Urbana, Illinois 
June, 1973 
Vol. 16, No. 6 
Manipulation of Pheasant Habitat G« B. Joselyn 
An undesirable aspect of attempting to draw nesting pheasants onto seeded road¬ 
sides is the possibility that some nests will be flooded, since one of the primary 
functions of roadsides is to provide a means of moving field runoff. Ten years of 
data from seeded plots at Sibley revealed that only a fraction of 1 percent of 
established nests were affected by flooding, so far as could be determined. During 
these years, runoff was very rarely of such volume during the late spring and early 
summer as to flood a significant number of roadsides. 
Studies of pheasant nesting ecology, now under way on the Ford County Management 
Unit (FCMU), indicate that ditch bottoms and sometimes considerable portions of 
entire roadsides have been flooded during the several periods of heavy precipitation 
that have occurred in Ford County since the third week in May this year. Precipitation 
in Gibson City between 25 May and 20 June totaled 12.31 inches, which included 
fchree daily totals of nearly 2 inches. Observations on FCMU roadsides indicate 
that water flowed down many ditches with considerable force, no doubt covering 
some nests with debris or soil while scattering the eggs from some, making them 
impossible to locate during searching. Nevertheless, several nests that had been 
under water have been located, indicating that flooding may this year constitute a 
significant factor in nest destruction. 
Ecoloqy and Manaqement of Squirrels C. M. Nixon, 
~ ” R. E. Greenberg 
The present distribution of gray squirrels in Illinois was examined in relation 
to the distribution by county of forest habitat at the time of settlement (cir ca 
1020 ). 
About 60 percent of presettlement Illinois was prairie, with forests found 
mostly along streams and rivers and in the unglaciated southern and northwestern 
areas. Within the prairie, forests extending along rivers provided some habitat for 
gray squirrels, but most of these woodlands were occupied by fox squirrels. Gray 
squirrels were rarely found in east-central Illinois in what is now Ford, Iroquois, 
Livingston, Grundy, LaSalle, and McLean counties. It seems likely that fox squirrels 
were plentiful in areas where forest and prairie coexisted but were rare or absent 
in the heavily forested southern counties. 
NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY 
JUL 91973 
IIDDADV 
