Enhancing northern bobwhite populations through translocation and integrated management in the Rolling Plains of Texas

As a valued game species, northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) populations have been managed for decades. The large geographic range of bobwhites results in regional habitat differences, leading to various subspecies and diverse management strategies tailored to each region. However, technological advancement has given rise to novel techniques and strategies that could provide a framework for a comprehensive approach to bobwhite management, considering all demographics and working to bolster or reestablish populations wherever implemented. Additionally, due to the disjunct populations of bobwhites across their range, translocation as a population recovery tool is gaining popularity and can be used in conjunction with bobwhite management practices that aim to bolster or reestablish populations. Preconditioning translocated birds with antioxidants has been proposed as a way to alleviate translocation stress. I first compared differences in spring-summer survival probabilities and productivity between northern bobwhite translocated from Florida (n = 50) and Texas (n = 17) to resident birds in the Rolling Plains of Texas (n =21) in 2021. Birds were trapped in walk-in funnel traps preconditioned with milo (Sorghum bicolor) or an antioxidant enriched feed prior to translocation. I monitored bobwhites via radio telemetry from March through September 2021, 4-7 times weekly. I developed 7 a priori models using nest survival models to estimate daily and spring-summer survival probabilities to explore the relationship between birds of differing sources and feed types. Bobwhite survival was significantly influenced by time, with high mortality rates observed within the first 30 days post-release. Productivity metrics, although not statistically analyzed due to small sample sizes, showed high nest success among translocated and resident females. Next, I evaluated the effects of dietary antioxidants on translocation stress in pen-reared bobwhites in 2021. Bobwhites were preconditioned with milo (n = 83) or antioxidant feed (n = 57) for 14 days, captured, and subjected to a 12-hour transport to simulate a translocation. A positive control group (n = 32) injected with Dexamethasone and true negative control (n = 48) were used as a leukocytic reference of stress. Leukocyte counts were evaluated under microscopy and stress responses were determined using heterophil to lymphocyte ratios (H:L) and body mass changes. Results of this experiment were unexpected based on existing literature; the negative control group, despite no induced stressor, gained the most body mass (16.3g) and had the highest H:L (1.2), which is typically characteristic of high stress levels. Conversely, the positive control group lost body mass (0.3g) and yielded the lowest H:L (0.57), potentially due to immunosuppression from steroid treatments. Lastly, I assessed 4th order nest site selection of nesting bobwhite and brood habitat selection in the Rolling Plains of Texas during the 2022 breeding season, a period of severe drought, by comparing sites used by radio-tagged nesting adults and broods to randomly available locations. I measured visual obstruction, vegetation height, and relative percentage of cover types (i.e., woody, herbaceous, grass, leaf litter, and bare ground) at the nest or brood sites. I used a conditional logistic regression with 16 and 15 a priori models to assess selection, respectively. Nesting adults showed the strongest selection for microhabitats with greater percentage of forbs, increased visual obstruction, and decreased bare ground. Microhabitat for brood rearing had greater tall woody vegetation.