Quail calendar has 12 months of management tips

With this calendar on your wall, you won't forget seasonal steps to better bobwhite habitat.

JEFFERSON CITY-One challenge for busy landowners who want to increase quail and other grassland wildlife is keeping track of seasonal management needs. When do chicks hatch? When do you burn, plant, spray and disk? Now, answers to those and many other questions about grassland wildlife management are as easy to find as looking at the calendar.

"Your Key to Quail Habitat" is a 32-page wall calendar with daily notes to help landowners meet their wildlife management goals. It notes key events, such as the start of quail nesting season, average dates of first and second brood hatches and other important milestones in the bobwhite quail's year.

Also included are reminders about the best times for management activities, such as planting food plots, and the last day for managing fields enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. The calendar has tips for easy quail habitat creation, ranging from placing old Christmas trees near existing brush piles in January to sowing wildflower seeds atop newly fallen snow in December.

Wildlife illustrations by Conservation Department artists David Besenger, Mark Raithel and Charles Schwartz accompany each monthly page. The calendar also devotes pages to special topics that include sericea lespedeza eradication, aging quail by examining their wings and a list of biologists who can provide technical advice and material assistance to landowners.

Although the calendar focuses on quail, the activities outlined in it benefit all sorts of wildlife, from colorful songbirds to box turtles.

To receive a free copy of the calendar, call the nearest Conservation Department or Natural Resources Conservation Service office and ask to speak to a private land conservationist.

-Jim Low-