MH, what is your take on their reputation on eating young quail, please? I had a rancher from Alpine tell me hes seen them together often and no problems. Others swear they grab the chicks heads and do as that one did the rattler.
Some radiotracking work that is being done over in the West Potrillos by New Mexico State University suggests that once the chicks are out of the nest and following their parents, the mortality rate declines significantly. I believe that this is the middle year of a three-year study. The first year, we were still in a drought. This year, quail are breeding like rabbits. It will be interesting to see how the results look after the final year next year.
Out here, numbers of quail, like most other species, ebb and flow with annual precipitation. Predation on quail is a function of the availability of both quail chicks and alternate prey. Both tend to fluctuate in synchrony, so it is very difficult to sort out the just what the effect of a single predator species has on a prey species. Virtually all the research concludes that climate (the summation of weather events) is the predominant driving variable, accounting for 80-90 percent of the variation seen between sites and between years.