Yes George as usual is right. Not all the birds are doing the same thing at the same time. They relate to weather, predators, food, hunters, domestic animals and just plain old "traffic" among other things.
We've been a bit stymied of late by weather which was too nice. Our usual spot is entirely CRP, surrounded by cut corn, wheat stubble and harvested sunflowers which belong to others. There is always a few birds in it. On these really nice days many birds seem to prefer the wheat stubble. They can eat, and duck down in the stubble itself if a hawk or eagle flies over and they seem to spend the day there when they go there. The corn seems used more on days of heavier wind, not because it's corn, but because it's sheltered by cedar breaks planted on the north and west sides of it. The overall preference is for the sunflowers it appears, but they won't stay out there long as the stalks were disked down by the operator. It seemed to "hold" more birds when the stalks were standing. Now they just run out there, eat a crop full and run back into the CRP. In any event, if we had colder windier but not too windy, the CRP would hold more birds through the day. With the nicer weather, we've had to compress our hunting into the last hour before dark as the birds come back from their lengthier forays into the crops.
As I often tell the dogs, we can only get three. Matters not much at all what the other 247-497 in the field did.
