Montezuma quail are an avian conundrum. They’re among the most visually stunning birds in Far West Texas: The males have sky-blue bills, black-and-white striped faces and chestnut bellies covered in white polka dots. But they’re also masters of concealment. You could spend a lifetime here and never see one.
The birds’ secrecy means that even basic questions – where are they found in the Trans-Pecos? How many are there? – have remained elusive. Dr. Ryan Luna, of Alpine’s Borderlands Research Institute, has been seeking the answers for more than a decade. And now, with the help of new technology, he and his students are beginning to unlock the mysteries of Montezuma quail.
Approach a covey of scaled quail, our region’s most common species, and they’ll soon flush in a burst of flight. That’s not the Montezuma’s strategy. Sensing danger, these quail crouch and freeze, disappearing into the grassy cover they favor. Luna said you can nearly step on one before it takes to the wing.
“I always say that they're the true species that kind of give you a heart check,” Luna said, “because they do wait until you are within a couple feet of them before they decide to flush. And it gets you every time.”
And this “cryptic” behavior isn’t the only obstacle to studying the birds. Scaled quail are easily lured to traps with milo or other grains. But the Montezuma diet centers on subterranean tubers, which the quail dig up with their long claws; milo doesn’t interest them.
Luna and his colleagues have used bird dogs to find the quail. But in three seasons, they trapped 63 birds. By contrast, one BRI student captured 1,600 scaled quail in a single summer.
Enter a new technology: the autonomous recording unit. Luna’s team has placed the devices at five remote locales around the Trans-Pecos. The units record thousands of hours of audio. Then, AI software identifies Montezuma calls on the recordings.
“We get that basic presence-absence data at each of those locations,” Luna said. “Then we'll be able to note the times and the days and how frequently they were there, if they were there for the duration of that study or if it looked like they were just passing through.”
While scaled quail are flatland birds, Montezumas prefer slopes, with a savannah-like mix of grass and trees – which makes pinyon-juniper woodlands their prime habitat. But the recording units are revealing the quail in unexpected places. Luna’s team has identified Montezumas from the Chisos and Chinati mountains to the rugged Sierra Diablo range, south of the Guadalupes.
And they estimate that the Davis Mountains – the bird’s Texas stronghold – are home to between 10,000 and 20,000 Montezuma quail.
“I was very excited to hear those numbers,” Luna said. “And if we had that many in just the Davis Mountains, as we start looking at some of these other mountain ranges as well, I think that we have a lot more Montezumas in Texas than what people realize.”
The range in the Davis Mountains estimate reflects a “boom and bust” reality for Montezuma quail. Populations contract during drought, Luna said, but explode with good summer rains.
In the wake of last year’s monsoon rains, Montezumas have been spotted outside their mountain redoubts – on the Marfa grasslands, and even at the Sul Ross rodeo arena in Alpine.
Luna is heartened by their resilience. But he said there’s still much to learn about these “invisible birds” of West Texas.
“They keep us guessing,” he said, “and I think that's part of the intrigue of doing research with them: We're always learning something new.”
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