This week of class was shorter than most. Typically we have Mondays dedicated to our practicums and Tuesdays through Fridays used as class time. However, Monday this week was the national holiday traditionally called Columbus Day (now widely alternatively recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day), and so Tuesday was our practicum day instead. This left us with only three days of class. Notably, unlike almost all previous weeks, there were no off-campus field trips this time around. The only activity we left the classroom for was done a mere few hundred yards away from the building, near the base of a feature known as Racetrack Hill. Because of its tie-in to the larger curriculum, it will be the focus of this post.
The activity in question was running a series of tests to determine the habitat suitability of randomly selected 1 x 1 meter squares on the hillside for northern bobwhite quails. For each test, we would fling the sampling square above the hill, and wherever it landed, we would place a white plastic pole in the center with a piece of blue tape around one point that was at approximately quail height. We would then try to estimate the approximate percentage of bare earth within the square, the distance from which a quail in the middle would be visible to a ground predator (by using a measuring tape and getting on our hands and knees), and the angle from which a quail in the middle would be visible to an aerial predator (using a protractor and a string). For the latter two tests, we performed them from all four sides of the square. Each team performed a round of these tests at three separate points.
The preferred percentage of bare ground per section for northern bobwhite quails is 1-10%, while the preferred degree of openness is visibility in the center from 1-5 meters away on the ground and from an angle of 0-15 degrees from above. Almost none of the 15 randomly selected areas (there were five teams across the class) met all three of these criteria. Thus, it is perhaps no wonder that the quails have never been recorded on Racetrack Hill.
These micro-tests we performed relate to the greater themes of biodiversity conservation in this course. If an area of habitat is set aside to protect a species, it will only be effective at doing so if the habitat in question is in fact appropriate for the species. And to determine if it is, and especially if said species is not currently present there, tests must be done to assess the habitat’s level of suitability. Like what we did on a very small scale with the sampling squares, plastic posts with blue tape, protractors, string, and measuring tapes on Racetrack Hill.
