New wildlife book features cover with photos by Timothy E. Fulbright. Everything you ever wanted to know about the care and feeding of the popular Texas bobwhite is available from a new book by a Virginia biologist and four wildlife researchers with the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

Texas Bobwhites, A Guide to Their Foods and Habitat Management, was written by Jon A. Larson, Timothy E. Fulbright, Leonard A. Brennan, Fidel Hernández, and Fred C. Bryant and will be available to the public in September.

Published by the University of Texas Press, this field guide to the seeds most commonly eaten by northern bobwhites will help hunters identify likely places to find coveys of quail, while landowners and rangeland managers will use it to learn how to conserve and improve bobwhite habitat.

Larson is a wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and lives in Farmville, Va.

Fulbright, Brennan, Hernández, and Bryant all work at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute.

Fulbright is a regents professor and is Meadows Professor in Semiarid Land Ecology.

Brennan holds the C.C. Winn Endowed Chair for Quail Research.

Hernández is an associate professor and holds the Alfred C. Glassell, Jr., Endowed Professorship of Quail Research.

Bryant is the Leroy G. Denman, Jr., Endowed Director of Wildlife Research.

Northern bobwhites are one of the most popular game birds in the United States.

In Texas alone, nearly 100,000 hunters take to the field each fall and winter to pursue wild bobwhite quail.

Texas is arguably the last remaining state with sufficient habitat to provide quail-hunting opportunities on a grand scale, and Texas ranchers with good bobwhite habitat often generate a greater proportion of their income from fees paid by quail hunters than from livestock production.

Managing and expanding bobwhite habitat makes good sense economically, and it benefits the environment as well. the rangelands and woodlands of Texas that produce quail and also support scores of other species of wildlife.

Texas Bobwhites is a field guide to the seeds commonly eaten by northern bobwhites, as well as a handbook for conserving and improving northern bobwhite habitat.

It provides identifying characteristics for the seeds of 91 species of grasses, forbs, woody plants, and succulents. Each seed description includes a close-up and a scale photo of the seed and the plant that produces it, along with a range map.

Using this information, hunters can readily identify concentrations of plants that are most likely to attract quail. Landowners and rangeland managers will greatly benefit from the book’s state-of-the-art guidance for habitat management and restoration, including improving habitat dominated by invasive and nonnative grasses.