D. Holdermann/TPWD

A fleeting glimpse of the Montezuma quail on the South Rim.

The intricate complexity of water, soil, plant communities, and wildlife populations that makes up the Big Bend, is protected within the boundaries of the park, but is never completely understood. We monitor water and air quality. We survey plant and animal populations. We research and experiment with restoration techniques, all attempts to know more, understand more completely the dynamics of the ecosystem, but our knowledge always seems to lag behind. Our own actions, however well planned or intentioned, sometimes create more harm than good. A single thread breaks, one organism goes missing, and the chain of resulting consequences alters the whole in some almost imperceptible way. Sometimes I think we try too hard to affect change and trust too little the resiliency of nature. Resurrection can, and does, occur.

Several spring seasons ago, I wrote the story of one of the missing; Montezuma quail. This cryptic-plumaged desert quail (known variously as Mearn’s, Harlequin and Fool quail) joined the ranks of the ghosts of Big Bend by the 1960s, its West Texas range reduced to the grassy, oak-studded slopes of the Davis Mountains. In 1973 a small covey was transplanted from Arizona into Pine Canyon. Park biologists monitored the quail yearly until 1979, when the last survey turned up not one bird. The last documented report came from the South Rim of the Chisos in 1983. I ended that piece with a wish; “Perhaps one day the little ‘Fool’ quail will again haunt the dry hillsides of the Chisos Mountains.” At the time, Montezuma quail haunted the Chisos only in legend and memory.

In May, 2003, while performing an annual breeding bird survey along the Green Gulch, Park Ranger Dan Leavitt and I heard a ghostly, quavering call from the opposite slope, a call we had to search memory for. The bird moved on the ground upslope, calling every few seconds. We could never see it, never make a positive identification, but our memory whispered Montezuma.

In April, 2004, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) biologist Dave Holdermann, with years of experience studying Montezuma quail, traveled the South Rim of the Chisos. On the dry grassy slopes, he found several small scrapes in the soil; sign, to his trained eye, of Montezuma. In spite of a search and attempts at calling them in, the little quail remained unseen.

Fast forward to May, 2005. Another TPWD biologist, Sylvestre Sarola, also well experienced in the habits of Montezuma quail, retraced his co-workers path into the Chisos. On May 14, very close to where Holdermann reported finding sign, Sarola first heard, then saw, a male Montezuma quail. Two weeks later, Sarola, Holdermann, and Park Wildlife Specialist Raymond Skiles returned to the site and photographed at least three individuals. Ghosts no more.

Questions remain. Where did the quail come from? Are they descendents of the 1973 transplant project? Are they quail from populations in the mountains of Mexico just to the south? I’ll leave that question to the specialists. I find hope and inspiration in the renewed presence of this one small thread of the tapestry. Like the black bear before them, Montezuma quail have returned. Our part in the process was to make sure there was a place to come home to, a place to return from the dead. Resurrection can, and does, occur.