As a youngster, when I began exploring the neighboring pastures, fields and fence rows, I never saw one. In fact, I’m so old I do remember finding breeding ring-necked pheasants though, and in the summers and falls, flushing a dozen or more birds.

But never the northern bobwhite. Even with all that time outdoors and eventually tagging along with my dad on small game hunts, I never flushed or saw a single bobwhite.

My first sightings were at Assateague Island, Maryland, where the “quail” would scurry across some hiking trails there. I would hear their “Bob White” calls at a number of locations. Now, even there around 2000, the “Bob White” calls were no longer heard.

Bobwhites, in fact, were found in every Pennsylvania county through the mid 1800s. Quite a few still survived in good bobwhite habitats until the 1950s and early 1960s. Today, the northern bobwhite is just a memory to some folks, and since 2013, has been listed as extirpated from our state.

Their demise cannot be blamed on poor reproductive capabilities. They nest twice a season having 12-14 eggs in each nesting. They, as with most precocial birds, lose most of their young within a month or two of hatching. (Precocial birds, like turkeys or ducks, generally lay more eggs than robins, etc. due to their large losses after hatching.) Soaking rains, deep winter snows, or a host of predators reduce their numbers until they breed again the next spring.

I made an attempt to reintroduce some bobwhites in Carbon County about 35 years ago when I released 15 in an area where I thought they might survive. About two weeks after their release I flushed one bird, and weeks later found no trace of any of them. I was familiar with a local sportsmen’s group that many years before my attempt, raised and released dozens. This program stopped after two years because of the poor success as well.

The key to the bobwhite’s return to Pennsylvania is finding the optimum habitats to release them. Early successional fields and low shrub habitats are ideal where warm season grasses, milkweed, black-eyed Susans, goldenrods, etc. dominate. These plants offer protection from predators, nesting sites, and for the insects needed by the young bobwhites as they mature.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission has been developing a habitat at Letterkenny Army Depot. Some forested areas have been cleared and important grasses have been established. Prescribed burns have also been used and are important for maintaining this habitat.

Ideal bobwhite habitat is also perfect for some other birds whose populations have been decreasing.

These birds are yellow-breasted chats, meadowlarks, dickcissels, and bobolinks. I drive miles each year to Cunfer’s farm in East Penn Township to try to get photos of the latter as they make a brief day or two stopover there.

Birding buddies Rich, Dave, and I try to find the rare chats each year in the Beltzville State Park area. This same area, with some habitat improvements, could be one of the better places to reestablish bobwhites and to support the other birds I just identified.

If the Pa. Game Commission project at Letterkenny is successful, I would think that much of the acreage just north of Beltzville Dam, and managed by the Game Commission, could be another ideal place to reintroduce them. Remember, if the bobwhite is not successful, other grassland birds might be. Let’s hope we see the return of bobwhites to our state.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: ____ are currently adding nesting materials to strengthen their nests. A. bald eagles. B. great blue herons. C. bluebirds. D. house finches.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: If you bird through the different seasons in our area you could find seven species of woodpeckers.

Barry Reed is a Saturday columnist in the Times News. Contact him at breed71@gmail.com.