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Stan, you may be right on the insecticide, but some years ago I talked to an old established Iowa farmer who raised mostly corn. The corn he was now raising , of course, was "Roundup Ready" and was not affected by Roundup. The farmer said that he'd not seen a grasshopper in 4 years. Around my house in Montana,Roundup kills everything I spray. Of course those plants are not genetically changed to Roundup Ready. What plants do you feel are Roundup resistant except for the genetically protected ones ?

There are weeds that have become Round-up resistant from natural selection.

It's going to be even tougher on wildlife habit, to pump "renewable" fuel into glorified go karts.

I’ve heard the old timers around here say the bushhog has done more to eradicate the bobwhite as anything. Farmer next to me would not allow any cutting before the end of June to allow the turkey poults and young quail to get off the nest.

Daryl, there are several grasses and weeds that are only mildly affected by glyphosate. Most still are totally susceptible to it, however (thankfully). I see millions of grasshoppers here each late spring, and farm in a system that relies heavily on glyphosate. Minimum-till and no-till farming requires that the existing vegetation, whether cover crops or natural weed cover, be killed at or prior to planting. I invariably see the largest numbers of grasshoppers where winter weeds have been killed with glyphosate, prior to planting corn, beans or cotton. Glyphosate is the herbicide of choice to do that, with paraquat being a close second. (The use of minimum till and no till has been proven to be much more beneficial to game birds than systems requiring extensive tillage [plowing]).The two herbicides work in entirely different ways. The point I wanted to make is that glyphosate will not kill grasshoppers or any other insect that I am aware of. Grasshoppers need proper habitat, same as any other organism.

Quail are not always finished nesting by the end of June. Weather has a lot to do with that.

Stan, thanks for the good explanation. I have some experience with Roundup and lawn grass. After spraying my 200 yard driveway gravel with Roundup, when putting things away , I walked across the yard to turn off the water hydrant. Six or so days later one could see my tracks in the grass. Dead grass footprints that stayed all summer.

When I was a kid on the farm in Iowa, it looked to me that the oats in the grainery were about 1/3 grasshoppers . We had few pheasants , then, and some thought that because every small farm had livestock, especially hogs, and that everything was eaten up to the fences making it tough on the pheasants and occasional quail. That continued into the 60s when the Soil Bank came in , feedlots came in, and we had pheasants in swarms. Nowadays, actually since approximately the 90s, the pheasants are almost gone, relatively speaking. This is even with the various diverted acres programs.

Daryl, could you give us a better explanation of your last three sentences. Another point, in Pennsylvania, the change from picking corn to combining it to ground level occurred at a period when pheasants just about disappeared. Is there a connection?

Eightbore, in the 60s farms changed. The Soil Bank [diverted acres] came in giving more cover. At the same time, farms got larger, and fewer farms had livestock, as feed lots and hog containment facilities were growing. We still had not started the chemical farming anywhere close to what it became later. Pheasants and some quail thrived in SW Iowa.

In the 90s it was similar to the 60s, except the agricultural chemicals started to become prevalent. Since then the pheasant populations have been a small fraction of what they were 30 years earlier.

I had never thought of the change from pickers to combines, but for sure the combine leaves far less cover and food on the ground.

Don't feel bad, my friend. I once did exactly the same thing.

That scenario won't fly either, unless pheasants like less cover than more cover. Corn pickers left the shuck on the ear and put the whole ear in the wagon/truck to be hauled to the bins. Combines remove the shuck and cob from the ear, and only the shelled corn kernels are hauled out of the field, leaving the shredded corn shuck and cob on the ground. There is far, far more residue behind a modern combine than behind a corn picker.