Texas · UplandGambel's quail

Gambel's quail sits at the easternmost limit of its entire range in Texas, confined to a single narrow corridor rather than any broad ecoregion. TSHA's quail handbook entry and TPWD's own research (Delineation of Gambel's Quail Habitat in the Trans-Pecos, Texas) agree the species occupies 'a narrow strip of desert shrub and irrigated farmland bordering the Rio Grande from about the ghost town of Lajitas northward to El Paso' -- i.e., the Rio Grande riparian corridor through the far western Trans-Pecos, not the Trans-Pecos region generally (where scaled quail dominates instead). Research on the corridor's habitat has focused specifically on Presidio and Hudspeth counties, with the river between El Paso and Presidio itself mostly a dry bed due to upstream irrigation diversion in New Mexico and Texas, except for an actively irrigated stretch between Presidio and Redford that supports the strongest habitat. This is a bag/possession limit shared statewide with bobwhite and scaled quail, but the species' actual huntable range is this single river-corridor strip, nowhere else in the state.