Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Birds

Symbols of the Great Plains

You may consider it an unfortunate fact that many grassland birds are brown. Birders call them LBJs, for Little Brown Jobs. Open grasslands enforce unique evolutionary pressures on birds — there are fewer places to hide than, for example, in a forest. Being brown is a wonderful camouflage strategy for a bird, and Great Plains birds have explored the available hues of the brown color palette thoroughly.

Grassland birds are also lonely. Rather we should say that grassland birds have to fight the problem of potential loneliness. How can they find a mate in such a large, open landscape? Some species, like the western meadowlark, solve this problem through song. My research teams have documented hearing meadowlarks' musical invitations at a distance of almost one-third of a mile during our surveys. Males of other species, like the McCown's longspur and Sprague's pipit, use aerial displays high above the sea of grass to attract their mates. Species like lesser and greater prairie-chickens and sharp-tailed grouse are more sparsely distributed than meadowlarks, longspurs, and pipits, which makes it very problematic to find a mate. Grouse could easily go all day without seeing a familiar face. To solve that dilemma, these prairie grouse species have developed unique "lekking" mating systems, in which the males gather at the same dancing or booming ground year after year to compete with other males by strutting, fighting, and vocalizing. The females come to the lek sites to find the males, and all is solved. Breeding and comparison shopping for a mate can happen in wide open spaces, and it is amazing to see the variety of techniques that different species have developed to make reproduction happen.

Common Birds of the Great Plains

Raptors, birds of prey, are among our largest birds of the plains, and they typically soar as they search for prey. We tend to notice them. The plains are home to our national bird, the bald eagle (figure 3). The white head and tail of an adult bald eagle are ironclad identifiers. Bald eagles can be found in large numbers below dams at reservoirs in the winter throughout the Great Plains. They are more likely to nest in northern states, but over the past twenty-five years, bald-eagle nesting has increased in every state of the Great Plains. Bald eagles are long-lived, and they take up to five years to gain their solid white head and tail plumage. For the first years of their lives, juveniles, not yet sporting white tails and heads, cover vast distances looking for territories, confusing birders who believe they have seen a golden eagle (figure 3). Indeed, golden eagles and immature bald eagles both have dark plumage, but look for mottled dark and light plumage under the wings of juvenile bald eagles. Golden eagles have solid dark wings with distinct white, underwing patches and are typically found only in the western Great Plains. Both eagles can inspire awe as you watch their predatory skills in action. A colleague of mine once watched a bald eagle kill a snow goose in midair over a lake. After the goose fell in the lake, the eagle was unable to lift its prey in flight, so the eagle landed and perched on the goose as it if were a raft and used the goose's wings to row it to shore. Honestly.

The burrowing owl (figure 4) may take home your vote for the cutest bird on the plains. These owls inhabit prairie dog burrows or holes dug by other mammals; look for them if you are visiting a prairie dog colony (figure 5). As prairie dog numbers have declined on the plains, so have burrowing owls. In contrast, the number of red-tailed hawks (figure 4) on the plains has increased to the point that you may be able to make a game of counting them as you drive down interstate highways. Watch for them on center-pivot irrigation rigs, telephone poles, or fence posts, in addition to trees, and keep track of how many you see per mile driven. If you are a fan of European cathedrals or the animated Hunchback of Notre Dame movie, you will understand why my wife calls these stoic sentries the Gargoyles of the Plains. Red-tails rarely turn around to show you their unique, rusty, upper tail feathers (that would be too easy), so look for the streaked, dark chest stripe on their lower chest that distinguishes them from other perching raptors. Another movie note: if you enjoy westerns that feature soaring bald eagles with shrill screams that echo through the valleys, Hollywood is attempting to trick you as the director has dubbed a red-tailed hawk's call into the film. The mighty bald eagle's true vocalization is less worthy of the cinema than its proud silhouette.

Rough-legged hawks (figure 4) are arctic breeders that can be seen in large numbers on the plains only during spring and fall migration or during the winter. Dark patches on the underside of their wings can assist with identifications. Their name is derived from feathers that extend down their legs. Ferruginous hawks (figure 4), named for the rusty (ferrous) color on their wings, breed only on the plains and mountain states to the immediate west, and they also have feathers that extend down their legs. A sighting of a fuzzy-legged hawk in the summer is most likely this species. As you pass through wide, open prairie on your travels, keep your eyes peeled for a ferruginous's large stick nest in a lone tree or on a windmill or power pole.

The upland sandpiper (figure 6) is, as its name implies, a shorebird, but it is not found near water. Instead, you will most likely see these birds standing atop a fencepost. If you wander too close to their ground nests on a prairie walk, the pair will let you know by circling and calling above your head. Their chicks are precocial, which means each chick is feathered and ready to walk as soon as they hatch from their egg. The hatchlings follow the parents as they learn to forage for insects. Researchers in Kansas have found that upland sandpipers, like other precocial species such as ducks, pheasants, and grouse, commonly take their newly hatched chicks up to a quarter of a mile from the nest to find food on the first day of the chicks' lives outside of the eggshell. Imagine heading out on that journey in the first few hours under the sun.

Horned larks (figure 6) are an example of a plains-dwelling bird that prefers less-dense stands of grass for foraging, and you may see them in areas with bare ground caused by grazing or haying, agricultural tillage, or another disturbance. You may not see the male's hornlike feathers through your binoculars. In contrast to the upland sandpiper, a horned lark has altricial young, which means each nestling hatches from its egg in a naked, eyes-closed, and defenseless state. After eight to ten days in the nest, however, the young are soon bailing from the nest to follow the parents with short hops and flutters.

Bobolinks (figure 6) breed in the northern plains, and you will most likely find them in meadows or other areas of dense, open grasslands. If you find one, look for others as they crowd into good nesting areas. Like all grassland birds, bobolinks need grasslands with an array of flowering plants — it is not enough to have a monoculture of grassland, as you might find in a seeded pasture, for example. Birds do not depend on the flowers for aesthetic reasons, although it may be interesting to ponder what birds find "beautiful." Instead, the flowers attract a host of insects that are the primary protein source to feed nestlings and growing fledglings. More flowers in a pasture means more ants and aphids and beetles, and that means happy, healthy baby birds with full tummies. If you can visualize how fast a human baby grows, consider that a nestling bobolink grows from about 3 grams to 22 grams in less than fourteen days. The juveniles are eating, pooping, and growing machines, doubling in size every three to four days. (Human babies take three months to double in size for the first time, thankfully!) A bobolink fledgling's legs are about three-quarters of adult length when they leave the nest, which allows them to hop about and follow their parents. However, their wings and tail are less than half of their eventual adult length. The wings and tail will continue to grow rapidly with the high-protein diet of insects from their parents.

Your first sighting of a male yellow-headed blackbird (figure 6), accented in a marsh by the morning sun, can be magical. They tend to be found in wetlands with more open water than their cousin, the red-winged blackbird, prefers. Females are drabber than males with only a bit of yellow on their head, and the pattern of drab females is common among birds and especially grassland birds. Why? Imagine trying to hide your nest from a potential predator with a bright yellow set of feathers on your head. Over thousands of generations, females with brighter feathers have been removed from the gene pool by a variety of predators, while males with showy plumage are rewarded with more offspring who carry on their father's trait. The females do not need to show off, as they are the ones making the choice for a mate in most cases. Males compete with other males for the attention of females using their plumage as a guide to their prowess as a potential mate. Parasites that live in feathers can plague birds, which is a really good reason to wash your hands if you ever handle a live bird, and these parasites tend to destroy the integrity of their hosts' feathers making them duller in color. Therefore, males with bright feathers may also be signaling to females that their genes allow them to be less prone to parasitic infections. Along with straight teeth and a college education, avoidance of parasitic infections is something every mother bird wants for her offspring.

Grasshopper sparrows (figure 6) get their name because their song includes a trill that sounds very much like their namesake insect. Odds are, you may hear them before you see them darting from one grass clump to another. Drab in color, the grasshopper sparrow may be the Little Brown Job poster bird. The song of this smallish sparrow will either become one of your favorites or start to drive you crazy, as grasshopper sparrows are one of the most abundant sparrows in the Great Plains. Early pioneers learned to love this bird because the sparrows ate loads of grasshoppers that plagued the farmers' fields.

If you are looking for the dark, evil overlord of the plains, then you have found your spirit animal in the loggerhead shrike (figure 6). Shrikes, found throughout the Great Plains, are the size of a robin with the heart of a red-tailed hawk. These sneaky predators eat small rodents, lizards, other birds, and insects. Keep an eye on barbed-wire fences or thorn bushes as you hike — shrikes are famous for impaling their prey as a way of storing the food for a later snack. If you see a lizard, small snake, or grasshopper hanging lifeless from a barb on a fence, you might look around for nearby shrikes (figure 7).

The wild turkey is now found in all of the forty-eight continental states of the U.S. and Hawaii (figure 8). Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, state wildlife agencies in the Southeast traded some of their turkeys to northern states for Canada geese or river otters. All of these transplants have been very successful. Our airports are now overrun with Canada geese, and kayakers can find river otters back in their former range. Benjamin Franklin positioned the wild turkey as an intelligent bird worthy for consideration as our national bird, and each fall and spring, turkeys outsmart over half of the hunters who take to the fields in search of Sunday dinner. Throughout the Great Plains in the winter, you can find mixed flocks of ten to fifty (or more) males, females, and immature turkeys. In spring, watch for males strutting near woodlands at the edge of pastures or crop fields as they try to attract females for mating.

The northern bobwhite (figure 8) may not provide such a visually impressive display as does their cousin, the turkey, but these small quail rely on vocalizations to find mates. The countryside in spring and summer can be pierced by their two-note, namesake call, "bob-white!" Try carrying on a conversation with them if you hear one calling — whether the male sees you as a threat or even recognizes your whistle is questionable, but it can be fun to try. Bobwhite are found in respectable numbers from Nebraska south across the Great Plains, and they are susceptible to habitat loss and harsh winters. You may appreciate their presence more when you learn that in an average year, over 90 percent of bobwhites may find their way into a coyote's stomach or some other cause of death. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as the poet Tennyson wrote. Typically, only a quarter of nests of most species of bird are successful in producing offspring, so female bobwhites who lose their first nest will lay another clutch of eggs as they try to produce enough young to keep up with their mortality level. It is a tough world out there on the plains.

Scissor-tailed flycatchers are a proud breeding bird of the southern plains (figure 8), but they are rebellious at heart, wandering east, west, and north (as far north as Nova Scotia) on their migration between Central America and the southern plains. Their unique tail and body form make the species easy to spot (figure 9) on fences or electric lines as you zip along the highway during spring and summer. If you find one, and slow down for a good look, you may quickly add them to your list of favorite birds because of their pinkish flanks, smooth gray head, and long black-and-white tail.

Mating and Breeding Behaviors

Bird watching can be viewed as a multilevel sport. The entry level involves noticing birds from time to time, especially strange or unusual birds that we encounter. The second level is defined by a bird watcher who runs about and finds as many species as possible: list-making. However, once a bird has been found, there is an opportunity to learn more about the bird — an opportunity to let the bird talk to you and tell you about its life. Thus, the third level of bird watching involves prolonged observation.

What little quirks does the bird have? Maybe it twerks its tail every few seconds — why does it do that? Maybe it crawls head-down along a tree trunk — what is it doing? Perhaps it flits out away from a tree and flits quickly back — what is the purpose of these little flights? This is the realm of bird behavior.

As we discuss behaviors of birds, I am going to break a golden rule held by many ornithologists: thou shalt not ascribe human qualities and thoughts to birds. Strictly, it is true that without experimentation it is impossible to know the real function for the behaviors we see in birds. However, I want to encourage you to think about why birds do what they do. Make a guess. The father of wildlife management, Aldo Leopold, enjoyed watching wildlife on walks near his cabin in Wisconsin, and he wrote descriptive passages in which he used humanlike actions to describe the animals around him. Regarding the death of a rabbit on a warm January day, Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac: "To this rabbit the thaw brought freedom from want, but also a reckless abandonment of fear. The owl has reminded him that thoughts of spring are no substitute for caution."

As we watch animal behavior, we do need to keep in mind that our conclusions about the events unfolding before us may be quite false. It is hard to get inside the brain of a bird. Consider an alien life-form landing its invisible spacecraft in the grassy space of a very large city park in which a group of yoga enthusiasts have gathered for their Yoga-in-the-Park exercise session. The yoga session begins, and the class follows the leader in a series of poses, extending their arms toward the rising sun, raising their arms to the sky, and then squatting. Clearly, the alien surmises, the group is training for combat, and their commander is forcing them through odd rituals to suppress all individualistic tendencies. Of course, they are simply exercising. Our understanding of bird behavior may be as poor as an alien's understanding of yoga, but if we try to think like a bird and imagine a list of possible explanations for what we observe, we cannot help but close the gap that often exists between humans and the world around us.

To pique your interest in bird behavior, in the next section I have chosen five species to describe that are common targets of bird watchers and tourists on the Great Plains. Focus your attention on their behaviors shown in the sketches by Allison Johnson, a research ornithologist; her insights from hours in the field with birds guide her artwork.

---

Excerpted from "Great Plains Birds"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---