Newcomers: Not all of Wyoming’s birds have been here forever
Published Oct. 6, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle
By Barb Gorges
Just as many of us living here today didn’t have family in Wyoming at the turn of the last century or earlier, many bird species didn’t either.
I was perusing “Birds of Wyoming” by Douglas W. Faulkner, published in 2010, where I found records of first observations and population explosions of species in the state. Keep in mind that in the early days, there weren’t many people recording bird species.
First, there are the familiar species introduced to North America from Europe, but it took some of them a while to make it to Wyoming.
Rock pigeons were introduced in eastern North America in the early 1600s and it’s unknown when they made it here.
House sparrows were released for the first time in New York City in 1851, but it was the ones introduced in Salt Lake City that made it to Evanston in 1874. Birds released in Denver in 1877 expanded their population and were settled in Cheyenne by the 1890s.
First reports of European starlings in Wyoming were in Laramie and Laramie County in 1937. Starlings made Jackson Hole by 1941. Large counts, over 1000 birds, didn’t become routine until 1990.
Eurasian collared-doves were first sighted in Florida in the 1980s, but the first Wyoming state record was in 1998 here in Cheyenne at the Wyoming Hereford Ranch. I remember being with the group there trying to distinguish them from ring-turtle doves, pet birds that escaped from time to time.
Sometimes bird species are native elsewhere in North America and eventually get to Wyoming: Chimney swift, 1924; blue jay, 1958 (dramatically increasing in the 1970s) and eastern bluebird, 1901, near Cheyenne but as of 2010 most breeding was seen along a bluebird trail in Crook County in northeastern Wyoming.
The indigo bunting, the eastern equivalent of our lazuli bunting, started infiltrating Crook County and was documented in 1949. Another was documented in southwestern Wyoming by 1959.
A blue grosbeak was first reported in 1962 in Torrington and is now considered a regular breeder in the state, especially along the North Platte.
There are species that were already in Wyoming when ornithologists started looking but the distribution and numbers have increased. American white pelicans were up in Yellowstone National Park but colonized Pathfinder Reservoir near Casper by 1984. Double-crested cormorants were also up in Yellowstone and also flocked to the new reservoirs in the eastern part of the state.
The American crow barely showed up on Christmas Bird Counts around Wyoming in early years. Faulkner wrote, “Fewer than 4% of the CBCs reporting crows had totals exceeding 300 individuals from 1951-2004. Roughly around year 2000, many CBCs experienced up to a ninefold increase….” Certainly Cheyenne did and they are still here.
Common ravens were always seen a few miles west of town, but they have increased their numbers statewide and have been seen in Cheyenne sporadically the last 10 years.
Bobolinks, fancy-looking songbirds of the grasslands, were spotted this year in eastern Laramie County where Darrel and Marilyn Repshire’s wetland pasture was undergoing restoration. Historically, they were common around Cheyenne, but more recently breeding birds were concentrated in irrigated meadows in northeast Wyoming.
The common grackle was documented in Wyoming in 1858 but was rare here in the southeast. Then it had a population explosion in the 1970s. The first record of the similar great-tailed grackle was 1989, near Cheyenne, now slowly spreading across the state.
Interestingly, one of our most common backyard birds, the house finch, was only present along Wyoming’s southern border, including Cheyenne, in the first half of the twentieth century. Faulkner wrote that they expanded in the late 50s, with Casper’s first nest record in 1984 and Jackson Hole’s in the mid-90s.
Game birds from beyond North America are a group that often gets released for hunting. They don’t often naturalize widely and so new birds are constantly released, like the popular ring-necked pheasants of China and East Asia. Sometimes you’ll see escapees from bird farms like the chukar of Europe and Asia. Also from that region are gray partridges which sometimes can make a go of it around grain crops.
The wild turkey was introduced in Wyoming in western Platte County in 1935 in a trade with New Mexico for some sage-grouse.
The Canada goose, by the early 20th century, could be found in the river basins in Eastern Wyoming, but that wasn’t enough for hunters and introductions of all kinds of subspecies were made.
Northern Bobwhite is only native to southeastern Wyoming. If you see it elsewhere in the state, those birds are from introduced populations.
Whether they immigrate with help from people or move in on their own, birds are constantly testing new locations for suitability—for living and raising young.
Cheyenne Bird Banter 