Big Day Arctic visitor

This juvenile red-throated loon spent several days on Sloans Lake in Lions Park. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Cheyenne Big Day Bird Count catches Arctic visitor

Published June 4, 2022, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

By Barb Gorges

            I’m sure our Cheyenne Big Day Bird Count compiler for Cheyenne Audubon, Grant Frost, was thinking to avoid cold, nasty weather when he picked May 21 instead of the 14^th for the count. But it snowed the day before anyway. Our total of 125 species is not too shabby considering the weather was chilly, but not windy.

We had several highlights:

–Red-throated loon juvenile was seen at Sloans Lake for several days before and on the count. It is considered rare in Wyoming, wintering on either coast and nesting in the Arctic.

–Common loon juvenile same place.

–Broad-tailed hummingbird was trying to get nectar out of frozen crabapple blossoms at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

–Harris’s sparrow may winter next door in Nebraska but is seldom seen here.

–Red-headed woodpeckers showed up in two locations, including a pair in one.

–Baltimore oriole, the eastern counterpart to our Bullock’s, came by with a female.

–No eagles were seen.

            I came across the scan of a “Tribune Eagle” article about the 1982 Big Day, held a week earlier than this year’s, with 40 people counting. The total number of species seen was nearly the same, 124.

            The difference between which species were seen in 1982 but not this year, 29, was close to how many were seen in 2021 but not this year, 27. But if you look at eBird for the first three weeks of May this year in Laramie County, 185 species are listed. Some species passed through before our count day and some could have still been here count day but in less abundance and we missed them.

            Besides all the species name changes in the last 40 years, what’s interesting is what isn’t on the 1982 list but is in 2022:

–Cackling goose was split from Canada goose in 2004.

–Eurasian collared-dove was first observed in Wyoming here in Cheyenne in 1998.

–Great-tailed grackle in 2003 was my first Cheyenne observation.

–Common raven, though they have always been reliably seen starting about 10 or 15 miles west of town, my first Cheyenne observation wasn’t until 2010.

            The 1982 count lists five winter species we didn’t see this count: bufflehead (duck), rough-legged hawk, northern shrike and at the time what are now subspecies of dark-eyed junco listed as two species, Oregon junco and gray-headed junco. Maybe they migrated earlier this year thanks to weather or climate change.

            Evening grosbeak made the 1982 list, but it is hard to find them anywhere these days. They are listed as a globally threatened species.

Black-bellied plovers and mountain plovers, grassland species recorded in 1982, rarely make our count anymore, but eBird has sightings recorded for April 2020—when everyone was out birding more than usual.

            Our Big Day count area is essentially the same as our Christmas Bird Count, a 7.5-mile diameter circle centered on the Capitol building. There are more trees to attract birds than in 1982, or in 1956 when only 85 species were counted, according to early compiler May Hanesworth. But as the surrounding grasslands are built upon, mowed and invaded by free-roaming dogs and cats, the grassland birds will be harder to find.

Cheyenne Big Day Bird Count, May 21, 2022

125 species, 19 participants  

Cackling Goose

Canada Goose

Wood Duck

Blue-winged Teal

Cinnamon Teal

Northern Shoveler

Gadwall

American Wigeon

Mallard

Northern Pintail

Green-winged Teal

Redhead

Ring-necked Duck

Lesser Scaup

Common Goldeneye

Ruddy Duck

Pied-billed Grebe

Eared Grebe

Western Grebe

Clark’s Grebe

Rock Pigeon

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Mourning Dove

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

American Coot

American Avocet

Killdeer

Marbled Godwit

Least Sandpiper

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Western Sandpiper

Wilson’s Phalarope

Red-necked Phalarope

Spotted Sandpiper

Solitary Sandpiper

Greater Yellowlegs

Willet

Ring-billed Gull

California Gull

Common Loon

Red-throated Loon

Double-crested Cormorant

American White Pelican

Great Blue Heron

Black-crowned Night-Heron

Turkey Vulture

Osprey

Northern Harrier

Cooper’s Hawk

Swainson’s Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Great Horned Owl

Belted Kingfisher

Red-headed Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

American Kestrel

Olive-sided Flycatcher

Western Wood-Pewee

Willow Flycatcher

Dusky Flycatcher

Say’s Phoebe

Western Kingbird

Eastern Kingbird

Warbling Vireo

Blue Jay

Black-billed Magpie

American Crow

Common Raven

Black-capped Chickadee

Mountain Chickadee

Horned Lark

Northern Rough-winged Swallow

Tree Swallow

Violet-green Swallow

Bank Swallow

Barn Swallow

Cliff Swallow

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Rock Wren

House Wren

European Starling

Gray Catbird

Northern Mockingbird

Townsend’s Solitaire

Swainson’s Thrush

Hermit Thrush

American Robin

House Sparrow

House Finch

Pine Siskin

American Goldfinch

Chipping Sparrow

Lark Sparrow

Lark Bunting

White-crowned Sparrow

Harris’s Sparrow

Vesper Sparrow

Savannah Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Lincoln’s Sparrow

Green-tailed Towhee

Spotted Towhee

Yellow-breasted Chat

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Western Meadowlark

Bullock’s Oriole

Baltimore Oriole

Red-winged Blackbird

Brown-headed Cowbird

Brewer’s Blackbird

Common Grackle

Great-tailed Grackle

Orange-crowned Warbler

MacGillivary’s Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

Yellow Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Wilson’s Warbler

Western Tanager

Black-headed Grosbeak

Lazuli Bunting

Indigo Bunting

New birding field trip strategies

Published July 10, 2020, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle: “Cheyenne Audubon tries a new field trip strategy”

Birders sign up for the Cheyenne Audubon socially distant field trip June 27 at the Curt Gowdy State Park visitor center.

By Barb Gorges

            The Cheyenne – High Plains Audubon Society has been adapting to pandemic life. We now Zoom for our board meetings and our fall lectures will probably also be via Zoom.

            Field trips are harder to adapt. Our field trip chair, Grant Frost, suggested a survey of the Cheyenne Greenway birds in late April and many of us signed up to individually bird a section. Our May  Big Day Bird Count was arranged similarly. At the end of June, we tried “separate but simultaneous” at Curt Gowdy State Park—choosing different trails.

            This time there was some pairing up—but it is much easier to keep two arms’-lengths away from one person than a group. However, the trails between the visitor center and Hidden Falls were practically a traffic jam of heavy-breathing bicyclists, reported the birders who headed that way. They had to continually step off the trail to allow bikes to pass.

            One of our Laramie Audubon friends took the trail from Crystal Reservoir towards Granite Reservoir and met up with the many participants of a footrace.

            Mark and I were lucky. We chose a trail with little shade, not very conducive to a summer stroll. But the trail passes along the lake shore and creek, through ponderosa pine parkland, grasslands (sad to say, much of it has gone over to cheatgrass in the last five years), mountain mahogany shrubland, cottonwood draws and across a cliff face in the stretch of about 2 miles.

We saw 29 species: gulls over the lake, a belted kingfisher along the creek, chickadee in the pines, meadowlarks in the grassland, green-tailed towhees in the shrubs, a lazuli bunting in the cottonwoods and rock wrens in the rocky cliff. The total for the morning, including what the other eight participants hiking in the forest saw, was 71 species.

            While we could see the runners on the trail across the water, Mark and I met only two people on our trail, a friendly father and son on their bikes. So, it was a little disconcerting to come back to the trailhead three hours later and find in addition to the two vehicles there when we started, 10 more. One was the park ranger’s truck, one from Colorado, one from Oregon and the rest from Laramie County, like us. They must have all gone the other way.

            A normal Audubon field trip serves at least two purposes besides recreation. One is to find birds and to report them now that there is a global data base, eBird.org. But the other is to learn from each other. Our local bird experts are happy to share their knowledge with newcomers. Even the experts discuss with each other their favorite field marks for identifying obscure birds.

            This time we did have someone new to birding show up and one of our members graciously allowed her to accompany her. As we finished our hikes, we reported back by the visitor center where we gathered with our lunches under a pine—spaced as required. There was general conversation about birds we’d seen and other topics dear to birdwatcher hearts. I almost canceled the Zoom tally party I’d suggested for the evening but decided to go ahead with it anyway.

Yellow Warbler, photo by Mark Gorges

            Five of us signed on, including our new birder—now a new chapter member. I’d invited people to share photos from the day and showed landscape shots of where Mark and I hiked. Mark shared his shots of a yellow warbler and a mountain bluebird. Someone photographed a nest of house wrens and Greg Johnson shared two photos we could use to compare the beaks of hairy and downy woodpeckers—the best field mark for telling them apart (the hairy’s is proportionately longer).

            Then it occurred to me, maybe we should have a tally party via Zoom after more field trips and not just during pandemics. It could be a way for bird photographers to show off their pictures and for all of us to learn more about identifying the birds we see. It’s a chance for birders to flock together, something we like to do as much as the birds.

            Our next socially distant field trip will be July 18. We’ll meet at the Pine Bluffs rest area to explore the natural area behind it and document what we find for the annual Audubon Rockies Wyoming Bioblitz. Check for details soon at https://cheyenneaudubon.wordpress.com/.  

Mountain Bluebird, photo by Mark Gorge

“Prairie Ghost” bird protected by farmers

Even though the Mountain Plover’s preferred nesting habitat is nearly completely bare ground–like farmer’s fields–it can still be very difficult to pick out. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Published June 13, 2007, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “‘Prairie Ghost’—the Where’s Waldo of the wilderness. The mountain plover has its disappearing act perfected—so much so that some people were convinced it was an endangered species.”

2014 Update: “Larry Snyder started in 2002 with the Nebraska Prairie Partners as a seasonal field technician. Now as the full-time Nebraska Prairie Partners Assistant, Larry is responsible for implementing the Mountain Plover nest protection program and wildlife escape ladder project, and he is involved in the Nebraska Prairie Partners Education and Outreach programs. Larry continues to help conduct special species surveys and has begun the implementation process of playa restoration projects in the southern panhandle.”—from the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory website, www.rmbo.org, 5-8-2014. The mountain plover nest-marking program has gained in popularity with farmers.

By Barb Gorges

If you stare really hard at the rocky soil, you may see a ghost of a bird, the “prairie ghost,” but only if it moves.

If you are good at it, you can distinguish its white belly from a pale-colored rock. But if it turns its light brown back to you, it is indistinguishable from the surrounding tilled earth.

The nickname for the mountain plover is apt. Its disappearing act may be partly responsible for people thinking there were so few of them that the species would be a good candidate for listing as threatened or endangered.

On a damp morning in late May, just 50 miles east of Cheyenne and a few miles north of Bushnell, Neb., mountain plovers were present, right in the middle of alternating, mile-long strips of winter wheat, millet and fallow ground.

Not only were they present, but the plovers were nesting on the stony ridges of the fallow strips. A nest is harder to find than the birds though because the eggs are on bare ground between the stones and they don’t move. It’s like playing “Where’s Waldo?”

A mountain plover nest is a mere scrape made by the male with his feet. He makes several. The female lays three eggs in one and three eggs in another and then each parent incubates a nest. The parents will flick small pebbles at the eggs occasionally, but that’s as far as nest building goes here.

Larry Snyder is good at seeing ghosts. His first encounter was about six years ago. While working one of his own fields, what he thought was an odd looking killdeer, one without the usual double neck band markings, flew up in front of him. He was able to find its nest and avoid driving over it.

A short time later, on a fishing trip with his daughters, he bumped into Chris Carnine of the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. She was setting up the Nebraska Prairie Partners program, which was to include mountain plover nest surveys.

Chris identified the mystery bird. Its nest in Larry’s field became the first documented mountain plover nest in the NPP program and also for Nebraska Game and Parks.

Chris found that Larry had a good eye for plovers and he was hired to find more.

He still farms, but weekdays he works for RMBO. In the spring he rides his neighbors’ fields searching for nests. He also does burrowing owl and raptor surveys.

The first farmer to sign up for the plover program was Larry’s friend and neighbor, Bernie Culek.

As the third generation of his family on his farm south of Kimball, Neb., Bernie is always looking for better ways to make farming pay.

In 1992, when he came back to the farm, he changed it to a certified organic operation producing wheat, millet and several other grains.

Funding of the NPP program from a Nebraska Environmental Trust grant and Nebraska Game and Parks makes each mountain plover nest on his place worth $100. He allows RMBO to find and mark nests and then he plows around them. He feels he should take some responsibility for wildlife.

Signing up for the program is a risk some of Bernie’s farming neighbors have not been willing to take, he said.

The reluctant think the federal government might get too interested in plovers found on their land, even though the petition to list them was rejected in 2003 because there were more plovers than originally thought.

Bart Bly, currently in charge of the NPP program, said the long-term goal is to turn the program over to the landowners. They found a fifth of the nests last year.

But, said Bernie, for farmers like him, spring is very busy, and it is unlikely that spending hours to find a nest would be a good use of his time.

It can take two days–the longest interval Larry and summer field technician Cameron Shelton have had between nests this spring.

However, on the morning of my visit we found two nests.

Larry put out an invitation for volunteers a couple months ago. I thought it would be a good chance to see another mountain plover, my first being last summer on a field trip with Larry and the folks from the Wildcat Audubon Society of Scottsbluff, Neb. Five other volunteers have been or will be out this spring.

The catch was learning how to drive a four-wheeler. It rates right up there with snowmobiles in obnoxiousness in my book. But it’s a tool, a modern-day mule.

We rode half the length of the mile-long fallow strip at 6 miles per hour, three abreast, about 30 feet apart from each other, Larry, me, then Cameron. Then we rode back and out again, eventually sweeping the whole width of the strip.

I was watching the ground for rocks and hills instead of birds when a plover flew across in front of me, like a deer in the headlights.

Larry said “she” seemed to have shot out from under his front tire. It is impossible to tell the sex of a mountain plover sitting on a nest, but Larry and Cameron refer to them as “she” anyway.

The only time in the field one can be certain of gender, Larry said, is when birds are copulating or the male is performing a courtship display or scraping a nest site.

Larry carefully examined the ground to make sure he hadn’t run over the nest and wasn’t going to step on it.

At a short distance he found three pale olive eggs with black splotches, each about an inch and a half long. He marked the nest with florescent orange stakes set 40 feet out in four directions.

Meanwhile, Cameron brought over a plastic jar of water for a float test. He examined each egg closely for any signs of pipping, where the hatchling might have picked a hole in the shell. If there was a hole, the float test could drown the chick. The test determines the age of the egg—the higher it floats in the water, the closer it is to hatching.

Incubation takes about 30 days, but the parents aren’t tied to the nests.

If it isn’t too cold, they let solar energy work for them. But if it gets too hot, they stand, casting a shadow over the eggs, even holding out their wings sometimes, Larry said.

So temperature plays a big part in how successful nest hunting is on any given day.

On a cold day or a hot day, where the adult flies up from is likely to be the nest. Otherwise, they might be out anywhere, stalking beetles, grasshoppers, crickets and ants–the extent of their food diversity.

After Larry took a location reading and filled out a nesting record form, he explained that we couldn’t walk back from the nest to our four-wheelers the way we came. We must continue past the nest and circle back so that predators finding our scent later will also circle away.

A second plover flew, but when a little investigation didn’t get a nest, we backed off and waited for the bird to return. Larry is a patient person. He just hunkered down with his binoculars and waited.

He said some birds have an attitude. While some are straightforward, others fly off over the hill and then sneak back.

Even though he sent Cameron around to the other side of the strip, neither of them could re-find the bird until Larry changed location.

And then I saw a pale rock move. It was the bird again and the nest could be found. This one had only two eggs.

Larry said 13-lined ground squirrels are the most common nest predators, along with snakes.

Overall, Fritz Knopf, author of the Birds of North America Online account for mountain plover and the one who originated the “field clearing” idea in Colorado, told me the survival rate is very good, greater than 50 percent, sometimes even 90 percent, compared to maybe 25 percent for another ground nester, the mallard.

Last year the RMBO crews found 87 nests. This year, they are already up to 54. Larry hopes they break 100.

With his eye for prairie ghosts and the help of Cameron and the other two-man crew, they probably will.

A bird of contradictions

The mountain plover is a bird of the prairies. The naming mistake can be attributed to John James Audubon. The species was first collected by John Kirk Townsend along the Sweetwater River in Wyoming in 1832, said retired plover researcher Fritz Knopf.

Townsend shipped the specimen back to Audubon who thought that Townsend’s description of the bird’s location near the Continental Divide must mean it was found among mountain peaks. But the divide in Wyoming often runs through desert and wide-open prairie.

Also, even though classified as a shorebird, it doesn’t spend time at the shore.

Historically, mountain plover breeding habitat is the short-grass prairie of the Great Plains, from Montana to New Mexico, but today populations can be found on tilled fields.

Even on the prairie, the mountain plover prefers disturbed ground, such as burns or areas overgrazed by cattle or trimmed by prairie dogs. Thus, what may be considered good ranching practice in Wyoming, which Fritz considers the major breeding landscape for plovers, may not be compatible with the plover’s bare ground nesting requirements.

Researchers are also looking into the effects of pesticides on mountain plovers, not only on their breeding grounds, but in California’s Imperial Valley where most of them winter.

Fritz said mountain plover populations were decimated by an outbreak of plague in prairie dogs in the late 1800’s, but they prospered during the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. Bare ground to a mountain plover means no predator ambushes. The hordes of grasshoppers must have been like manna from heaven.