State bird among the species disappearing from Kansas
Mark Robbins was just 13 when he saw a black and brown bird with a slightly curved beak, and a white belly fly to the base of a tree in his neighborhood, spin upwards in a spiral, and then, with a flourish, fly back to the bottom of the tree.
Thoroughly impressed and equally curious, he looked up the bird and found out it was a Brown Creeper, a tiny woodland bird that builds hammock-like nests. From that moment, he became hooked on birds.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” said Robbins, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Kansas and a member of the Kansas Ornithological Society for 26 years. “I’m now 66, and it’s a passion, for sure, because you can go anywhere on the planet and see birds, so that’s exciting.”
Robbins is one of many Kansas Ornithological Society members who has watched the ebb and flow of the Kansas bird population.
The U.S. is losing its bird population, to the tune of 3 billion since the 1970s, and Kansas is no different, but the answer as to which bird species Kansas is missing and why they’re leaving is more complicated. Some birds are changing their range due to climate change and other factors, while others are leaving the state as their habitat disappears, in search of it elsewhere.
Local experts say that 11 species of birds have decreased in number or nearly disappeared altogether over the past 25 years. They suspect there may be more.
“We don’t have enough measures and a long enough period of measures to accurately document it,” said Chuck Otte, the secretary of the Kansas Bird Records Committee. “We know the situation is dire. We just don’t know how dire it is...It’s me having been a birdwatcher for 60 years saying ‘there aren’t nearly as many warblers migrating through as there were 20-30 years ago.’ It’s anecdotal, not hard science.”
Birds account for 15% of all endangered species in the U.S., the second largest animal group after fish, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
There are many reasons for bird populations decline, such as habitat loss, pesticide use, invasive species of plants and animals, feral and outdoor cats, industry practices and climate change.
“The climate is warming steadily and for people who have observed birds for decades, as some of us have, the effect on bird populations is significant and obvious,” said Pete Janzen, a nonprofessional birder, and co-author of The Guide to Kansas Birds and Birding Hot Spots.
Janzen said birds are changing behaviors. Some have moved their migratory range northwards, no longer wintering in Kansas. And then some southern species have found Kansas as a new home.
Declining species
While researchers do not have a comprehensive list of affected species in Kansas, they have found that grassland birds are facing the sharpest decline in population. This includes the Kansas state bird, the Western Meadowlark, as well as the Eastern Meadowlark.
“We are able to more easily tell that grassland birds are declining because of the nature of the species. They’re easier to detect,” said Mark Robbins. “Here in Kansas, the most negatively influenced group of birds are Meadowlark. Eastern Meadowlark is probably even worse because that’s in the eastern third of the state because we’ve converted almost all the tallgrass prairie.”
Among the species that are disappearing:
▪ Meadowlarks. With similar brown and black bodies and yellow tummies, the male birds of these species share the habit of taking more than one mate at a time. The Eastern Meadowlark, which tends to be the chunkier of the two, isn’t claimed by any state while the slightly thinner Western Meadowlark is the state bird for six states.
▪ Prairie Chickens. Known for their vigorous drumming dances and cackling songs, the brown and white game birds known as the Greater Prairie-Chicken and the Lesser Prairie-Chicken are at risk as grassland species and effects of climate change.
“Grassland birds, most of them, are seeing exponential annual declines and wetlands birds, in general, are,” Janzen said. “Habitat specialists that depend on a very specific habitat are the ones that are not doing so well, and habitat generalists that were more tolerant of changes that we have created are doing okay.”
The Prairie-Chickens are smaller than the Ring-necked Pheasant, the only other grassland bird noted by the researchers on the decline in Kansas. According to Robbins, there isn’t as much concern among ornithologists about the pheasant, however, as it was an introduced species.
▪ Henslow’s Sparrow. Weighing as much as an AAA battery, the Henslow’s Sparrow is known for its song, which sounds like a “feeble hiccup,” according to famous ornithologist David Sibley. It, like the grassland species, is struggling because it is a habitat specialist.
“It has a very specific habitat need of tallgrass prairie that typically has not been burned or grazed for three years, and there’s not too many,” Janzen said. “As a result, they’re not doing well nationally. We do have a fair number of them in Kansas, but the carpet burning in the Flint Hills has an impact on their population.”
▪ Northern Bobwhite. The Northern Bobwhite is also declining because of the loss of hedgerows, according to Robbins. The small game bird is the only eastern native quail.
▪ Black-billed Magpies. Black and white birds with blue-green iridescent wings and tails, weighing about as much as a hamster, the Black-billed Magpies, would follow Plains Native Americans and eat their leftovers. Lewis and Clark once wrote about the little birds who would steal food out of their tents.
Black-billed Magpies’ populations were decimated after 2001 because of the West Nile Virus and haven’t rebounded. Their lack of rebound might be associated with climate change, according to Eugene Young, coauthor of Birds of Kansas and chair of the Kansas Bird Records Committee.
▪ Eastern Whip-poor-wills. Both known for their summer songs, Eastern Whip-poor-wills and the Common Nighthawk are in decline because of overused pesticides that have destroyed the moth population, which is their primary source of food.
▪ Black-capped chickadee. The tiny spherical shaped bird known as the Black-capped chickadee weighs as much as a pair of dice. It is slowly being replaced in the state by Carolina chickadees, their southern cousins, according to Otte.
This story was originally published September 6, 2020 at 6:01 AM.
