Words on Birds and Wildlife

By Todd Burras

SOMEWHERE IN NEBRASKA – A pair of long, gray shafts sliced through the gunpowder-colored sky like one could imagine a couple of arrows released by Pawnee or Lakota warriors might have some 200 years ago.
The two flew straight and true despite cutting through a hellacious headwind out of the west that pounded vehicles – even overturning a semi and trailer in the middle of the east-bound lanes at one spot — and prompted travel advisories farther north because of accompanying snow squalls.
This was an overcast morning early last week with sustaining winds of nearly 40 mph near Kearney in south-central Nebraska, a small city of some 35,000 people living in Buffalo County near the Platte River. For those that have traveled that way, Kearney might be memorable, if for no other reason, than it’s home to The Archway, a unique pioneer and Native American museum that stretches over Interstate 80.
Kearney is in the heart of Nebraska, and by extension, one of the primary outposts of a sort of transcontinental thoroughfare that’s connected the East and the West coasts for centuries. This is a corridor that’s seen Plains Indians on ponies, soldiers on horseback and European settlers in covered wagons. This is a landscape that served the Oregon and Mormon Trails, the Pony Express, the Union Pacific Rail Road and the Lincoln Highway.
Today, Kearney and its surrounding land of sand hills is home to cattle feedlots, no-till cropland, irrigation systems, an endless connection of barbed wire fencelines, prairie hawks, tumbleweeds, cottonwoods, coyotes and antelope.
For a couple weeks each spring, it’s also a Mecca of sorts for birders from around the Midwest and beyond as millions of birds in the Central Flyway follow a portion of the Platte River on their way to breeding grounds farther north. This is an area where anyone from the keenest birder to the average traveler driving the interstate can spy huge flocks of red-winged blackbirds and gulls, rafts of mallards and pintails, and waves of snow geese mile after mile after mile. In a society that’s been hijacked linguistically by the abuse of hyperbole, “spectacle,” in fact, is truly the only word that accurately attempts to describe the simultaneous movement of millions of waterfowl and other birds.
As interesting or not as any of that is to unsuspecting passersby, it’s the arrival from Mexico, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona of the big gray birds, like those first two we spotted straining against the elements, that people come from great distances to see. The real stars of this Great Plains and Platte River party are the Sandhill cranes.
Every spring from about mid-February through early April the Platte River Valley serves as a major stopover site for hundreds of thousands of Sandhill cranes. The giant birds, among the largest in North America with their 7-foot wingspans, spend several weeks here, feeding during the day on waste grain, snails and earthworms in cornfields and wet meadows and resting in the shallow waters of the Platte River at night. This period of staging prepares them for the next leg of their journeys as they head for breeding grounds across the northern United States, Canada and Siberia.
Cranes are among the oldest living birds on the planet, and their history in this stretch of Nebraska is so old it even predates the existence of the Platte River itself. Fossil records show that Sandhill cranes were in what is present-day Nebraska some 9 million years ago. The Platte River? It’s been flowing for about 10,000 years.
On the way to Colorado, most of the cranes, as well as virtually all the other birds we saw, were grounded by the high winds. Huge flocks of cranes hunkered down in fields with only an occasional bird doing its extravagant courting ritual of bowing, jumping and wing flapping. A few days later, however, on the return trip to Iowa, dozens of kettles of birds could be seen soaring above fields in small flocks while on the ground thousands more strutted, preened and generally showed off for one another.
According to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, each crane stays in the area for approximately four weeks before catching the right thermal and heading for its pre-determined breeding ground. It doesn’t take them long to get where they’re going, either. Cranes can travel up to 500 miles on a good day, although 200 to 300 miles is more common.
If you’re outdoors this week and happen to see a pair of slender gray shafts streaking across the sky, look closely. You might be seeing a pair of Sandhill cranes on their way to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan or points farther north.
The spring migration is underway. Whether you’re in central Iowa, south-central Nebraska or somewhere else, enjoy it.

Todd Burras can be reached at ou****************@gm***.com.

The marble-sized blueberry rolled across the bare concrete and came to a stop in a thin layer of snow.

It didn’t remain there for long.

In a flash, an intrepid robin fluttered down from a nearby crabapple tree and plucked up the plump berry.

This was Wednesday morning in a busy commercial parking lot in West Des Moines. The thermostat on the car read 2°F outside but inside I was toasty, warm and enjoying a freshly made crepe topped with strawberries and blueberries.

Watching a pair of robins scour each branch of the small fruit tree for any remnant produce from last year’s growing season, I couldn’t help myself from offering a store-bought berry from my breakfast. Their willingness to stay put in close proximity to so many cars and individuals coming and going was testament to their steadfastness in not relinquishing their hold on what had become a spartan food source.

A look around the parking lot revealed that a dozen trees or more had been nearly completely stripped of their previous stores of frozen fruit. These two robins, and a small growing flock of their kind, were cold and voraciously hungry.

For many Iowans, the thought of American robins persisting through a Midwest winter and remaining here well into mid-winter is noteworthy if not unimaginable. Yet, every year, small flocks of the orange-breasted thrushes eke out their survival by locating and subsisting on the frozen berries proffered from crabapple and other fruit-producing trees. In recent decades, as climate changes, more and more robins are seen toughening it out through the colder and bleaker months of the year.

Late-winter and early-spring severe snow or ice storms notwithstanding, most of these birds should survive until nesting season as long as they can continue to find adequate food sources.

You can certainly help out robins and other backyard birds by feeding them high-quality, nutritious foods that include dried mealworms, dried fruit, nuts, sunflower seeds and suet. Add in a heated water source and you may not be able to get these cheery robins to leave your backyard, snow or no snow.

You can keep your birdfeeders up.

That’s the word from Rachel Ruden, state wildlife veterinarian with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

After nearly a year without any detections in sick or dead birds of the highly pathogenic avian influenza, Iowa has seen a sharp jump in the number of cases of infected waterfowl across the state since December. Most of those cases have occurred in flocks of ducks and geese, mostly north of Interstate 80.

Avian influenza is a highly transmissible, naturally occurring virus found in certain waterfowl and shorebirds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are various subtypes and strains, most of which cause limited harm to domestic poultry (low pathogenic) but some of which are lethal (highly pathogenic). 

The H5N1 strain that has been circulating since 2022 is the first time HPAI has affected wild birds in North America at such a large scale.

Ruden said birds infected by the virus continue to exhibit the ‘classical’ signs of twisting their heads and necks or swimming in tight circles. However, she added, some are just quiet and seem unable or unaware to fly away when approached.

Ruden said people should stay away from sick birds, especially waterfowl, and also cautioned against bringing these birds to licensed wildlife rehabilitators to limit further spread.

On the upside for those of us who enjoy feeding songbirds, Ruden said there is no need for change in feeding practices since most backyard birds are at extremely low risk of being exposed.

“We did document our first blue jay mortality event in early December (and actually the first reported in the U.S.), but also not surprising given their propensity to scavenge,” she said earlier this week. “The affected flock was roosting together with no bird feeders on site anyway.”

Overall, Ruden is optimistic heading into the New Year.

“I believe we are on the backside of the recent wave of influenza activity, so hopefully we will move into a quiet, mid- to late-winter,” she said.

So keep those birdfeeders up … and, might I add, keep them clean and full.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has an online database tracking HPAI detections in wild birds and other species by state at https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections

Mothers who happen to be backyard birders received the ultimate gift Sunday courtesy of none other than Mother Nature, herself.

In a rare and coincidental but serendipitous alignment of timing between the migration of neotropical songbirds from Central and South America and thunderstorms rolling through on Saturday night into Sunday morning, Central Iowans experienced what’s known in birding circles as a “fallout.” Simply put, a fallout is a natural occurrence where migratory birds are forced down by adverse weather in a way that makes them congregate in large numbers.

What that meant for those prepared and fortunate souls who had their feeders full, and even many who didn’t, was they awoke Sunday morning to a euphonic panoply of some of the most beautiful birds on the planet. This was avian nirvana and nothing short of stupendous.

Our small and sheltered backyard in north Ames was teeming with a salubrious smorgasbord of tropical visitors from some of the Western Hemisphere’s most tantalizing locales: the Andes Mountains, Yucatan Peninsula, Costa Rica and islands in the Caribbean Sea. Feeders offering black oil sunflower and safflower seeds, peanuts, tree nuts, dried fruit and grape jelly were overwhelmed by dozens of rose-breasted grosbeaks and Baltimore orioles, and smaller numbers of orchard orioles, gray catbirds and Swainson’s thrushes. Other common local birds competing for spots at the feeding stations when they saw an opening included cardinals, robins, house finches, blue jays, black-capped chickadees, European starlings, Carolina wrens, house sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves, white-breasted nuthatches and downy woodpeckers.

Along nearby rivers and more thickly wooded areas friends reported seeing dramatic numbers of warblers, such as Tennessee, Nashville, black and white, yellow, Blackburnian, chestnut-sided, magnolia, palm and orange-crowned among others, as well as a variety of kinglets, vireos and flycatchers.

On Monday, the frenetic activity of feeding grosbeaks and orioles in our backyard continued, and the list of intriguing species grew with the appearances of a brightly colored male indigo bunting (a rarity in our yard through the years) and a male and female scarlet tanager pair (also an uncommon visitor to the yard). If you’ve ever seen a male scarlet tanager with its electric blood-red body and jet-black wings, you likely haven’t forgotten it. They’re one of the most gorgeous birds you’ll ever see in this part of the world.

With strong southerly winds pushing through the area on Tuesday, the stream of migrants showing up at the feeders in our yard dropped off dramatically with the majority of birds from the previous two days presumably taking advantage of a significant tailwind to continue on their northerly migration. A few orioles and grosbeaks made stops at the seed and jelly feeders, but by then the majority of visits to feeders were being made by local birds in the process of setting up nesting territories of their own.

By Wednesday, just a handful of grosbeaks and orioles were seen hanging around our yard (although a couple of ruby-throated hummingbirds made appearances late in the day), leaving us with a somber reminder of the intensity and relative brevity of the spring songbird migration. But we will never forget the two glorious days we were inundated with a deluge of neotropical birds in what will be remember as the Magnificent Mother’s Day Migration.

By Todd Burras

One morning earlier this week I put up a new birdhouse. Within minutes of it being set up, Stephanie hollered to let me know a black-capped chickadee was perched on top of the structure’s roof, inspecting the new housing addition to the backyard.
That’s how it is outdoors during these natal days of spring: there are things happening everywhere one looks. Bees buzzing. Cardinals courting. Daffodils stretching out of the dirt toward the warming sun. That’s the nature of nature. It’s always dynamic and never static. Even in the dregs of winter when many of us seemingly shut down for days and weeks at a time, nature keeps on keeping on – changing, evolving, living. Still, when spring arrives, those changes seem to be more abundant, accelerated and evident.

That’s what I experienced during a walk off the beaten track at Ada Hayden Heritage Park a few days ago. Of course there were robins hopping all along the trail and in seemingly every tree and bush, just like there have been in nearly every yard across the city during the past two weeks. A flock of goldfinches flew overhead and Canada geese, mallards, ring-necked ducks and hooded mergansers came and went at a dizzying pace. American tree sparrows flitted among branches on trees that revealed swelling buds in the light of the sunny day.

It was once I left the gravel path and headed through the dense prairie plants on my way to get a closer look at some of the small wetlands on the west side of the park, however, that things got a bit more interesting. In each shallow-water cell I inspected, I counted dozens of dead fishing floating along the shores and on the mudflats.
“We often see a winter kill on carp, which is good,” said Erv Klaas, professor emeritus of animal ecology at Iowa State University. “I wish we could eradicate carp; they are not good to have in the wetlands.”

Common carp can overwhelm shallow lakes and wetlands by continuously stirring up the first trophic level. The constant movement of the bottom-feeding carp produces wave action that dislodges the root systems of healthy aquatic plants and also creates turbid water that prevents the germination of seeds and limits the amount of sunlight young plants can gather, thereby preventing them from growing. Essentially, carp can kill a healthy-functioning aquatic ecosystem.

Another resident making small – at this time – alterations to the park is the beaver. Or, in this case, a family of beavers. Evidence of their presence can be seen in numerous places around the park.

“Yes, the beaver are taking down a few trees but nothing of much value at the moment,” Klaas said. “If they start chewing on big cottonwoods along trails the city puts wire around the trunk to discourage them.”

In the past couple years, beavers have focused most of their gnawing energy on the stands of willows that encircle most of the small wetlands. They’ll be allowed to call the park home for the foreseeable future.

“The city relies on the Friends of Ada Hayden Heritage Park group to advise them on management issues, and, right now, we are not advocating any active management of beaver except to let them along unless they cause problems,” Klaas said.

So while the beavers can stay, some plants need to go.

“The Friends group plans to bring back ‘Goats on the Go’ this summer to attack the honeysuckle in the savanna (on the southeast side of the park),” he said. “I think the city will bring back the Conservation Corps this spring to work on eradicating Siberian elm, as well.”

Whether it’s a favorite city park or your own front or backyard, spring is a time of dynamic change in the outdoors. Slow down a bit and keep your eyes peeled. You never know what you might see.

Todd Burras can be reached at ou****************@gm***.com.