Rope-dragging for Long-billed Curlews

All week, we've been out at our field sites in the morning trying to track down Long-billed Curlew nests.  We started a new method called rope-dragging, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Rope dragging is often used to flush secretive birds or find their nests, or flush them into nets to band them.  In the past, Alex and I have used rope-dragging to flush sparrows into mist nets, and it is also often used to flush rails or ducks.  Last week, Alex, Jay, and Heather travelled to Oregon to work with a masters student who uses this method with much success in finding Long-billed Curlew nests.  Basically, 4-5 people all line up with about 100 feet of rope between them, and walk in a straight line across the target area where curlew nests are suspected from previous observations.  Curlews tend to hunker down when a threat is near, so as not to give their nest away, and it takes the rope passing over them to flush them off.  Sometimes, this isn't even enough to make them fly, so you still have to keep your eyes focused on the ground near you to make sure birds are not missed.  It is a pretty good work out, and after a few hours, can be pretty tiring.

So far, we haven't found any curlew nests at our field sites with rope dragging. We know of many nests north of our sites, and aren't sure why we don't have any yet. It has been unseasonably cold lately, which may be delaying the start of nesting.  We found one pair that we suspected was nesting, but as soon as we thought we had it figured out, rope-dragging revealed nothing, and the pair had moved into the next valley.  A few days ago, we found a male frantically trying to gain a females love by making numerous nest scrapes, and trying to lure her over to them with low flights.  We'll keep an eye on them, and hope the female chooses to stay with the male.  On a few other occasions, we've found pairs on the ground together, but within minutes, they are flying off together into the distance. If they have nests right now, one should be on it because of the cold temperatures.  Finding single males defending territories is promising though, since we hope their mates are nearby on a nest. Today, we saw two different male curlews attacking Prairie Falcons!  In my opinion you have to be pretty crazy to go after a Prairie Falcon.  Hopefully this is a sign of a nearby nest, and we can rope-drag at these sites tomorrow when the temperature gets warmer.

Typical view of Long-billed Curlew pair...flying away.

male Long-billed Curlew walking around on his territory

same male surveying his territory for intruders

Same male attacking Prairie Falcon that got too close!

In reality, our study sites are really not ideal curlew habitat. Historically, many curlews nested here, but their numbers have drastically dropped in the past 30 years, most likely because the land is poorly managed for Long-billed Curlews.  It seems to be managed soley for cattle, and because it is BLM land, it is open to the public.  In this case, the landscape has been devastated and the ecosysytem totally disrupted by the practice of "plinking," or shooting ground-squirrels.  Ground-squirrel populations are exploding at our field sites because they aren't closed to the public, and this attracts a breed of people who find pleasure in killing a small animal purely for recreational purposes.  Unfortunately, badgers and coyotes are also targetted and killed, taking out natural ground-squirrel predators.  In turn, their is an abundance of raptors and ravens that come to scavenge the excess number of ground-squirrel carcasses. Long-billed Curlews are then affected negatively by the presence of so many avian predators, in the form of egg and chick predation, not to mention the energy expenditures of chasing predators more often than they should normally have to.  It doesn't help that our field sites are used as illegal dumping sites, and it is likely that illegal poaching also takes place.  A weekend at our sites can be pretty scary if you are a curlew, with loads of people shooting in every direction. In general, if I was a curlew, this is the last place I'd want to nest.  The low number of curlews and curlew nests at our field sites, in comparison to historic numbers, should be a red flag that the land is being poorly managed.  In this situation, I put more personal value on a healthy population of Long-billed Curlews (an obvious indicator species here for the general health of the land) than I do on someones weekend of target shooting, and I doubt this declining population could ever begin to increase as long as these sites are open to the public and managed for cattle.

Rocky Mountain National Park 11/24/09

We set off for Rocky Mountain National Park early in the morning, only a few miles away from Estes Park.  Unfortunately most of the park is closed in the winter time due to the snow, but we still managed to see a ton of birds.  We started out by driving as high as we could to the end of the road.   Here we saw mountain chickadees and and abert's squirrel.  A flock of red crossbills also flew by.  Throughout the day we saw many more of each of these species. 

Near one of the park campgrounds, we came across a group of birds looking for handouts.  This included magpies, stellars jays, and clark's nutcracker, in addition to this abert's squirrel.

Abert's squirrel

Stellar's Jay

Clark's nutcracker

black-billed magpie

Also in the campground were 5 coyotes roaming around.  They seemed pretty habituated to people and were ignoring all of the cars that were stopping to photograph them.

At another park road, we saw a flock of red crossbills fly over.  We quickly pulled over and went into the woods to find them, and heard many other chirps.  Here we found more mountain chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches (very plentiful in the park), and a pair of red crossbills working on some pinecones.

male red crossbill

female red crossbill

mountain chickadee

On our way out of the park, we pulled over to find about 10 pygmy nuthatches, life birds for both Alex and I.  We continued out of the park, and on our way back into Estes Park, we were stuck in a small traffic jam due to a herd of elk gathering in the town.

We then headed to a river in Estes Park, where we heard we could find American Dippers.  After about 20 minutes of searching, Alex spotted this one working its way up river.