A Utah Public Radio production featuring contributors who share a love of nature, preservation and education
Author: Lyle Bingham
Lyle loves anything that flies: bees, birds, bugs, balloons and electrons. Lyle is a Senior Marketing Project Manager with EMC Corporation. He is also a former secretary of the Bridgerland Audubon Society. Lyle is an active birder, when not flying his hot air balloon.
Long-billed Curlew Lee Karney, US Fish & Wildlife ServiceLong-billed Curlew in Flight Cresent Lake NWR, US Fish & Wildlife Service
The Cyrano de Bergerac of the bird world is the long-billed curlew. Its bill is 9 inches long and curves downward at the tip. This 19-inch bird is the largest shorebird of North America. The long-billed curlew is cinnamon brown above and buff brown below. It is similar in size to a marbled godwit, but the bill of the godwit is shorter and turns up.
Like Cyrano, the long-billed curlew is shy. They arrive in Utah in mid-March, seeking open fields and grasslands away from trees, posts, power poles or any other perches of use to predators. They can been seen walking through fields, probing with their bill for worms, insects, spiders and even berries.
In breeding season the male repeatedly flies high, then glides downward, calling all the while.
[Kevin Colver, Songs of Yellowstone #9 Long-billed Curlew]
Like other shorebirds, their nest is just a shallow scrape on the ground, lightly lined with grass. Typically 4 eggs are laid. Both sexes incubate the eggs for about 2 weeks. The down covered young hatch with their eyes open and feed themselves. Two to three weeks after the chicks hatch, the female departs. Dad stays with his chicks until after they fledge when they are about 35 days old. Soon thereafter curlews flock up to migrate south. In mid July, they fly to California or Mexico, where they frequent coastal mudflats eating crabs and other aquatic life.
The long-billed curlew was once much more common. Market hunting in the 19th century and habitat loss more recently have reduced their numbers, but they persist in parts of Utah.
Thanks to Kevin Colver for the use of his recording.
To view pictures visit the Wildaboututah link on upr.org
This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.
Credits:
Photos: Courtesy Fish and Wildlife Service Online Digital Media Library
Long-billed curlew Numenius americanus, USGS Migratory Bird Research – Patuxent Wildlife Research Center,
https://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i2640id.html
Burrowing Owl Near the Great Salt Lake Courtesy Bridgerland Audubon Society Lyle Bingham, Photographer
This is Dick Hurren from the Bridgerland Audubon Society.
During a recent field trip sponsored by our group, we saw two small burrowing owls with long legs and round faces, standing by their burrow, near the road, on a large stone.
A car stopped close by and the owls disappeared under the ground. Not wanting to disturb them, we stayed in our car to watch the pair. A few minutes later, after the other car left, one of the owls was back on the stone surveying the area and the other reappeared soon thereafter.
Burrowing owls are one of the less commonly seen of the 14 owl species found in Utah. With many former grasslands and prairies, the preferred habitat of these owls, now cities and cultivated farms, these protected birds have tried to adapt.
As their preferred habitats disappear, they may take up residence in cemetaries, golf courses, airports, on the edges of farms or in deserts. But their numbers are declining precipitously.
Most inhabit holes built by other animals. Occasionally, however, they burrow their own holes. For both nesting and off-season living, their preferred holes are bare of vegetation with a nearby mound. They stand on the mound mornings and evenings and hunt primarily nocturnally. Burrowing owls are often common near prairie dog towns and love to take over old prairie dog holes for their own. Where natural burrows are sparse and in winter, they may resort to using dry culverts under roads.
In spring, burrowing owls migrate north from the southerwestern states, that is Texas, New Mexico, Southern California, and Arizona. As well as parts of Mexico and from as far south as Honduras. Some travel as far north as Canada to nest. Most burrowing owls fly back south by the end of September, with the last leaving in October.
Weighing less than 6 ounces, this long-legged owl stands just 8 inches tall. The female incubates from 3 to 11 eggs while the male ferries in food to her for that 30-day period.
Their diet is diverse, a smorgasbord of invertibrates such as scorpions, grasshoppers, beetles, moths and worms as well as vertibrates like kangaroo rats, mice, frogs, snakes and lizards.
Both parents tend to the young until they fledge, at 40 to 45 days. In the burrow, the young can make a buzzy rattle-snake-like sound. This helps deter animals and humans from reaching in the hole to disburb them.
Land owners find that providing space for burrows or by building artificial burrows gives them, that is the landowners, the benefit of a voratious preditor of insects and rodents.
We can enjoy burrowing owls, and help reduce their declining numbers, when we preserve open spaces, restrict free-roaming dogs and cats, and restrict using pesticides that kill owls and the insects and small animals they eat.
A Dark Black-billed Magpie Courtesy Bridgerland Audubon Society Library Stephen Peterson, Photographer
I knew a man who referred to those black and white, long-tailed birds as “Holstein Pheasants.”
He used to say, you can shoot pheasants, can’t you? Magpies are loved or hated. Few are without opinions when it comes to these protected, I remind you protected, birds.
In Asia, they are revered for good luck; while their relatives, the crows, are omens of bad luck.
The black-billed magpie of Utah is related to the yellow-billed magpies in California and more distantly to the European magpie and the Korean magpie.
They all have a similar general appearance, black and white with a long black tail.
Our Black-billed magpies mate for life and stay together until one dies. Then the other may find a new mate.
Their home-building skills will not produce awards for neatness on the outside. But are marvels of architecture.
Nests are collections of loose sticks, mud, bark and other available materials, often built on older nests. A hood of loose sticks covers the nest with multiple entrances.
And the inside is lined with soft grasses and other materials.
Once the nest is built, the female lays six or seven eggs. While she sets on the eggs, the male feeds her for up to 18 days. The parents feed their young about two months, even though the young fledge in about a month. Upon independence from their parents, the young flock with other young magpies.
Magpies can be seen harassing hawks, eagles and owls as they perch in trees.
But despite the begrudging landlords, owls and hawks often take up residence in old magpie nests.
Bold and gregarious, magpies are well adapted to man. They are the bane of back yard bird feeders, driving songbirds away and eating everything in sight.
I know at least one local birder, however, who enjoys magpies and attracts them with Cheetos and soft cat food, but on the other side of the house from her regular bird feeders.
Magpies are opportunists and nest raiders. They are despised by hunters because they clean out unprotected and abandoned nests.
And fruit growers fight them with netting, flags and pyrotechnics. But don’t hold that against them.
These Holsteins clean up roadkill, tent caterpillars, grasshoppers and many other things that we’d rather not see or smell.
For Wild About Utah, I’m Dick Hurren.
Credits:
Photos: Courtesy Bridgerland Audubon Society Image Files
Text: Lyle Bingham and Dick Hurren, Bridgerland Audubon Society
Callifornia Gull Larus californicus Courtesy and Copyright 2003 Jack Binch All Rights Reserved
Utah’s state bird is is commemorated as the seagull, more accurately the the California Gull. Known in Utah for having saved the pioneers from the Mormon cricket invasion of 1848 and subsequent years, gulls hold a hallowed place in local history.
Seagull is a generic term referring to gulls of all types. Gulls we are familiar with range from the small 11-inch Bonaparte’s gull with a 32-inch wingspan to the 20-inch Herring gull with a 55-inch wingspan. They are white, grey and some have black heads. Young go through phases giving them different appearances as they mature over two to four years depending upon the species.
Many Gulls migrate to parts of Utah and some pass through in their migration to more northern regions. Ring-billed gulls are here during the fall, winter, and spring. The occasional Herring or Thayer’s gull may visit us in winter. A few black-headed Bonaparte’s gulls pass through reliably in spring and fall during migration. Upon rare occasions, we are even visited by Herrman’s, Western, Glaucous, Glaucous-winged, Mew, yellow-footed , Sabine’s, Iceland, and lesser black-backed gulls.
In spring, the California gulls and the much smaller and black-headed Franklin’s gulls return to nest. They migrate from southern states or the pacific coast and raise their young locally on islands in fresh and salt water.
Gulls clean up. They frequent garbage dumps, and irrigated, plowed or manure-covered fields. These carnivores eat insects, worms, crustaceans, fish and the occasional french fry in a parking lot. Opportunistic, they watch and raid unprotected nests of other birds, eating eggs and young. Sometimes flying singly, they are more often found in flocks. In flocks they defend against predators by harassment and intimidation.
Thayer’s and Herring gulls have been known to use tools. They have been seen dropping shellfish on asphalt or concrete roads to crack them open and eat the contents.
At the store, take a moment to think about our state bird. In the dump, and in waterways, gulls can become entrapped in six-pack rings. Do your part to prevent this by cutting up these plastic rings before disposing of them. Or better yet, buy cans loose or in boxes instead of rings.
Text: Bridgerland Audubon Society: Lyle Bingham and Dick Hurren
A Moment to Think About Our State Bird: Additional Reading:
Utah Symbols – California gull
Utah State Bird – Sea Gull(The California gull, Larus californicus), Utah’s Online Library, Utah State Library Division, Utah Department of Heritage & Arts, https://www.utah.gov/about/state-symbols.html
Bonaparte’s Gull, Larus philadelphia
Bonaparte’s gull Larus philadelphia, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, USGS, https://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i0600id.html
Handbook of the Birds of the World 3: 609. Lynx Edicions. Larus thayeri (TSN 176828). Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved on 10 March 2006.
