13 years beforehand, researchers banded an upland sandpiper on the Konza Prairie Pure Station, an area analysis station contained in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Like many banded birds, the rooster then disappeared from human uncover. Till this summer season season, that’s. A photographer documented it, alive and correctly, perched on a fence put up contained in the Flint Hills – just a few mile from the place it was banded in 2006 as a chick on the nest.
At precisely 13 years and 1 month, it’s now the oldest upland sandpiper on report. Whereas it was relocated close to its banding location, contained in the 13 years of existence it perhaps migrated the equal of 5 instances all through the globe.
Whereas there are a great deal of particulars of this sandpiper’s life we’ll by no means know, the small print of its discovering is in itself a captivating story.
Fowl on a Fence Publish
Upland sandpipers are a migratory shorebird species that makes use of grasslands in North America for nesting and as stopover websites. The Flint Hills, on account of the last word necessary expanse of tallgrass prairie, is a vitally very important habitat for sandpipers and fully totally different grassland birds. Contained in the North American winter, upland sandpipers migrate to Uruguay and northern Argentina, the place furthermore they reside on grasslands.
Researcher Brett Sandercock spent 9 years on the Konza Prairie and 4 years in Uruguay banding larger than 800 upland sandpipers. Banding is a numbers recreation, with many birds by no means recorded as quickly as further. Most bands are recovered when a uninteresting rooster is discovered, or the rooster is recaptured by one totally different analysis crew. Nonetheless it’s attainable to {{{photograph}}} birds and report their bands, an prepare that has flip proper right into a specialised house of curiosity amongst birders.
Greg Kramos works for the Companions for Fish and Wildlife contained in the Flint Hills, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service program that works with non-public landowners to care for grassland as grassland. Kramos spends fairly just a few time prairie habitat and the creatures that reside there.
On the primary day of summer season season this yr, he had a go to day. And he spent it on the prairie. “Even my days off flip into work associated,” Kramos says with pleasant. “I made a decision to cruise the Flint Hills roads, searching for factors to {{{photograph}}}.”
That afternoon, he noticed an upland sandpiper on a fence put up. “Sandpipers are normally fairly cooperative,” he says. “They don’t fly off instantly like meadowlarks. I snapped a few pictures. Then I seen the rooster was banded.”
Sandpipers have skinny legs. To swimsuit, a rooster band ought to be equally tiny. Consider studying numbers wrapped spherical a consuming straw at a distance. “I used to be affected specific particular person,” says Kramos. “I knew I needed to {{{photograph}}} all of the numbers. Because of the rooster shifted, I took bursts of pictures.”
He photographed for 45 minutes, hoping he had captured the band numbers so the rooster might most likely be acknowledged. He returned residence and filed a banding report with the USGS Fowl Banding Lab – and shortly started listening to from researchers who needed to see the pictures. Because of Kramos’s consideration to facet, and a bit luck, biologists confirmed that this was a sandpiper banded as a chick 13 years beforehand – making it a mannequin new longevity report for the species.
“I used to be delighted to amass this report due to I used to be completely sudden,” says Sandercock. “Fewer than 1 p.c of banded upland sandpipers have been recovered and Greg’s assertion virtually doubles the earlier longevity report of 8 years and 11 months.”
Monitoring knowledge present that upland sandpipers in Kansas undertake a round-trip migration of 18,500 miles per yr; over the course of the rooster’s life, it perhaps flew the equal of 5 instances all through the globe. We’ll solely think about the perils it dodged: dangerous native climate, hunters, pesticides, predators and extra.
Regardless of these long-distance travels, the rooster was photographed barely a mile away from the place it was first banded on the nest. “They present a glorious net web page constancy,” says Kramos. “They return in shut proximity to the place they hatched. Nonetheless discovering a rooster like this furthermore reveals how tons we don’t know relating to the species. I think about we’re merely scratching the bottom.”
Nonetheless one situation, Kramos notes, is for certain: the significance of prairie habitats for migrating birds.
The Greatest That Stays
Many conservationists know that grasslands are vitally very important as rooster habitat. Nonetheless migratory shorebirds will not be the primary species that come to concepts.
“When most individuals ponder shorebird habitat, they image mud flats and the water’s edge,” says Robert Penner, Cheyenne Bottoms and avian program supervisor for The Nature Conservancy. “Nonetheless some shorebird species are terribly counting on grasslands just like the Flint Hills.”
The Flint Hills is the biggest intact tallgrass prairie habitat remaining throughout the USA.
“At one stage, it was the biggest ecosystem contained in the nation, and now it’s principally primarily probably the most altered by means of acres misplaced,” says Brian Obermeyer, director of the Conservancy’s Flint Hills Initiative. “The Flint Hills is the most effective of what’s left.”
It’s vitally very important for many migratory rooster species. Many upland sandpipers nest there. Others cease there to relaxation and refuel before persevering with north.
“They’re discovering what they want correct proper right here,” says Obermeyer. “Yearly, we get a surge of birds.”
Upland sandpipers are merely thought of one in all many species that can rely on the habitat. American golden-plovers and buff-breasted sandpipers nest contained in the Arctic nonetheless use the Flint Hills as a stopover. Actually, the Flint Hills ecoregion was not too manner again designated a “Panorama of Hemispheric Significance” by the Western Shorebird Reserve Group.
“For migratory shorebirds coming from South America, that is the principle massive chunk of grassland they encounter,” says Penner. “Birds which are born correct proper right here will return to inside numerous miles of the place they grew up. If the mother and father had been worthwhile, it is smart to return.”
They depend upon the grassland habitat remaining intact and healthful, and that’s the first aim of The Nature Conservancy’s Flint Hills Initiative, a two-decades-old conservation effort to deal with the unfragmented nature of this panorama, and to care for the prairie healthful and freed from invasive timber and weeds. To hold out this, the Conservancy works with ranchers, landowners, and conservation companions together with the USFWS Companions for Fish and Wildlife program. One milestone of this effort has been the upper than 100,000 acres protected by means of conservation easements by the Conservancy’s land notion companions.
Together with its emphasis on non-public lands conservation, the Conservancy has a formidable defend neighborhood contained in the Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma. The Konza Prairie Pure Station, the place the chick was first banded, is primarily owned by the Conservancy and managed by Kansas State Faculty’s Division of Biology. The Conservancy owns a number of the 11,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie Nationwide Protect, managed as a unit of the Nationwide Park Service. The Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Protect, situated in Oklahoma, is the biggest protected tract of tallgrass prairie in North America.
“The Conservancy’s focus contained in the Flint Hills is on defending what’s correct proper right here,” says Obermeyer. “Restoration, or altering crop fields as soon as extra to native vegetation, is actually low on our tips due to the Flint Hills nonetheless has intact tallgrass prairie. We wish to guarantee that prairie stays as prairie.”
Migratory shorebirds return yr after yr, looking for the meals and canopy that the prairie offers. “We think about this record-breaking sandpiper glorious, nonetheless maybe 12 years will not be that uncommon,” says Obermeyer. “we merely don’t know. There’s tons about these birds we don’t know. Nonetheless we do know they want intact, open prairie landscapes. We must always at all times defend that, so birds can have one issue to return once more as soon as extra to yr after yr.”