Western Meadowlark…by Brad Marks

We are nearly to Christmas, the stores are bustling, the roads are jamming and the last minute shoppers are starting to panic. It also means we’ll soon be shutting down Intrigued headquarters so our staff can spend time with their family and friends. Brad is going take us along on another one of his birding adventures today, our traditional Christmas Day post and then we will probably call it a year to enjoy the festivities and play with all our new toys. Maybe another one while Linda and I are migrating south, but we’ll play that by ear.  Before Brad takes it away, wanted to extend congratulations to my brother Ron who reached the 300 unique species annual goal today towards our Average Year (link here). He scored a +1 lifer to put the proverbial cherry on top – if you recall last year, we both fell short of the goal (link here). Quite fitting as today’s post features a +1 for Brad as well!

Now you can take it away Brad…

When we left Hill City, SD it was relatively early morning for the kids, but mid-morning for Jan and I.  By mid-afternoon, we had already been to two National Parks (Black Hills and Devils Tower) in the same day mind you.  Why not try for a third?  By the time we arrived at The Badlands, we had already travelled 300 miles that Saturday morning.  After we flashed our National Parks Annual Pass at the gate, we followed the winding path to the depths of the park.  Gotta love the Annual Park Pass!  What, you don’t have one?  Go get one right now . . . go ahead . . . you can catch up on the story in a minute. (No, Wildlife Intrigued doesn’t receive any commission from Annual Park Pass referrals.  But hey, maybe that’s something productive our Legal department can work on.)

Just outside the car on the right-hand side was a small group of Bighorn Sheep, lounging and munching on the sparse early season grass.  I slowed down to take a look since we rarely see them in the parks.   But after rolling down the windows, the soundtrack I was hearing didn’t fit the scene.  There was this solitary sweet song coming from across the road.  At first, all I could see was dried prairie grass and reddish-brown dirt.  But then something bright yellow moved in the grass.  This little fellow was singing its heart out.  As far as I could tell, no one else was around to appreciate the song:  birds or humans.  It was singing for the joy of singing.

Hit the jump to read more about this little yellow fellow!

For a change, it was me tapping Jan on the arm saying “Give me a camera.”  I put the car in park, turned on the flashers, rolled down the window the rest of the way, and starting clicking away with the camera.  The performer was a Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta), not to be confused with the Eastern Meadowlark.  There are minor color differences between them.  For example, Westerns have a yellow stripe alongside their throat (mustache) where the Easterns have a white stripe.  Westerns also have a paler tail with narrow banding whereas the Easterns have a darker center to their tails with wider banding.  I didn’t have them sitting still side by side (which doesn’t happen very often as their names reflect their fairly define regions) so I had to rely on a non-physical trait:  the song.  And the Merlin app, which told me it was a Western.  So there!  No arguing Western vs. Eastern here folks.  By the way, this Western Meadowlark was a +1 for me.

Western Meadowlark songs are long and flute-like. Eastern Meadowlark songs tend to be more like melodic whistles. Ironically, even though the birds are nearly identical, their songs are so different they would have no idea what the other was trying to tell them. Nor would they recognize them as a Meadowlark song at all. Western Meadowlarks are often heard long before they are seen, even across an entire field, which is how I found one of them at the Badlands.

He, or she, was sitting on a chunk of rock about 50 yards away.  I had heard the song bouncing off the cliff behind me, but I just couldn’t find the bird.  It flitted around a bit and the glint of yellow caught my eye.  I had my zoom all the way at 500mm just to catch this highly cropped, tiny image of the bird.  The light was fading quickly so I snapped as many as I could at as high an ISO as I dared late in the day and while holding a 500mm lens. (That’s 750mm on a cropped Nikon sensor for the technical editors reading this.)

A few days later, Jan and I visited Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge (see history at the end).  We had just come from over 9000 feet in the mountains (link here) to the plains north and just a tiny bit west of Denver.  As we climbed out of the car we were greeted with waves of heat, a nice change (not completely) from the very cold day at The Badlands.  Jan and I quickly agreed we wouldn’t spend very much time in the sun.  I tend to burn even with SPF 50 slathered on.  The park had precious few trees, and all of them were on the exact opposite side from where we were walking.

Not very long after I had assembled the cameras, for the third time that day, I caught this sweet melodic flute-like song coming from the grassy area near the parking lot.  I was pretty sure it wasn’t coming from the only other car there, so I crept closer to the edge of the grassland.  The song was moving, but I couldn’t see any motion in the still grass.  Then I caught a flash of yellow. 

A Western Meadowlark was nearly perfectly camouflaged in the grass.  It must have heard my camera shutter on rapid-fire because it moved a little bit.

I think it took pity on me, if only for a second, and revealed as much of itself as it was going to reveal.  Except for the bright yellow, this bird would be tough to find in dry grasslands.  Evolutionary genius or not?  Talk amongst yourselves.

This brightly colored, yet almost perfectly colored bird was hiding in the grass, singing nearly the entire time.  I didn’t see another bird anywhere near that would have understood it.  But knowing how far its song can carry, I thought another bird must be within hearing distance.

As usual, Jan had already taken off down the trail.  She was quite a distance away when I saw her walk into the tall grass.  I heard a Meadowlark singing, but as usual, couldn’t see it.  Jan was able to creep up on it while it was singing.

Actually, Jan caught it while it was inhaling between song phrases and completely quiet.  First time for everything. It seemed to be staring straight at her.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more of our Western Meadowlark photos, please visit here.

Credits:

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Allyson is still on assignment.  Thanks to Jan for some of the photos in this article. 

Notes:

Disclosure:  This is a very brief history of the site.  Rocky Flats National Wildlife Preserve is an oxymoron in itself.  Nearly every other major city in the US has a bypass or ring road to help keep traffic out of downtown wherever.  Except Denver.  Here’s why:

From the early 1950’s through the end of the 1980’s, Rocky Flats was the leading US producer of plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons.  A series of facility accidents occurred which caught unwanted attention.  In 1989, the site was shuttered, ending nuclear weapons production at the site.  But the local ecological damage had already been done. 

From 2001 through 2007 a major site cleanup effort took place.  A study was done to extend the I-470 bypass over the site.  The project was rejected because of the level of plutonium contamination in undisturbed soil.  And there’s no way anyone was going to be digging and moving dirt for a bypass at that point.  Picture the bypass road (giant circle shape) around Denver as a clock.  I-470 stops at roughly the 9 o’clock position (west of Denver) and doesn’t pick up again until about the 11 o’clock position (NNW of Denver) keeping with our clock analogy. 

The DOE transferred the property to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to use as a wildlife refuge.  The outer portion of the park (think donut) is now considered safe for visitors.  The rest is either still being cleaned up, or reserved for wildlife.

I have it on good authority that the Western Meadowlarks where already glowing bright yellow before the Rocky Flats facility came into existence.