Introduction

“Whether on its winter range or summer breeding ground, McCown’s Longspur is a bird of the plains, of the ‘big sky’ country where the land flattens to the blue haze of mesa or plateau; where distance is the hawk’s flight from a line of craggy ‘breaks’ to the horizon. Amid the features of such a vast landscape it was first collected about 1851....as much by accident as by design. ‘I fired at a flock of Shore Larks,’ wrote Capt. John P. McCown, U.S. (1851), ‘and found this bird among the killed.’”

So wrote Herbert Krause (1968), in opening his life history of the McCown’s Longspur in A. C. Bent’s series, which preceded this one. Characteristic of the shortgrass prairie, the McCown’s Longspur favors the open wind-swept plains and sparse vegetation provided by native shortgrass prairie, or structurally similar habitats such as overgrazed pastures. In its striking Aerial Display, the male flutters upward to a height of about 10 m and then descends, teetering on outstretched wings held back to display the vivid white lining, with its white-and-black “T”-patterned tail fanned, and issuing a tinkling, warbling song. These longspurs arrive on their breeding grounds in the northwestern fringe of the Great Plains and the southern edge of the Canadian Prairie Provinces in April, and establish territories by means of this Aerial Display. Females build compact nests in the ground beside cactus pads, clumps of grass, or beneath shrubs. The two to five eggs are incubated solely by the female for 12 days, but both parents feed and brood nestlings. Young fledge at about 10 days. Longspurs begin flocking in August, and amass huge flocks en route to wintering grounds in the southwestern United States, Texas, and northern Mexico. Although this is one of the few grassland species that may actually benefit from grazing, other disruptions of habitat—plowing, use of pesticides, and control of grassland fires that maintain shortgrass prairie—have reduced its numbers and its distribution.