NORTH DAKOTA OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

Study Follows State Bird

Ron Wilson

Researcher watching meadowlark with a tracker flying away

Western meadowlarks arrive in North Dakota in early March and then turn and wing it south sometime in late October or early November.

That’s what scientists tell us about our state bird, an appealing songster with a recognizable call and unmistakable appearance.

Yet, compared to all that scientists do know about this common prairie species, there is some that they don’t, which is why researchers caught and fitted six meadowlarks with small GPS satellite backpacks in early May to track these birds throughout their movements across the entire year.

“Meadowlarks are extremely charismatic and anyone who’s spent time in grasslands throughout the country knows meadowlarks. They’re really an excellent symbol for our nation’s grasslands,” said Andy Boyce, research ecologist for the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and the Smithsonian Great Plains Science Program, based in Missoula, Mont. “Surprisingly enough, even though they’re very well known to the average person, we don’t know really anything about their migratory ecology, which was one of the reasons for using meadowlarks in this study.

“Another reason is that they’re just a really good indicator of grassland habitat quality. They’re not the pickiest. I work with some birds like Sprague’s pipits, and they need 100,000 acres of native grass or else you won’t find them,” he added. “Meadowlarks are a little bit more flexible than that, but they won’t tolerate really degraded habitat. So, if you have meadowlarks using certain areas, that’s a good indication that’s valuable grassland habitat that needs protecting.”

Aside from the Smithsonian Institute, players in the study include the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, University of North Dakota and the Meadowlark Initiative, a statewide strategy that teams landowners, conservation groups, scientists and others to enhance, restore and sustain native grasslands in North Dakota.

Researchers setting up mist nets

Researchers setting up mist nets.

Sandra Johnson, Game and Fish Department conservation biologist, said the study is funded by the Department through a state wildlife grant. The study will run through 2025.

Like the substantial loss of native grasslands in the state, roughly 75% over time, Johnson said there is a need to learn more about meadowlarks as their population is also on the decline.

“Western meadowlarks have been declining about 1% per year. I often get calls from people saying they just don’t see and hear meadowlarks like they used to,” Johnson said. “That stems from the fact that grasslands are being lost in North Dakota and elsewhere.”

To learn where these birds spend their time throughout the full annual cycle, the GPS technology is critical as it gives researchers a fix on their whereabouts about two times per week.

Researcher with stuffed meadowlark in front of mist net

Employing a stuffed meadowlark to trick live meadowlarks.

“For a lot of more charismatic megafauna, whether you’re talking about deer or bison or prairie dogs, you can conserve them in one place because they’re staying in the same place year-round,” Boyce said. “With migratory birds if we want to effectively do conservation, we need to understand where they are throughout the annual cycle. So, if North Dakota’s got a problem with its meadowlarks, it needs to be communicating with states like Kansas and New Mexico, for example, where those birds are spending the winter to make sure that there’s effective conservation going on there as well, because conservation of migratory species is only as good as the weakest link in that chain.”

Meadowlarks were caught in 30-foot mist nets that have a long history of being safe for birds. The nets were placed near a prominent song perch like, say, a rock or fence post, that the target birds were using. Researchers also deployed a meadowlark decoy and a device that played the meadowlark song.

A GPS backpack that was fitted to a captured meadowlark by researchers.

“Essentially, we’re trying to convince these birds that there’s an intruder in their territory they’ve got to deal with,” Boyce said. “Sometimes it takes a little bit of cajoling, but just enough to lure them into the nets.”

All the birds caught earlier this spring were males, which came as no surprise to researchers.

“When male meadowlarks are on the breeding grounds, they’re enraged and they’re dumb. They’re easy to catch because they’re willing to put themselves at risk to defend their territory,” Boyce said. “The females are a little bit more cryptic. They’re not going to respond to intruders nearly as much. The bottom line is males are just easier to catch. We hope we can tag females in the future.”

Boyce said researchers are pretty confident that the GPS fitted to the study birds has little if any impact on survival, movement or reproductive success.

Researcher fitting meadowlark with tracker

A researcher makes sure the GPS backpack is a perfect fit so it doesn’t hinder the bird in any way.

“The guideline that we’ve come up with as a research community is that you don’t want to be putting any more than 3% of the bird’s body mass on them in terms of weight. We total up everything including the weight of the harness, the weight of the tag … we total all that up and we are really careful about keeping that below the 3% threshold,” Boyce said. “We’ve got a lot of evidence that shows that if we’re below that threshold, we’re not having any negative impacts. Earlier this morning, for example, 45 minutes after we tagged our first bird, he was already singing and responding to the audio playback back on his territory, so we felt pretty good that he was feeling fine.”

Boyce said the first thing researchers look for after releasing a GPS tagged meadowlark is to make sure the backpack harness doesn’t encumber the wings and hinder the bird’s ability to fly.

Andy Boyce releases a Western meadowlark in McLean County that was captured then fitted with a small GPS backpack earlier in spring.

“We also make sure we watch them until they come down and perch for the first time because the harness also goes around the legs,” Boyce said. “Usually, they’ll settle down after that first release flight. They’ll kind of shake everything out, preen their feathers out from under the harness, and as long as we see them walking around normally, we’re really comfortable that they’re in a good place, which happens really fast.”

The lifespan on a GPS tag is about 12 months or more. The harness is made of a soft plastic, string-like material that eventually breaks down and falls off the study birds.

“There’s been a lot of work done that shows that stuff breaks down right around 18 months to two years, just from exposure to UV on the landscape,” Boyce said. “Some of these birds can be quite long-lived, and we don’t want them toting this nonfunctional thing around for any longer than they have to.”

This is exactly what researchers want to see. An unharmed Western meadowlark, fitted with a GPS backpack that will alert researchers to its whereabouts for the next year or so, fly off to do meadowlark things.

The meadowlark tagging study isn’t exclusive to North Dakota, Boyce said, as researchers are tagging Western, Eastern and Chihuahuan meadowlarks on breeding grounds across North America. The goal is to build a map that shows the connections between breeding and winter grounds for all three species of meadowlarks.

Boyce said researchers have already received some information from meadowlarks tagged in North Dakota in 2022. Of the four birds fitted with GPS backpacks, three provided a full annual cycle of data.

“Twelve months of data is pretty darn good. Two of those birds made a straight shot down to southern Nebraska, spent the winter there on some private land, while another bird went a little bit farther into central Kansas,” he said. “So, that’s given us kind of a first look at where our North Dakota population of meadowlarks spends the winter. Once we get up to 10 total tags, we’ll have a little bit better of an idea because there can be a lot of variation. These birds don’t necessarily all spend the time in the same place just because they breed in the same place.”

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