Bird lovers of the world - unite! This is your time of year. The great fall migration is underway and will continue into late October and early November. Commentator Rex Buchanan says Kansas is a hot spot for bird lovers this time of year and there are plenty of resources available to help you spot a few feathered friends flying south.
(Transcript)
This is a great time of year for bird watchers. Lots of birds, maybe as many as 700 to 800 million, move through this part of the world as they migrate south. That big migration includes some species you don’t ordinarily see around here.
Some of the best places to watch that migration are in central Kansas. Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira National Wildlife Refuge are critical stopping points for birds to rest, feed, and regroup as they had south. Quivira is probably best known for the whooping cranes that come through in October or early November. But both places attract all sorts of birds, including shorebirds, water fowl, thousands of sandhill cranes. There may be no more haunting, evocative sound than the bugling and croaking of sandhill cranes.
Closer to home, big numbers of Franklin’s gulls roost at Clinton Lake, west of Lawrence. They come through from late September to October in what a bird expert calls “one of the most spectacular fall migrations in eastern Kansas.”
This mass migration is something of a miracle. In the book “A World on the Wing,” author Scott Widensaul describes how birds--small packages of feather, bone, and muscle--cover thousands of miles, from the Artic to South America, with unerring accuracy. If, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “hope is the thing with feathers,” then this massive, long-distance migration is the epitome of optimism.
To be clear, I’m a casual birder, at most. I’m moderately color blind, which makes it hard to identify some birds by sight. But I’ve learned to compensate, mostly by learning the calls that birds make.
I also use a phone app to identify bird calls. Called Merlin, like the wizard, it’s free from Cornell University’s ornithology program. It’s easy to use. A couple of weeks ago I was camping in my pasture in central Kansas, and accidentally left the app running all night long. I woke up to see that it had identified more than 30 bird species that had moved through during the night, including some that I didn’t know were around.
This kind of technology is another reason it’s a good time to be a birder. There’s a ton of info available at ebird a sort of citizen science website that pinpoints the best places in your area to see birds and record the bird species you’ve seen yourself. Which is something that birders love to do. They don’t just keep track of the birds they see, they record the location, down to the county.
This may be a good time to be a birder, but it’s not necessarily a good time to be a bird. Habitat fragmentation, climate change, all sorts of environmental degradation have made their lives tougher. The total number of birds has dropped precipitously.
Look, we all know this: you only take care of the things you know. And they need your help.
So this fall, head out to central Kansas, or just your own backyard. Pay attention as the birds move through. It’s a great thing to see. And hear.
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Commentator Rex Buchanan is a writer, author and a casual, part-time birder. He's also director emeritus of the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas. He lives in Lawrence but often camps in central Kansas, where he watches birds.
This commentary is for the birds... and the people who love them. If you enjoyed this little segment, please support Kansas Public Radio with a pledge. And thanks.