Birds of Tallgrass Prairie: 23 Years of Counting in the Kansas Flint Hills

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve lies in the rocky, rolling Flint Hills of Kansas, some of the last tallgrass prairie never turned by a plough. National Park Service scientists of the Heartland Inventory & Monitoring Network have surveyed its breeding birds every year since 2001, comparing them with the wider Eastern Tallgrass Prairie Bird Conservation Region.

The Loggerhead Shrike, a year-round resident whose numbers in the region have fallen sharply. NPS / Andy Bridges

Why count birds

Birds eat pests, spread seeds and pollinate plants; birdwatching is a multi-billion-dollar industry; and birds are the canary in the coal mine for an ecosystem. Farming, towns and industry are eating into habitat around the preserve, and 35% of the birds that breed in and around it are declining across the region — the Black-billed Cuckoo, Grasshopper Sparrow, Loggerhead Shrike and Western Meadowlark at alarming rates. Counting in the park, and comparing with the region, shows how its birds are faring and how they respond to changes in habitat.

What 23 years show

The number of species and how they spread across the landscape barely changed over the years — a sign the preserve's habitat has held up or improved. Among the birds of concern are Bell's Vireo, the Dickcissel, Henslow's Sparrow, the Red-headed Woodpecker and the Upland Sandpiper; the grassland obligates include the Bobolink, both meadowlarks, the Greater Prairie-chicken and the Northern Harrier.

Henslow's Sparrow, a summer resident that seems to be increasing as management favours tall grass and grass litter. NPS / Jeremy Springfield

Trends in the common birds

16 streamside and 21 upland species were common enough to measure how many there were. Overall the park's birds are doing as well as the region's — with one standout: the Northern Bobwhite is doing significantly better in the park.

Not every trend is about habitat management. A decade and more of drought across Kansas has shrunk the brushy cattail margins of streams and ponds where Red-winged Blackbirds roost, and they have declined with it.

The Dickcissel, a grassland bird of regional concern whose numbers rose moderately in the park and the region. NPS / G. Yellowhawk

One meadowlark gives way to another

Western Meadowlarks are declining in the preserve while Eastern Meadowlarks increase. The Western prefers shorter vegetation, the Eastern taller and denser — and the grass has grown taller: since 2005 the park has set fewer prescribed burns and grazed fewer cattle than in the first years of the surveys, and in the Windmill Pasture bison replaced cattle in 2009.

A Western Meadowlark. NPS

The full report is in the NPS DataStore.

Sources

Written from "Bird Community Monitoring at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, 2023," Heartland Inventory & Monitoring Network, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.