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This is the story of a bird. A bird and its home, which is in peril.
Enter the Thick-billed Longspur.
Named for the elongated claws on their hind toes and large bill, this little bird is best known for its song display, which is . But Thick-billed Longspurs not only captivate birders� hearts, they also play an important role in their ecosystem.
This little bird doesn’t just call a certain habitat home. Like many grassland songbirds, its range spans from Canada to Mexico, the entire range of the Central Grasslands. They winter in the desert grasslands of northern Mexico and western Texas, and in the spring, they fly north, looking for breeding habitat in eastern Montana and southern Saskatchewan. In autumn, they start their southward migration to their wintering grounds—and then the cycle begins again.
In the Central Grasslands, Thick-billed Longspurs and their grassy songbird cousins are at the center of many conservation strategies because their home is under tremendous threat.
Once spanning more than 550 million acres across North America, more than 62% of these grasslands have been lost due to agricultural cultivation, development, and invasive species invasive species
An invasive species is any plant or animal that has spread or been introduced into a new area where they are, or could, cause harm to the environment, economy, or human, animal, or plant health. Their unwelcome presence can destroy ecosystems and cost millions of dollars.
Learn more about invasive species .
As a result, Thick-billed Longspurs have lost much of their habitat. Despite , Thick-billed Longspurs continue to lose about 6% of their remaining population each year,1 and 2—and they’re not alone.
Over the last 50 years, North American grassland bird populations have declined faster than any other group of birds. Over 74% of grassland bird species have shown significant population declines, and 53% of the grassland bird population has been lost�.3
Just like the “soft tinkling warble� of , there is hope among the high notes. Welcome to the world of grassland conservation. Because grassland birds migrate across vast distances, we must consider all the land they could use for breeding and wintering (which can, and does, change from year to year) and everything in between. Longspurs don’t have high site fidelity, meaning they don’t necessarily return to the same place again and again. That covers a lot of land, and many different kinds of land types—including working lands.
Grassland bird conservation requires collaboration across many partners, and different solutions for different communities. It is complicated, but with dedicated stewards—many of whom are private landowners, ranchers, and farmers—creative solutions result in grassland bird conservation, piece by piece.
To further complicate things, not all prairie is considered equal, at least according to Thick-billed Longspurs. Thick-billed Longspurs seek not just bare ground, but dry climates with plentiful seeds and insects. Some theorize that Thick-billed Longspurs once looked for the now-extinct Rocky Mountain locust. John Carlson, Grassland Ecosystem Coordinator for the Service, theorizes that the extinction of the locust is a contributing factor behind the decline of some grassland birds like the Thick-billed Longspur—and it’s a story we’ve seen before: the Eskimo curlew, once common in North America, is widely considered extinct, following the extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust.
Thick-billed Longspurs look for sparse vegetation or disturbed patches, with bare ground within native mixed-grass prairie for foraging and breeding.4 Historically, these disturbed areas were created naturally by changes in fire, precipitation, locust populations, and bison foraging. As grasslands and natural disturbances disappeared, so too did the eastern part of the Thick-billed Longspur’s range. Today, Thick-billed Longspurs rely on areas with low precipitation, sparse vegetation, or modern disturbances such as tillage for their bare ground habitat.
The Thick-billed Longspur and its unique prairie preferences make it a very interesting bird to study—and a very important bird to get to know. And get to know it, we must, for the Thick-billed Longspur is one of the great Fab Four—alongside the Baird’s sparrow, Sprague’s pipit, and Chestnut-collared Longspur.
Together, these Fabulous Four grassland birds form something of a catalyst for conservation; conserving these four grassland birds also provides conservation wins for 21 other bird species and 7 mammals.
This treasured landscape wouldn’t be the same without these birds, so it is important that we keep learning, and keep looking for ways to protect and restore the Thick-billed Longspur’s population. To do that, we have to better understand how to conserve and create Thick-billed Longspur habitat on both public and private lands.
Conservation can’t just happen in one place—it requires collaboration at a massive scale and relies on the collective efforts of nations, conservationists, funding, and even the conservation of other grassland birds. Saving these birds is a complex undertaking. Luckily, we have some nifty new tools at our disposal like (a crowdsourced citizen science database run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology) the , and Motus. Motus is a collaborative research network that tracks wildlife movement.
Using Motus technology, we can now follow these hard-to-track grassland songbirds, identify their preferred routes and habitats, and better understand their range.
The U.S. Geological Survey caught and tagged Thick-billed Longspur #39795 near the (WSA) in northeast Montana on May 16, 2022. This remote piece of land, comprised of a patchwork of private and public lands, supports hunting, backpacking, photography, and wildlife viewing. Bitter Creek WSA is also featured on the Montana Northeastern Plains Birding Traill, making it a great place to see Thick-billed Longspurs, and some of the other Fab Four.
198 days after being tagged, Longspur #39795 was located 1,500 miles away on Mimms Ranch in western Texas, within the Chihuahuan Desert, which is an important wintering ground for many grassland birds, including the Thick-billed Longspur. The Dixon Water Foundation owns the 16,000-acre Mimms Ranch and elected to have a MOTUS tower installed on their property to help conservation efforts.
Conserving grassland birds is a story of public-private partnerships and the work of many different organizations: the developers who created the bird tag technology, the field biologists who tagged the bird, the landowners who wanted a Motus tower and the partners who installed it—all working together to create safe flyways and stopovers for these imperiled birds.
These long-distance feathered migrants don’t just connect two points on a map, they connect landscapes, species, time, and people.
Thick-billed Longspur habitat is ephemeral. It’s hard to predict where they will go from year to year. This is what grassland birds have always been so good at � following the seasons and the food. And while it makes it hard to study them, it highlights the need for partnerships between private landowners and public land managers, between agencies, organizations, and communities.
“This is one of those places where if you build it, Thick-billed Longspurs will come. If the bare ground is there, they will come.” � Mike Borgreen, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Bitter Creek WSA.
Who knows where the next tagged Thick-billed Longspur will show up, and who knows how many more tags could help us better understand what exact habitat type the Thick-billed are looking for? With so many agencies working together to protect intact prairie, there is restored hope not just for our Fab Four, but for the other grassland species that depend on their survival—and the only way to learn about and protect this bird is by working together.
Written by Katie Nuessly and Christina Stone, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in collaboration with Matt Webb, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, Mike Borgreen, Bureau of Land Management, and Marisa Sather and John Carlson, USFWS. Graphics and data visualization by Katie Nuessly, USFWS.
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- Sauer, J. R., Pardieck, K. L., Ziolkowski, D. J., Smith, A. C., Hudson, M.-A. R., Rodriguez, V., Berlanga, H., Niven, D. K. & Link, W. A. (2017). The first 50 years of the North American breeding bird survey. The Condor, 119(3), 576-593.
Somershoe, S. G. (editor). (2018). A Full Annual-Cycle Conservation Strategy for Sprague’s Pipit, Chestnut-collared and McCown’s Longspurs, and Baird’s Sparrow. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C. - Data include years 1967-2015 (as cited in Sauer (2017))
- Rosenberg, K. V., Dokter, A. M., Blancher, P. J., Sauer, J. R., Smith, A. C., Smith, P. A., Stanton, J. C., Panjabi, A., Helft, L., Parr, M. & Marra, P. P. (2019). Decline of the North American avifauna. Science, 366(6461) 120-124.
- Swicegood, A. E., Ellison, K. S., Sather, M., Somershoe, S. G., & McNew, L. B. (2023). Detecting ecological traps in human-altered landscapes: A case study of the thick-billed longspur nesting in croplands. Ecology and Evolution, 13, e9993.
