Mike Jacobs Always in Season: Curlews forsake the valley, but hang on elsewhere in North Dakota

GRAND FORKS – A long-billed curlew jumped out of my mailbox last week – not the bird itself, of course. Long-billed curlews haven’t been seen in Grand Forks County in 100 years.

This was a picture of the bird. The curlew is the cover model for this month’s issue of North Dakota Outdoors. The magazine is published by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, and this issue is testimony to the department’s increasing interest in wildlife that isn’t hunted.

The well-publicized “Meadowlark Initiative” is another aimed at the iconic state bird, the western meadowlark, whose populations are decreasing across much of the state.

The curlew was a game bird in settlement days. Theodore Roosevelt hunted curlew during his sojourn in the Badlands of Dakota Territory in the 1880s. He pronounced them “very good eating.”

Long-billed curlews haven’t been seen in Grand Forks County in 100 years. The last nesting record I found was in Robert W. Stewart’s “Birds of North Dakota,” which was published in 1975. A pair of curlews nested near Ardoch, which isn’t too far outside Grand Forks County, in 1923.

Long-billed curlews were numerous in Minnesota, too. In 1885, F.L. Washburn wrote, “Only a few individuals observed. I was informed by sportsmen at Ada that it was not present this year where it was extremely abundant last year. The bird was spoken of familiarly at Georgetown and a few were shot near Crookston and Ada.”

This report I found in Thomas Roberts’ two-volume tome entitled “The Birds of Minnesota.”

These reports are not surprising. The long-billed curlew prefers short-grass prairies on sandy soils, conditions prevalent on the beach ridges of Glacial Lake Agassiz. These ridges mark the boundaries of what we now call the Red River Valley.

The birds were driven away by rapidly expanding settlement and advancing agriculture.

Today, long-billed curlews are considered “a species of concern” in North Dakota.

Some have persisted in North Dakota. I discovered a likely curlew nesting area in Billings County, just west of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and that’s where I would go if I wanted to see a long-billed curlew – although the frantic pace of oil development might have driven the birds away.

A research team from Boise State University’s Intermountain Bird Observatory in Idaho had the same idea. They captured and banded five curlews in southwestern North Dakota and attached tracking devices. Two of them returned to the same nesting areas the following year.

The researchers intend to follow the birds at least through this nesting season and into next year.

The report in North Dakota Outdoors reports the wanderings of several curlews. It turns out they spend only a short time in North Dakota, from late March to early July. Their winter quarters are in Mexico.

The long-billed curlew is technically a “shorebird,” closely related to the snipes and other so-called “waders.” Like the snipes, the curlews like grass. Snipe – fairly common in Grand Forks County – nest in rank, damp grasslands. Curlews prefer drier sites.

The other grassland “shorebirds” – including godwits – are showy birds, but the curlew takes the prize. It is the largest of these so-called “shorebirds,” which of course made them tempting targets both for sportsmen and market hunters.

This is an unmistakable bird. The bill is nearly as long as the body, and it curves down dramatically, making it an ideal tool for probing Mexican mudflats or North Dakota sand prairies.

In color, curlews are buff overall, but heavily marked with darker brown – an ideal camouflage in a dry prairie.

The intense heat discourages birding, and last week’s wind only added to our lethargy. Suezette and I spent some time watching dragonflies coursing over the lawn and garden – and returning to the same perch.

Other than that, crows, chickadees, woodpeckers and an occasional hawk pretty much run out of list of sightings.

Oh, and the chipping sparrows, a likely candidate for next week’s title of “Bird of the Week.”

Jacobs is a retired publisher and editor of the Herald. Reach him at mjacobs@polarcomm.com.