JACKSON, Wyo. — Yellowstone’s Birds, only the third book published on birds in Yellowstone’s history, is aimed at increasing visibility of avian species in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).
The comprehensive guide presents untold stories and critical issues related to ecology, natural history and conservation, along with birding tips. Douglas Smith, former wildlife biologist for Yellowstone National Park (YNP) who has worked with wolves since 1994 and birds since 2008, is an editor of the book. He tells Buckrail that the previous two books on Yellowstone’s birds, which touched on natural history and provided a guide to birding, were published in 1925 and in 1989, respectively; Smith says this is surprising for a national park that’s been around for over 150 years.
“That’s a ridiculously low number for the world’s first national park,” Smith says. “That was a really big motivation for the book. There’s a lot of things people don’t know about the birds in this region.”
According to Smith, birds have been overshadowed over the decades by geology, history and a focus on large mammals. In the GYE, grizzly bears, bison, elk and now wolves get most of the attention, but Smith emphasizes that the data set on trumpeter swans dating back to 1931 is on par with the famous megafauna that everyone talks about and studies.
Smith calls trumpeter swans an iconic species in the GYE, one of the reasons he says they’re featured on the book’s cover. He attributes their significance to the fact that the GYE was the last stronghold of trumpeter swans in the lower 48. In 1935, when Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge was created for trumpeter swan conservation, the species was thought to be gone everywhere else.
While Smith notes there were actually fairly sizable populations in Alberta and Alaska that weren’t discovered until the 1950s, he says the GYE remains “super important” habitat for trumpeter swans. Wyoming Wetlands Society, based out of Jackson Hole, continues to release cygnets, or young swans, in YNP to help establish more breeding pairs in the ecosystem.
Smith also emphasizes that the GYE has the most isolated common loon population in North America, and the farthest south. While often confused as part of the duck family, the National Audubon Society defines loons as their own separate species notable for their moaning calls considered “a symbol of wilderness.” While there are approximately 25 pairs of loons in the GYE, Smith says about 60 percent of them are within YNP itself.
“Loons are very poor at colonizing new areas,” Smith says. “They like to come back to where they’re born. If this population were to blink out, it would be very hard to restore it. It’s 300 miles to the next loon population.”
And while Smith says everyone is studying the decline of the whitebark pine, hardly anyone has been looking at the Clark’s nutcracker, a member of the crow family that has a mutualistic relationship with the tree. Smith says 99 percent of all whitebark pine germination depends on Clark’s nutcracker caches that the birds create in the fall for food during the following winter and spring. While the birds find almost all the seeds they cache, the ones they don’t find are able to grow.
Swans, loons and Clark’s nutcrackers are only some examples of the unique and critical diversity of YNP and GYE birds. In addition to increasing the profiles of these species, Smith says there are also a number of management issues that he hopes the book can help address.
