A songbird called the streaked horned lark has a curious propensity for risky neighborhoods. That's not a good quality for a bird proposed for listing as a threatened species. Its preferred hangouts include airports, Army training fields, and dredge spoil dumping sites along the lower Columbia River. A two-state experiment seeks to find out if these rare larks can be enticed to safer habitats.
You can recognize this small, ground-nesting songbird by its yellow face and throat, black bib and feather tufts on its head that look like horns. The streaked horned lark's range used to extend from British Columbia to Oregon's Rogue River Valley. But a lot of the bird's habitat has succumbed to the plow and the bulldozer. At this point, there are fewer than 2,000 left.
Biologist Hannah Anderson of the Center for Natural Lands Management says the remaining holdouts have settled in some surprising spots. "They aren't a traditional endangered species where they are in these last, best great places. They're using airports, military bases, and dredged material islands along the lower Columbia River."
No comments:
Post a Comment