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Florida Grasshopper Sparrow

High hopes for a nearly extinct sparrow as mating season begins

by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal February 23, 2021

written by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal

It’s almost mating season for the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, a spring ritual dating back thousands of years on the Florida prairie. But this may be the year that determines whether a rescue mission can turn things around for the country’s most endangered bird.

A year-old grasshopper sparrow just before its release into the grasslands. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

Every week starting this month, researchers are releasing a half dozen or more young sparrows raised in captivity to try and boost breeding in the wild and stabilize the overall population.

The releases are the final step in a long, complex restoration plan that’s taken shape over the two decades since the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow’s sudden collapse. Now researchers will be watching the sparrows’ every move as they hope nature will take its course.

Juan Oteyza, the state research scientist who oversees the project along with Karl Miller, watched the first batch of sparrows disappear into the Florida prairie south of Orlando one morning earlier this month.

“They’re on their own now,’’ he said.

That isn’t entirely true: It’s up to the sparrows to fan out over the grasslands, find mates, build nests and raise a new batch of chicks. But a team of human helpers will be on hand to monitor the mating rituals, locate the nests and then raise them out of the reach of flood waters. They’ll also encircle the nests with fences to ward off predators. Each new family is tracked daily for five months to see if the sparrow population increases.

Here’s a video of this spring’s first release, taken with a remote camera, so the picture is slightly fuzzy. But you can see the sparrow’s hesitant reaction to the prospect of freedom — followed by a plunge into the grasslands:

February 23, 2021 2 comments

Birding research Breeding and Nesting Conservation

Fledglings take flight: Good news for the nation’s most endangered bird

by Anders Gyllenhaal September 9, 2020

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

The wildlife managers who bred more than 200 Florida Grasshopper Sparrows in a laboratory setting over the past two years knew they faced a tricky question when it came to releasing the birds into the wild this spring:

A Florida Grasshopper Sparrow about to be released

Would they know how to act like grasshopper sparrows?

Could they sing the sparrow’s unique courting song? Would they know how to hide from hawks? Would they have the instincts to build nests, mate with wild sparrows and raise their young together?

The captive-breeding experiment is the culmination of a decades-long project to revive the most endangered species in the U.S.. Only 30 pairs of the sparrows remained in the wild when the team decided they had no choice but to try producing chicks in captivity, then introducing them back into the wild in hopes they’d multiply.

The answers to all their questions came pouring in over the course of the breeding season that is now coming to a close.

A bundle of newborn sparrows in a hidden nest in the grasslands. Photo by Amanda Adams.

The birds not only mastered the routines of the mating season, they gave birth to a new generation of Florida Grasshopper Sparrows over the summer. ( Forty-two birds were born from captive-bred birds and altogether 64 were born from wild and captive-bred birds.) Almost all have now left the nest and flown off to begin life on their own.

“We’re very happy with what we saw this first season,’’ said Juan Oteyza, the research biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Institute that oversees the project. “It seems to be paying off.’’

Craig Faulhaber, avian conservation coordinator for the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said it was hard to tell the captive-bred from the wild sparrows. “They showed all the normal behaviors,” he said. “They bred successfully. They took care of their young. They acted just like wild sparrows.”

Flying Lesson: The project to save the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow has been full of discoveries for researchers. They’ve learned what it takes to breed birds in captivity, protect fragile nests from harm and how to begin to replenished the depleted population. It’s not yet clear if the project will be successful, but already the lessons are proving valuable to help understand the woes of the grassland birds like the sparrow.

September 9, 2020 1 comment

Birding research Conservation Migration

Rebuilding troubled species takes decades of patience and persistence

by Anders Gyllenhaal May 27, 2020

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

What does it take to rebuild a depleted species with birds bred in captivity? In the case of one of the longest-running breeding projects, it can take decades of patience and persistence – and hundreds of chicks added to the wild for every one that will go on to thrive.

A Loggerhead Shrike in eastern Canada. Photo by Larry Kirtley.

Our stories in the Washington Post on the rescue mission of the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow prompted a call from the research project that has been working for more than 20 years to save the Loggerhead Shrike in eastern Canada. Researchers there have valuable perspective on the laborious process of captive breeding.

“In our case, it’s years in the making,’’ said Jane Hudecki, coordinator for the Shrike conservation breeding program with Wildlife Preservation Canada. “It can be a tough field to work in.’’

Added Hazel Wheeler, the lead biologist on the project: “I’ve certainly read a lot of papers that speak to the long-term investment needed for a successful recovery program.”

There are a number of parallels between the shrike project and the mission to save the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, which just had its first hatchings produced by captive birds in the wild. While both programs have figured out how to raise, release and establish mating pairs, questions loom around what it will take to restore the wild populations to strength.

Researchers put a transmitter on a Loggerhead Shrike to track its movement and migration. Photo by Sarah Matheson.

Wildlife Preservation Canada has released 1,300 Loggerhead Shrikes since the recovery program’s formation in 1998. Still, only about 20 breeding pairs remain in the areas of Ontario where the local subspecies settle for the spring and summer. “Basically, we’re just keeping the wild population stable,’’ she said.

The Canadian shrikes and Florida grasshopper sparrows are very different species, living on either end of the continent.

May 27, 2020 0 comment

Birding research Conservation Featured

What the Grasshopper Sparrow is teaching us as it skirts extinction

by Anders Gyllenhaal May 2, 2020

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

For the next month or so, biologists from a coalition of wildlife agencies will be standing on the sidelines of a grassy prairie in Central Florida, pacing like worried relatives in a hospital waiting room.

A captive-bred sparrow steps from its cage.

They’ll be peering through binoculars and listening for bird calls for signs of the revival of the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, whose total population has fallen to a just 30 breeding pairs.

Our article on the campaign to save the sparrow runs this week in the Washington Post. It’s a story about the mysterious decline of one of Florida endemic species and how a consortium of state, federal and non-profit agencies is staging a biological intervention sparrows bred in research centers to hold off extinction.

Sarah Biesemier (left) and Juan Oteyza, state biologists who oversee the project, arrive at the prairie with a carrying case full of sparrows.

It’s also a story about what’s happening on the front lines of the world of birds in a time of extraordinary change. On the one hand, researchers have built more tools, they’ve developed better research practices and they know more about birds like this sparrow than ever before. On the other hand, the threats to many species are unprecedented. A study in the journal Science a few months ago found that a third of North America’s breeding bird population has vanished in the last 50 years.

We came home from weeks in Central Florida, after visiting the research centers and talking to dozens of scientists, with a question nobody could answer very well: Do we have the collective wherewithal, and the financial and political capital, to put this kind of rescue mission together for the growing number of species certain to need it in the future?

Every grasshopper sparrow on the prairie is identified and tracked by four bands on its legs to follow their progress.

The Florida Grasshopper Sparrow is not the most likely candidate to win the kind of scientific full-court press it’s getting. It’s a small, brown, nondescript bird that’s never seen by most people. It’s found only on the Florida prairie, a unique environment slowly evaporating as the state grows. As a brand, this sparrow is on the far end of the appeal spectrum from such conservation successes as the Bald Eagle, the California Condor and the Osprey.

And yet, an ambitious plan has come together on behalf of this bird. It’s powered by state and federal researchers, some of whom have devoted their careers to studying Florida’s birds, and it’s supported by such non-profits as Florida Audubon and the Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida (which just announced a grant for this project.) It is all the more impressive given the anti-environmental streak now running through modern politics.

The consortium makes a persuasive case that the grasshopper sparrow should be saved: It is one of the symbols of the Florida environment. With its haunting song and its place on nature’s ground floor, it’s a key piece of the puzzle of the biosphere we rely on. “The grasshopper sparrow is one of Florida’s flagship birds,” said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Flying Lesson: The Florida Grasshopper Sparrow is a harbinger of a future in which many species are threatened with extinction. Researchers have built an ambitious rescue plan to save this bird, but is there enough public and political support to undertake missions like this for dozens of birds at the same time?

May 2, 2020 1 comment