Lars Fladmark's opinion that the decline in songbirds is due to predation by hawks, based on his experience releasing pheasants into the wild in North Dakota and detailed in his column in the News Tribune on Sunday, was a classic example of jumping to a conclusion with only scant evidence.
Fladmark asserted that wildlife professionals were spreading "propaganda" that hawks don't eat birds and that there aren't any songbirds to be found on the prairie he restored.
Let's take the last point first. As a professional wildlife photographer, I spend up to two months each year photographing in the same area where his property is located. I can tell you where there is good habitat there are lots of songbirds. But since they are small, mostly brown, and nest on the ground with fairly large territories for each mated pair, they are dispersed and not easy to see. Expecting to see lots of birds is a fool's errand.
Second, I know of no one who asserts raptors don't eat birds. Some specialists, like peregrine falcons and merlins, eat almost nothing but birds. And even generalists, like red-tailed hawks, take birds when opportunities arise, though the bulk of their diet is rodents. That hawks, falcons and even owls eat other birds isn't news.
It also isn't news that releasing pen-raised pheasants is a waste of time and money if your goal is to establish a breeding population. Even the briefest of searches on pen-raised pheasant mortality reveals that Fladmark's poor pheasant survival rate is due to the fact that these birds are unfit for the wild. Numerous studies show about a
ADVERTISEMENT
5 percent survival rate to one year. Yes, predation accounts for most mortality. But, according to Pheasants Forever, the premiere advocacy group for wild pheasants and their habitat, releasing pen-reared pheasants actually attracts predators. Why? These dumb-as-rocks domestic pheasants are easy pickings. Think of spreading pork chops around your yard. Would you then be surprised to see every neighborhood dog chowing down?
"Average production of spring-released hens ranges from five to 40 chicks per 100 hens released," Pheasants Forever reports. "Pheasant populations must have a production rate of roughly four chicks (surviving to 10 weeks) per hen. Thus, released hens are not productive enough to replace their own losses."
If predation by hawks was indeed the limiting factor for pheasants, how can Fladmark explain a hunter harvest of 1.5 million pheasants in South Dakota last year and 700,000 in North Dakota?
Finally, whatever is going on at his property, the most egregious flaw in his commentary was extrapolating his experience with domestic pheasants to the larger general decline in some songbird populations. Songbirds face many challenges, with predation only one factor. Consider that many of the birds he loves to see winter in Central America and South America, where vast acreages of forest have disappeared while nearly all of North America's prairie has been plowed under. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates as many as 900 million birds killed in collisions with towers, windows and cars. Domestic and feral house cats annually kill millions more. And continued habitat loss, fragmentation, and other land-use changes stress birds during migration, destroy feeding or nesting areas and encourage encroachment by nest parasites like the brown-headed cowbird. These are the real factors in bird population declines.
I salute Fladmark for restoring that farm to prairie. Because I too love birds, and love to hunt pheasants, I hope it stays in grass forever. And may the next owner take the time to see the birds that surely are nesting there.
Michael Furtman of Duluth is a wildlife photographer and author, including several books on the natural history of birds; he writes extensively about conservation.
