It is one thing to drive through the grasslands of northern New Mexico. It’s quite another to walk through them. When the winds are relatively calm and there are clouds in the sky, the prairie stretches meditatively ahead, flanged here and there with glimmers of illumination. It may look like nothing but grass and light, but on foot you can see the prairie’s rich wildlife community — a herd of pronghorn antelope grazing in a prairie dog town, or a Say’s phoebe flycatching while letting out a plaintive pee-ur. The very fortunate might see the queen of grassland birds: the long-billed curlew, Numenius americanus, which arrives here in the spring from Mexico, the Gulf Coast, or even Central America, depleted after flying hundreds of miles in just a couple of days.
Grasslands are gorgeous ecosystems. The shortgrass prairies of northeastern New Mexico brim with blue grama and buffalograss — perennial grasses whose roots stabilize the soil — and a subtle multitude of wildflowers. Over the last two centuries, though, the flat, fertile grasslands of North America have been razed for agricultural development: The American Bird Conservancy estimates that 51.3 million acres in the Northern Great Plains have been plowed under and replaced with cropland. In 2018 and 2019 alone, nearly 600,000 acres of Northern Great Plains grasslands — an area almost the size of Yosemite National Park — were converted to fields of wheat, corn and soy.
Like many grassland birds, long-billed curlews nest directly on the ground. They tend to choose open, flat expanses with very short grasses; curlews are territorial during the breeding season, and a single pair will fiercely defend an area of 100 acres or more. Once their young hatch, curlews may use taller grasses to shield the chicks from the elements and from predators such as coyotes, snakes and ravens. When grasslands are commandeered for crops or fragmented by residential development, curlews lose the habitat they need for breeding.
Though the long-billed curlew was once abundant in North America, in 2016 it landed on the North American Bird Conservation Initiative’s “Watch List” of species most in danger of extinction without significant conservation efforts. The initiative’s 2022 report confirms a narrative of population decline among grassland birds: Species such as the mountain plover and chestnut-collared longspur have lost more than 75% of their populations since 1970. “Since the 1960s, we’ve lost more than 40% of grassland birds,” Steven Riley at the American Bird Conservancy told me. “A lot of grassland birds are in dire condition today.” Today, an estimated 140,000 long-billed curlews breed in grasslands ranging from northeastern New Mexico to southern British Columbia, but they continue to be threatened by habitat loss and, in some places, by the use of pesticides and rodenticides, which can kill not only the grasshoppers and other insects that curlews depend on but also birds themselves.
ON MEMORIAL DAY last year, my husband, Michael, and our two girls and I hiked in the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge without seeing a trace of a long-billed curlew. Not even a cry. There were other birds — western meadowlarks in yellow-and-black sang throatily from fence posts, and horned larks with schoolgirlish headbands scuttled in the dirt, looking for grass seeds. Long days spent observing birds are like a yatra — a pilgrimage. A naturalist, I’ve been watching and studying long-billed curlews for more than two decades, and I know not to expect an appearance simply because I’m in the field in the right season. Transcendent experiences, after all, are rare.
After driving an hour north of Rio Mora, we turned west toward the town of Cimarron, following back roads. The afternoon light was translucent, playing in the sky like musical notes, with clouds gathering in tones of gray and the deep blue retreating until the billowy gray clouds all but devoured the sky. We drove past private grasslands, and I scanned the prairie for curlews until my eyes hurt.
Then, in a mass of sage-gold grass, I spotted an unmistakable decurved bill.
I gasped. “I saw a curlew!”
“Should I turn around?”
“Yes!”
As soon as Michael pulled over to the shoulder of the road, I moved toward the two-foot-tall curlew. A second curlew, perhaps its mate, stood in the same field, some 30 feet to its right. The pair screamed almost in unison, determined to scare me away. I suspected that they had a nest nearby; as part of the courting ritual, the male scrapes a shallow nest in the ground, and the female later lays a clutch of four mottled eggs in the depression. Maybe this pair had chicks, since neither parent seemed to be sitting on a nest. Cur-lee! Cur-lee! The female’s spectacularly extended bill, over eight inches long and more curved at the tip than her companion’s, moved almost robotically as she opened it wide, emitting shrill staccato cries.
The pair flew over me, arcing across the road and screeching as they flew. Then they soared into the field on the other side, never far above my head. Soon, I saw another pair of curlews flying over the second field. Four curlews! As the first pair landed, I saw the female deftly pluck a grasshopper from the ground and swallow it. Moments later, she downed another.
If I had to pick one bird species to venerate, it would be the curlew. The reasons are partly anthropomorphic — these large, gangly birds are fiercely protective of their young, and the fathers stay behind to rear the chicks after the mothers fly on to central Mexico or some other wintering grounds. Though curlews are monogamous, a paired male and female may spend the winter in different places before returning each spring to the same grassland to breed. Talk about a couple giving each other space! The pair rears the chicks for the first two or three weeks; after the mother leaves for her wintering grounds, the father stays until the chicks can fly away from the nest site, usually another two or three weeks. Compare the devotion of curlew fathers to, say, hummingbird dads, who typically have nothing to do with chick-rearing.
“Since the 1960s, we’ve lost more than 40% of grassland birds. A lot of grassland birds are in dire condition today.”
A sunbeam broke through the clouds, and the curlews kept flying against the shifting skylight. The first two curlews returned to the field. Fat raindrops began to fall, and, reluctantly, I returned to the car. Moments later, I saw a flash of lightning dancing a jig in the sky.
I soon trooped back toward the curlews, who were patrolling the field while mechanically letting out their cur-lee cry. Deep in the grass, nearly camouflaged, I glimpsed a small bird. A chick? No, a horned lark. By this time, my own chicks had come out into the rain and were watching and listening to the curlews, almost as mesmerized as I was. Light whirled about, gray, silver and blue. I might have been Dorothy in Oz, standing alongside a Good Witch — Mia, whose blessings on our road trips are de rigueur — and my not-at-all Cowardly Lion, brave Pika. That afternoon has stayed with me like a shining crystal, reminding me why I live a bird-filled life.
IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO, the area’s three national wildlife refuges are islands in a sea of private ranch and farmland, about 16,000 acres altogether in a region where a single ranch can cover more than 100,000 acres. Last summer, I’d looked for curlews on the wildlife refuges and, as in previous summers, found them mostly on nearby ranches instead. So, this spring, Michael, our two girls and I embarked on a road trip from Santa Fe to learn how ranchers are providing habitat, in some cases inadvertently, for the largest shorebird on the continent.
The curlews’ cries rang out within me in March, when we stopped at the visitor center of the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge. I was looking for Eric Spadgenske, the supervisor of the Northern New Mexico National Wildlife Refuge Complex. A lanky, middle-aged man with close-cropped hair, Spadgenske has an air of efficiency mingled with Southern charm. He had hiked with us last year at the Rio Mora Wildlife Refuge, and Mia and Pika shyly pointed out a photograph from the hike that was showcased in the visitor center. I told Spadgenske that I planned to look for curlews on private ranches during this year’s road trip, and he nodded approvingly. Rio Mora hosts one or two curlew pairs each year, but given the species’ large breeding territories, two pairs are “probably close to saturation” for the small refuge, he said.
After we left the visitor center, I birded at nearby Melton Pond, eyes lingering on American avocets and common mergansers, before heading across the town of Las Vegas to the Mallette Farm. A couple of weeks earlier, a pair of local hikers had enthusiastically recommended it to me as a place where they had spotted some migratory birds, so I figured that the farm must be doing something right.
The family’s land is located at the northern edge of town, within the traditional homelands and hunting grounds of many Indigenous peoples, including Apache, Pueblo, Comanche and Ute communities. The 800-acre farm has been in the same family for 120 years, and Shirley Mallette, the current matriarch, was minding the feed store when I arrived. Soon, we were talking sandhill cranes and long-billed curlews; her adult son, who stood nearby, nodded, affirming that in years past he had seen curlews in the farm’s pastures. Like many local landowners, the Mallettes let native grasses, including blue grama and sacaton, grow everywhere. In wet years, they seed their 150-acre pasture with oats, wheat and alfalfa.
The Mallettes lease their pastures to neighboring cattle owners, and, in the summer, a keen observer can sometimes spot long-billed curlews foraging alongside the cattle who graze there. Badgers, elk and burrowing and barn owls share the land, too. An added attraction for wildlife in this dry climate is the farm’s 150-acre-foot holding pond, used mostly to collect rainwater.
Mallette’s kids grew up playing in the pasture; once they were adults, however, they all left to live in Denver and other cities. “But then it dawned on them that they couldn’t have their horses and dogs,” she chuckled. In time, all came back and are now active in the farm’s management. When a middle-aged man walked by, she said, “That’s Tim, the baby of the family.”
When I asked about pesticides, Mallette said, “We’ve never used them” on the pasture. Like many other farms in the 1940s and ’50s, though, they sprayed DDT inside their farm buildings to control flies. Years later, her husband, Pete, and her mother-in-law lost most of their hearing, which Shirley Mallette blames on their long exposure to the spray (research has linked the use of some pesticides to hearing loss). Since then, she said, her family has avoided pesticide use entirely.
Despite the loss of his hearing, Pete Mallette has had a long life; he recently turned 90. While I spoke with his wife, he brought over her walker so that she might perch on it.
THE NEXT MORNING, my family and I went for a hike in the Rio Mora refuge before driving an hour north to Cimarron. We didn’t take the back roads, the way we did last June, because the curlews had not yet returned from their wintering grounds. The inn where we stayed was adjacent to a mountain ridge, and during our first night, the spring winds moaned and wheezed, chilling the room. I woke early to the sight of grasses fluttering in the cold, unrelenting wind. Even the staid juniper trees were dancing.
The wind had scarcely eased when we arrived at CS Ranch, which is stunningly laid out below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In front of the main ranch house, Julia Stafford was feeding a flock of wild turkeys; she and her siblings represent the fourth generation of ranchers in the family, and I would later meet the sixth generation — her sister Kim’s granddaughters, the eldest one in grade two. My own third-grader, Pika, wandered about, petting the dogs Hank and Belle and watching the turkeys eat the seed Stafford had scattered.
While Pika and Mia stayed near the house with Kim and her granddaughters, Stafford drove Michael and me through parts of the 110,000-acre ranch, where the family raises cattle, breeds horses, and offers guided hunts for antelope, deer and elk. Stafford and her sister, Kim, grew up on this ranch along with their four brothers, all of whom remain actively involved in ranching. Out in the pastures, curlews were beloved birds; the family has always tried to give the birds space. Stafford has only happened upon curlew nests a handful of times. “My father was a real bird-watcher and enthusiast, and he would always watch for them in the spring,” she remembered.
Stafford pointed out a variety of grasses growing in the ranch: blue grama and galleta grass are the most common, but there is also sideoats grama, little and big bluestem, coarser grass such as alkali sacaton, and, especially in natural depressions, vine mesquite grass. “The blessing of this area is that (much of it) was never plowed,” Stafford said. “So the land is a natural seed bank.”
Robert Sivinski, who spent two decades as New Mexico’s state botanist, later told me that native grasses such as blue grama and buffalo grass can take a beating by cattle and persist. He added that ranchers often think non-native grasses will produce more beef, since they can grow faster and create more biomass, but they tend to be less nutritious than the natives. “It’s important to have a native ecosystem for native wildlife, including invertebrates, who are the base of the whole food system,” Sivinski stressed. I’ve seen firsthand why native grasshopper populations are crucial to curlews: The birds need a whole lot of grasshoppers to feed their growing chicks.
The Staffords carefully manage their grasslands, following advice from groups that focus on grazing in arid regions, such as the Quivira Coalition and the Savory Institute; they move their cattle frequently to avoid overgrazing, and mow the pastures early in the season, when it’s less likely to disrupt ground-nesting birds. “The native species have always been here, but they’re just really expressing themselves in all of the pasture,” Stafford said. “That’s been a hugely satisfying thing for me, to watch the diversity of all the rangeland species becoming a more common sight.” In 2018, the family worked with the New Mexico Land Conservancy and the Natural Resources Conservation Service to place an 8,000-acre conservation easement on part of their land.
The shortgrass prairie at CS Ranch can host as many as three pairs of breeding curlews. They hadn’t arrived yet, but I spotted a horned lark, a bird I often see in similar seasons and habitats, flying in short bursts. The diversity of grasshoppers and other insects in the grass made me suspect that CS Ranch doesn’t use pesticides, which Stafford confirmed. “We’re fortunate that there’s not a whole lot of insect pressure on the cattle or the native prairie,” she said.
I’ve seen firsthand why native grasshopper populations are crucial to curlews: The birds need a whole lot of grasshoppers to feed their growing chicks.
The curlew is part of an interdependent community that needs functioning grassland ecosystems that stretch across hundreds of thousands of acres. Keystone species like bison and prairie dogs keep grasslands open, creating nesting habitat for grassland birds. While I was looking for curlews last summer, my daughter Pika was hoping to get a good look at a herd of more than a hundred bison we had glimpsed only fleetingly on nearby private land, their bodies glistening in the morning sun. “Let me know if you see them,” she said, scanning the fields. During hikes at the Rio Mora Refuge, I usually came upon a herd of bison and their young belonging to the Pueblo of Pojoaque, grazing there thanks to a partnership between the refuge and the tribe.
Even people who don’t care about bison or curlews might note that grasslands, which sequester impressive amounts of carbon, keep the planet functioning and habitable for all of us. But it bears repeating that climate change is not the main cause of the decline of grassland species like the long-billed curlew; the primary culprit is still habitat loss, and the North American grasslands are one of the most at-risk habitats in the world.
The North American Grasslands Conservation Act, introduced in the U.S. Senate in July 2022, attempted to create a coordinated strategy for conserving grassland ecosystems across the continent, much like existing strategies for sagebrush and wetlands. Relying on a voluntary, incentive-driven program, the act endeavored to encourage the planting of native grasses and removal of invasive species, along with wildfire and drought mitigation and soil carbon sequestration. While the act failed to make headway and hasn’t been reintroduced, incentives for grassland conservation are offered to landowners through the Department of Agriculture’s Grassland Conservation Reserve Program as well as various state programs. In northeastern New Mexico, the High Plains Grassland Alliance also advises landowners and ranch managers on wildlife stewardship.
Botanist Sivinski has witnessed the consequences of private grasslands management, for worse as well as for better. “One rancher in Hidalgo County in New Mexico drained his cienega and planted the nonnative weeping lovegrass instead,” he told me. “Then the cattle didn’t like it. And he regretted doing what he did because the lovegrass turned into a weed. … It’s hard to get that diversity back, and the species that aren’t there anymore.” But he also recalled the shortgrass prairie on the DeHaven Ranch in northeastern New Mexico, where the owner, a retired schoolteacher, managed her orchard and a small herd of cattle to ensure good grass cover, varying soil depths and a variety of species. The DeHaven has woody vegetation, too, including native oaks, and that has created a patchwork of habitats that benefit a variety of wildlife. The ranch also has “prairie mounds” — low, naturally occurring hillocks — and when it rains, water pools between the mounds. “That is where I saw my first and only long-billed curlew,” Sivinski said, growing radiant and solemn.
I nodded, understanding. Since my long-billed curlew sighting last June, I have tracked curlew footprints in Oregon, Utah, California and even western Alaska, where the bristle-thighed curlew migrates in the spring. But the sighting in Cimarron still has a special resonance for me. The very next afternoon, we’d returned to that grassy field, and I saw the head and bill of one of the previous day’s curlews sticking out of the grass. This time, we stopped only briefly to minimize the disturbance. Still, the ever-alert female began to call. A couple of minutes later, the male flew back, his rufous wings touching down in the sage-gold grass. I imagined that the chick or chicks waited camouflaged in the grass between the parents. A horned lark, perhaps the same one I’d seen in the grass yesterday, was now on a fence and soon ducked back to the ground. The two curlews remained about 30 feet apart.
A car whizzed by, and the driver glanced curiously at me. As I stood there in jeans and a T-shirt, I probably seemed to be staring at nothing but a sea of grass. The driver didn’t hear Mia speculate that the male curlew had likely gone to get some insects and, upon seeing our car stop nearby, the female had called him back. As Mia stitched together our field observations, her eyes lit up, and I knew that she, too, had been touched by the wonder of curlews.
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.
Sarah Trent contributed reporting.
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This article appeared in the July 2024 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Queen of the grasslands.”
