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
