Redrawing Range
Written on June 14, 2024
The day was full of birds that weren’t supposed to be here, species whose range maps do not show them anywhere near Price, Utah. None of these were rare birds, but rather those that aren’t widely known to breed in Carbon County, even though they do. This is a scientific coloring project for me, and I take great joy in capturing data that will one day fill in the blank spots on outdated maps.
My morning started out like every other. I filled the backyard platform feeders with one stainless steel mugful of black oil sunflower seed, and the hanging feeder with one mason jar of mixed seed that is mostly millet. The House Finches and House Sparrows arrived first, since they come to the yard when the sun rises, and wait for me to fulfill my end of our deal. The White-winged Doves, that have nested in the ash trees halfway down the block come later, crowding atop the platform and pushing all the smaller birds down to the ground to clean up their scraps.
There was a time when White-winged Doves hardly existed in this state. They were historically a southwestern species, that were considered a rarity this far north, but in recent years, they have expanded their range. When I first moved to Price, two years ago, I had to encounter multiple individuals, over the course of a year, to realize that this species is now a permanent resident in eastern Utah.
After doing a little backyard birding, I was headed up to Price Canyon Recreation Area. The three mile paved road up the canyon winds through oak, aspen and ponderosa forests. This is one of my favorite local hotspots, and it gets few visitors on a Thursday morning, so I planned to park my car in a pullout, and hike the road in an effort to notice more birds. There were two species I was after—Dusky Grouse and American Three-toed Woodpecker—that would be additions to my year list.
When I began my walk, I noticed that the forest was drenched with the melodic songs of warblers. MacGillivray’s and Virginia’s Warblers sang from the scrubby oak and serviceberry hillsides, and Grace’s Warblers could be heard from the canopies of ponderosas. I faced a tree where a Grace’s was singing, and began to lure it in by pishing. Price Canyon was closed for the entirety of last summer while they resurfaced the road, and since these striking warblers are migrants, I hadn’t seen one since the preceding May. A beautiful male, the color of summer sunshine, came down to the lower branches to investigate.
Grace’s Warblers are very loyal to ponderosa forests in Utah. I have seen them on the Kolob Plateau of Zion National Park, in Devil’s Canyon near Monticello, in Price Canyon, and in the Uinta Mountains north of Vernal. Since they are so in love with this species of pine that stretches all the way to Montana and southern Canada, one would think that these birds would follow their favorite habitat, but the Uinta Mountains are northernmost point that I’ve ever seen them. Their range map tells a different story, showing them breeding only as far as the southernmost portions of Utah, Colorado, and Nevada.
I walked the entirety of the road, did a loop through the campground which marks the terminus of the recreation area, and turned back towards my car. It was getting later in the day, and the warblers were going into their afternoon hush. The forest was nearly silent on hike back down, with the only sound being the whisper of a breeze through pine needles. Just before I reached my car, a methodical hammering broke through the quiet. I walked towards the source, and saw an American Three-toed Woodpecker, one of my target species, low on the charred trunk of a ponderosa. It was striking heavy blows, knocking off a section of burned bark, and then probing the newly exposed area for insects.
When I entered the woodpecker into my eBird.org app, it flagged it as rare. I pulled up the range map for this species, and saw that it also was not supposed to be in Carbon County. This bird is shown to breed a bit closer than the other two, but there is still a large blank spot in the eastern part of Utah.
On the drive back home, I thought about why these three species might not be shown here. A lot of it comes down to the way that we have collected data in the past, and I think things will change based on how we currently collect it. It is impossible for mapmakers to bird every square inch of our large country, and in the past, ranges have been determined based on the data that was available at the time. Before the internet, many people’s checklists lived on pieces of paper, and this is what a lot of historical range maps are based off of. Many rural and remote areas, have always been very under-birded, and where little data exists, educated guesses were likely extended to fill in the blanks. A bird’s range can also expand or contract over time. Contraction can happen when breeding habitat is destroyed. Expansion can happen because birds wander, or because they are pushed around by an unstable climate.
The creation of range maps is changing now, with the advent of eBird. Millions of community scientists enter checklists across the country, and upload them to the site. This huge data trove fills in those gaps. On eBird’s 20th anniversary in 2022, they reported that 89 million checklists had been uploaded to their site. There are still under-birded areas in Utah, but this is relative to a huge dataset that has been compiled since the community science site came online. Carbon County is relatively under-birded compared to the major population centers along the Wasatch Front. The data that I take on a daily basis will help fill in those blank spots on the map, and paint a more complete picture of bird distribution in the state. This is why I take so many checklists, and one of the main reasons that I list.
The range maps are in the process of being redrawn. I don’t know when the task will be considered complete, but if I keep entering White-winged Doves, American Three-toed Woodpeckers, and Grace’s Warblers on my checklists, perhaps those maps will one day accurately depict these birds’ presence in Carbon County. I’ll continue with my scientific coloring project, doing a little more shading every time I push the submit button on my eBird app.
Note: If anyone caught that I was using the term “community science” instead of the more common “citizen science,” see this link. Thank you to Alex for tuning me in to more inclusive language.