June 2, 2000

'Birds of a feather'
Ranchers, government and environmental groups join together to save endangered songbirds...

By Lana Robinson
Field Editor

Texas Farm Bureau members and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department have become “birds of a feather,” so to speak, in an effort to save two endangered songbirds—the black-capped vireo and golden-cheeked warbler—from cowbird parasitism in the Texas Hill Country. Together, these organizations are educating area farmers and ranchers on a program to control the brown-headed cowbird population. And the results of the program’s very first season in the region, which involves trapping the offending birds, has shown promising results.

The brown-headed cowbird is a brood parasite that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, including songbirds, for them to raise. The cowbird chick hatches out first and dominates the feeding, leaving the songbird chicks weak and undernourished. In some instances, songbird chicks, or eggs, are pushed out of the nest. A female cowbird, which is totally brown, with a lighter, streaked breast (the male is black with a brown head), is just slightly larger than a sparrow. It can lay up to three dozen eggs during the breeding season. The trapping season begins in March and ends in early June.

“We’ve placed 37 traps to date through meetings here,” Steve Bauer, president of the Kerr County Farm Bureau and owner of Double L Ranch and Wildlife Feed in Ingram, reported May 19. “All are active. I talked to Linda McMurray with Texas Parks and Wildlife this morning and 24 people, with maybe 30 traps, caught and dispatched approximately 4,500 cowbirds. Of those, 2,319 were females. For every female you take out, you affect 3.5 songbirds, so that means 8,050 songbirds were impacted, and that’s the Hill Country traps only. That does not include Central Texas.”

In addition to Kerr, other counties involved throughout Central Texas and the Hill Country this year included: Kimble, Kendall, Real, Edwards, Bandera, Blanco, Gillespie, Mason, Llano, Travis, Williamson, Coryell, Bell, Lampasas, Burnet, McLennan, Bosque and Parker.

The first such control program began at Kerr Wildlife Management Area in 1985 when parasitism rates in the black-capped vireo nests were on the rise. In 1986, 27 singing male vireos were identified in the wildlife management area. In 1999, 320 singing males were counted. The Nature Conservancy started a similar program on government property at Fort Hood in 1989, but didn’t get an effective program going until 1991. Then, in 1999, a successful landowner initiative was launched by a group of Fort Hood-area cattlemen, led by Steve Manning of Gatesville. Bauer attended one of the Fort Hood landowner meetings and organized the very first Kerr County meeting in March 2000.

“Steve has been a leader there in Kerr County,” said Manning, who continues to promote the program and recruit new participants. Manning is booked to give a number of presentations on the program to other county Farm Bureaus throughout the remainder of 2000, and will be following up with classes to certify participants and sending them traps. “He’s actually the reason other counties in the Hill Country got involved. He was acting as a shipping point, and made sure they got their traps.”

Bauer sees the trapping program as a viable alternative to proposals like the Safe Harbor Program, currently being pushed by the Environmental Defense Fund, which calls for designation of habitat, limited agricultural practices and removal of livestock in exchange for exemptions on certain regulations. He said traps placed outside his store this spring got a lot of attention.

“Once people found out what they were, they wanted traps because they’re being inundated by cowbirds—not just farmers, but city folks. Their birdhouses and feeders are being taken over by them. So the idea is to expand the program away from farmers and ranchers to others. We’ve involved a lot of urbanites,” said Bauer. “I recruited Bob Dittmar, a veterinarian in Kerrville, who ranches up in Gillespie County. He’s been a mouthpiece for the program. He has a big client-base. I leaned on him real hard for support.”

Dittmar said he liked the program because it is “totally voluntary and totally confidential.”

“What caught my fancy is it included all parties involved, not only ranchers, but also some of the governmental agencies—even the Sierra Club. It’s good PR. It’s a property rights movement,” he said. “It’s positive for landowners. It’s a leadership thing.”

This spring, the Kerrville veterinarian had two traps on his property. Dittmar said it is not uncommon to trap 60 or more birds in a week.

“I’ve caught as many as 670 birds in one trap this year,” said Dittmar, who admitted he never noticed there were so many cowbirds until he became involved in the project. “In fact, I even caught birds in a trap that was on a trailer parked behind the clinic before I even put it out.”

The rectangular traps are eight feet high and seven feet long with a steel frame wrapped with hail screen. A 1.25-inch slot is left in the top for bird entry. Bait birds send out a distress call, which lures other cowbirds into the trap. According to Bauer, the traps have shade, water, and food, and they are checked daily or every other day. Non-target birds are released.

“It’s cheap to do. The traps are furnished for free. It just costs a little milo and some time,” the Kerr County FB president explained.

Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Terry Tunney has been conducting seminars with interested farmers and ranchers to insure that the traps are properly set and cared for and that non-target birds are released unharmed. Bauer has also conducted required training seminars to explain the purpose of the program, how to identify the cowbird and how to build the traps. Some funding for materials and construction was provided through a Texas Parks and Wildlife Landowner Incentive Program (LIP) grant, applied for by Steve Manning, for the statewide program. Of some 200 traps built, about 140 have been placed in the two participating regions. Traps have been built by Texas Department of Corrections inmates and by high school students, including those at Tom Moore High School in Ingram.

Bauer said the program has opened the door for constructive dialogue between those devoted to saving the endangered songbirds and owners of the habitat, whose agricultural activities and livelihoods are threatened by the presence of the species. He noted a recent opportunity to explain the program to one birder by telephone who, at the end of the 45-minute conversation, said, “You’ve dispelled all my concerns.”

The program has also received good coverage in local newspapers and was praised in a recent editorial appearing in the Kerrville Daily Times. Bill Lindemann, a retired geologist who has been an avid birder for 35 years, pens a weekly column, “Birding in the Hill Country,” for the Kerrville Daily Times and the Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post. He said a lot of retired people in and around Fredericksburg, Ingram, Hunt, Comfort, and Junction are active, organized birdwatchers. He has used his column as a forum for explaining the trapping concept.

“It’s fairly clear that cowbird parasitism is a major contributor to these birds being on the decline, but it’s easier to blame it on loss of habitat. There is still a tremendous amount of countryside that doesn’t have urban sprawl, yet birds are being attacked out there and their nesting disrupted by cowbirds. I’m glad we’re now focusing on the real problem,” said Lindemann. “I live on a 29-acre tract, and I don’t have cattle on my property, but I signed up for a trap.”

Lindemann is delighted to see the cooperation between the TPWD and area cattlemen.

“I think that’s been the real success of this effort. A year ago, I thought it was an impossible dream. The people that I run into and talk to about endangered species won’t tell you anything for fear the government will tell them they can’t cut a cedar tree or juniper tree down. It’s important that the landowners and the cattlemen understand that this is not about restricting them, but about saving a bird’s life, and saving a species. The quicker we can get these two birds (black-capped vireo and golden-cheeked warbler) off the endangered species list, the less restrictions they will have... This is the important thing, not only to save these two birds, but to ensure that other birds, like cardinals, don’t get parasitized. There are over 225 to 250 birds susceptible, so they’re not just picking on these two. It’s a broad spectrum,” he said.

According to Lindemann, black-capped vireos are under more pressure than the golden-cheeked warblers.

Dittmar believes the trapping program demonstrates that livestock and wildlife can coexist, that management practices can benefit both.

“Good deer habitat is good vireo habitat,” he insisted.

Several other birds are on the short list to be listed, said Don Petty, associate director of Commodity and Regulatory Activities for the Texas Farm Bureau. Petty works closely with TPWD and the cattlemen’s groups involved in the trapping program.

“Maybe if we can get ahead of the game, we can prevent that,” said Petty.

Bauer agreed. “Our objective down the road is to help in rewriting the recovery plan for the black-capped vireo, and you have to remember that the cowbird affects over 225 other bird species. Hopefully, our efforts will help keep some of them from going on the list and will de-list the two.”

Beyond the Fort Hood area and the Kerr Wildlife Management Area in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, Manning said target areas for expansion of the trapping program include Val Verde County and the Concho region, around San Angelo.