Digital Commons @ Connecticut College

Title

History of grassland birds in eastern North America

Authors

Robert A. Askins, Connecticut CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1999

Comments

Initially published in Studies in Avian Biology, September 1999, Issue 19, p60-71.

© 1999 by the Cooper Orinthological Society

http://www.cooper.org/publications/sab.htm

Full text of the 1999 issue is available at: http://sora.unm.edu/node/84

Abstract

Until recently the severe decline in the populations of many species of grassland birds in eastern North America has aroused relatively little concern or conservation action. This response appears to be rooted in the perception that grassland birds invaded the East Coast from western grasslands after European settlers cleared the forest. Detailed historical accounts and analysis of pollen deposits, however, show that open grasslands existed on the East Coast of North America at the time of European settlement. Extensive grasslands resulted from burning and agricultural clearing by Native Americans. Natural disturbances, such as wildfire and beaver (Castor canadensis) activity, produced grasslands even before Native Americans cleared the forest. The presence of specialized grassland birds in Pleistocene deposits and in the earliest ornithological collections from eastern North America, and the existence of distinctive eastern populations of the Greater Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido), Henslows Sparrow (Ammodramus henslowii), and Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis), indicate that grassland birds are an ancient component of biological diversity on the heavily forested East Coast of North America.

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Recommended Citation

Kurosawa, R. and R. A. Askins. 1999. Differences in bird communities on the forest edge and in the forest interior: Are there forest-interior specialists in Japan? Journal of the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology 31:63-79.