A few Wilson’s Phalaropes have been spotted at Cheyenne Bottoms and they are right on schedule.  These shorebirds usually show up around April 12th during their  spring migration from their wintering range in the southern areas of South America.  As many as 87,000 have been estimated at one time in the Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands. The Wilson’s Pharalope breeds in the northern Midwest states.  Its breeding habitat has been reduced by up to 50% in some [...]

Welcome to the first webpost of a new series from the Kansas Wetlands Education Center.  The Spring Migrant Spotlight will provide interesting information about species arriving to Cheyenne Bottoms during spring migration.  Visit the Bottoms to see these birds for yourself! The Long-billed Dowitcher spends its winters in the southern United States and Central America.  As temperatures rise and days get longer in the late winter months, these shorebirds head north.  Long-billed Dowitchers arrive at [...]

The first shorebirds of the spring migration have begun trickling in to Cheyenne Bottoms!  Thanks to all the snow we received over the last few weeks, there’s even a little bit of water in the pools to welcome them. Cheyenne Bottoms hosts approximately 45% of all nesting shorebirds in North America as they make their way northward, up to 600,000 birds from at least 39 species! It’s still early in the migration season, but we’ve [...]

The recent winter storm brought large amounts of snow to Kansas and the Midwest.  In the midst of a serious drought, this precipitation will provide much needed moisture to Cheyenne Bottoms.  The actual amount of water that snow provides varies greatly, depending on the temperature of the air in which the snow is formed.  Four inches of wet snow can be equal to one inch of rain.  Dry, powdery snow can take 20 inches to [...]

The Kansas Wetlands Education Center needs your help! We would like to document the many species that call Cheyenne Bottoms home, and need you to help contribute to that list. With this goal KWEC has started a citizen science project to document the biodiversity at Cheyenne Bottoms using iNaturalist.org. iNaturalist.org is a free, web-based collaborative where anyone can upload observations of wild organisms along with pictures and descriptions. The objective is to create a large [...]

After a night of hard and steady rain, Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area has a little water once again. While most wetlands lack standing water for some parts of the year, Cheyenne Bottoms has gone through a long period of drought. This has left the area without water for many months, which has affected the local wildlife communities as well as migrations. Cheyenne Bottoms is limited to precipitation in the form of stream discharge, river diversion, and surface run-off. With both Blood [...]

After last night’s snow, there has been a spike in bird activity around our feeders here at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center. Birds require lots of food to maintain their high metabolism and to keep their body temperature up. In the winter (especially after a snow), food such as seeds and insects are not easy to come by, which leads the birds to feeders. Our hungry visitors include red-winged blackbirds, American goldfinches, Harris’s sparrows, and [...]

Thirteen observers conducted the Cheyenne Bottoms CBC on Tuesday December 18th.  The lack of significant water and poor grassland conditions made for a challenging day for birding.  However, the weather conditions were nearly ideal for December. We tallied 76 species and a total of 118,527 individuals with the following notes of interest:   a Brown Thrasher, two Double-crested Cormorants, 135 Northern Harriers, 34 Rough-legged Hawks and three Townsend’s Solitaires which was a new Barton County bird [...]