{"id":4223,"date":"2013-02-28T21:15:41","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T03:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=4223"},"modified":"2022-12-16T08:29:35","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T14:29:35","slug":"learning-laplands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/4223","title":{"rendered":"Learning Laplands"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lapland Longspur, Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. USFWS image in the pubic domain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In wintertime, huge numbers of Lapland Longspurs come down to the northern United States from their Arctic breeding grounds — sometimes gathering in enormous single-species flocks, but often mixing with other longspurs, Horned Larks, and Snow Buntings. At a distance, their cryptic winter plumage pattern can make them hard to pick out from these other birds. That’s why many people “look” for longspurs with their ears.<\/p>\n

Away from the Great Plains, Lapland is usually the only expected longspur species, and one can usually detect and identify it by its characteristic rattle call, which generally resembles the rattles of other longspurs.\u00a0 Although the number of notes is highly variable, this call is pretty much the same across the Lapland Longspur’s entire (worldwide) range:<\/p>\n

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Lapland Longspur rattle, Weld County, CO, 11\/19\/2007.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/LALOrattle3_PNG-NDP2007-38-16b.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

But this isn’t all that longspurs say.\u00a0 They give a variety of other calls, some of which are more immediately distinctive than the rattle.\u00a0 Here in Colorado, I recorded a longspur giving “chewlup” and “terlee” calls in addition to rattles:
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