When we talk about bird migration, we tend to speak in terms of north and south (ie, north for the spring, south for the winter). But if you read this blog often, you’ve noticed that we enjoy talking about the outliers, the ones that don’t do what every other bird does. Into this group one must include the Mountain Plover, a shorebird that rarely if ever sees the seashore, and doesn’t live in the mountains. Audubon California has long fought to raise awareness of the Mountain Plover, a bird that has been declining significantly over the years, and faces a number of threats. It’s a tough bird to pin down, but it tends to spend its winters in California before heading off to the middle of the country to breed in the spring and summer. The maps below tell the story pretty well (photo by Greg Smith):

The first thing you'll notice on the eBird maps is the relatively small number of sightings of the Mountain Plover. As you can see from the photo above, the bird fades into the landscape pretty well. And, unfortunately, there just aren't that many of them. Anyway, as you can see from the January eBird map, most of the birds were in California during the winter, mostly in the Central Valley:

But then look at the map from today, showing most of the birds in Colorado:

So, why do we call it the Ghost of the Plains. That's a term that Audubon California's Andrea Jones uses to describe the bird. And she uses it because there are certain species that evoke memories of a landscape that no longer exists, for the most part. There are so few Mountain Plover left, but when you see one, it's almost a ghost of a landscape that used to be.