Yerington Monday: Endangered Species of Lyon County
The lands , sky and waters in and around Yerington are full of beautiful critters and plants, however there are a few that have made the endangered species list. They are the Greater Sage-Grouse, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, the Lahontan cutthroat trout, and the Churchill Narrows Buckwheat plant.
Greater Sage-Grouse
Greater Sage-Grouse stand up to two feet tall and weigh between two and seven pounds. Females (hens) are smaller and mottled brown, black and white. Males are more colorful and have spiked tails and large white ruffs around their necks. The male’s most distinctive feature may be bright yellow air sacs on the chest, which they inflate during courtship displays. The hens’ less-showy coloring helps hide them from predators, especially when they have young to protect.
Chicks are precocial – their eyes are open when they hatch, and they can leave the nest within two days. Hatchlings are covered in soft down feathers that also help camouflage them from predators.
As their name suggests, Greater Sage-Grouse need sagebrush habitat to survive. They currently inhabit sage-steppe ecosystems in Montana, southern Idaho, northeastern California, eastern Oregon, northwestern Colorado, and broader sections of Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.
Greater Sage-Grouse use sage-steppe habitat year-round, but it is critical for their survival in winter and spring. In cold months the birds shelter under mature sagebrush. In spring, males and females congregate on leks – large, open flats surrounded by sagebrush – to breed. Males strut with tail feathers fanned, swishing their wings, and inflating the air sacs on their chests with rhythmic huffing that can be heard from a mile away. Individual birds often use the same lek year after year.
After mating, hens fly 4-15 miles from the lek to nest and rear their broods. Research shows that hens nest within the same two or three square yards (meters) every year. They gradually move to moist areas such as stream banks and wet meadows during the brood-rearing phase to feed on the forbs and insects needed to ensure chick survival. When Greater Sage-Grouse return to find a familiar lek, nesting or brood-rearing area disturbed, they show little ability to adapt to the changes or to find substitute habitat.
As the American West has become more and more urbanized over the last 100 years, Greater Sage-Grouse populations have declined due to loss, degradation or fragmentation of habitat. Today, there are about 40 percent fewer sage-grouse than in the 1970s occupying only 56 percent their historic habitat.
No single factor is the cause of declining Greater Sage-Grouse populations. But the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Assessment identifies a number of factors that, since the beginning of settlement in the West, have adversely affected the number of birds and the amount, distribution and quality of sagebrush habitats:
• habitat loss and degradation
• sagebrush destruction
• habitat fragmentation
• woodland encroachment
• drought
• altered fire regimes
• weed infestation
• rehabilitation challenges
• pesticide applications
• built structures (water developments, fences, power lines, wind turbines, etc.)
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
The upper parts are grayish brown, lower parts white, and the body is slender with a long tail. The underside of the tail is black with white at the base of each tail feather, forming conspicuous white spots on a black background. Rufous colored shading is visible on the center of the primaries. The lower part of the slightly curved bill is yellow while the upper part is black, and the eye ring is yellow.
Yellow-billed cuckoos live in cottonwood and willow riparian and other woodland habitats and prefer dense under-stories in Nevada.
Cool Facts
- Yellow-billed Cuckoos are among the few bird species able to eat hairy caterpillars. In the East they eat large numbers of tent caterpillars—as many as 100 in one sitting.
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoos don’t lay their eggs all at once: the period between one egg to the next can stretch to as long as five days. This “asynchronous” egg laying means the oldest chick can be close to leaving the nest when the youngest is just hatching. When food is in short supply the male may remove the youngest bird from the nest, though unlike their relative the Greater Roadrunner, they don’t feed them to the older siblings.
- If threatened, nesting pairs of Yellow-billed Cuckoos will react with a “distraction display” designed to lure potential predators away from the nest site. While one bird remains on the nest, the other hops to a visible perch, opening its wings and pumping its tail up and down. In open nesting areas, a bird flushed from the nest flutters away in a slow, wavering flight, flashing its rufous wing patches and white tail spots.
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoos have a primal-sounding, croaking call that they often give in response to loud noises. Their tendency to call at the sound of thunder has led to their colloquial name, the “rain crow.”
- Yellow-billed Cuckoos sometimes lay their eggs in other birds’ nests—although they don’t do this nearly as often as the Common Cuckoo of Eurasia, which made the behavior famous. When outbreaks of cicadas, tent caterpillars, gypsy moths, and other prey create an abundant food supply, Yellow-billed Cuckoos sometimes lay eggs in nests of other cuckoos as well as in those of American Robins, Gray Catbirds, and Wood Thrushes.
- Both parents build the nest, incubate the eggs, and brood the nestlings. They incubate and brood equally during the day, but the male takes the night shift. The male brings nest material every time he comes to the nest to take his turn. The female usually takes the offering and works it into the nest.
- Yellow-billed Cuckoos have one of the shortest nesting cycles of any bird species. From the start of incubation to fledging can take as little as 17 days. Although born naked, the young birds develop quickly; within a week of hatching the chicks are fully feathered and ready to leave the nest.
Lahontan Cutthroat Trout
Lahontan cutthroat trout is the largest subspecies of cutthroat trout, and the state fish of Nevada. It is one of three subspecies of cutthroat trout that are listed as federally threatened.
Life History:
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Female sexual maturity is reached between the ages of three and four, while males mature at two to three years of age. Consecutive repeat spawning is rare. Like other cutthroat trout species, Lahontan cutthroat trout is a stream spawner, spawning between February and July. Spawning depends upon stream flow, elevation, and water temperature.
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Distribution and Habitat:
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Lahontan cutthroat trout, like other trout species, are found in a wide variety of cold-water habitats including large terminal alkaline lakes (e.g., Pyramid and Walker lakes); alpine lakes (e.g., Lake Tahoe and Independence Lake); slow meandering rivers (e.g., Humboldt River); mountain rivers (e.g., Carson, Truckee, Walker, and Marys Rivers); and small headwater tributary streams (e.g., Donner and Prosser Creeks).
Generally, Lahontan cutthroat trout occur in cool flowing water with available cover of well-vegetated and stable stream banks, in areas where there are stream velocity breaks, and in relatively silt free, rocky riffle-run areas.
The Lahontan cutthroat trout is endemic or native to the Lahontan basin of northern Nevada , eastern California , and southern Oregon. In 1844, there were 11 lake dwelling populations of Lahontan cutthroat trout and 400 to 600 steam dwelling populations in over 3,600 miles of streams within the major basins of Lake Lahontan .
Lahontan cutthroat trout currently occupy between 123 to 129 streams within the Lahontan basin and 32 to 34 streams are outside the basin, totaling approximately 482 miles of occupied habitat. The species is also found in five lakes, including two small populations in Summit and Independence Lakes . Self-sustaining populations of the species occur in 10.7 percent of the historic stream habitats and 0.4 percent of the historic lake habitats.
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Threats:
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As subpopulations of the species become isolated due to physical and biological fragmentation, migration rates decrease, local extirpation may become permanent, and the entire population may move incrementally toward extinction. Maintaining a networked population may provide the ability to recover LCT without having to establish fish in every tributary as well as establishing self-sustaining lake populations for long term persistence. Although the presence of non-native species have dramatically altered aquatic ecosystems, hybridization and competitive interaction between lake dwelling LCT and non-native species is not well understood.
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Churchill Narrows Buckwheat
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Low, loosely branched perennial mat 0.5-2.5 dm across from a stout woody taproot; leaves sheathing 1.5-4 cm up the stem, stalked, blades elliptic, mostly 0.8-2 x 0.5-1.2 cm, densely grayish-tomentose; flowering stems scapiform, mostly 0.5-1.5 dm long, white-tomentose, each with a single head of creamy-white flowers with greenish-tan to reddish markings.
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Distribution and Habitat:
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All known occurrences are in the Churchill Narrows area of Lyon County, Nevada.
Dry, relatively barren and undisturbed, white to yellowish tan, often gysiferous, clay to silty diatomaceous deposits of the Coal Valley Formation, with a variable volcanic cobble overburden, on rounded knolls, low ridges, slopes, and especially small drainages on all aspects at elevations of 1300-1410 m
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Threats:
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The loss of habitat by recent agricultural and municipal development activities, off-road vehicles and soil disturbance by grazing livestock
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