 Breeding evidence |
 Relative abundance |
 Probability of observation |
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Click on plot to view table of mean abundance
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Number of squares
Long-term BBS trends
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-7.62 (-10.2 - -5.15)|
Mean abundance (number of birds detected per 5 min. point count) and percentage of squares occupied by region Bird Conservation Regions [abund. plot]
[%squares plot]
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Atlas Results
Atlas results coming soon
Excerpts Adapted from the Birds of Saskatchewan:
One of the most delightful and distinctive performances belongs to the Thick-billed Longspur (formerly known as McCown's Longspur). Climbing several metres into a wide blue sky, the male, with spread wings and fanned tail, floats downward gracefully in a long spiral, all the while singing a tinkling, wind-chime-like song with distinctive pauses. Thick-billed Longspur breeds on the dry short grass of the Great Plains and is a short-range migrant that winters from central Arizona and west-central Kansas south to northern Mexico and southcentral Texas (AOU 1998).
The Thick-billed Longspur favours native shortgrass prairie, but with the disappearance of preferred habitat, singing males have been recorded in newly planted crops, summerfallow, and stubble fields especially in the northern and eastern parts of its range.
Thick-billed Longspur is a common summer resident only in the shortgrass prairie ranchland of extreme southwest Saskatchewan, beginning west of Val Marie and intermittently along Hwy 18 all the way west and north to Robsart (JFR). This is the heart of its range, where it reaches its greatest abundance in North America (With 1994). The species has withdrawn from the eastern and northern portions of its Saskatchewan range, where Smith (1996) described it as an uncommon, local, and irregular summer resident.
Original text by Daniel J. Sawatzky and Stephen K. Davis. Text adapted by Daniel J. Sawatzky
Read more about the Thick-billed Longspur in the Birds of Saskatchewan here.
Recommended citation: Latremouille, L. M. 2025. Thick-billed Longspur in Latremouille, L. M., S. L. Van Wilgenburg, C. B. Jardine, D. Lepage, A. R. Couturier, D. Evans, D. Iles, and K. L. Drake (eds.). 2025. The Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Saskatchewan, 2017-2021. Birds Canada. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan https://sk.birdatlas.ca/accounts/speciesaccount.jsp?sp=TBLO&lang=en [14 Nov 2025]
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