Habitats of the Americas

Habitats vary all over the New World, from Arctic climes, to deserts, to mountains, to tropical rain forests. Each habitat has its own characteristic avifauna. Here we present some of the varied habitats found in the Americas, and some of the birds you might see there.

Additions to this page will be posted periodically, so check again to see new places and the birds that live in them!

Habitats:

• Islas Ballestas and Paracas, Peru

• Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA

• Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

• Sonoran Desert, Arizona, U.S.A.

On Habitats of the Americas, Page 2:

• Lowland Pine Savanna, Nicaragua and Honduras

• Tallgrass Prairie, Oklahoma, USA

• Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

• Alpine Habitat of New Mexico, USA

Islas Ballestas and Paracas, Peru

Birds cover the rocks of the Islas Ballestas, even when they are difficult to distinguish and identify through the fog.	Peruvian Boobies are among the most common species on the Islas Ballestas.	The nearby Paracas Peninsula is extremely arid, with essentially no vegetation, and hence few land birds.

The cold Humboldt Current flows northward from Antarctica along the west coast of South America, bringing rich nutrients to the surface of the Pacific Ocean.  In this current, just off the south-central coast of Peru, lie the Islas Ballestas (Ballestas Islands), just offshore from the Paracas Peninsula.  Because of the cold offshore current (one of the major components of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation), the climate here is cool and foggy, despite being only a few degrees from the Equator.   The air here is chilled by the cold current, creating a climate with little or no rain, ever, surprising despite the fog!  But nutrients carried by the current grow fish, and the fish attract sea birds in great numbers.  With little rain, and many birds, the bird droppings over the centuries accumulated into deep deposits of guano.  The guano was an important source of fertilizer at the end of the 19th Century, and was mined and shipped to the United States and Europe.  

A few of the bird species you might expect to see here include some of the northern-most penguins in the world (the Galapagos Penguin is still farther north).  Most of the birds occur in great numbers. The Paracas area is a major wintering ground for many shorebirds that breed in North America.  Other birds are:  

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA

Grebe Lake, which did have Horned Grebes on it, and many Ospreys.  August 1998.	Forest burned in the 1988 forest fires still has many dead trees standing, and pink fireweed flowering .  August 1998.

Yellowstone National Park is one of the treasures of the United States.  It is one of the most beautiful places in the country, and has some of the most interesting and unbelievable sights, too, such as swooshing geysers and blurping mud pots.  

Ten years ago, great fires swept through the park, burning many thousands of hectares.  Although the park was not really hurt--fires are a natural part of its environment--many people feared much damage had been caused.  Indeed, even ten years later, there are many areas of standing, dead trees.  But when the trees lost their canopies, light came to the forest floor, and grass and shrubs could grow.  This provided food for animals, and also insects.  And insects are food for birds.  So in some ways, the park is now perhaps better for wildlife than it was before the fires.  

A few bird species you might see if you visited here during the summer are:

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

Beagle Channel

Lapataia Bay, Ushuaia National Park.  Here there were sea lions, steamer ducks, and cormorants.	Southern beech forest on Tierra del Fuego.	Ashy-headed and Upland geese on shores of Bahia Lapataia.

Off the southern end of South America, across the Straits of Magellan, is the island of Tierra del Fuego.  Its southern boundary is the Beagle Channel, named for the ship that carried Charles Darwin (and FitzRoy and many others) on their exploratory voyage around the world in the early part of the 1800s.  The Beagle spent much time surveying this area.  The city of Ushuaia lies on the shore of the Beagle Channel.

The climate here, so close to Antarctica, is cool, as you would imagine.  The summer (December and January) is short, and although the winters are not extremely cold, due to the moderating effects of the surrounding ocean, they are long and snowy.  Although most people think of South America as being "tropical," Ushuaia is definitely very temperate. As with most temperate areas, the avifauna is not as diverse as in lowland tropical rainforests such as Amazonia, but because of the isolation of Tierra del Fuego, most bird species found here are unique.   

A fascinating book to read about life growing up by one of the first settlers of Ushuaia is The Uttermost Part of the Earth, by Lucas Bridges.   

A few bird species you might see if you visited here:

Sonoran Desert, Arizona, U.S.A.  

A view from the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona.	Cholla (in the foreground) are used as nest sites by several desert birds, including Cactus Wrens and Curve-billed Thrashers.

Covering some 120,000 square miles (310,776 square km), the Sonoran Desert stretches across southwestern Arizona, southeastern California, and much of Baja California and Sonora, Mexico.  Although the hottest of North American deserts, a bimodal annual rainfall pattern results in a relatively rich abundance of plants and animals.  Thanks perhaps to Hollywood westerns, the saguaro cactus is thought of by many people as the signature species of the Sonoran Desert.  Rising like giant green dinner forks with uneven tines, saguaros may reach 50 feet (15 m) in height and live 200 years.  Gila Woodpeckers and Gilded Flickers excavate nest cavities in saguaros, providing future homes for other cavity nesting desert birds such as Elf Owls.  Other common plants of the Sonoran Desert include cholla, prickly pear, and barrel cactus, creosote bush, desert saltbush, bursage, and palo verde and mesquite trees. Some bird species you may expect to see in the Sonoran Desert include:

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Bird Song: Dickcissel

Copyright 1999 George M. Sutton Avian Research Center

Unique visits since 8 October 2004