April 6, 2008
On a visit with family in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, my brother, Mike, and I took a walk to a piece of undeveloped land surrounded by suburban sprawl. The area was a mix of abandoned pasture and young Post Oak woods. It belonged to the retirement village where my parents live. The maintenance crew kept the abandoned pasture mowed and had created a few garden spots for village residents.
Since it was early April and the start of the spring neotropical bird migration, I grabbed the cheap binoculars I keep in my car just to see what I could see. We meandered through the field without seeing any particularly special birds (Eastern Wood Peewee, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Cardinal, Hermit Thrush, and Brown Thrasher).
Things changed as we turned for home. Walking past a copse of mixed Post Oaks and Osage Orange, we flushed an Armadillo! Technically, named a Nine-banded Armadillo.
I have seen Armadillos before, but never this far north. As a student in Springfield, Missouri in the 1970s, I’d heard rumors of Armadillos in the Ozarks, but had never seen on there. By the 1990s, some of my Missouri friends were reporting Armadillos in an off-hand, noncommittal manner a little north of Springfield. But seeing on in a suburban green spot surrounded by suburban Kansas City was a true surprise to me.
A quick web search on the Armadillo revealed a source that notes that Armadillos can’t survive if the average January temperature is below 28° F.
Upon returning to my father’s apartment we mentioned the Armadillo and my surprise. My Dad doubled the surprise by telling of sighting a Roadrunner in the area a few years back. Birding purists will want me to note that is was a Greater Roadrunner.
Again, I was surprised. Once in the 1970s, I observed a Roadrunner in the extreme southern Ozarks along the Arkansas Border.
Biologists have been observing numerous species shifting their distributions as a result of climate change. Often it’s difficult to attribute all of a species distribution shift to one simple cause. However, Armadillos and Roadrunners were considered southern species and not generally known as far north as Missouri until recently. To me it was something of a shock and surprise to be confronted with apparent affects of climate change in such a personal way.
My typical scientific caution requires me to state that it is my speculation about climate change causing these distributions shifts. Things are always more complicated.
Some biologists feel that habitat change, fire suppression, and a evolutionary change in Armadillos are significant factors. For Roadrunnners, sources note that the birds are expanding out of the southwest, but they don’t speculate as to the cause.
Gordon T. Maupin
This milk snake, Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum, visited our back door last week. Milk snakes received their name from the myth that they drink milk from cows (milks snakes can often me found in barns, but they’re looking for mice, not milk). This is one of our most beneficial snakes, eating lots of rodents. They also eat other snakes, including venomous species.
