KARVAL- As he rides past the vast open plains near Karval, farmer and rancher Jeff Thornton knows he's not alone.
"They've learned to work with us, and we just work around them also," he said.
Thornton is talking about mountain plovers, birds which come to nest on these vast tracks of land every spring.
"It's actually conducive to what this bird likes as a habitat," he said.
Despite their name, mountain plovers are actually shorebirds that spend their winters in California but then migrate over the mountains to set up nests on the Eastern Plains. They are considered a "near-threatened" species.
"A near-threatened species means it's one that we would like to keep an eye on," Jeff Birek, with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, said.
Birek said the yearly appearances of the mountain plover are directly tied into the health of the prairies. The drought conditions of the past few years, with a less than ideal amount of water, has not been easy on their habitat, nor on the insects that they like to eat.
"They do fairly well with low amounts of vegetation, but there is a threshold just like any species," Birek said. "So, if their insect populations are low because of a lack of water, that could really affect them as well."
Mountain plovers aren't exactly easy to spot, because they blend into their surroundings and stick close to the ground. Still, the bird has become part of the identity of this area and especially for the town of Karval. That is why in 2007, Karval began hosting the Mountain Plover Festival, as a way to attract birders to their tiny town and pay homage their flighty neighbor every April.
"That's the only economic development we have is the Plover Festival," rancher and farmer Carl Stogsdill said."We farm quite a bit of ground with big four-wheel drive tractors and you learn to watch for them, mark the nests, go around them—all kinds of things to try and help."
This year's Mountain Plover Festival in Karval will be held on April 24, 25 and 26. For more information on it, go to www.karval.org
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