Butler County Conservation Naturalist Annette Wittrock has spent time studying the migratory behavior of locally found animals. She says some species are commonly thought to migrate, but remain in Iowa throughout their lives.
“The one I always hear, even from my family, is the American Robin,” Wittrock says. “Most people think that the appearance of robins in February and March means that spring is here. In fact, all of Iowa is in the year-round range for robins. So they do not leave the state in the winter. Technically they’re considered a migratory bird because in the northern part of their range, like Canada and Alaska, they do migrate, but here in Iowa they stay year-round. So when I participate in the Christmas bird counts, we find hundreds of robins, but they’re normally in thickets of cedar trees, not in people’s yards. These cedars provide not only good shelter from the wind, but also food because they’ll eat those berries from the cedars as well as other fruit that is on plants year-round. And then of course the bluebird. We’re actually in the year round range for these little birds as well. And like the robins, they’ll find places that offer good protection and fruit to eat for the winter.”
Wittrock says some species that normally aren’t thought to be migratory actually are.
“The common green darner, which is a dragonfly, lay their eggs in the water and their young live in the water until it’s time to be an adult. So the first generation of these green darner dragonflies will emerge in the southern US, Mexico, and the Caribbean sometime between February and May, and then this group will migrate north to the Midwest and beyond, and then they can arrive as early as March here. So we should be seeing them soon. They will lay their eggs in the ponds and eventually die here. And then their young will become adults in late summer and fall, and they’ll migrate south. So thousands of miles, we’re pretty sure that they’re headed again back down to Mexico and the Caribbean or Southern US. But as long as they have what they need in a habitat, they should continue to migrate every year as well. And we have nine species of bats in Iowa, four of which migrate.”
