Smith's Longspur

Calcarius pictus

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Figure 1. Breeding and wintering ranges of Smith's Longspur.

Smith's Longspur, breeding male; Churchill, Manitoba; June

; photographer Brian E. Small

The Smith's Longspur has one of the most unusual social breeding systems known among passerines. Unlike the majority of songbird species that form socially monogamous relationships for breeding, the Smith's Longspur is polygynandrous—each female pairs and copulates with two or three males for a single clutch of eggs, at the same time that each male pairs and copulates with two or more females. Males do not defend territories, but instead guard females by following them closely and compete for fertilizations by copulating frequently in order to dilute or displace sperm from other males. Over a period of one week in the early spring, a female longspur will copulate over 350 times on average; this is one of the highest copulation rates of any bird. Males are well-equipped to deliver such large numbers of ejaculates—their testes are about double the mass of those of the monogamous and congeneric Lapland Longspur (C. lapponicus). As expected from their mating behavior, most Smith's Longspur broods contain chicks of mixed paternity. At such nests, two or more males may assist females in feeding nestlings although the amount of investment provided by a given male depends on the number of young he has sired within a nest. The mating system of the Smith's Longspur is much more promiscuous than that found in other longspurs and exactly why it differs is still a mystery. Perhaps the advantages females obtain from extra male help in raising offspring may explain why they pair and mate with more than one male.

Smith's Longspur was first described by William Swainson as the “Painted Bunting” in 1831 from a specimen collected by John Richardson in Saskatchewan. Audubon later renamed this species in honor of his friend Gideon B. Smith of Baltimore in 1844 from new specimens collected in Illinois.
Kemsies, E. (1968). "Smith's Longspur." In Life histories of North American cardinals, grosbeaks, buntings, towhees, finches, sparrows and allies, edited by A. C. Bent, 1628-1635. Washington, D.C: U.S. Nat. Mus. Bull.
Kemsies 1968 summarized the life history of this species in Bent's classic series, but the remoteness of the subarctic breeding range of the Smith's Longspur meant the first systematic descriptions of breeding biology did not appear until Jehl's pioneering work in northern Manitoba (
Jehl, Jr., J. R. (1968a). Geographic and seasonal variation in Smith's Longspur, Calcarius pictus. Trans. San Diego Soc. Nat. Hist. 15:1-5.
Jehl 1968a,
Jehl, Jr., J. R. (1968c). The breeding biology of Smith's Longspur. Wilson Bulletin 80:123-149.
Jehl 1968c). Details of the unusual social mating system of the Smith's Longspur was later worked out by Briskie (
Briskie, J. V. (1992). Copulation patterns and sperm competition in the polygynandrous Smith's Longspur. Auk 109:563-575.
Briskie 1992,
Briskie, J. V. (1993a). Anatomical adaptations to sperm competition in Smith's Longspurs and other polygynandrous passerines. Auk 110:875-888.
Briskie 1993a,
Briskie, J. V. (1999). Song variation and the structure of local song dialects in the polygynandrous Smith's Longspur. Canadian Journal of Zoology-Revue Canadienne De Zoologie 77 (10):1587-1594.
Briskie 1999), and
Briskie, J. V., R. Montgomerie, T. Poldmaa and P. T. Boag. (1998). Paternity and paternal care in the polygynandrous Smith's Longspur. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 43 (3):181-190.
Briskie et al. 1998 reported the first genetic profiling of paternity and the relationship between paternity and parental care. Systematic studies of the wintering ecology of the Smith's Longspur were first undertaken by Gzybowski (
Grzybowski, J. A. (1982). Population structure in grassland bird communities during winter. Condor 84 (2):137-152.
Grzybowski 1982,
Grzybowski, J. A. (1983b). Patterns of space use in grassland bird communities during winter. Wilson Bulletin 95 (4):591-602.
Grzybowski 1983b,
Grzybowski, J. A. (1983c). Sociality of grassland birds during winter. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 13 (3):211-219.
Grzybowski 1983c), with later work by
Dunn, E. H. and Jr. Dunn, R. B. (1999). Notes on behavior of Smith's longspurs wintering in Oklahoma. Bulletin of the Oklahoma Ornithological Society 32 (3):13-20.
Dunn and Dunn 1999 and
Ormston, C. G. (2000). Winter habitat of the Smith's longspur in Oklahoma. Bulletin of the Oklahoma Ornithological Society 33 (1):6-12.
Ormston 2000.