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Conservation

Floridians and their Scrub Jay: Can they coexist?

by Anders Gyllenhaal January 29, 2020

It’s the height of the birding season in Florida, where some 500 species can be found from the sawgrasses marshes of the Everglades to the North Florida oak hammocks. But if you had to choose a single ambassador for the state’s huge bird population, it would be the Florida Scrub Jay.

Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

These beautiful blue and gray birds are so full of personality and appeal that there are on-and-off-again pushes to make them the state bird. The Florida Scrub Jay is the sole bird found only in Florida. And they’re among the most social creatures you’ll ever encounter.

When we finally found them on a small preserve just west of Titusville midway into our January swing through Florida, this family of jays acted as if we were long lost friends:

They flew back and forth in front of us as if showing us the way. They took up perches just a few yards off and launched into nonstop greetings – (or scolds; it was hard to tell which). They hopped around on the ground as if in charge of entertainment for our party of birders.

In many ways, the Florida Scrub Jay is the symbol for Florida’s bird story. On the one hand, Florida is near the top of the list of states for its number of resident and migratory species. On the other, it’s struggling to keep from losing several of its most prominent indigenous birds, including the Scrub Jay.

“The big thing that threatened the Florida Scrub Jay is that they occur in high dry ridges of land,’’ said Reed Bowman, a research biologist with the Archbold Biological Station and one of the state’s experts on Scrub Jays. “And that’s also where all the people want to be.”

About 4,000 Florida Scrub Jays remain in a handful of scattered Central Florida patches of elevated scrub land that sit on sandy soil, with low bushy growth and few trees. As development consumes what’s left of this habitat, state and county researchers are waging a campaign to keep the jays from dwindling further, to the point of moving whole families when their territories are threatened.

“We’re losing land by the minute,’’ said Johnny Baker, a Brevard County land manager who watches over some of the remaining Scrub Jay families. “We’ve got to preserve what’s left.’’

The story of the legislation to make the Florida Scrub Jay the state bird helps explain why they’re in trouble in the first place. Opponents in Tallahassee have cited a list of reasons for keeping the common, unexciting Northern Mockingbird in that perch. But the unspoken truth is the powerful development lobby is afraid the special status might get in the way of further construction, say those in the know.

January 29, 2020 2 comments

Birding research Birds stories Conservation

How an invisible bird is saving the rainforest

by Anders Gyllenhaal January 12, 2020

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

In almost every interview with scientists and researchers, a question comes up about why birds are important to people. One of the most compelling answers I’ve ever heard came in an interview for a piece running in the Washington Post this week exploring the powers of bioacoustic research.

A Puaiohi Thrush (Photo by Lucal Behnke; cover photo by Behnke as well)

The bird in question was the Puaiohi Thrush, the last few hundred of which live so far up in the cliffs on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai it’s almost impossible to see them. To try to save them, a team had to turn to special recording devices placed at the foot of the cliffs to study their range and breeding.

But why is it important to save a bird that you never see in a place people cannot even get to?

Lisa “Cali” Crampton, who manages the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project, said while you rarely see the Puaiohi, its work is spread all across the island. That’s because these thrushes are one of the primary fruit eaters, which then in turn spread the around the island.

“I would hate to see us have to save only one bird, but it would be the Puaiohi,’’ she said. “We have no forest without the Puaiohi. Without forests we have no flood control. We have no drinking water. The forest is the backbone of these islands.’’

Not every bird plays such a pivotal roll. But all perform some part of the interlocking operation of nature, from pollination to pest control.

Many people who study birds will talk about their profound beauty, or how they serve as an indicator of the environment. I love the Puaiohi story because it illustrates in such concrete terms what the impacts would be if species disappear the way many recent studies are predicting.

A bioacoustic recorder in California’s Sierra Nevadas is tracking Snowy Owls. (Photo by Connor Wood)

This week’s story in the Post is about how bioacoustic technology — basically capturing bird songs and calsl and then using technology to analyze the results — has advanced to become a powerful tool for learning about birds. Together with new uses of radar, citizen science and big data, bioacoustics helps uncover more about the complexities and threats to birds than ever before.

That knowledge makes it steadily more obvious that birds are both creatures of miraculous beauty and natural engineers that are fundamental to a healthy and functioning environment.

That research also provides solutions for how we can keep species like the Puaiohi on the job of building the rainforests. We’ll save the details of that rescue plan — as well as many other breakthroughs from bioacoustics — for the story. Here is a link to both the Washington Post piece and a list of rescue projects using bioacoustics around the globe.

Puaiohi Thrushes (Photo by Patrick Blake)

January 12, 2020 1 comment

Birding research Conservation Migration Video

Probing a hummingbird mystery — one band at a time

by Anders Gyllenhaal November 7, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The tiny captive is a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, held firmly in fingers that are far bigger than he is. What happens next will help solve an intriguing migration mystery affecting one of the world’s most intriguing birds.

Along the North Carolina coast, hummingbirds are creating a birders’ kerfuffle by staying into the winter when they’re expected to be headed to South American with millions of their fellow migrants. Susan Campbell, an ornithologist from Southern Pines, and the state’s leading expert on hummingbirds, is trying to figure out why.

First, Campbell tags the hummingbird with a small aluminum band on his leg, then weighs and measures him and puts a dollop of white paint on his forehead. After a sip of nectar, this young male is ready to be set free in the woods near North Carolina’s Hatteras Island to join the research project.

Susan Campbell

“This is one of the last frontiers in bird research right now,’’ Campbell said. Over the past 20 years, she has banded some 4,000 hummingbirds in North Carolina in hopes of tracking their travels to try to make sense of these migratory patterns.

The banding last month was part of a demonstration to raise visibility of the volunteer campaign to study the 15 species of hummingbirds that migrate through North Carolina. This is one of the best places there is to do it: More hummingbirds have been spotted in North Carolina than anywhere in the U.S. but Arizona.

Here’s a video of the banding process:

November 7, 2019 1 comment

Birding research Conservation

“This isn’t only a bird crisis. The birds are just the messenger.”

by Anders Gyllenhaal October 17, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Part of a series

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has spent his career talking about why people should care about birds.

John Fitzpatrick

This fall, that argument has shifted to include a tougher, more compelling question: Why should people care that a quarter of the bird population has been lost in the past 50 years?

Fitzpatrick is one of the world’s leading voices on behalf of birds and a visionary researcher whose career roughly spans that half century of declines.

“The question of why people should care is so important,’’ he says. “The answer is a series of things, on a number of different levels.’’

He starts with the power and beauty of birds and our relationship with them. “Birds are not an optional lifestyle for us,’’ he says. “They sing to us emotionally, spiritually. They appear in poetry from 2,000 years ago. They are part of our fabric.’’

Birds also serve as a kind of messenger from the front lines of the environment we all rely upon, he says.

Fitzpatrick with some of the lab’s specimens.

“We need to watch the birds as a barometer of the things that are going on,’’ he says. “We need to listen to what the birds are telling us, and the birds are telling us that things are getting steadily harder for them.’’

The news that about 3 billion birds have been lost from the overall population came in a major study published in the journal Science three weeks ago. Cornell joined with the American Bird Conservancy, the Smithsonian, Audubon and Georgetown University to assemble the most comprehensive look at North American bird populations ever conducted.

The news was not a surprise, since the declines in the overall volume of birds have been the subject of many studies. They are obvious to anyone watching birds over time. But the dimensions of the losses were shocking, as was the discovery they are occurring not just with endangered birds but across almost all species, including such common birds as Cardinals and Blue Jays.

October 17, 2019 0 comment

Birding guidance Birding research Conservation

10 things you can do to help stop the alarming decline in birds

by Anders Gyllenhaal October 10, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Part of a series

The recent study that found a quarter of the bird population has been lost in the U.S. and Canada made such a big splash that it had one unexpected consequence: Some people came away thinking things are too far gone to do anything about it.

The group of organizations that sponsored the research say the opposite is the case — that now is the perfect time to confront the crisis.

Scientist Ken Rosenberg/Photo Cornell Lab of Ornithology

“What we’re saying is that this is a lot of loss, but it’s still at a point where we can turn things around,’’ said scientist Ken Rosenberg, the lead researcher on the study. “We’re not saying all these birds are going to go extinct. We’re saying it’s so much easier and less costly to be proactive, to work on this while the birds are still coming.’’

The research published in the journal Science found that the total number of birds of breeding age lost in the past 50 years has reached 3 billion. This statistic represents the volume of birds not being replenished during the avian life cycle, creating a trend with alarming potential. The total population in North America is now about 7 billion birds, down from 10 billion in 1970.

The consortium of organizations — including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the American Bird Conservancy, the Smithsonian, Georgetown University, and Audubon – put together a mix of solutions, from pushing for legislation, to increasing protection for endangered species, to limiting deadly pesticides.

But at the heart of the initial campaign is this simple idea: Average people can make a difference by taking a few basic steps around the house.

This post is part of a series delving into the Science research and its impacts. Click here to view an initial report on the findings, and here for a piece about how to make sense of the enormous dimensions of lost birds. Watch for future articles on why we should care and more detail on what can do done to combat the declines.

Here are 10 things any of us can do to help. The list is taken from the consortium’s recommendations, interviews with the study’s authors this week and reactions and reviews that the report generated.

Safeguard your windows against bird collisions: About a billion birds die each year from crashing into glass they mistake for airspace. You can protect birds by putting up screens, breaking up reflections that confuse birds and marking outdoor windows. For practical tips on how to do this, click here.
Keep cats indoors: One of the biggest threats to birds is the huge number of outdoor and feral cats. Cats kill an estimated 2.6 billion birds each year in the U.S. and Canada. The consortium says the solution, keeping cats indoors, is good for both birds and cats. Here’s some guidance.
Avoid plastics: Disposable plastics, such grocery bags, wraps, straws and silverware, often end up in landfills or in the oceans. Birds, fish and turtles can die when they eat the plastic or become entangled in it.
Put up a bird feeder: As habitat for birds has decreased, backyard feeders have become more important. You can help birds by feeding them, and at the same time attract year-round and migratory birds that you can enjoy at home.
Reduce lawns and non-native plants that don’t support birds: The steady conversion of land for housing and other development destroys habitat that birds must rely on. Development isn’t likely to slow, but raising native plants enables you to support many species that coexist with people. Here’s an Audubon site that helps you determine appropriate plants for where you live..
Go a step further and deliberately create bird habitat: You can help create habitat by letting dead trees remain as homes for birds, building a brush pile that certain species favor and planting nut- and fruit-bearing trees. A good summary of these and other steps can be found in this essay published last week in the New York Times.
Avoid the use of pesticides in your household – as well as in your food. The ban on DDT 50 years ago helped save such species as the Osprey and the Bald Eagle. Today the use of pesticides, in particular a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, is harming birds and the insects they rely on for food. The greater problem is in farming, but avoiding the household versions of these pesticides can make a difference. The consortium suggests going one step further to consume organic foods to support the use of pesticide-free farming.
Support legislation to protect birds: A number of bills pending in Congress would help reduce the losses. They include legislation to promote bird-friendly construction and an important bill called The Recovering American Wildlife Act. It would provide $1.4 billion to state and federal wildlife agencies to help a variety of endangered wildlife species. Another worthy bill, Saving America’s Pollinators Act, would prohibit the use of neonicotinoids pesticides altogether.
Contribute to bird organizations: The struggle to save birds will also require more ambitious and expensive efforts to protect land parcels and support research. Each of the major bird organizations – Cornell, the American Bird Conservancy and Audubon – play complimentary roles. Contributions are a big part of funding their work.
Join one of the “citizen science” projects that help track birds by reporting what you see: We can all contribute to the study of birds by reporting sightings to Cornell and Audubon. This helps track bird populations – and also supplies birders with guidance on what birds you can see and where. Click here for information on Cornell’s eBird app. Here’s information on Audubon’s Migratory Bird Initiative.

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab

Some of these suggestions may seem small compared to the size of the problem. But there’s power in numbers, said John Fitzpatrick, one of the country’s leading bird experts and director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a primary sponsor of the research.

“The idea is that we need to give people things they can do on a daily basis that make a difference,” Fitzpatrick said. “If you multiply that by millions, which can turn into billions, we will be able to change the direction of the needle.”

The consortium is working on other measures as well. Go to the website 3billionbirds.org for more details on things you can do on many of these suggestions, as well as links to the Science report, conservation measures and ways you can get involved in this project.

Ken Rosenberg, the lead author and scientist who works with both Cornell and the American Bird Conservancy, said the next phase of research will seek to break down the results by regions to determine how the losses are playing out in different places.

Future research will delve more deeply into the causes of the decline, said Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy.

Some are obvious, such as the loss of habitat and the impacts of climate change. Others are hard to pin down.

Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy

“We need to dig into the threats more,” Parr said. “It’s tough, because nature is not a laboratory where you can say, ‘Oh, let’s remove the cat threat and see what happens.’ You just can’t do that. More threats might be coming that will muddy the picture.”

The researchers agree that while more study is needed, now is the time for action. There’s still time to address the crisis, but nobody can say how much time.

“I don’t think we can wait until we have perfect science,” Parr said. “It’s clear right now that there’s a combination of threats, some of which are more serious, some not. We should focus on the threats we can see immediately.”

October 10, 2019 2 comments

Birding research Conservation

Why 3 billion birds vanished: Understanding the startling new research

by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal September 22, 2019

written by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal

First in a series

Many causes contribute to the losses. Solutions will be just as complex.

Three billion birds have vanished in North America in the span of a single lifetime. They’re just gone. It’s as simple as that. But at the same time, this staggering finding from the study of bird populations published last weekj in the journal Science is so complex — the number so large — it’s hard to get your arms around it.

What does it mean to the environment, to the balance of nature, to the species themselves, that roughly a quarter of the avian population has disappeared since 1970?

In the coming weeks, we’ll explore these and others questions raised by the research that has uncovered a crisis over the future of birds in U.S. and Canada. Upcoming posts will look at why people should care, what these findings mean for other segments of wildlife and where the research will go from here.

The study shows that a combination of forces more powerful than previously thought is wreaking havoc across almost all bird species, according to its authors, scientists and researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Smithsonian, the American Bird Conservancy and four other institutions.

Some of the causes are indisputable: The most obvious is the way the places birds live are being developed at a pace affecting not just endangered species but our most common birds as well. It runs from the general to the specific. For example, the loss of grasslands to farming and housing has cost of the lives of half the Eastern and Western Meadowlarks and a huge numbers of sparrows. Many coastal species are hurt by the fact that so many people now live along beaches and waterways that birds are being squeezed out. At the same time, rising water levels are impacting the shallows where many species live and breed.

And then there’s the problem of insects. As their names imply, species like flycatchers and swallows survive on bugs, and they’re disappearing, too, due in part to newer types of powerful insecticides called Neonicotinoids. Warming trends are throwing off the life cycles of birds and cutting into their nesting and breeding seasons that fuel future generations.

A Scientific American graphic on the study.

The declines have been devastating to birds, but they also signal broader shifts in environments that all life forms depends on.

“We can do better, and we must, if only in our own self-interest, because trouble for birds means trouble for us as well,” Cornell Lab CEO John Fitzpatrick and Peter Marra, director of the newly created Georgetown Environmental Initiative, wrote in an essay for the New York Times this week.

While some causes are clear, the declines of certain species mystify researchers. The loss of millions of migratory birds — which make up about 40 percent of overall population — are a puzzle, since they rely on environments spread all across the hemisphere and make arduous trips twice a year that expose them to all sorts of hazards.

September 22, 2019 0 comment

Birding Birding research Conservation Featured

New research finds 30 percent of the bird population lost over 50 years

by Anders Gyllenhaal September 19, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Every birder will want to tune into a study published today in the journal Science that reaches a startling conclusion: Three billion birds — or 29 percent of the total population across all species — have been lost in North America since 1970.

The research is much more than a traditional study. All of the major bird organizations pooled resources to collect data from the last half century, track what has happened to every species and analyze the modern state of the avian landscape with a precision never before possible.

What this study means is that a sharp and widespread drop in the bird population is taking place. It includes not just the endangered species that get the most attention, but familiar, common birds like orioles, blue jays, sparrows, blackbirds that seemed to be thriving.

Grassland birds (down 53 percent) are losing habitat with the spread of farms, while coastal birds (down 37 percent) are affected by development and climate change. Populations of forest birds are down by about 30 percent from 50 years ago, and arctic birds are down 23 percent.

Go to the end of this piece for links to the many stories, opinion pieces, graphics and videos on this research. To read the Science paper itself, go to the website developed as part of this project, click “findings” at the top right and you’ll find a link.

One of the posters the Cornell Lab released with the study

The findings are so stark and surprising, the authors say, that they have reason to hope this might lead to the kind of public response that followed Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” that helped forge strong new conservation laws.

The research is delivered in the form of a dispassionate scientific study. But the authors –- a Who’s Who in ornithology — do not mince their words when describing the conclusions.

“This data suggests that we are facing the beginning of the end for nature as we know it,” said Mike Parr, president of American Bird Conservancy (ABC). “If we continue to put economic benefits first at all costs, that’s where we are headed.”

Declines among birds have been well studied in recent years, usually focused on those most threatened. Drawing on all the previous data, decades of bird counts and 10 years of weather radar, this study stands out for its breadth of data and sweep of focus.

“Multiple, independent lines of evidence show a massive reduction in the abundance of birds,” Ken Rosenberg, the study’s lead author and a senior scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and American Bird Conservancy, said in a release this afternoon. “We expected to see continuing declines of threatened species. But for the first time, the results also showed pervasive losses among common birds across all habitats, including backyard birds.”

September 19, 2019 1 comment

Birding Birding research Conservation

What will it take to mobilize the country’s birders?

by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal August 13, 2019

written by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal

Our long-planned visit to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., this week began just as the White House announced plans to weaken the Endangered Species Act. The move seemed to strike at the heart of the lab’s work to protect birds in a time of accelerating declines.

We were at the lab for a day of interviews on all sorts of topics, but conversations kept circling back to these changes to the law. Many birds are already threatened by the combination of habitat loss, urbanization, pesticides and early impacts of climate change.

Specimens of extinct species are part of the research collection.

What will happen if the bedrock legislation that helped restore and preserve the Bald Eagle, the Peregrine Falcon, the Alligator, the Grizzly Bear and countless threatened bird species loses its teeth?

A second question kept coming up from members of the staff of more than 200 researchers, scientists, archivists, photographers and computer specialists:

What would it take for the millions of Americans who care about birds to come together on a scale equal to the threats so many species are facing?

“The bottom line is that we need to have a voice,’’ said Ken Rosenberg, an applied conservation scientist who works both for the Cornell Lab and the Washington-based American Bird Conservancy. “We need to be a force that the politicians have to reckon with.”

Executive Director John Fitzpatrick

This isn’t a new question when it comes to birders. It’s hard to pin down their exact numbers in the U.S., but government surveys put the number at around 40 million people. They range from backyard birders to weekend birders to those who’ll travel wherever the latest rare species can be found.

That’s a huge group that has so far remained passive and diffused through a rising tide of bad news for birds. The authoritative State of the World’s Birds Report concluded last year that 40 percent of the Earth’s species are in decline. A May United Nation’s study predicted that a million species of birds, animals, plants and insects are threatened with extinction in the coming decades if action isn’t taken.

More research along these lines is on the way: The most comprehensive report ever conducted on the state of North American birds is about to be released in a scientific study on what’s happened to the overall bird population over a span of 50 years.

The findings, assembled jointly by all the major bird organizations, are embargoed. But many who’ve worked on the study say its conclusions are alarming enough to serve as a call to action.

Will bird-lovers answer that call?

At the Cornell Lab, researchers have been chronicling the vital role that birds play in the balance of nature since 1915. Executive Director John Fitzpatrick, who has shaped the lab into the research and digital powerhouse it’s become, makes the point that birds are the key to understanding our environment.

“They are literally the heartbeat of the Earth’s system,’’ he said. “They tell us how nature works.’’

Director John Fitzpatrick and Cornell staff writer Pat Leonard look over lab specimens.

The lab’s mission is science and information, leaving the outright advocacy to others. But lab staffers seem to agree that it will take more than the traditional arguments to mobilize the country’s birders in the same way the National Rifle Association, for instance, advocates for gun ownership or hunters push for protection of game species.

Today, even if the groups were to fully mobilize birders, it’s not clear how those interests would be represented in the political realm, or how funds might be collected to power a broad campaign. “The truth is, there’s no mechanism for that to be done,’’ said Rosenberg.

The major birding organizations are indeed pushing for protections, lobbying government agencies and legislators and speaking out on the issues of the day. The Audubon Society published an immediate response to the reshaped Endangered Species Act Tuesday. More pressure is certain to follow as the likely impacts of the these changes become clear.

Mike Webster, director of the lab’s Macaulay Library that collects and organizes millions of bird photos, recordings and videos.

But each of the bird groups has separate emphases, and while they work together on select projects, they have yet to create a true omnibus campaign that might help to unite their supporters.

As the news from Washington circulated through the lab, the question of how to pull that off was on the minds of everyone we talked to.

“Awareness is no longer the bar,’’ said John Bowman, head of the lab’s Conservation Media program that produces vivid reports to support the lab and its partners. “Changing behavior is the bar.’’

A portion of the lab’s enormous mural that shows every major species type around the world — along with species that have become extinct since the arrival of humans on Earth

August 13, 2019 1 comment

Birding Birding research Breeding and Nesting Conservation

Magnificent photography fuels a campaign to save the Earth’s rarest eagle

by Anders Gyllenhaal June 17, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Toward the end of the full-length documentary “Bird of Prey” about the quest to save the Great Philippine Eagle, a chick followed from birth to adulthood takes off for its first flight and slowly soars high above the jungle.

A Philippine Eagle soars over the jungle. Photo by Neil Rettig. The display photo above is also by Neil Rettig.

It’s a breathtaking scene that is the crescendo of Cornell Lab of Ornithology”s first feature film. To capture that shot took six months of trudging through the jungle, fighting off swarms of insects, avoiding poisonous snakes, shimmying up giant trees and waiting days on end for the key moments to unfold.

A close-up look at the feathers that frame the Eagle’s face. Photo by Neil Rettig.

This is a remarkable creature, and its first flight drives that point home. It’s one of the largest Eagles on Earth, with a mop of feathers that frames its face and a wingspan of seven feet. But today just 400 pairs of the Great Philippine Eagle remain due to years of logging, poaching, careless development, and public indifference.

Here’s a trailer for the documentary:

June 17, 2019 0 comment