I wrote last time about a recent collaborative study that gave concrete percentages and numbers for declines in North American bird species, well documented since 1970.
Many charismatic species have declined over 50 percent in 50 years.
Reasons were given, and some actions proposed — mostly in follow-up articles and websites as the journal Science where the study was featured limits space to three pages, no matter the import.
There were lots of footnotes.
As part of the follow-up to the article, National Audubon released estimates that several states will lose their state bird if modeling for climate warming proves accurate.
A large, quite odd photo of a purple finch — our state bird — was on the Sunday News front page last weekend. “ON THE BRINK” read the heading; “Silence in the forest” read the long article’s title.
A similar New York Times article didn’t make the front page, but it was a full page spread. The purple finch photo was better in that article, but still didn’t do much justice to a handsome bird, wonderfully wild and tuneful. Not a backyard bird, but a bird of spruce-fir forests.
Numbers for forest birds as a group show declines.
At least eight states could lose their state bird as a heating climate forces them northward.
The shift of birds, of course, is a lot simpler than trees moving north. Our sugar maples get mentioned whenever the topic is climate heating and its impact on vegetation.
The question, of course, is whether or not significant actions will be taken as it’s increasingly difficult to ignore what’s going on in the natural world.
I pass along a promising story.
A few days after the study came out, a landowner contacted NH Audubon and said he wanted to donate 70 acres as permanently protected bird habitat.
The land abuts a town forest. Land that links with other conserved land has higher conservation value. Conservation groups have a ranking system when considering land protection. Linkage is big, along with protecting wetlands, shoreland, farmland. There’s a list of about ten features that help determine conservation value.
The landowner contacted NH Audubon because of birds. He didn’t contact one of the many land trusts in the state that specialize in land protection.
That’s action, quickly taken, and so relevant to bird declines as loss of habitat is the lead reason cited.
What good news it would be if land trusts around the country are receiving similar phone calls.
As part of the positive fallout from the Science article, Pam Hunt from NH Audubon and David Patrick from The Nature Conservancy were interviewed by Laura Knoy on NHPR’s The Exchange program October 8.
Pam and David did a great job explaining the study and birds and their world in general, and what we humans can do to help. It’s worth listening to, and easily found with an Internet search “the exchange diminishing bird numbers.”
Midway through the program, Laura asked the “What good are birds?” question, although she phrased it more elegantly by asking what their role in the natural world is.
Besides somewhat routine answers — dispersing seeds, eating pest insects, and being part of the food chain—the big answer offered is that birds, of all the wildlife species, are the most studied group. They are an indicator species that let’s us know what’s going on out there.
What’s happening to them is happening to others far less easily observed and studied.
Laura asked Pam if the results of the study surprised her.
Pam’s answer surprised Laura.
She said she was surprised some of the declines weren’t bigger.
Pam is lead author of “The State of NH Birds” that tracks population trends of NH’s breeding birds.
The Science study’s focus was North America as a whole, one big bundle.
Pam’s work at NH Audubon has helped highlight the steep decline in birds that take insects on the wing—the aerial insectivores.
The big study didn’t give that group much attention. Forests, grassland, wetlands, yes, but not the year-round insectivores.
Most birds feed insects to their young during the breeding season, but eat seeds and fruits as well as insects the rest of the year. Insectivores rely almost entirely on insects year-round.
They are not doing well.
That knowledge has helped wake us up to the plight of insects—the very foundation of the food chain.
That’s big.
Mostly, instead of me writing about the interview program, tune in yourself. The online site includes links to the Science study (a quick read at three pages), as well as links to the “3billionbirds.com” website that has graphs, videos, and photos, and what we can do to help birds and insects and their world.
One stunning reality is that house cats and feral cats kill 2.6 billion birds a year.
That translates to about 7 million birds a day in North America. Next to habitat loss, that’s the No. 2 contributing manmade factor.
Pam gave an interesting nuance to that figure. That’s a tease to get you to listen to the interview.
The NHPR link also includes a photo of our state bird that does it justice. Purple finches will be passing through our region soon, heading south for the winter.
Keep a watch.