Category Archives: birds

Citizen Science and Birds

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPeople love birds, and that makes it relatively easy to mobilize citizen scientists for bird research. Recently, the International Rusty Blackbird Working Group did just that to learn more about the spring migration of a bird that is in a mysterious decline. The insights are still to come, but the data collection has been deemed a success.

Read more in the US Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast’s blog, here.

In a PLoS ONE paper, researchers from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the University of Wisconsin, Madison analyzed a review article of the impacts of climate change on bird migration and found that citizen scientists played an important role in gathering the data that the findings were based on.

“Our paper is a chance to say thank you to the many people who are citizen scientists,” said lead author Caren Cooper, a research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said in a lab press release announcing the paper. “These people are part of the process of creating new knowledge—and whether it’s counting birds or butterflies, gazelles or galaxies, they should know that their observations really make a difference in professional science.”

Read the PLoS ONE paper here. (It is open access.)
Read the Cornell Lab of O press release here.

Photo: Through projects like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s NestWatch, citizen scientists have provided the data to document regional differences in the breeding cycle of the Eastern Bluebird. Photo © Gary Mueller/Cornell Lab.

The Secret Life of Birds

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Birds are full of surprises. While transmission line corridors can be a blight in many landscapes, in the Northeastern United States they are providing valuable grassland and shrubland habitat for vulnerable bird species.

Read the US Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast’s blog for more information how utility company rights of way are benefiting birds in Vermont, here.

And how do birds find their way along their migration routes? A study by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and University of Nebraska researchers focused on birds that do a “loop migration,” that is, taking a slightly different route south than north. They found that on the way north, the birds were following the greening of vegetation.

Read the Cornell Lab of O press release announcing the paper here.
Read the abstract in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B here. (Subscription or fee required to read the whole thing.)

Birds and Environmental Health

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environmental health news logo-wideIt has bird week here at State Wildlife Research News, but Environmental Health News is dedicating months to articles reflecting on birds and environmental health. The publication’s Winged Warnings series will contain 16 articles when it concludes in October.

Right now you can read many informative articles about the impacts of heavy metals, toxics, climate change, night lighting and other environmental problems that harm not just birds, but humans as well.

Find the home page for the Winged Warnings series here.

Bird Journal Round-up

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Condor cover Aug 14In honor of two major reports on bird conservation released last week, it is going to be bird week here at State Wildlife Research News. First, the science journals. If the State of the Birds has you wondering what and where your state can be doing bird conservation better, the latest issue of The Condor has some answers for you.

Some highlights:
Development, such as farms and the building of transmission lines, in the sagebrush ecosystem favors raven populations over sagebrush specialists, such as ferruginous hawks. Landscape alterations influence differential habitat use of nesting buteos and ravens within sagebrush ecosystem: Implications for transmission line development

Radar analysis has revealed several important fall migratory stop-over sites for birds in the northeastern United States, including coastlines of Long Island Sound, throughout the Delmarva Peninsula, in areas surrounding Baltimore and Washington, along the western edge of the Adirondack Mountains, and within the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia and West Virginia. Radar analysis of fall bird migration stopover sites in the northeastern U.S.

In grasslands, getting rid of trees helps populations of savannah sparrows and sedge wrens much more than improving the quality of the grasslands does. A multiscale assessment of tree avoidance by prairie birds

This issue of the Condor is particularly rich in papers relevant to bird conservation in North America. Check out the table of contents here.

In the Wilson Journal of Ornithology:
Analysis of thousands of eared grebes that died on the Great Salt Lake in December 2011 found that the downed birds had elevated levels of mercury and selenium compared to the eared grebes that migrated through the area without incident. Factors Influencing Mortality of Eared Grebes (Podiceps nigricollis) during a Mass Downing

And No Sex Bias in Wood Thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina) Captured by Using Audio Playback during the Non-breeding Season

State of the Birds

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2014SOTB_Cover_300pxAccording to a National Audubon Society press release issued last week, more than half of the common bird species in North America are at risk from climate change. The release announced a comprehensive study of North American bird populations based on Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count and other sources.

“The study identifies 126 species that will lose more than 50 percent of their current ranges – in some cases up to 100 percent – by 2050, with no possibility of moving elsewhere if global warming continues on its current trajectory. A further 188 species face more than 50 percent range loss by 2080 but may be able to make up some of this loss if they are able to colonize new areas. These 314 species include many not previously considered at risk,” the release says.

Read the Audubon press release here.
Read Audubon articles and access the report itself, here.
Read The New York Times article on the report here.
Read the USA Today article on the report here.

The very next day the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, a 23-member private/public partnership released its annual State of the Birds report. There, the message was much the same, with a slightly more optimistic frame. The New York Times reports that the State of the Birds says that “nearly one-third of America’s birds are in trouble.”

Federal agencies play a big role in the State of the Birds report, and this report emphasizes the importance of habitat to bird populations, pointing to specific regions as trouble spots.

“After examining the population trends of birds in desert, sagebrush and chaparral habitats of the West, the report’s authors identify aridlands as the habitat with the steepest population declines in the nation. There has been a 46 percent loss of these birds since 1968 in states such as Utah, Arizona and New Mexico,” the Initiative press release states.

The State of the Birds also emphasizes success stories, such as the impact of wetland restoration on waterfowl populations.

The 2014 State of the Birds landing page is here. It includes links to the press release, the full report, a watch list and a list of common birds in decline.
Read the very brief New York Times article here.
Read the National Public Radio report here.

The State of the Birds report has been issued since 2009. Audubon played a lead role in putting together the report and publicizing it in 2009, 2010 and 2011. It does not appear that there was a State of the Birds report in 2012. In 2013 the Audubon’s CEO issued a statement saying that Congress’s inaction on the Farm Bill was harming birds. This year, Audubon issued its own report emphasizing climate change as a threat. Audubon is still a member of the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative and its name still appears on the State of the Birds report.

 

Lost in Migration

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European_Robin_2German scientists have found that radio waves can throw birds off their migration paths. The phenomenon is most acute in cities. The paper was published in Nature last week.

The scientists discovered the issue when trying to research the impacts of subtle magnetic fields on bird migration in their lab in Oldenburg, Germany, a BBC article reports. A much-replicated method of studying bird migration and magnetic fields didn’t work until the scientists shielded their experiment from radio waves of a certain frequency.

They study found that birds are adversely affected by EMF (electromagnetic frequency) radiation and levels much lower than humans are. So low, in fact, that the BBC article says only quantum level phenomena can explain it.

The research was conducted for seven years. In the BBC article, a scientist explained that the team wanted to be extra careful before reporting the unexpected findings, which they knew would be controversial.

Read the Nature article here. (Subscription or fee required for full article.)
BBC article here.
Article in The Australian, here.

Photo: European robin, the subject of the lab experiments. By Sunnyjim (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.0-uk (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Low Lead in Arizona Condors

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Condor_bloodwork_webIt’s been a good year for lead levels in condors in Arizona and Utah. While last year saw the second worst levels on record, this year saw the lowest level in a decade, says a press release from the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

“The ups and downs of lead poisoning over the years demonstrate that any single season does not make a trend, but our test results are encouraging,” said Eddie Feltes, field manager for The Peregrine Fund’s condor project in the release. “If this ends up being the beginning of a trend, we hope it will continue.”

Arizona Game and Fish, as well as the Peregrine Fund, which also distributed the release, believe that voluntary lead ammunition measures in the two states has contributed to the lower lead levels in condors there. Another factor may be the unseasonably mild winter, the release says.

In an article in the Salt Lake City Tribune, Chris Parish, condor program coordinator for The Peregrine Fund is quoted as saying, “The half life of lead in blood is a very short period. That gives us a relatively good indication of where and when exposure may have happened.”

The Tribune article also says that 78 percent of hunters in condor country who were contacted were voluntarily using non-lead ammunition. In 2011 the number was 10 percent.

More details in the Arizona Game and Fish press release here. (Halfway down the page.)
The same press release is here on its own page at the Peregrine Fund website.
The Salt Lake City Tribune article is here.

Photo: Courtesy Arizona Game and Fish Department

 

 

 

 

Construction Netting Harms Swallows

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Nets installed to keep cliff swallows away from a bridge construction zone in Petaluma, California wound up killing dozens of the birds last year, the Press Democrat reports. The construction firm had to pay a $3,525 fine for killing the birds, but now a local conservation organization has won a victory that will force CalTrans and its contractors on the Petaluma bridge project to use hard plastic sheeting instead of netting to keep the birds away during construction.

Read all the details in the Press Democrat, here.

Roadside construction nets, although these were used on the ground to control erosion, also killed wildlife in New York State. We wrote about it here.

Photo: American tree swallows nesting under the bridge over Cayucos Creek, Cayucos, CA. By marlin harms. Used under Creative Commons license.

Construction Netting Harms Swallows

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Nets installed to keep cliff swallows away from a bridge construction zone in Petaluma, California wound up killing dozens of the birds last year, the Press Democrat reports. The construction firm had to pay a $3,525 fine for killing the birds, but now a local conservation organization has won a victory that will force CalTrans and its contractors on the Petaluma bridge project to use hard plastic sheeting instead of netting to keep the birds away during construction.

Read all the details in the Press Democrat, here.

Roadside construction nets, although these were used on the ground to control erosion, also killed wildlife in New York State. We wrote about it here.

Photo: American tree swallows nesting under the bridge over Cayucos Creek, Cayucos, CA. By marlin harms. Used under Creative Commons license.

WNV And Shrikes

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From the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre’s healthywildlife.ca blog:

This was also a somewhat higher year for West Nile virus infection in birds in Saskatchewan. This past summer the CCWHC Western Northern region diagnosed WNV deaths in a Cooper’s hawk, two northern goshawks and two nestling loggerhead shrikes, as well as nine crows. Some diagnostic testing is still pending so those numbers may increase. The death of the loggerhead shrike nestlings is particularly noteworthy as the number of shrikes has declined dramatically throughout their range and in some parts of Canada they face local extinction. In Canada, eastern loggerhead shrikes are considered endangered and prairie loggerhead shrikes are threatened. The population of shrikes has been declining for the last century and the causes for the declines are multiple and varied. As their numbers dwindle, WNV is just one more threat faced by this vulnerable species.

Read the blog, here.