It’s in your nature: Can we slow the loss?

As previously noted, my birding interest began when I was a youngster. That hobby got me into the “woods” quite a bit, and soon I was in college and a biology major. My initial years afield were simply spent watching many backyard and feeder birds.

After college and with a car, I was now able to travel to different areas of this region, and my yearly bird lists grew from 50 or 60 birds to over 150. Spring brought with it waves of migrants, and sometimes you couldn’t get the binoculars ready quick enough as dozens of birds were sometimes in a tree at one time.

Then wow, now, well. … Birding buddies Dave, Rich and I would soon notice over the past 10 years or so, those big spring “waves of migrants” weren’t happening anymore. We seem to be spending more and more time looking for the birds and seeing fewer and fewer.

It sure wasn’t being done as a scientific study, but the signs were there. Each spring we would anticipate the migration and get more and more disappointed. Doing some reading I found that Cornell University researchers published data showing that since 1970, about 3 billion fewer birds have found our continent home (30% fewer birds today). Most of those losses occurred in 12 major bird families including the warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, vireos, thrushes and even blackbirds.

I guess Dave, Rich and I weren’t wrong. There are fewer and fewer birds.

Again, just theory, here are some reasons for the declines. The forest birds such as hooded warblers or Cape May warblers still find good nesting habitats to our north, but they are finding fewer and fewer wintering areas in Central and South America. Recent reports of massive forest fires in the Amazon should help you understand the magnitude of this problem.

You need proper habitat, both for breeding season and winterfeeding areas for them to succeed. Another problem is the fragmentation of the forests (from pipelines, power lines, housing developments, etc.) is bringing nest parasite cowbirds into the remaining forest strongholds. Throw in more and more communication towers, wind turbines, glass-walled tall city office buildings, and our feathered migrants find more and more perils.

Most of these passerine birds migrate at night, and these man-made structures, often on the ridge tops that they follow, take a huge toll year after year.

The earth’s human population growth is displacing our wildlife and depleting the biodiversity. We need to continue our awareness of the fragility of the balance of nature. I/we can only hope that this hemisphere’s problems can be slowed or maybe even reversed. A few more years of the reductions could be critical to some of these species. Protecting the birds’ wintering areas should be our focus.

Not all bird populations have suffered. When we made concerted efforts to save popular birds, we did have good results. Bald eagles, peregrine falcons and osprey populations have grown due to pesticide changes, reintroductions and international laws and protections. Let’s make the southern hemisphere’s forest protection focus number one.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: Banded woolly bear caterpillar’s dark band width indicates: A. how severe our winter will be, B. if it is a male or female, C. how soon it is to finding overwintering area, D. all of these.

Last Week’s Trivia: As a lead-in to this column, all the birds listed in last week’s question are experiencing big population drops.

Contact Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com.