Flaming Wildfire Bird

Flaming Wildfire Bird
According to news reports (http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/07/19/wildfires/), the recent 5,700 acre Foothill wildfire in Los Angeles County, California was caused when a Red-tailed Hawk flew into a power line and caught fire, falling to the ground and igniting dry vegetation. Powerlines remain a hazard to many birds, and in this case, created a human risk. Earlier this spring, a bird grounded a powerline causing an outage at the Los Angeles International Airport control tower, delaying about 100 flights (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4723808/).

West Nile Mosquitoes Most Likely To Come From Backyards

West Nile Mosquitoes Most Likely To Come From Backyards
A recent news report from Iowa claims that the mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus are more common in polluted water--the kind most commonly found in backyard bird baths, dog dishes, and old discarded tires. West Nile is killing large but unknown numbers of birds, and backyard birds living in proximity to these mosquitoes may be at greatest risk.

More info on urban mosquitoes and West Nile can be found here, here, and here.

Effects of West Nile on bird populations remain unknown, though there are reports of widespread bird deaths in the midwest, and numbers of crows in the midwest appear to be down. Now there is concern about industrialization and mining creating habitat for West Nile mosquitoes in rural areas where they are impacting vulnerable Sage Grouse populations in the Mountain West (more here, here, and here).

BirdPAC

Ever wish you could influence electoral politics for the benefit of birds and wildlife? Tired of hearing how special interests are buying candidates, but you don't have enough money to buy your own? Join with others to support candidates that will do the right thing for birds, wildlife, and the environment by contributing to a new environmental Political Action Committee--BirdPAC.

BirdPAC is the political muscle behind more than 52 million Americans who go bird watching, bird hunting, study birds, and are passionate about protecting bird habitats. BirdPAC represents bird lovers and raises the awareness of bird conservation issues with decision makers who want bird enthusiasts as their friends.

In addition to being the fastest growing outdoor pastime, enjoying birds is big business responsible for generating billions of dollars in retail sales and taxes while providing hundreds of thousands of jobs. Yet birds and bird enthusiasts do not receive the recognition or representation they deserve. Contribute to BirdPAC today and help give birds a voice by electing lawmakers who will advocate for birds, their habitats, bird watchers, bird hunters and better bird science tomorrow. Contribute today!

Wind Farms Bad For Birds?

The potential use of wind farms as a "green" source of energy remains a controversial topic. While some observers declare that modern windmills are more bird-friendly (also here) than the disastrous Altamont turbines in California that have killed thousands of raptors over the past 20 years, others claim that power companies are hiding the true effects of wind farms on birds (See Mark Duchamp's critique here, with many links--including the claim that wind farm electric generation does not reduce greenhouse emissions). An additional critique of windfarms is provided by Country Guardian.

While modern societies need to find alternative energy sources, care must be taken to ensure that new technologies do not destroy wildlife populations.

Birds and Global Warming

Climate change attributable to human urban industrial activity will potentially alter bird distrubutions and abundance in significant ways. Check out the 2000 EPA report and additional articles here, here, here, and here.

Perhaps the best online source of information on global warming and birds is at the American Bird Conservancy's Website. ABC's Jeff Price has been studying this for years, and is the director of this program (a great guy, I've birded with him on the Kennedy Ranch in South Texas and led some bird tours with him for the Harlingen Birding Festival back in 1996).

Good sources of info on global warming in general can be found by following the links at Disinfopedia. Since 82% of greenhouse gas emissions come from burning fossil fuels for electricity and driving around urban areas, our urban lifestyles are having a huge impact on global wildlife populations. The latest example is the huge population decline in the rare Ivory Gull as its seasonal foraging patterns are disrupted by the shrinking polar ice cap.

Nebraska Alliance for All-Bird Conservation

On May 8, 2003, representatives from state agencies and conservation groups met at Platte River State Park for the first meeting of the Nebraska Alliance for All-Bird Conservation. While traditional bird conservation efforts are often imposed by agencies in a top-down fashion, the Nebraska efforts seek to emulate new grassroots, coalition, and community-based strategies for integrated bird conservation.
Each state, county, and community should have a bird conservation plan and working group to seek community-based strategies and efforts to protect populations of local birds. Someday, bird conservation groups will be formed for every neighborhood group, city, county, state, bird conservation region, nation, continent, and hemisphere. There is plenty of work for everyone--but in Nebraska and scattered places across the globe, a glorious future of community-based bird conservation is beginning.

Urban Bird Studies

Urban Bird Studies
Cornell University Lab of Ornithology has several different urban bird projects that people can help with, including pigeon studies (see some results), a crow count, and a gull habitat project called Gulls Galore.

The lab's Celebrate Urban Birds program kicks off July 9-18, 2004. Check the website for details on how to participate.

Birds in the Suburban Wilderness

The latest book of nature writing on urban birds is Going Wild: Adventures with Birds in the Suburban Wilderness by Robert Winkler. Selected essays on suburban birds and nature are on his website.

This is a good book for backyard birders, public officials that might be interested in urban nature, or your neighbor. Pick one up for yourself and get another for a friend.

Power Lines

As early as 1876, ornithologist Elliot Coues noted that telegraph wires formed a flight hazard for birds (Coues,E. "The destruction of birds by telegraph wires," American Nature, 10:734, 1876). In 1904, W. Otto Emerson described dozens of shorebirds killed by striking wires running along a road through a salt marsh (Emerson, W. O., "Destruction of birds by wires," Condor 6(2):37-8, 1904). Over 100 years later, 157,810 miles of transmission lines and over 4 million miles of electrical distribution lines pose a potential electrocution hazard, as well as a dangerous flight obstacle for many species—especially those with high wing loading and low aspect, such as rails, cranes, pelicans, and herons (Bevanger 1998). Collisions with transmission lines are a problem for California Condors, and are a major source of mortality for the critically endangered Whooping Crane (Doughty, R. Return of the Whooping Crane, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1989).

In the late 1980s, the Edison Electric Institute formed an Avian Power Line Interaction Committee (APLIC) to address the problem of cranes colliding with power lines in Colorado. Originally comprised of EEI, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Audubon Society, and 10 electric utilities, APLIC has expanded to address additional power line issues faced by birds, and now has over 20 members, and is open to electric utilities, utility organizations, or federal agencies involved in bird and power line interaction issues. In 1994, APLIC published Mitigating Bird Collisions with Power Lines to address the problem of birds colliding with transmission lines. In 1998, they issued an 18 minute companion video showing bird/power line interactions and mitigation techniques.

Some utilities have tried placing large balls or other devices on the wires to make them more visible to birds, but researchers are still trying to figure out how to better minimize the impact of bird-wire collisions.

Birdscapes

The first use of the term "birdscaping" that I can find is in the title of Birdscaping Your Yard, a 47 page pamphlet published by the State of Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection in 1972. The term "birdscaping" is not used in the text itself, where the process of creating wildlife habitat in residential yards is termed wildlife gardening or landscaping.

In 1994, Rodale Press published Birdscaping Your Garden by George Adams. This 208 page reference work uses the term birdscaping frequently in the text, and also refers to created bird habitats as "birdscapes."

In the past decade, the term birdscaping has become more common. A Google search yields 835 websites using the term, including sites published by Wildbirds.com, havahart.com, KVFS TV 12 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and the Sydney, Australia Birds in Backyards Project.

In 2000, Birdscapes was launched as the all bird conservation magazine of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service.

While the term birdscapes and birdscaping are only recently gaining currency, the concept of landscaping to attract birds has historic roots in English bird-bottle and Colonial American birdhouse technologies, the landscape gardening movement in 18th Century England, the bird-preservation studies of Baron von Berlepsch in Germany in the late 1900s, and the popularization of bird feeding, gardening, and landscaping in America during the early 20th Century "Back to Nature" movement.

The strength of birdscaping as a conservation strategy lies in its inherently positive (you can attract and save birds because you like them) rather than negative (birds are being wiped out so we have to do something) approach. In this sense, it transcends the traditional understanding that wildlife management is typically spurred upon realization of declining populations of valued species.

In short, birdscaping is a positive conservation concept and strategy that can appeal to nature-loving homeowners in urban and suburban neighborhoods without resorting to doom-and-gloom rhetoric frequently common in current environmental discourse.

Seattle Urban Nature Project

The Seattle Urban Nature Project is a local non-profit organization dedicated to increasing understanding of Seattle's public natural resources. They have recently mapped the vegetation and wildlife habitat on Seattle's public land, and these maps and data are now available for use and study.

Mapping is the primary activity required for inventorying and modeling ecological activity in a given area. Maps show where habitats are, and reveal opportunities for ecological restoration and management of the urban area. The maps can be used for a host of convservation purposes.

In mapping the urban ecology of Seattle, the project developed its own classification system for urban habitats, based on amount of development and vegetation structure. Their website has an interactive key for classifying these habitats.

Every community in America needs a project like this. The Seattle Urban Nature Project can be a model for others to emulate, and as such, represents the future of community-based urban conservation mapping and planning.

National Wildlife Federation Backyard Wildlife Habitats

In 1973, the National Wildlife Federation started a Backyard Wildlife Habitats program to promote residential landscaping for wildlife. As of April 2004, it had certified 40,300 backyard habitats--up from 22,500 in 1998. While the increasing number of certified habitats is encouraging, it is still a tiny fragment of the more than 68.5 million single-family residences with yards in the United States.

One difficulty in promoting the NWF backyard habitat is that membership in NWF is mainly through magazine subscribers that are affiliated with statewide advocacy organizations. Without local chapters, NWF has to rely on magazine articles and paid staff in regional offices to promote its programs. Recently, NWF has teamed up with Home Depot to conduct backyard habitat clinics to teach people how to improve their yard for wildlife.

New Orleans Bird Studies

One of the challenges of protecting local urban birdscapes is the difficulty in getting good information about what birds are present and what factors influence local bird distribution. Birdwatchers may know a lot about locations for finding the local birds, but may not have scientific information to help explain patterns of local bird distribution. Finding a local biologist or ornithologist doing research in your city can be an excellent way to start get information about local bird populations.

Peter Yaukey of the Department of Geography at the University of New Orleans is a good example of an academic researcher doing excellent research on local bird ecology. Yaukey's research is focused on the effects of development on bird distribution. His papers include:
"Habitat use by migrant birds in a disturbed habitat" (1992), Physical Geography 13:149-159.

Make sure to check your local university for professors or graduate students doing local bird surveys or projects. Having scientifically collected data on your side can be more valuable than years of birdwatching sightings when trying to get local officials to address bird conservation needs.

Audubon at Home

The Audubon at Home program encourages us all to think about the relationship between ourselves, our yards, and the larger environment. The website includes tips on how to implement five major suggestions for improving the environment of our yards: Reduce Pesticides, Conserve Water, Protect Water Quality, Remove Exotic Plants, and Plant Natives. These five steps can improve our own personal health and quality of life, as well as the quality of our environment.

Many local Audubon chapters are promoting this program, including Tulsa, and especially Seattle (cool downloadable book).

The National Audubon Society is teaming up with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to promote this program across the country.

So take a look around your yard, see what more you can do...practice Audubon at Home.

From the latest Audubon Advisory...

INCREASING PROTECTIONS FOR MIGRATORY SONGBIRDS:
Want to help protect some of the most endangered birds in North America -species like the Kirtland's Warbler, Bicknell's Thrush, Black-capped Vireo, as well as a species of great concern, the Cerulean Warbler? Well one way you can is to encourage the U.S. Congress to fully fund the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Fund. Habitat destruction overseas has pushed far too many bird species closer to extinction, and Neotropical migratory bird populations are dwindling due to destruction of their wintering habitats. Congress passed this 5-year law passed in 2000 to address the problem. The Act established a $5 million per year fund to support partnership programs to protect and enhance critical habitats in the U.S., as well as the Caribbean and Latin America, where approximately 5 billion migratory birds of 500 different species spend their winters. Unfortunately, every year, demand for the grants is much greater than the actual funding levels, and because of this, 113 worthy projects could not be funded last year. If we can convince Congress to approve full funding for this program, more of these bird conservation partnerships will get off the ground. Audubon and our partners in conservation are focused on that effort, and you can help by asking your federal lawmakers to support full funding of the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Fund - and keep those beautiful songbirds coming back to our yards! CLICK HERE for more information and to take action.

Washington, DC Bird Bibliography

A good example of a bibliography useful for local urban bird conservation is this bird bibliography for Washington, DC compiled by Ryan Shepard, Collections Librarian, The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

This bibliography contains notes on birds dating back to an 1862 Smithsonian report on DC birds and an 1871 John Burroughs piece on birds at the capitol (online here).

Comprehensive bibliographies like this make it possible for conservationists to look at historic local bird distributions and birdscapes, contrast those with current conditions, and start to envision more viable urban birdscapes for the future. Barn Owls used to nest in the Smithsonian tower on the National Mall. Wouldn't that be cool...

Local Bird Atlas Projects

One of the first things that needs to be done in trying to preserve and conserve birds and their habitats in urban areas is to find out where birds are in the city. Local bird atlas projects are a great way to find out what birds are around.

In the United States, most states have published atlas projects, and several are conducting their second round of atlasing. County level bird atlas projects, which provide a much finer resolution of bird distribution patterns are rare in the United States. The first county-level bird atlas projects were conducted in Maryland. The Breeding Bird Atlas of Montgomery and Howard Counties, Maryland was published in 1978.

The next county bird atlas--The Atlas of the breeding birds of Los Alamos County, New Mexico--was published in 1992.

California is the epicenter for county bird atlas projects in the United States. Bird atlas projects have been completed for Marin (1993), Monterey (1993), and Sonoma (1995) Counties.

One of the most recent county-level bird atlas projects is being completed in San Diego, CA (field observations concluded in 2002).

These local atlas projects are great because they show where birds are at a local level. If each city or metropolitan area had a bird atlas project, local bird conservation organizations would have better data on where birds are and how they might be impacted by development projects.

There are other ways to collect distribution data for an urban area. Point counts spread across a city can provide valuable information on where birds are located and what habitats they are utilizing. Local bird surveys of this type have been conducted in many cities, with the most extensive projects being the Tucson Bird Count, Washington, DC Project Birdscape (see Hadidian, J. et al. "A citywide breeding bird survey for Washington, D.C.," Urban Ecosystems 1(1997): 87-102.), and the Baltimore Urban Birdscape Project.

If you want to conserve birds in your city or town, you need to know what species are present, where they are, and what resources they need. It is vital that we conduct atlas projects or surveys in our cities if we are going to protect and conserve urban bird populations.

John Marzluff and Seattle Urban Bird Ecology

John Marzluff is one of the premiere urban bird ecologists in the country. His work with the University of Washington Urban Ecology program (here) is addressing many of the most difficult issues, including population dynamics of birds in fragmented urban landscapes.

A Christian Science Monitior article about his work with American Crows gives another good indication of what his lab is looking at.

In 2001, Marzluff co-edited Avian Ecology and Conservation in an Urbanizing World , a review of bird ecology studies in urban environments. It's a very expensive book, but worth finding at a university library. This book is the current state of the art review of urban bird ecology.

In 2001, Marzluff and Ken Ewing published an article in the journal Restoration Ecology, which gives 15 suggestions for restoring bird populations in fragmented urban areas (abstract here).

Urban Birds on Birdzilla

The Birdzilla World Bird Omnibus website has the complete text of the classic 1937-68 Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds. Until recently, these were the standard life history accounts for most birds in North America, and they still provide a remarkable view of birds--especially urban birds--from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

An easy way to search this site for information about birds in urban areas is to do a site-specific google search. At google, enter a search term, followed by site:birdzilla.com. This will return all entries with that term from within the birdzilla site (of course, this little google search tip works for any website). For instance, a search for lawns site:birdzilla.com reveals early statements about Anna's Hummingbirds bathing in lawn sprinklers and Black Phoebes "sweeping over city lawns, or even hunting in the artificial canyons of downtown Los Angeles."

You can do a google search to look for mention of birds in your own hometown or to see how many birds foraged in garbage dumps. While this information may not help you immediately save the birds in your city, it can help place urban bird behavior in a historic and ecological context...and provide interesting stories to share with others while watching urban birds.

Bird Health and Electromagnetic Fields

We've all seen birds perched on electric wires--ever wondered if electromagnetic fields generated by power lines have any effect on birds?

A study of birds nesting under power lines found reduced nesting success in Tree Swallows, but not in House Wrens or Eastern Bluebirds. Recent studies of American Kestrels found electromagnetic fields to effect melatonin levels and growth of hatchlings--according to one article, "EMF exposure affected
reproductive success of kestrels, increasing fertility, egg size, embryonic development, and fledging success but reducing hatching success."

A helpful literature review with references introduces potential health effects of electromagnetic fields to humans and other species. Magda Havas of Trent University in Ontario has published a more complete review of health effects. While these studies focus on human health, they do present evidence of effects on birds as well.