Birding Education
You Found a Bird That crashed into a Window. What to do?
- Building strikes are an unfortunately common occurrence, especially during migration season. Here’s what to do if you find a collision victim. Here are some ideas on how to handle the situation, from National Audubon.
Check for Life! – Even when a bird survives a strike, it is often stunned and may appear dead or injured. If it isn’t immediately apparent whether a bird is dead or alive, you can find out by gently moving its legs
Handle with Care – If the bird is alive, slowly approach, perhaps from behind to avoid startling it. Pick up the bird and put it into a paper bag or a shoebox.
Call in the Pros – Hitting glass often leaves birds with concussions. Some might have pelvic injuries from sticking their legs out toward the window in a last-second attempt to avoid collision. That’s why the best thing to do for a window-collision victim is to get the bird to a wildlife rehabber who can provide expert care and anti-inflammatory medication. Check out The Humane Society’s state-by-state list of rehabilitators, or use the Animal Help Now website or app to search by your location.
Open Your Home – If you can’t get the bird to a wildlife rehabber, the next best thing is to take it to a safe place where it won’t fall victim to predators, hypothermia, or other hazards.
Take Preventive Measures – Don’t wait until a bird hits your window. You can work proactively to prevent future bird injuries and deaths by making glass safer for birds. There are many ways to go about this. Hanging cords inside the window or applying dots to the glass can dramatically reduce collisions. Flex suggests using a glass pen and a ruler to draw vertical lines across the outside of the whole window, four inches apart. Kellner recommends UV-reflective window film. Though less effective, closing blinds is an easy way to at least decrease collisions. And if you feed birds at home, place feeders and bird baths either within three feet of windows, so birds can’t gather much speed before hitting, or more than 30 feet away.
Read the full article here
https://www.audubon.org/news/you-found-bird-crashed-window-now-what
A Video Captures the Dreadful Toll Window Strikes Take on Migrating Birds
https://twitter.com/MelissaBreyer/status/1437813494141886467?s=20
Handling Injured Birds
You've found a Baby Bird, What do you do? Here is the visual guide!. Click on the image to view the pdf of the guide. Here are some helpful links on helping wildlife in need. San Joaquin does not have county rehab facility. Please contact one of facilities listed below.
Guide to Climate Action
Looking for a guide to climate action? Start here…
National Audubon Society Announces New Executive Appointments in Conservation and Organizational Leadership.
NAture Journaling
Author: Amy Weiser, Stockton, CA
During this pandemic I have been using much of the time that I would have spent on birding trips doing nature journaling of birds and native plants. I started nature journaling after watching John Muir Laws three part series that was presented by Audubon. Link: https://johnmuirlaws.com/how-to-draw-garden-birds-video/
Nature Journaling has definitely made me a better birder. As I took the class, it helped me remember the feather patterns on birds, and to pay attention to which feathers have certain field marks. As I look at the bird I am drawing, it makes me pay close attention to the shape of the bird, which help me recognize that species in the field later. As I draw, I pay attention to field marks, and note differences between species. As I take notes, it helps me remember the different calls, behaviors and habitats of different species. Here is a link to John Muir Laws’ article on how Nature Journaling makes you a better birder: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/summer-2020/how-nature-journaling-can-make-you-better-birder
Even if you don’t consider yourself an artist, making a nature journal of your bird observations will help you to be a better birder.
AUDUBON STATEMENT ON INCIDENT IN CENTRAL PARK RAMBLE
In response to an incident in Central Park’s Ramble that went viral on Twitter and was widely disseminated in national news, the National Audubon Society issued the following statement:
“Black Americans often face terrible daily dangers in outdoor spaces, where they are subjected to unwarranted suspicion, confrontation, and violence,” said Audubon SVP for State Programs Rebeccah Sanders, who is white. “The outdoors – and the joy of birds – should be safe and welcoming for all people. That’s the reality Audubon and our partners are working hard to achieve. We unequivocally condemn racist sentiments, behavior, and systems that undermine the humanity, rights, and freedom of Black people. We are grateful Christian Cooper is safe. He takes great delight in sharing New York City’s birds with others and serves as a board member of the New York City Audubon Society, where he promotes conservation of New York City’s outdoor spaces and inclusion of all people.”
BIRDS ARE SHRINKING AS CLIMATE WARMS
North American migratory birds have been getting smaller over the past four decades, and their wings have gotten a bit longer. Both changes appear to be responses to a warming climate.
Those are the main findings from a new University of Michigan-led analysis of a dataset of some 70,000 North American migratory birds from 52 species that died when they collided with buildings in Chicago.
Since 1978, Field Museum personnel and volunteers have retrieved dead birds that collided with Chicago buildings during spring and fall migrations. For each specimen, multiple body measurements are made.
The research team analyzed this remarkably detailed dataset to look for trends in body size and shape. The biologists found that, from 1978 through 2016, body size decreased in all 52 species, with statistically significant declines in 49 species.
Over the same period, wing length increased significantly in 40 species. The findings were published Dec. 4, 2019, in the journal Ecology Letters. “We had good reason to expect that increasing temperatures would lead to reductions in body size, based on previous studies. The thing that was shocking was how consistent it was. I was incredibly surprised that all of these species are responding in such similar ways,” said study lead author Brian Weeks, an assistant professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability.
Several lines of evidence suggest a causal relationship between warming temperatures and the observed declines in avian body size, according to the researchers. Within animal species, individuals tend to be smaller in warmer parts of their range, a pattern known as Bergmann’s rule. And while the possibility of body size reduction in response to present-day global warming has been suggested for decades, evidence supporting the idea remains mixed.
Studies of plant and animal response to climate change often focus on shifts in the geographical range of a species or the timing of events such as springtime flowering and migration. The consistency of the body-size declines reported in the new study suggests that such changes should be added to the list of challenges facing wildlife in a rapidly warming world, Weeks said.
Citation: University of Michigan. “Migratory birds shrinking as climate warms, new analysis of four-decade record shows.ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 December 2019.
WARMING CLIMATE IS CHANGING WHERE BIRDS BREED
Summer is in full swing. Trees are leafed out, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, and birds are singing. But a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those birds in your backyard may be changing right along with the climate.
Clark Rushing, Assistant Professor in the Department of Wildland Resources and Ecology Center, Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University, and colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey wanted to know how climate change has already affected where birds breed. They used data from the Breeding Bird Survey — one of the oldest and longest citizen-science programs in the world — to conduct their research. “Thousands of devoted volunteers, cooperators, and a joint U.S.-Canadian wildlife management team have contributed to the success of the surveys for the last 54 years,” said Andy Royle, a USGS senior scientists and co-author of the study. “The Breeding Bird Survey is fundamental to our understanding and management of wild bird populations in North America.”
The research team combined Breeding Bird Survey data with powerful computer models to discover changes in breeding range for 32 species of birds found in eastern North America. What they found is surprising:
Some birds’ ranges are expanding. Birds that both breed and winter in North America are extending their ranges north to take advantage of new, warm places to breed. These birds are also maintaining their southern ranges. These results bring hope that some bird populations, such as Carolina wrens and red-bellied woodpeckers, may be resilient to future climate change.
Some birds’ ranges are shrinking. Neotropical migratory birds breed in North America during the summer and migrate to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America for the winter. Neotropical migrants include many species that people love and look forward to seeing each spring such as buntings, warblers, orioles, and flycatchers. The team’s research shows that these birds are not expanding north and their southern ranges are shrinking.
To make matters worse, over the past 50 years Neotropical bird populations have decreased by about 2.5 billion individuals. Rushing explained, “There’s a real risk that, if these declines continue at their current pace, many species could face extinction within this century. Neotropical migrants are vulnerable to future climate change, putting them at risk of greater declines.”
Neotropical migrants already fly thousands of miles each year to breed, so why can’t they go just a bit farther as the climate warms? The researchers suspect the conditions where the birds live during the winter might make this impossible. Migrations require immense reserves of energy, so migratory birds need high-quality winter habitat with abundant food and moisture. Unfortunately, many habitats in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America are being degraded. It is possible that Neotropical birds can’t store enough energy during the winter, so they simply can’t extend their journeys any farther.
“That’s just one explanation,” concluded Rushing, “and it highlights how little we know and how much more research is needed.” And what the team does know wouldn’t have been possible without the help of devoted citizen scientists.
Citation:
S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University.
“Warming climate is changing where birds breed: Migratory behavior and winter geography
drive differential range shifts of eastern birds in response to recent climate change.”
ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily. 26 May 2020.
NEST SHARING IN ACORN WOODPECKERS
Acorn Woodpeckers live in close-knit family groups and have one of the most complex breeding systems of any bird in the world. In about 20 percent of family groups, up to 3 related females may lay eggs in the same nest. They raise the chicks cooperatively with one or more related males. This behavior is known as joint nesting or “cooperative polyandry.” Only five other species of birds worldwide are known to do this. The reasons that may be driving the behavior are outlined in a study recently published in The American Naturalist.
Lead authors Sahas Barve at Old Dominion University (Cornell Ph.D. ’17), and Cornell Lab of Ornithology scientist Walt Koenig, used demographic data collected during 35 years (1982-2016) at the Hastings Natural History Reservation in central coastal California. They analyzed the costs and benefits of joint nesting, hoping to explain why some woodpecker females exhibit this rare behavior.
They found that joint nesting was more common in years when Acorn Woodpecker population density was high, all the breeding territories were occupied, and opportunities for a female to nest on her own were very unlikely.
Although nesting with others reduces the number of offspring each female can produce compared to when she nests alone, Barve says such females make the “best of a bad situation” by nesting jointly with their mother or sister rather than not nesting at all because of the lack of real estate.
Females that decide to nest jointly do so in groups where there are two or more breeder males, thus increasing the number of caregivers and the total number of chicks that females can successfully raise. Years of population boom may have therefore been an important mechanism driving the evolution of such highly social behaviors like joint nesting among Acorn Woodpeckers.
Citation:
Cornell University. “What drives multiple female acorn woodpeckers to share a nest? Study explores the possible benefits of rare behavior.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 May 2019.