BIRDCONSERVATION The Magazine of American Bird Conservancy
SUMMER/FALL 2021
ABC is dedicated to conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the Americas. With an emphasis on achieving results and working in partnership, we take on the greatest threats facing birds today, innovating and building on rapid advancements in science to halt extinctions, protect habitats, eliminate threats, and build capacity for bird conservation.
abcbirds.org A copy of the current financial statement and registration filed by the organization may be obtained by contacting: ABC, P.O. Box 249, The Plains, VA 20198. 540-253-5780, or by contacting the following state agencies: Florida: Division of Consumer Services, toll-free number within the state: 800-435-7352. Maryland: For the cost of copies and postage: Office of the Secretary of State, Statehouse, Annapolis, MD 21401. New Jersey: Attorney General, State of New Jersey: 201-504-6259. New York: Office of the Attorney General, Department of Law, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271. Pennsylvania: Department of State, toll-free number within the state: 800-732-0999. Virginia: State Division of Consumer Affairs, Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services, P.O. Box 1163, Richmond, VA 23209. West Virginia: Secretary of State, State Capitol, Charleston, WV 25305. Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by any state.
Bird Conservation is the member magazine of ABC and is published three times yearly. Senior Editor: Howard Youth VP of Communications: Clare Nielsen Graphic Design: Gemma Radko Contributors: Erin Chen, Steve Holmer, Brad Keitt, Daniel J. Lebbin, John C. Mittermeier, Jack Morrison, Merrie Morrison, Mike Parr, Amy Upgren, George E. Wallace, David Wiedenfeld, EJ Williams
For more information contact: American Bird Conservancy P.O. Box 249, 4249 Loudoun Avenue The Plains, VA 20198 540-253-5780 • info@abcbirds.org
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Author Brad Keitt windsurfing. Photo by Alex Pang
Violet-crowned Hummingbird by Mick Thompson
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Painted Bunting by USFWS
Anchiornis huxleyi reconstruction by Carl Buell
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24 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Summer/Fall 2021
FEATURES
DEPARTMENTS
To Sail Like a Seabird
BIRD’S EYE VIEW
The Power of Seabirds Inspires Mariners and Conservationists Alike p. 12
Flashy Colors, Mixed Fortunes The Eastern Painted Bunting p. 24
How Early Were the Birds? Exploring the Bird-Dinosaur Nexus p. 30
COVER: Painted Bunting by Alan Murphy LEFT: Laysan Albatross by Tory Kallman, Shutterstock
It’s All About the Habitat p. 4
ON THE WIRE Our Latest Flock of Bird News Stories p. 6
BIRDS IN BRIEF p. 10
ABC BIRDING The Paton Center for Hummingbirds, Arizona p. 20
BIRD HERO Helping Build Community and Northwoods Partnerships p. 33
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BIRD’S EYE VIEW
It's All About the Habitat
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arlier this year, a pair of Common Ravens began nest prospecting atop light poles in my local Target parking lot. Ravens are uncommon birds in
the Washington, D.C., area so this was quite a surprise to me. Ultimately the birds didn’t stay around, but their appearance got me thinking…. That same parking lot plays host to groups of postbreeding Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls in late summer, and Eastern Kingbirds call from the surrounding wires. The occasional Cooper’s Hawk or even Peregrine Falcon will streak through the nearby neighborhoods between the auto parts store and McDonald’s. Recent research that many of our members participated in (thank you!) let us know that your number-one bird conservation concern is habitat loss. We agree! ABC has worked successfully with partners across the Americas to conserve and improve habitat for birds, to the tune of more than 8.6 million acres. But after considering those parking lot birds, I began to think about habitat a bit differently. It occurred to me that even the most extreme version of habitat conversion — literally Joni Mitchell’s “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”— does not leave “zero” habitat for birds. Just ask those Laughing Gulls. In truth, habitat is rarely completely “lost;” it just changes from one type to another. Granted, one type may be very severely degraded like that parking lot, and it may no longer be suitable for birds that are exacting in their requirements, but it is not completely lost.
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So, it occurs to me that it is the degree of degradation that really matters most. And that’s where things get more complex. Your feedback told us that overall, many of you are less concerned about cat predation on birds and the impact of wind energy development than about habitat loss itself. ABC recognizes, however, the unfortunate reality that poorly sited wind turbines do negatively impact habitat for bird species of concern, and in the broadest sense, we must also consider cat predation an aspect of habitat degradation, even if it’s not outright loss. For example, some parks in South Florida might look like attractive habitat but be deadly for birds due to high numbers of feral cats; some of the birds attracted to these habitats will never leave in one piece. Other drivers of habitat degradation are even harder to detect: Mosquitoes carrying avian malaria in the forests of Hawai'i are a more lethal and insidious form of degradation than even cats or wind turbines. Perhaps our survey questions should have been more nuanced to acknowledge the connection between human-caused threats and degraded habitat. After all, what good is habitat if it is hostile to birds? I'd suggest
that conserving habitat needs a comprehensive and holistic approach — it is definitely about more than intact vegetation. In fact, those logging clear cuts that look so ugly from the road can flourish into habitat for declining species such as the Prairie Warbler in just a few years, and even the flat roofs of commercial buildings can provide habitat for Least Terns and Common Nighthawks, two species of conservation concern. What’s the take away here? For me, it’s that habitat conservation is complex, and nuanced, and often less straightforward than it may appear on the surface. It’s critical to take a holistic look at what is degrading habitat in any given area, to ensure that bird conservation can advance and that birds themselves are able to recover. That degradation can be caused by paving the habitat over, but also by building wind facilities in the wrong places, allowing feral cats to proliferate, or by applying pesticides — and a variety of other threat factors. Instead of looking at habitat and threats as existing independently, we could envision a bird habitat gradient ranging from highly impacted on the one hand to pristine or barely impacted on the other. In fact, this integration of our habitat conservation work and the threats that degrade these habitats —
from free-roaming cats and wind turbines to glass collisions — is now underway at ABC. Our teams that work to reduce bird mortality are now embedded within our North American regional programs in the Northwest, Great Lakes and Northeast, Southeast, Central, and Southwest. We believe that by helping birds reproduce successfully through the maintenance or creation of high-quality habitat, and reducing mortality in these places among both juvenile and adult birds, we can provide the best possible bird conservation programs with the most likelihood of success. I look forward to reporting on our progress in future issues of Bird Conservation, including updates on how this work is enhancing our BirdScapes approach to migratory bird conservation (see birdscapes.org). Thank you very much for supporting ABC! Sincerely,
Michael J. Parr President
TOP: Black-necked Stilt and wind turbines by Emma Steigerwald LEFT: Eastern Kingbird @Michael Stubblefield
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ON the WIRE Terns Return to Alternate Virginia Site
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n last year’s summer/fall issue, we reported on remediation steps taken by Virginia’s government to save the commonwealth’s largest seabird colony, when Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) construction work was going to displace the birds. In 2019, ABC and partners urged action to save the colony. Virginia consulted with multiple stakeholders and the result: a successful relocation. Virginia’s Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) worked with the Virginia Department of Transportation to lay sand and gravel at nearby Fort Wool and to control rats there, and to moor substrate-covered barges nearby. In spring, returning birds were drawn to the new site thanks to playback and decoys deployed by Virginia Tech biologists, funded in part by ABC in partnership with the National Audubon Society.
By late spring 2020, thousands of birds were at the new colony site. Data analysis revealed that the “class of 2020” included 10,000 to 20,000 adult Royal Terns and approximately 5,200 chicks at Fort Wool, along with 200 to 275 adult Sandwich Terns with 100 to 140 chicks, hundreds of Laughing Gulls, and a few Common Terns. On the nearby barges, researchers counted more than 650 adult Common Terns with nearly 600 chicks; at least 140 adult Black Skimmers with at least 105 chicks; and a single pair of state-threatened Gull-billed Terns with two chicks. Fast forward to 2021. The colony was again teeming and included 11 adult Gull-billed Terns, four of which were on eggs on one of the barges. The season’s nesting data will be analyzed, assessing survival
Gull-billed Terns by Eric Kershner, USFWS
rates and overall success of the newly re-situated colony. See dwr. virginia.gov/wildlife/birds/seabirdconservation-in-hampton-roads/ for updates. ABC is grateful to Barbara Fried for supporting this project and to McGuire Woods for their assistance. We also thank the many volunteers who worked on this effort, and the Commonwealth of Virginia for its actions to help sustain the colony.
Red-fronted Macaw Census Yields Encouraging Results
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he Critically Endangered Red-fronted Macaw is found in just four dry river valleys in south-central Bolivia. There, this large green parrot with red- and blue-splashed wings nests mostly on
cliffs and, in some cases, in endemic Bolivian Mountain Coconut trees. The species’ population has dropped for years due to loss of dry forest, hunting, and the illegal bird trade.
Red-fronted Macaws by Steffen Reichle, Asociación Armonía
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As part of the multi-pronged Redfronted Macaw Conservation Program, ABC helped support Bolivian partner organizations Asociación Armonía (Armonía) and Fundación Natura Bolivia to complete a range-wide census of the macaws in 2021. In all, 1,160 Red-fronted Macaws were tallied — a significant bump from the last population estimate of 807, from a survey conducted between 2011 and 2012. In this latest count, 82 percent of nests were located in two river basins. The most important single breeding site was the Redfronted Macaw Community Reserve, which Armonía established with continued on page 8
On Kaua‘i, Nesting Hawaiian Petrels and Some Surprises
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ast summer, we reported that ABC and partners celebrated the return of the first ‘Ua‘u or Hawaiian Petrel translocated as a chick to a fence-protected haven at Nihoku, in Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. This year, there’s even better news from Kaua‘i: A pair of these Endangered birds was confirmed nesting — the first of 110 translocated ‘Ua‘u chicks to return and nest at Nihoku. Other seabirds are taking to the secure site as well. The first prospecting ‘A‘o or Newell’s Shearwater — another focal species translocated there as chicks — was recently observed on trail cameras, and one ‘Ou or Bulwer’s Petrel was located, on an egg. In addition, Kermadec Petrels were seen on the ground, engaged in what appeared to be courtship behavior. If these birds nest, they will provide the
first Northern Hemisphere breeding records for the species. The Nihoku Ecosystem Restoration Project is a multi-partner effort involving Pacific Rim Conservation; the Kaua‘i Endangered Seabird Recovery Project; Hono O Nā Pali Natural Area Reserve; Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife; University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit; the Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and ABC. It is part of a larger, island-wide effort to restore populations of ‘Ua‘u and ‘A‘o, both culturally important species that are threatened by invasive predators, powerline collisions, and light pollution — which can disorient the birds, especially during their fledging flights, boosting collision risk.
“It is incredibly rewarding to see the hard work by all of the partners pay off, and even more exciting that we are making demonstrable progress toward protecting these species,” says Brad Keitt, ABC’s Oceans and Islands Director. “It is also fascinating to see the unexpected happening, with Bulwer’s and Kermadec Petrels showing up within the fenced area. We appear to be on our way to a thriving and diverse seabird colony.” ABC and our partners deeply appreciate the support of this project by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Lynn and Stuart White, Atherton Family Foundation, Cooke Foundation, the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, the Martin Foundation, and Marge Duncan.
Where Do Common Nighthawks Go?
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paper published by Birds Canada, the Smithsonian Institution, and partners in the journal Ecography documents efforts to pinpoint migration routes of the Common Nighthawk with an aim to better understand why this aerial insectivore is declining so precipitously — over 50 percent in the past 40 years. This study was initiated by the Migratory Connectivity Project at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and co-led with Environment and Climate Change Canada and the University of Alberta. Researchers attached GPS-satellite tags to Common Nighthawks at 13 locations across their breeding range, then tracked them as they migrated south.
Tag data indicated that the marked nighthawks migrated to Amazon and cerrado habitats of South America, mostly in Brazil. The migrating nighthawks congregated along the Mississippi Flyway before taking a single path across the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, then on to South America. Researchers observed that while breeding and in southbound migration, the nighthawk showed an increase in migratory connectivity — the degree to which birds from a particular population stay together — and less connectivity once on wintering grounds and during northbound flights. This information will allow
partners to identify key conservation areas for the Common Nighthawk, and ultimately take conservation actions to aid its recovery. Common Nighthawk by Warren Cooke
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ON the WIRE French Company’s Turbines Threaten Rare Brazilian Macaw
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place wind turbines. Plans for this project must be revised to move turbines to a lower-risk location.” The Lear’s Macaw was not documented nesting in the wild until 1978. In 2000, experts believed 150 or fewer wild individuals remained.
Today, after decades of conservation work and careful study by conservation groups including ABC and its partners, the population is estimated to be about 2,000. Now, this Endangered species faces the threats of collisions with or displacement by a poorly sited wind-energy facility. Lear’s Macaws by David Fischer, Neotropical Bird Club
n July, the Public Ministry of Bahia, Brazil, called for a suspension of approval of a wind-energy facility initiated by the French energy company Voltalia in eastern Brazil. The project, which had already broken ground, is sited within dry caatinga habitat in the small range of the Endangered Lear’s Macaw. The ministry is calling for an Environmental Impact Statement to be done, to ensure that this facility will not be detrimental to the macaw and other fauna. ABC and its partners are advocating for the relocation of this planned facility. “There is far too much at stake with this project,” says ABC President Mike Parr. “Renewable energy is vitally important in the fight against climate change. At the same time, we have to be smart about where we
Red-fronted Macaw Census, from page 6 the local community in 2006. (ABC has helped support the reserve’s ecotourism, outreach, and habitat management efforts.) As part of the conservation program, all documented nesting macaw pairs were mapped, and community members were interviewed and briefed about Red-fronted Macaw conservation issues. At key locations, including the reserve, fencing was installed to allow dry forest to regrow, and roadside signs explaining the macaws’ rarity and protected status were installed. In addition, Armonía produced a video about illegal bird trafficking, to be aired on a local
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television station. The group also hired a local macaw reserve guide. Red-fronted Macaws sometimes raid corn crops and scavenge harvested peanut fields. Some farmers intentionally poison or shoot them; others mistake them for more common crop-raiding parakeets. However, in some places, public awareness of the bird’s plight has grown, especially around the community reserve, where illegal capture and killing of macaws sharply declined following Armonía’s efforts to educate communities, develop ecotourism to the area, and work with farmers to improve agriculture.
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In 2020, the fenced area below the reserve’s breeding cliffs was planted with peanuts, which fed the macaws within the reserve, while also fixing nitrogen in the soil and benefiting new plantings of native trees. Armed with updated population information, Armonía and Fundación Natura Bolivia are presenting a conservation action plan to national and local governments in Bolivia as a next step in intensifying efforts to keep Red-fronted Macaws flying toward recovery. ABC would like to thank The MarshallReynolds Foundation for their support of this project.
Bobolink by M. Leonard Photography, Shutterstock
50-50-5:
You have Big Dreams. We have Big Plans. If you want to ensure a brighter future for birds, look no further: Help us close out the last dollars of our $25-million “Save Birds, Save Our Earth” campaign. We are nearly there, but you can help get us over the finish line. This campaign is built on our 50-50-5 Action Plan. Based on the same science that brought us the daunting news of 3 billion birds lost over 50 years, our vision is ambitious yet realistic. Over the next 25 years, we will: •
Save 50 Flagship Birds. ABC’s 50 flagship birds represent all major threatened habitats, and include some of the rarest and fastest-declining species. To see the full list, visit abcbirds. org/50-50-5-plan.
50 FLAGSHIP BIRDS. 50 MILLION ACRES. 5 KEY THREATS.
ONE YOU.
•
Conserve 50 Million Acres. ABC has identified areas — called “BirdScapes” — that cover more than 20 ecosystem types, from Amazonian rainforest and Andean cloud forest to grasslands and freshwater wetlands.
•
Fight 5 Key Threats. Together, we will tackle habitat loss; climate change; free-roaming cats and other invasive species; pesticides and other toxics; and collisions with glass, wind turbines, and towers.
Our love for birds is endless, but the time we have left to conserve them is not. Please don’t wait — respond today with your most generous gift for bird conservation!
To donate and learn more, please visit: abcbirds.org/donate-50-50-5
BIRDS in BRIEF
encouraging result follows decades of conservation, along with the banning of DDT and other dangerous pesticides.
Marvelous Spatuletail: Peru’s Money Bird
Two Eastern Landmarks Take Steps to Save Birds from Glass
This year, Peru updated its 100 soles bank note, which now features one of the country’s most spectacular endemics, the Marvelous Spatuletail. The artwork for the bill was based on a photo taken at the Huembo Reserve by Miguél Jose Morán Morán.
In Liberty Park at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey affixed a dotted pattern to a 300-foot-long glass railing that had killed dozens of birds that mistook the clear, elevated panes for a clear fly-through. Before ordering and installing the pattern, the agency consulted with ABC on bird-friendly options for the site.
Seabird-harming Ants Eradicated from Johnston Atoll This past June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the invasive Yellow Crazy Ant had been successfully eradicated from Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, located southwest of the Hawaiian Islands in the North Pacific Ocean. The nonnative ants were swarming ground-nesting seabirds and spraying them with formic acid, blinding and
A new Peruvian bank note celebrates the endemic Marvelous Spatuletail.
sometimes killing them. Volunteers, federal workers, and ant-sniffing dogs all worked to clear the atoll of the invasive insect. Johnston Atoll hosts the world’s largest colony of Red-tailed Tropicbirds, as well as other seabirds, including the Masked Booby and Great Frigatebird.
Banner Bald Eagle Count in the Lower 48
Red-tailed Tropicbird by Tom Grey
A spring 2021 Bald Eagle survey conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the lower 48 United States — where the species was once feared nearly extinct — showed that the raptor’s population there now numbers more than 316,000 birds, or over 71,000 breeding pairs. This
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Retrofitted glass railing at Liberty Park, NYC. Photo by Port Authority NY NJ
ABC and its Peruvian partner Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos (ECOAN) worked with a community in northern Peru to establish the first reserve to protect the species in 2005. Efforts to reforest more of the area continue, to ensure a bright future for this Endangered hummingbird, which is estimated to number fewer than 1,000 individuals.
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Nearly 200 miles to the south, the National Aquarium in Baltimore announced that it will replace the aged glass-paneled pyramid enclosing its rooftop rainforest exhibit with glass etched in a fritted pattern visible to birds outside, but not obstructive to visitors looking out at Baltimore’s scenic Inner Harbor.
Brazil's Mata do Passarinho Reserve Continues to Grow Established in 2007 by ABC and partner Fundação Biodiversitas to protect the Stresemann's Bristlefront, Mata do Passarinho Reserve was recently enlarged by more than 500 acres, including the area where the last known individual of the species was detected in 2020.
ABC Helps Galveston Gain Bird City Status
Marbled Murrelet by Tim Zurowski, Shutterstock
The land, donated to Biodiversitas by a local utility company as part of a mitigation project, preserves additional habitat for the bristlefront and other rare birds, including the Banded Cotinga. Both species are listed as Critically Endangered by BirdLife International.
The city of Galveston has now been certified as a Bird City Texas community, thanks to collaboration among the Galveston Island Nature Tourism Council, ABC, and a host of local and national partners.
Bolivia’s Nest Box Knockout The Critically Endangered Bluethroated Macaw numbers fewer than 450 birds in the wild and is endemic to the savanna of Bolivia’s Beni Department. There, ABC’s Bolivian partner Asociación Armonía
to this small seabird. This status reclassification provides additional protections for the species on Oregon state lands.
Blue-throated Macaw by Marton Hardy, Asociación Armonía
Greater Sage-Grouse by Kerry Hargrove, Shutterstock
The Marbled Murrelet lives at sea but nests in old-growth forests. It faces an increasingly uncertain future due to the impacts of climate change and other factors.
Bird City Americas, a new ABC program, works to protect birds and their habitats through a combination of bird conservation initiatives and community action, which includes enhancing and restoring habitat, promoting the use of native plants, increasing public awareness of bird conservation issues, and promoting environmental stewardship.
Migrating Shorebirds Gain Additional Protection This past May, a public-private partnership purchased the last piece of property needed to permanently protect southern Delaware’s Mispillion Harbor from development. Mispillion, situated on the Delaware Bay, is an important spawning ground for horseshoe crabs and a vital stopover site for migrating shorebirds such as the Threatened rufa Red Knot.
marked an important milestone this year: More than 100 chicks have now fledged from nest boxes at the Laney Rickman Blue-throated Macaw Reserve since 2005. Nesting adults included nine with leg bands indicating they are previously fledged chicks now returning to the boxes to breed.
In July, the state of Oregon reclassified the Marbled Murrelet from Threatened to Endangered under the state’s Endangered Species Act, joining Washington and California in recognizing the increasing threats
Red Knots by Mike Parr
Oregon Reclassifies the Marbled Murrelet
Greater Sage-Grouse Wins Reprieve on Federal Lands in Two States In June, a federal judge blocked plans for oil and gas drilling on over 600 square miles of federal lands in Wyoming and Montana. The judge cited the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) lack of research into potential impacts of increased energy exploration on rapidly declining Greater Sage-Grouse populations. BLM auctioned off leases to these lands in 2017.
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ABOVE: The author performs his own adaptation of dynamic soaring in Pacific Coast waves near his home in Santa Cruz, California. Photo by Alex Pang RIGHT: Wandering Albatross by Sergey 402, Shutterstock
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by Brad Keitt
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any people have heard of albatrosses, but mariners and aviators have a special affinity for these ocean-living birds and their amazing abilities. Consider this: A Wandering Albatross can circumnavigate
the Antarctic three times in a year, and travel over 3,100 miles in a week with very little energy expenditure. Or how about this: A Laysan Albatross nesting in Hawai’i can provision its chicks by foraging in Alaska. How can a bird that weighs on average 16 pounds, in the case of the Wandering Albatross, skim over large portions of the globe with ease? Two words: dynamic soaring. Dynamic soaring is a complex mechanism by which seabirds utilize wind shear — the variation in wind speed above the ocean surface — to extract energy and fly without flapping, with virtually no energy cost to themselves. The result is an arcing flight pattern during which the bird gains altitude by soaring into the wind, banks vertically in the stronger wind 10 to 30 feet above the surface, then drives downward with increased velocity to carry it toward its destination, before turning into another upwind maneuver farther along, then repeating
the process. Albatrosses could not do what they do — in essence, could not exist — without this capacity. The marvelous flight of albatrosses and other seabirds runs like a thread through my life, not just because I dedicate my professional life to conserving these creatures, but because they inspire me, as they have many others through the years. My hope is, too, that they will always be around, and the link between mariners and marine birds may be a tie that helps make this possible.
Timeless Wonder People have been marveling at seabirds, especially the larger ones, for centuries. Nobel physicist Lord
Rayleigh is often cited as the first to describe dynamic soaring in birds, and indeed he was the first to publish a model of the process in 1883. Centuries earlier, though, Leonardo da Vinci also pondered this process. Only recently did it come to light that buried within da Vinci’s codex on bird flight were drawings and descriptions of flight patterns and the processes underlying them that are consistent with dynamic soaring. Through observations of flying birds, both da Vinci and Rayleigh gained insight and inspiration, suggesting that the ability to extract energy from the wind would bode well for the prospect of human flight. Today, complex models emulating seabird
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dynamic soaring are being used to inspire wind-powered, autonomous drones that could collect valuable oceanographic data.
Harnessing the Wind For me, observing seabirds provides constant inspiration and has helped me learn to “fly” as a sailor. My father gifted me the skill set to harness the power of wind and wave, while sharing with me his two great passions, sailing and birding. He developed these interests between the ages of 10 and 13 in Madison, Wisconsin. Dad learned to sail on Lake Mendota, eventually graduating to the large sailing dinghies called E Scows. While exceptionally fast in flat water, these boats did poorly when waves began to build. It wasn’t until after college, while living in Massachusetts, that Dad began to observe seabirds and started to emulate their movements over water. I grew up in north-central Florida, surrounded by lakes and equidistant between the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. I initially took to sailing much more than birding, perhaps because birding was what my older brother did. My father’s favorite sailing location was Cedar Key, on the Gulf Coast, a little over an hour’s drive from home. There, he found ample access to open water where the fetch — the distance wind travels over open water — allows waves to
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build and a Sunfish sailboat to undulate up and down, extracting energy from the wind and waves so it and its operator can fly across the water. I recall many afternoons at Cedar Key, which I spent clinging like a barnacle to the foredeck of my father’s Sunfish, balanced precariously between sheer delight and fear. My father’s skill at allowing the delight to overcome the fear is something I am trying to capture as I begin exposing my twin 10-year-old boys to my water-sport passions.
A Sailor’s Epiphany Around the time I was born, my father began the first of several summers on the coast on Cape Cod, at Cotuit, Massachusetts. There, a 14foot, flat-bottomed, crab-claw-rigged Sunfish dinghy was at his disposal. It
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Leonardo da Vinci’s codex on bird flight included drawings and descriptions of flight patterns and the processes underlying them that are consistent with dynamic soaring. TOP: Da Vinci's plan view sketch illustrating northward acrosswind dynamic soaring (from right to left) of a flock of four birds along an undulating flight path. ABOVE: A da Vinci sketch showing a bird rising in a thermal. Reprinted courtesy of The Royal Society of the History of Science. OPPOSITE PAGE: The author's father and brother sailing off Nantucket in 1968.
seemed some parallel with the movement of seabirds. He continues: “Some albatrossian intuition seemed to be guiding me to broad-reach with the waves on a plane until the moment the following crest begins to break. Then a quick pull on the tiller and slack of the sail drops the boat rapidly downward. Just before plowing into the next wave, a shove on the tiller and a rapid haul-in of the sail power the boat back up to ride the next wave in the line. An aerial observer (perhaps an amused albatross) would witness a wildly gyrating sailor, zigzagging across wave and wind shrieking with pleasure. I believe I made it halfway to Nantucket on that day.”
was reading his recollections of those experiences that led me to consider my own seabird/sailing connection. Reflecting on the summer of 1967, Dad wrote: “I cleared Dead Neck in Cotuit Bay and headed out into the Sound where the 3- to 4-foot waves rolled in on steady 15-knot winds all the way from Block Island. I found that the dimensions of the Sunfish fit me perfectly. I could control the rudder from the exact midpoint of the hull by a long tiller extension. I could tuck my toes under the far edge of the cockpit and lean far out over the water when required. As I moved rapidly out of sight of the
low dunes, the waves built up and needed to be dealt with. With the wind also rising, the carefully shaped hull of the Sunfish lifted beyond the depth dictated by its buoyancy. This high speed and precarious state between sailing and flying is called planing. A miracle happens.” My father was basically avoiding broadsides from roiling whitecaps by surfing down the face in front of the wave and then back up it to ride the unbreaking swell, until a whitecap formed again. This must have been one of my father’s most thrilling days of sailing. He drew parallels to surfing, and also hinted that there
It would be another 15 years, though, before my father made the intuitive link between these actions and dynamic soaring in open-ocean seabirds. That happened with the fortuitous find of a book by the British naval officer Sir William Jameson, entitled The Wandering Albatross. This monograph, which, according to the ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy, contains the best nontechnical description of dynamic soaring flight, was inspired by Jameson’s observations of this species in the southern oceans starting in 1940, during the hunt for the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee. It was by reading this book that my father made the connection
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Maui's Marine Mashup Both birds and people harness the powers of wave and wind off Maui's North Shore. Top-billed for windsurfing and surfing, the area also ranks as a high priority for conservationists hoping to entice albatrosses and other seabirds back to nest. Shown here (left to right): Albatross;
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Great Frigatebird;
Bottlenose Dolphin;
tailed Shearwater; 6
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Laysan
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Wedge-
Brown Booby; and
flying fish. Artwork by Chris Vest
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between the movement of the Sunfish in a modified S pattern and that of the albatross.
Different Path, Same Dynamic As Dad’s sailing evolved to parallel albatross flight, I gravitated toward windsurfing, which I picked up in high school because it was an easily transportable, individual activity I could do on my own on Florida’s lakes and coasts. I recall that when I applied and eventually matriculated to the University of California, I was only slightly aware that Santa Cruz, California, is recognized as the best windsurfing destination in the continental U.S. I can admit to being slightly more aware of the fact that studying seabirds might mean a life in and around the ocean as I began to consider a potential career path using my degree in biology. It was here, on the edges of Monterey Bay, that I was able to truly observe dynamic soaring. While it usually takes a pelagic trip to get far enough out to see Black-footed and Laysan
Albatrosses, it is possible to be surrounded by Sooty Shearwaters while sailing at certain coastal sites around Santa Cruz. Watching these birds effortlessly glide down the waves and navigate wind gusts provides endless entertainment, but also helped me learn how to be a better sailor. Although I’ve traveled the world to work on their nesting islands, it is while sailing that I feel most in tune with seabirds, perhaps because a windsurfing sail is about as close as you can get to an albatross wing. An albatross can travel upwards of 40 miles an hour during dynamic soaring, sometimes twice the speed of the wind. On a windsurfer, I can reach about 20 miles per hour, or 25 if really trying in strong winds of equal speed. But it is lighter-wind days that require the most skill, drawing from all I have learned from watching seabirds. On these days, by utilizing slight variations in wind speed and direction, and surfing the wind swell to stay on a plane, it is possible to move faster than the wind, essentially creating your own “apparent” wind to fly over the water.
Steering Seabirds From the Doldrums Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for sailors to watch and learn from seabirds, as many species are in decline around the world. On Maui, the undisputed windsurfing capital of the world, albatrosses are unable to breed due to introduced invasive mammals, disturbance, and other factors. You can still see the occasional Wedge-tailed Shearwater glide over the water, and the flapping flight of boobies just offshore. Exciting, yes, but a far cry from what a true, undisturbed seabird nesting island would offer. ABC has been working with partners at the Maui Nui Seabird Recovery Project to create seabird sanctuaries around the island. This builds on successful and in-progress projects across the Hawaiian Islands, and involves building fences to exclude nonnative predators and restore seabird breeding colonies. Steps are being taken to encourage birds to return to nesting areas on their own. These include
THIS PAGE, left to right: Newell's Shearwater by Jack Jeffrey; Hawaiian Petrel by Jim Denny OPPOSITE PAGE: Watching Sooty Shearwaters off Santa Cruz, California, helped the author learn how to be a better sailor. Photo by Sean Lema, Shutterstock
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putting out painted fiberglass bird statues as decoys to attract diurnal species, and artificial burrows for nocturnal birds. Then sounds of an active colony are broadcast via speakers. For some species, an effective approach is to translocate chicks from unprotected nests to artificial ones within the fence (see p. 7). Restoring seabirds to Maui, and islands around the world, provides far more than just inspiration for sailors and water-sports enthusiasts. Seabirds provide an important link between marine and terrestrial habitats by transporting nutrients — mostly in the form of guano deposited on the islands — from the ocean to land. This drives productivity on land, supporting plant and insect diversity. Seabird-derived nutrients are transported via rainfall and runoff into nearshore environments, which are critical sites for fish reproduction and coastal resiliency.
These nutrients are incorporated into corals, sea grasses, and plankton. Recent data show that islands with healthy seabird populations support coral growth that is twice as fast as on islands without seabirds, and that these corals are more resilient to increasing ocean temperatures. Dr. Sheldon Plentovich, Pacific Islands Coastal Program Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a former professional kite surfer, says: “Nesting seabirds are vital to healthy coastal ecosystems. But they are also ambassadors helping link oceans to land and people to the natural world. When I am on the water, I strive to mimic the graceful lines drawn by the albatross, and my hope is that more people will have the chance to experience the grace, devotion, and charisma of albatrosses as they begin to nest in proximity to humans on the high islands of the Hawaiian archipelago.”
It seems the albatross are ready to return. A Laysan Albatross was seen on the North Shore of Maui in January 2021, the first observed on the island in more than a decade. With some help, it is very likely that albatrosses will once again be flying in the waves just off Maui, coming ashore to breed, and in the process, closing the loop between land and sea and sailor and seabird. The forces that enable dynamic soaring will always be with us. My hope is that albatrosses and other seabirds will be as well, serving as tutors for future generations of sailors, just as they did for my father and me. Brad Keitt is ABC’s Oceans & Islands Director. This piece was inspired by his father Alan’s writings, which span more than 20 years, and was refined during numerous Zoom calls.
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ABC BIRDING
The Paton Center for Hummingbirds By John C. Mittermeier, ABC’s Director of Threatened Species Outreach Lay of the Land: The Paton Center for Hummingbirds (hereafter, the Paton Center) sits on 1.4 acres of riparian woodland fringing Sonoita Creek in the small southeastern Arizona town of Patagonia. The center is the former home of Wally and Marion Paton, who began inviting birders to visit their yard in 1973. Wally and Marion’s became known as the place to see Violetcrowned Hummingbirds in the United States. Over the years, thousands of birders have stopped by to watch the feeders there. After Wally and Marion passed away in the early 2000s, ABC, the Tucson Audubon Society, and Victor Emanuel Nature Tours raised the funding needed to purchase the property, which the Tucson Audubon Society now manages as a haven both for birds and birders.
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ARIZONA
Geographically, the Paton Center’s location on Sonoita Creek places it in a riparian corridor that connects to the Santa Cruz River to the west and extends southward into the Mexican state of Sonora. In an otherwise dry landscape, this ribbon of woodlands is vital for wildlife. To the delight of U.S. birders, it also provides a path for species such as Violet-crowned Hummingbirds to move northward from Mexico. There are several other famous birding locations along Sonoita Creek, including The Nature Conservancy’s Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, the Patagonia Roadside Rest Stop, and Patagonia Lake State Park. Any or all of these can easily be included as part of a birding trip to the Paton Center. TOP: Violet-crowned Hummingbird by Matthew Studebaker RIGHT, clockwise from top: Blue Grosbeak by Mick Thompson; visitors birding at the Paton Center, photo courtesy of the Paton Center; Plain-capped Starthroat by Alan Schmierer
Focal Birds: The Violet-crowned Hummingbird is the bird to see at the Paton Center. Native to western Mexico, this species’ range just barely reaches into the United States, and the feeders at the Paton Center are the best — and often only — place in the country to see this spectacular bird. While the Violet-crowned may be the star of the show, an amazing total of 15 hummingbird species have been recorded at the Paton feeders, with 12 of these occurring most years. Depending on the time of year, Broad-billed, Anna’s, Rufous, Broad-tailed, and Black-chinned Hummingbirds may all be present at the feeders, along with less-common species such as Costa’s and Calliope Hummingbirds. More than 210 bird species have been recorded on the Paton Center grounds, so if you can tear yourself away from the hummingbirds, watch for Gray Hawks, Thickbilled Kingbirds, Varied Buntings, Endangered “Western” Yellow-billed Cuckoos, and many other birds. In addition to the regular set of species, part of the excitement of birding in southeastern Arizona is the potential for vagrants. Over the years the Paton Center has hosted multiple rarities from Mexico, including a Cinnamon Hummingbird, a Crescent-chested Warbler, and several Plain-capped Starthroats and Rufous-backed Robins. Before visiting, be sure to check rare bird alerts to see what has been reported recently. Other Wildlife: Sonoita Creek’s lush woodlands are important for Bobcat, Gray Fox, and Javelina (also known
as Collared Peccary). You may notice that the deer in the area seem a bit smaller than usual; southern Arizona is home to “Coue’s” White-tailed Deer, a dwarf subspecies that averages about half the size of the White-tailed Deer found in the eastern United States. In between watching the hummingbird feeders, check the small pond on the center grounds to see the Gila Topminnow, an Endangered species found only in tributaries of the Gila River in Arizona and New Mexico. When to Visit: Birding at the Paton Center can be spectacular at any time of year. In winter, temperatures are often in the 60s, and the resident birds are joined by large numbers of wintering sparrows and towhees. In the spring and fall, migrant warblers, tanagers, and buntings can be found. Summer temperatures rise to highs in the 90s, but bring breeding birds such as the Gray Hawk, Thick-billed Kingbird, and Varied Bunting. For hummingbirds, early spring is a good time to see the highest diversity of species, while late summer is the best time for overall numbers, with dozens of hummingbirds often present at the feeders in mid- to late August. Conservation Activities: Since it acquired the property in 2014, the Tucson Audubon Society has been actively restoring native habitat around the Paton Center. The center’s Richard Grand Memorial Meadow includes native plant species such as sage and Cardinal Flower that provide food for hummingbirds as well as an incredible 50 butterfly species.
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Directions: The town of Patagonia is a little over an hour’s drive south of Tucson. Once you reach Patagonia, turn north off State Route 82 onto 4th Avenue (the turn is next to the Wagon Wheel Saloon). At the end of 4th Avenue, take a left onto Pennsylvania Avenue (there’s a sign for the Paton Center at this T-junction). The Paton Center will be on your left in less than a quarter of a mile: Watch for the Violet-crowned Hummingbird sign. The center is open from dawn to dusk and though entry is free of charge, donations to
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Along Sonoita Creek, sacaton grass and Arizona Walnut trees have been planted to enhance this refuge’s habitat for threatened and localized species. With the grounds now entirely planted with native species, the Paton Center serves as a showcase for native-plant gardening to the approximately 15,000 people who visit each year.
The Paton Center for Hummingbirds
the “sugar fund” help maintain the grounds and keep the hummingbird feeders well stocked. In addition to visiting the feeders themselves, be sure to walk the brief loop trail in the “Paton Creekside Cuckoo Corridor” just across the road from the Paton Center. This area can be good for Thick-billed Kingbirds and Varied Buntings, as well as the namesake “Western” Yellow-billed Cuckoo. The entrance to the trail is on your right, just after Pennsylvania Avenue crosses Sonoita Creek. Continuing southwest past the Paton Center, Blue Heaven Road borders The Nature Conservancy’s Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, which provides fantastic opportunities to look for riparian birds. You can walk along the road from the Paton Center or park at one of the pullouts farther along. A pullout on the right 0.7 miles beyond the Paton
Clockwise from top left: Varied Bunting by Larry Thompson; Thickbilled Kingbird by Agami Photo Agency, Shutterstock; Black-chinned Hummingbird by sumikophoto, Shutterstock
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Center marks the start of the Geoffrey Platts Trail, a 3.2-mile loop through drier habitat away from the creek. Then, 1.3 miles beyond the Paton Center, the entrance and visitor center for the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve is on the left (preserve open Wednesday to Sunday until 4 p.m.; $8 admission). To visit the other birding sites around Patagonia, return to State Route 82. The Patagonia Roadside Rest Stop is a pullout on the south side of the highway 3.8 miles southwest of Patagonia. The rest stop looks unimpressive at first glance, but it has hosted incredible birds over the years, including a Fan-tailed Warbler, a couple of Yellow Grosbeaks, and nesting Rose-throated Becards. Another 3.4 miles south along State Route 82 from the Patagonia Roadside Rest Stop, a large sign marks the
turnoff to Patagonia Lake State Park. The state park (open daily 4 a.m. to 10 p.m.; $15 for a day pass) can be good for waterbirds, including Neotropic Cormorants, Mexican Ducks, and, with luck, even the occasional Green Kingfisher. A birding loop trail at the east end of this park provides access to riparian habitat along the creek, as well as views over the lake itself. All told, more than 320 bird species have been recorded in Patagonia Lake State Park.
For more information, visit: tucsonaudubon. org/go-birding/tucson-audubons-patoncenter-for-hummingbirds/
TOP: Gray Hawk by Elliotte Rusty Harold, Shutterstock. MIDDLE: Lucy’s Warbler by Rick & Nora Bowers, Alamy Stock Photo. BELOW: The Richard Grand Memorial Meadow at the Paton Center. Photo by Nick Beauregard.
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The Eastern Painted Bunting:
Flashy Colors, Mixed Fortunes
by Rebecca Heisman
No North American songbird is more strikingly colored than the male Painted Bunting. With its blue head, red underparts, and yellow-green back, this bird turns heads whenever one pops into view. You might think that such a dazzling creature, so beloved by birdwatchers, would be carefully studied and monitored, with ornithologists and conservation biologists keeping a close eye on any potential threats.
Although the bunting’s smaller eastern population has received attention in recent years, many details of its conservation status remain murky. What is known paints a topsy-turvy picture of changing status, with a positive twist: Following years of decline, a consensus has emerged that eastern Painted Buntings seem to be doing better than once believed, at least for now. The Painted Bunting is split into two geographically isolated populations. One breeds across a wide swath of the south-central United States and in Northern Mexico, with a range encompassing all or almost all of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi, Kansas, and Missouri. The much smaller eastern population occurs along a narrow strip of the Atlantic Coast, from northeastern Florida north to eastern North Carolina. Are these two populations distinct subspecies? This designation remains to be made, but those arguing for subspecies status point out that the most recent genetic analysis shows little or no gene flow between the populations for at least the last 26,000 years. Plus, western breeders spend the winter in Mexico and Central America, while eastern breeders migrate mainly to Cuba, the Bahamas, and Florida’s lower half. Both Painted Bunting populations nest in shrubby and woodland habitat interspersed with open areas — nowhere with too many trees, but not in open grassland, either. For eastern, coastal-nesting birds, this typically means behind the dunes but not so far back that they’re in dense maritime forest — in the sweet spot where the once-shifting sand has been stabilized by vegetation but
LEFT: Painted Bunting in Florida by Danita Delimont, Alamy Stock Photo. RIGHT: A female Painted Bunting by Vineeth Radhakrishnan, Shutterstock. BIR D C O NS ER VATIO N | S UMMER /FALL 2021
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Painted Buntings’ beauty also makes them a target. Illegal trapping of live birds to sell as pets has long been rampant in parts of their wintering range, including in South Florida.
the habitat has not yet been completely taken over by trees. Abandoned farm fields and other overgrown but still-unforested places can also provide bunting habitat. For a long time, these eastern birds, which have a breeding range occupying only about 4 percent of that covered by the western population, appeared to be in trouble. Data from the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), an annual survey of bird populations conducted by volunteers following the same established roadside routes year after year, shows that the eastern Painted Bunting population declined at a rate of around 3 percent per year during the latter decades of the 20th century. There’s likely no single “smoking gun” behind the observed decline. Dean Demarest, a senior biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS’s) migratory bird program, described it as “death by a thousand cuts.” A few threats do stand out, though. Although they visit feeders, these birds do not nest in manicured suburbs or cities, but in wild places offering abundant shelter as well as plentiful seeds and insects, which provide important protein for their fast-growing young. The eastern Painted Bunting’s limited range and affinity for prime coastal real estate, where the brush they nest in is often cleared to make way for new roads and buildings, makes them especially vulnerable to habitat loss. Retired United States Geological Survey biologist Paul Sykes, who studied eastern Painted Buntings for 20 years, recalls seeing them vanish from some of his study sites over time as the surrounding habitat changed. “A lot of times the surrounding area got modified in some fashion by development,” he says.
Painted Buntings’ beauty also makes them a target. Illegal trapping of live birds to sell as pets has long been rampant in parts of their wintering range, including in South Florida.
A Fresh Eye on Breeding Buntings BBS routes don’t cover the core habitat of eastern Painted Buntings well, and while BBS data can provide an idea about a population’s trend — whether it’s increasing or decreasing — it’s less useful for estimating abundance, the actual number of birds out there at any given time. Around 2004, staffers from the FWS, the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture (of which ABC is a part), and other organizations came together to form the Eastern Painted Bunting Working Group, with the goal of getting a better handle on how the population was really doing and the type of conservation action that might be needed. The working group initiated a new survey, hoping to cover the eastern population’s entire range and to get a clear picture of its distribution, density, and abundance. From 2007 to 2009, biologists from federal and state agencies throughout the eastern population’s range conducted point counts, recording how many birds were seen or heard at points along new routes selected to better cover areas where buntings were likely to be found. At the same time, a community science effort led by the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Jamie Rotenberg recruited amateur birdwatchers to submit data on Painted Buntings visiting feeders. TOP: Illegally trapped Painted Buntings. Photo by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. RIGHT: Painted Bunting, Texas by Vineeth Radhakrishnan, Shutterstock.
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Western Painted Buntings Benefit from Expanding GRIP
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he bird conservation network Partners in Flight estimates that there are 15 million breeding Painted Buntings across the species’ entire breeding range, from the southern United States into Northern Mexico. Almost half of them nest in the area covered by the Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture (OPJV), an ABC-supported bird conservation partnership that conserves habitat in central Texas and central Oklahoma. In 2013, the OPJV, which includes governmental and nongovernmental partners as well as many private landowners, land managers, and birders, initiated the Grassland Restoration Incentive Program, or GRIP. This program incentivizes property owners in the region to introduce practices such as prescribed burning and planting native grasses on their lands. Land management practices such as these benefit a suite of grassland and shrubland birds — including Painted Buntings.
“We provide technical guidance [to landowners] and give them information on what might work with their land management objectives,” says former OPJV Coordinator Jim Giocomo, who is now ABC’s Central Region Director. “And then to get them over the hump and provide a little bit of training wheels, we can provide incentive payments to implement these new types of practices.” Landowners in the program commit to maintaining the resulting bird habitat conditions on their property for at least five years. Prescribed burning, in particular, helps keep trees at bay and creates the shrubby habitat that Painted Buntings seek. Other species with declining populations that benefit from this OPJV effort include the Dickcissel, Eastern Meadowlark, Northern Bobwhite, and about one-third of the wintering population of the LeConte’s Sparrow. So far, GRIP has enrolled 110,000 acres. OPJV’s longterm goal is to reach 3 million. “We’re getting there,” says Giocomo, “and if we hadn’t started in 2013, we wouldn’t be where we are now.” — Rebecca Heisman
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The survey found a lot of buntings — especially in the upper coastal plain of Georgia and North Carolina, a largely overlooked area inland from the coastal scrub habitat traditionally thought of as the population’s stronghold. “We concluded that there were at least as many birds as some of the other estimates at the time [had shown], but possibly twice as many, if not more,” says Demarest, a key organizers of the working group. Not only did it look like eastern Painted Buntings were more common than anyone had thought, but the concerning downward trend that had helped spur the formation of the working group also seemed to have come to a halt around the same time. Since the early 2000s, BBS results for eastern Painted Buntings show a turnaround, with the number of buntings spotted on BBS survey routes in the region beginning to increase slightly. And the population may be expanding its range northward and westward as well. In 2017, a pair apparently nested on the coast of Virginia, a first for the state. So is the eastern Painted Bunting out of the woods? It’s unclear. For one thing, not every researcher I spoke to puts much faith in the increasing BBS numbers. While some thought that a trend that appears consistent over so many years must be real, others remained skeptical due to the poor coverage of bunting habitat.
If the eastern Painted Bunting has truly started to increase after decades of decline, the reason remains a mystery. This is especially vexing because none of the threats that ornithologists had guessed might be behind the population’s downward slide have gone away. Coastal development in the eastern Painted Bunting’s breeding range certainly hasn’t stopped. “I can guarantee you there’s not more habitat” than there used to be, says Demarest. The illegal bird trade hasn’t halted, either, though it’s nearly impossible to know for sure if enough birds are being captured to have a population-level effect. “Particularly when the trade is illegal and birds are being sold and caught illicitly, the volume of the trade is extremely hard to quantify,” says John C. Mittermeier, ABC’s Director of Threatened Species Outreach. “This is especially true when the market for a bird species is a domestic one, since international export and import data is often one of the only ways to get numbers on wildlife trade.” The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has stepped up enforcement efforts against the trapping of songbirds in recent years, including introducing a new rule in 2019 that made even possessing an unpermitted trap punishable by a $500 fine or up to 60 days in jail. However, Florida officials still estimate that thousands of
Why, then, is the eastern Painted Bunting population (maybe) on the rise? “For the life of me, I can’t tell you,” says Dean Demarest. “It’s a mystery.”
Into the Future
Painted and related Indigo Buntings are illegally trapped in the state each year. In Cuba, where songbird trapping is also illegal but enforcement is almost nonexistent, the problem is likely worse. To study the bird’s migration, University of Georgia’s Clark Rushing (formerly at Utah State University, where he carried out the research described here) has deployed almost 300 tracking devices called light-level geolocators on Painted Buntings from across the eastern population’s range. These tiny devices record sunrise and sunset times at a bird’s current location, which are used to estimate latitude and longitude. An analysis Rushing and his colleagues published in the journal Ornithological Applications in spring 2021 shows that male buntings that winter in Cuba are 20 percent less likely to return to their breeding grounds the following season than birds wintering elsewhere in their wintering range, primarily in the Bahamas and central and southern Florida. “Of course, we don’t know that it’s the pet trade,” says Rushing. “It could be that those [birds] have to migrate farther, or that there are other threats in Cuba. But it’s certainly consistent with the idea that the pet trade is a problem.” At one point during his study, Rushing got word from a contact in Cuba that a couple of buntings wearing “weird little devices on their backs” had been captured by illegal trappers there. The devices were Rushing’s geolocators.
LEFT: Painted Buntings, Florida by Danita Delimont, Alamy Stock Photo. TOP: A male Painted Bunting by Steve Byland, Shutterstock.
Indeed, there is still much we need to learn about the eastern Painted Bunting. When I asked Demarest whether climate change could be playing a role in what’s going on with this iconic bird, he pointed out that more frequent hurricanes would be more likely to create the open, shrubby habitat buntings seek than to destroy it. I quipped that maybe that’s why the birds are potentially increasing, and he couldn’t entirely rule out the idea. In its climate modeling, the National Audubon Society indicates that the Painted Bunting is a species that would likely undergo a northward range expansion under various warming scenarios. “I am still somewhat surprised at how little work has been done on this species,” says Clark Rushing, the geolocator researcher. “First, because they’re really interesting from an ecological perspective, and second, because people love ’em, which I think lends itself to people getting excited about the research.” While conservationists recognize that habitat loss and illegal bird trade are dangers to this bird, Demarest still worries that wildlife managers could be missing some key threat to the species while their attention is elsewhere. “You know, you’re chasing all the critters that are in really dire straits, and so you forget about the Painted Buntings,” he says. “Then 20 years from now, someone goes, ‘Hey, have you seen what’s happened to Painted Buntings lately?’” The popular community science platform eBird will be releasing its own trend data on Painted Buntings soon, which may help clarify how worried about them (or not) we should be. With so many birdwatchers keeping their eyes peeled, it seems unlikely that such a stunning rainbow of a bird will ever truly be forgotten for long. Rebecca Heisman, a freelance science writer based in Walla Walla, Washington, is writing a book on the history of bird migration research, due to be published in spring 2023. She can be reached at @r_heisman on Twitter, or via her website rebeccaheisman.com.
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How Early Were the Birds?
Exploring the BirdDinosaur Nexus by David Wiedenfeld
F
or more than 100 years starting in the 1860s, the famous Archaeopteryx lithographica was thought to be the earliest bird, or at least bird-like dinosaur. That’s because Archaeopteryx fossils showed something never seen before: feathers. This crow-sized creature with both bird and dinosaur traits lived during the Jurassic Period about 150 million years ago (MYA). That was a long time back, but the origin of birds was probably millions of years before then. It can be hard to decide, however, what was a bird and what wasn’t. That’s because many dinosaur lineages exhibited such bird-like characteristics as walking on two legs or having a kind of beak, although with teeth, but many of these creatures probably weren’t really birds. There is now scientific consensus that birds are “living dinosaurs” that evolved from a branch of dinosaur ancestors, but there is no distinct break that we can point to and say, “Now, these are birds, and these aren’t.” Instead, we see a gradual accumulation of bird-like characteristics, including feathers, over time. (And, as just mentioned, there were also lineages with bird-like characteristics that never became birds.) Millions of years before Archaeopteryx, dinosaurs like the squat, turkey-sized herbivore called Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus began to show some evidence of something that would eventually become feathers. Kulindadromeus and its relatives, and maybe even many other kinds of dinosaurs, had a type of proto-feathers: a covering of thread- or hair-like filaments that resemble some kinds of bird down. Such fine filaments were very different from
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the plumes seen on Archaeopteryx, and likely served as insulation rather than aiding in flight. Feathers do seem to make the bird, though: In modern times, we don’t know of any animals that have feathers that aren’t birds. This is what made Archaeopteryx such a key discovery for 19th-century paleontologists. Feathers, of course, usually do not preserve well as fossils; hard structures like bones are much better preserved. Feathers are only preserved as fossils when they are covered very quickly and gently by fine sediments that harden to stone without being further disturbed, saving their imprint. However, in the last 30 years, paleontologists have been investigating rock formations, especially in Asia and South America but also North America, that do preserve these kinds of impressions. There have been many recent discoveries that tell us more about the early birds and what they were like. Many of these recently found fossils show evidence of feathers, from early fluff-like feathers that resemble those found on modern, flightless kiwis to fully developed ones, as we think of a modern bird’s flight feathers. Some of these fossils have greatly increased our knowledge of what birds looked like, even down to their color patterns.
Colors, of course, are even less likely to fossilize than the feathers themselves, but modern analysis and imaging techniques have begun to provide us with ideas of what fossil birds did look like. One example is melanin, a pigment that gives black, gray, and reddish-brown colors that are often a key part of feather patterns. In feathers, melanin is often clumped in microscopic granules called melanosomes, and the nature of the melanin molecule makes it resistant to decay. In fossils, although the melanin itself is long gone, the melanosomes persisted long enough to leave tiny, microscopic impressions in fossilizing rock.
In some cases, modern microscopy, using such high-tech tools as high-energy X-rays from synchrotron radiation, has been able to detect what appear to be the shadows of melanosomes, and the arrangements of these suggest what the overall pattern of the feather may have looked like. For example, in living birds — say, a Red-shouldered Hawk — we can see a tail pattern of light and dark bands that is formed by patterns of melanosomes. Some of these types of bands have been detected in fossils like Anchiornis huxleyi, a striking bird-like dinosaur from about the same era as Archaeopteryx (150 MYA). Anchiornis had black-and-white
TOP: Archaeopteryx lithographica by Mark Brandon, Shutterstock BOTTOM: Artist's rendering of an Archaeopteryx by Herschel Hoffmeyer, Shutterstock
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patterns on its wings, tail, and leg-ruff feathers, and possibly sported a reddish-brown crown. Confuciusornis sanctus, from about 130 MYA, was another bird-like dinosaur with a dark body and light-colored wings. Reconstruction of these dinosaur-birds’ patterns suggest that they looked like something we might recognize as a bird pattern today, even if it’s not on a “bird” we know. Yellow and red pigments don’t fossilize well because these pigments are much more fragile than melanin and the relatively resistant melanosomes. Therefore, we don’t know much about yellow, red, or green coloration in early birds. But we can tell that some were iridescent, like hummingbirds or starlings are today. This is because iridescence is created from feather structure and the presence of melanin. Iridescent feathers seem to contain melanosomes that are of various shapes, including flattened and hollow, different from the shapes seen in flat black, gray, or brown. By looking at the shapes of the melanosomes, paleontologists can now see that some fossilized birds, such as Primotrogon, which lived about 50 MYA and was an early relative of our modern trogons, had iridescent plumage. The color blue in birds is also a structural color, relying on layers and spaces within the feather to reflect back blue light, as a prism can break light into its colors. The structure of these layers is also produced by melanosomes, but melanosomes of a very specific size and shape. As with the overall pattern of light and dark, these patterns of melanosomes can also be detected.
Because this is a structure in the feather, powerful new microscopy techniques have been able to detect these arrangements of melanosomes in fossils. An example is the blue in Eocoracias brachyptera (pictured above), a bird related to kingfishers that lived 47 MYA. The analysis of these tiny structures in well-preserved fossils shows that birds from tens of millions of years ago may not have looked that different from the birds we see today, with patterns of light and dark, blue, and sometimes iridescence. Wouldn’t it be great if there were only a way to get them on our life lists! Birds are great survivors; they’ve been around for at least 150 million years. But today they face their sharpest, most focused threat ever. In a blink of geologic time, many are in steady decline, while others are vanishing forever. Unlike past extinction waves, human activities are the main cause of this downturn and, thus, we need to play a key role in keeping the world’s diverse birdlife flying free. So that others will know what “our” birds look like, and for so many other reasons, let’s save the birds and their dinosaur legacy!
David Wiedenfeld is ABC’s Senior Conservation Scientist.
TOP: Eocoracias brachyptera reconstruction by Marta Zaher, Ph.D. at the University of Bristol LEFT: Artist's rendering of an Anchiornis huxleyi by Carl Buell
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B I R D CO N S E R V A TI ON | SU M M ER/ FA L L 2021
For 13 years, Katie O’Brien has worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in Marquette, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A large part of her job is helping to build partnerships key to saving some of the continent’s scarcest songbirds and other species. Here is some of Katie’s story, in her own words. I believe that successful bird conservation depends on ensuring the well-being of people and nature together.
The “Northwoods” region holds more than 75 percent of the breeding populations of two scarce warblers. I serve on the Kirtland’s Warbler Conservation Team and I co-chair the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group. Through diverse partnerships, we seek to conserve these species while meeting local communities’ needs.
For example, working with ABC on “Forestry for Birds” programs, we empower foresters, biologists, and landowners to apply practical, economical, and effective land management strategies that benefit these birds.
The FWS’s Migratory Bird Program is committed to welcoming and including all people in bird conservation activities. Our Urban Bird Treaty program helps large cities become spaces where birds and people can thrive and where connected conservation communities are sustained.
Additionally, by teaming up with ABC’s Bird City Americas program and local Rotary clubs, I get to join forces with business owners and community leaders from diverse professional and social viewpoints, as we strive toward resilient communities and bird populations for future generations.
Golden-winged Warbler Kirtland's Warbler
Award-winning watercolor painter Beatriz Benavente lives in Spain, where she specializes in scientific and bird illustration. You can follow her on Instagram: www.instagram.com/wildstories.art
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The
Gift of a
Atop Ecuador’s Cerro de Arcos mountain, a hummingbird with a shimmering blue throat probes orange flowers amid rocky outcroppings. Beneath a craggy ledge, his mate incubates a clutch of tiny eggs. These Blue-throated Hillstars go about their day unaware that their species is one of the rarest in the world, only discovered by ornithologists in 2017 and described to science in 2018. More and more, ABC is able to support vital bird conservation work thanks to our supporters having the forethought to name ABC as a beneficiary of their wills and estates. In the philanthropy world, this is known as “planned giving” because gifts are planned as part of individual estate and financial planning. Planned giving played a hand in helping the hillstar. The species’ restricted alpine meadow habitat was entirely unprotected and under severe threat of burning and overgrazing by cattle — until 2020, when ABC and our Ecuadorian partner Fundación de Conservación Jocotoco (Fundación Jocotoco) stepped in to purchase 110 acres to establish a nature reserve for this species. ABC could support this action thanks to generous donations from our supporters, including a bequest from the estate of Mary Janvrin. “When we lacked any income from tourism from one day to the next, Mary Janvrin and American Bird Conservancy helped us not only generously but also swiftly,” says Fundación Jocotoco’s Chief Executive Officer Martin Schaefer. “I am personally very thankful for this strong support, which allowed us to continue to manage and protect a network of reserves for some of the most threatened bird species on the planet.” Thanks to the estate of Mary Janvrin, ABC was also able to provide emergency pandemic relief to more than a dozen additional partners, ensuring their vital work could continue. Meanwhile, a generous legacy gift
Cerro de Arcos landscape, April 2018, by Michael Moens; RIGHT: Blue-throated Hillstar by Roger Ahlman
Lifetime from the Elane and Ron Nuehring Trust helped support ABC’s core costs, providing added confidence in uncertain times. At ABC, we have many supporters who have named our organization as a beneficiary of their will, retirement plan, trust, or life insurance policy. Those that inform us of being included in their estate plans are recognized as members of our Legacy Circle — our core group of committed individuals who support a common vision for the future of bird conservation. Legacy Circle members receive lifetime membership in ABC, invitations to special ABC events and field trips, and an exclusive annual letter from ABC’s President. Legacy gifts also enable ABC to expand our regional coverage. A generous bequest through the estate of longtime supporter Phyllis Brissenden allowed ABC to help partners complete three land protection projects in 2020, protecting 6,650 acres in Washington and Colorado for the Northern Spotted Owl and Gunnison Sage-Grouse. The same bequest is also allowing ABC to support a wide network of partners in Hawai'i to address mosquito-transmitted avian malaria, using a promising approach that limits mosquitoes’ reproductive capacity. This effort is critical if we are to prevent the extinction of many of the islands’ endemic honeycreepers, which lack immunity to introduced diseases these insects carry and transmit. In 2021, we launched an outreach campaign called “Birds, Not Mosquitoes” to raise local public support for this issue. For many ABC supporters, a planned gift allows them to make a more significant contribution to bird conservation than they feel is possible during their lifetimes. According to the Giving USA 2020 report, bequests contributed $43 billion to U.S. charities in 2019 — nearly 10 percent of all charitable giving in the country
that year. Over the last few years, planned gifts have enabled ABC to take on conservation projects we otherwise would not have been able to tackle. In addition, we are often able to use these funds to leverage donations from other individuals or organizations to achieve greater results. Simply put, legacy gifts are transformative for ABC and bird protection across the hemisphere. They represent the gift of a lifetime — for the individual and for birds. — Daniel J. Lebbin, ABC’s Vice President of Threatened Species
If you are interested in learning more about planned giving to ABC or joining our Legacy Circle, please contact Jack Morrison, ABC’s Director of Major Gifts and Planned Giving, at: jmorrison@abcbirds.org, 540-253-5780.
P.O. Box 249 The Plains, VA 20198 abcbirds.org 540-253-5780 • 888-247-3624
The Violet-crowned Hummingbird, one of the star birds at the Paton Center for Hummingbirds in Arizona, which ABC helped to protect. Photo by Eric Gofreed.
