BIRDCONSERVATION
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 prevent extinctions, reverse bird population declines, reduce threats, and build the bird conservation movement.
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.
BirdConservationis the member magazine of ABC and is published three times yearly
Managing Editor: Matt Mendenhall
Graphic Design: Maria de Lourdes Muñoz
VP of Communications & Marketing: Clare Nielsen
Contributors: Erin Chen, Sussy De La Zerda, Naamal De Silva, Gabriel Foley, Lewis Grove, Bennett Hennessey, Brad Keitt, Hardy Kern, Lara Long, Sea McKeon, Jack Morrison, Juan C. Oteyza, Michael J. Parr, Jordan Rutter, George E. Wallace, David A. Wiedenfeld, Kelly Wood
For more information contact: American Bird Conservancy P.O. Box 249
The Plains, VA 20198 540-253-5780 • info@abcbirds.org
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FEATURES
Summer Nights, Bright Lights, and Bullbats
Once a typical sighting at baseball games, Common Nighthawks have gone the way of the sacrifice bunt. p. 16
If You Build It, They Will Come
A new predator-proof fence in Hawai‘i offers more than a dozen seabird species new nesting habitat high above the rising Pacific. p. 24
DEPARTMENTS
Giovanny Suárez Espín, ABC's Ecuador Seabird Bycatch Coordinator p. 34 Summer 2024 TABLE OF CONTENTS
BIRD’S EYE VIEW
Investing in an Ethical Future for Conservation p. 4 ON THE WIRE p. 7
BIRDS IN BRIEF p. 14
ABC BIRDING
Bosque de las Nubes Natural Reserve, Dominican Republic p. 30
BIRD HERO
COVER: Red-footed Booby (‘Ā in Hawaiian) is one of a dozen seabird species that may potentially nest within a recently fenced protected area on Moloka‘i Island. Read more on p. 24. Photo by Wang LiQiang, Shutterstock.
LEFT: Northern Gannet portrait by Owen Deutsch, owendeutsch.com
Common Nighthawk by Agami Photo Agency, Shutterstock
Black-throated
Blue Warbler by Juan C. Oteyza
Red-tailed Tropicbird by Baiterek Media, Shutterstock
Yellow-eared
Parrots by Tom Friedel, BirdPhotos.com
Investing in an Ethical Future for Conservation
by Naamal De Silva
In this, ABC’s 30th anniversary year, we are looking to our past successes and strengths for inspiration. ABC has been successful in keeping some places wild for birds and other living beings throughout the Americas, achieving those results through numerous and varied partnerships, some of which extend all the way back to the early years of the organization. At the same time, this anniversary provides a perfect opportunity to consider the future of bird conservation both within ABC and in the wider community: how we might find even more success through integrating ever more ethical, inclusive, and expansive approaches. One way we are focusing on this topic is through our Conservation and Justice Fellowships, which we established in 2022. They present us with an opportunity to bring in a variety of new perspectives to help us with collective envisioning. After all, fellowships represent possibility.
ABC’s Conservation and Justice Fellowships are intended to illuminate how more deeply collaborative and interconnected approaches to bird conservation can lead to sustained success.
on consumption. This scarcity, in turn, leads to solutions that may not be as sustainable and expansive as we need them to be, and to engaging fewer people in protecting birds. Faced with species on the brink of extinction, those of us who are researchers and practitioners may rely on solutions and strategies that do not adequately consider local perspectives, histories, and possibilities. Our sense of urgency may also prevent us from considering the longer time frames critical for multifaceted research, for building trust and partnerships, and for managing projects adaptively.
At ABC, we recognize that effectively protecting wild birds throughout the Americas requires the creativity, dedication, and participation of far more people than are currently part of the conservation community. Barriers to broader support include the following:
Interconnected Challenges
We intend for Conservation and Justice Fellows to help us find creative solutions for interconnected challenges. Protecting and restoring habitats for birds has the potential to benefit all species and to address climate change. However, all conservation organizations work with scarce financial resources to address declines in species abundance and ecosystem health — declines exacerbated by climate change and our continued societal focus
ABOVE: Detail from "Murmurations” by Neha
1. Conservation and birding are both burdened by histories of exclusion and extraction. Many people with deeply rooted connections to specific places have always understood that relationships and interconnections and reciprocity are at the heart of sustainable stewardship. They recognize that the most satisfying work lies in caring for our beloved relatives, whether human, bird, or plant.
Misra, 2022.
2. Intersections between the needs of people and birds often remain invisible. We believe that working to explicitly illuminate connections between human well-being and bird conservation will enable us to attract and retain a larger number and greater diversity of partners, supporters, and staff.
3. Many people do not pay attention to birds. We must, therefore, invest in environmental education in schools and in informal settings. Inclusive approaches to birding and providing more equitable access to nature can nurture the next generation of conservationists, perhaps showing them the way to bird conservation careers.
Fellowships involve investing in the future contributions of individuals. Too many people who want to work in conservation are unemployed, underemployed, or are seeking new connections. Isolation and burnout are major challenges. We decided we could support the largest number of people through paid, parttime fellowships. We would provide Fellows with relevant background knowledge, including on bird conservation, ABC programs and partners, community engagement best practices, and shared learning about environmental justice. We would offer spaces for Fellows to learn from each other. Finally, we would provide Fellows with new networks, visibility, and mentors so that they feel a sense of belonging within the bird conservation field. In turn, the Fellows would provide us with new ideas, strengthen connections across communities, and actively seek opportunities to highlight and act where needs of birds and people intersect.
Launching Our Fellowship Program
In early 2022, members of our internal justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion group provided ideas about gaps or opportunities related to their specific bird conservation programs and priorities. This yielded six potential project ideas, each with one or two ABC staff to serve as guides. A broader request to all staff yielded two additional projects. We launched the Conservation and Justice Fellowships and recruited candidates through environmental justice
and education and storytelling spaces as well as from within our existing conservation networks.
In 2022, we awarded eight Fellowships. Projects included the impacts of pesticides on migrant farm workers; weaving Indigenous grassland stewardship practices into our habitat work; documenting stories about Hawaiian relationships with highly threatened endemic birds; and creating a toolkit to increase Indigenous women’s participation in the conservation of Alliance for Zero Extinction sites. Our first cohort began their work in the middle of 2022, working closely with project supervisors and partners. Monthly workshops on Saturdays helped create a sense of community among individuals spread out from Hawai‘i to South Carolina. ABC hosts said that the Fellows provided them with access to new networks and organizations or with opportunities for conversations that deepened their understanding of community engagement. They were able to more clearly illuminate specific connections between the well-being of birds and people. Fellows learned more about bird conservation, multi-institutional partnerships, and their research topics. Several Fellows found new full-time positions. One applied to graduate school and another found a new direction for research.
2022 Fellow Swapna Shepherd painted this portrait of an Acorn Woodpecker.
2024 Fellows Bring Diverse Perspectives to Bird Conservation
This summer, ABC announced our second cohort of Conservation and Justice Fellows. The 14 Fellows are working on 11 projects related to bird conservation in the Americas, using wideranging approaches to supporting the needs of people and birds. Over six months, they will carry out interviews with ABC’s staff and partners, make connections to new communities, explore questions, and undertake research. Their projects will cover topics such as neurodiversity and birding, Ecuador’s Turquoisethroated Puffleg (a lost species last documented in 1963), and much more. They will share their work through visual art, blog posts, articles, guidelines, and other mediums. Fellows will tell stories from their own experiences and what their projects reveal about how bird conservation and justice can be interwoven in the places ABC works to conserve. We hope that what the Fellows discover through their explorations will inform our own conservation work and bird conservation as a whole.
To read about the individual Fellows and their projects, scan the accompanying QR code.
Expanding the Work
This still did not feel like enough. We launched our Together for Birds Seed Grants in 2023 to provide additional opportunities (read more on p. 9) and then offered a new round of Conservation and Justice Fellowship projects in 2024 with the overarching
theme of “An Ethical Future for Conservation.” In 2022, we received about 100 applicants, and this year we had nearly 400. This year, several projects are co-hosted with partners, and winners are based in six countries and a variety of states. This spring, we hired 14 Fellows (see sidebar), and we’ll be able to offer more seed grants as well.
Over time, our collective efforts to protect and restore bird populations and habitat will become even more effective and holistic. We will make progress toward training and sustaining the next generation of bird conservationists. Eventually, these Fellows will take on leadership positions and make numerous meaningful contributions to bird conservation, community engagement, and advancing justice. Our institution and the biodiversity conservation field will become stronger, more diverse, and more integrated across disciplines and geographies. Conservation and Justice Fellows will help us to envision a future in which all birds, all people, and all living beings have the opportunity to thrive.
Naamal De Silva is the Vice President of ABC’s Together for Birds program. She was profiled in the “Bird Hero” column of our Winter 2023 issue (p. 38).
2022
Fellow Swapna Shepherd painted this portrait of a Hawai'i 'Amakihi.
Turquoise-throated
Puffleg.
Art by John Gould
Mass Collision in Chicago Prompts Installation of Bird Deterrent
Chicago’s McCormick Place Lakeside Center is installing a reputable window collision deterrent, Feather Friendly, on its glass windows this summer. The move comes after nearly 1,000 migrating birds died in one night in October 2023 when they crashed into the convention center’s windows, near the shores of Lake Michigan. A few days later, ABC urged action by taking out a fullpage ad in the Chicago Tribune.
“Our partners in Chicago have been raising the alarm about bird collisions at McCormick Place for a very long time,” said Bryan Lenz, ABC’s Glass Collisions Program Director. “We are thrilled that McCormick Place’s leadership has stepped up to retrofit their glass to ensure that millions of migrating wild birds will have safer passages through the city.”
The Chicago Bird Alliance (formerly Chicago Audubon Society), Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, and Chicago
Ornithological Society have long voiced concerns over McCormick Place as a danger to wild birds due to its position along Lake Michigan's lakefront, an area known for its high concentration of birds during migration. They have been monitoring the building for collisions for many years, working with Willowbrook Wildlife Center to try to save surviving birds and document the massive toll that the building takes on migrating birds while also advocating for change.
The tragic event this past October (which we covered in our Winter 2023 issue, p. 7) put an even bigger spotlight on the convention center’s window collision problem, drawing local and national media attention as well as involvement from ABC and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who joined the Chicago groups in holding individual conversations with McCormick Place.
The installation of Feather Friendly represents a major step forward in reducing bird strikes in Chicago. But there is more to be done. The next big step is to convince the Chicago City Council to adopt mandatory bird-friendly building design guidelines.
For resources on how you can prevent bird window strikes, visit abcbirds.org/glass-collisions. You'll find window solutions for homes, tips for advocating for retrofitting buildings, model local ordinances, and much more.
Common Yellowthroat by Joshua Galicki and the Chicago skyline by Erica Sánchez Vázquez
Workers install Feather Friendly film on windows at McCormick Place in June. Courtesy Feather Friendly.
ON the WIRE
New Protections Established for Four Colombian Reserves
This spring, several Colombian entities established, expanded, or further protected four nature reserves that collectively will conserve the habitats of hundreds of bird species, as well as mammals, amphibians, and more. These reserves are located in priority places for ABC — areas where the organization has been working for years with partners to prevent bird extinctions. Here’s a summary of each site, which are numbered on the map below.
1. Reserva Las Tángaras. This 5,722-acre site, located about 85 miles southwest of Medellín, was first protected by ABC partner ProAves in 2005. It is now the first Regional Natural Park named in the Department of Chocó. A total of 557 bird species have been recorded within the protected area, including the Gold-ringed Tanager and the Black-and-gold Tanager, both of which are Vulnerable and endemic to Colombia.
2. Reserva Loros Andinos. This ProAves reserve, established
in 2009 and named for Andean parrots, also received Regional Natural Park status this spring. Its 11,406 acres of shrub- and grassdominated páramo and high Andean forestlands are located between the municipalities of Roncesvalles, in the department of Tolima, and Génova, in the department of Quindío. The reserve’s 200-plus bird species include five threatened parrot species, three of which are endemic to Colombia: Yelloweared Parrot, Indigo-winged Parrot, and Rufous-fronted Parakeet.
3. Alto Calima. Seventeen months of work by the rural and ethnic communities of the western Colombian municipality of Calima El Darién has established Alto Calima as a Regional Public Protected Area. The project, led by the Trópico Foundation and supported by the Conserva Aves initiative, covers five ecosystems over more than 44,400 acres at the confluence of the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Feathered beneficiaries include the Vulnerable Cauca Guan and the Near Threatened Olive Finch.
4. Atuncela. This reserve, located in the municipality of Dagua, about 50 miles south of Alto Calima, has more than doubled in size from 2,505 to 5,766 acres, thanks to a direct investment by Conserva Aves and CORFOPAL, an ABC partner. Officially known as the Distrito Regional de Manejo Integrado Enclave Subxerofítico de Atuncela, it was first protected in 2007. Atuncela protects seven ABC priority birds, including the Endangered Purple Quail-Dove, Banded Ground-Cuckoo, and Black-and-chestnut Eagle and the Vulnerable Brown Wood-Rail and Long-wattled Umbrellabird.
for Rare Birds
Gold-ringed Tanager by Fundación ProAves, www.proaves.org
Four Places with Increased Protections
Olive Finch by David Fisher, Neotropical Bird Club
First Seed Grant Recipients Explore Ties to Birds
In late 2023, ABC awarded its first ever Together for Birds Seed Grants to five individuals. They are exploring humanity’s ties to birds in varied ways and pursuing ideas that advance belonging, creativity, compassion, inquiry, and mindful observation within bird conservation, environmental education, and birding.
“To me, ABC’s Together for Birds Seed Grants are just that: seeds, or new ways of perceiving, or new possibilities for conservation,” said Naamal De Silva, Vice President for Together for Birds. “I also see them as ways of repairing disconnection and disrespect of the natural world. And, finally, I see them as pinpricks of light, showing us ways to find joy despite grief or extinction or injustice.”
The recipients are:
Keir Chauhan, who worked on two projects: “Neurodiversity in Birding and Conservation” (with Jim Giocomo, ABC’s Central Regional
Director) and “Lost Birds and Discovery Narratives” (with John Mittermeier, ABC’s Director of the Search for Lost Birds). “I am proud to have worked alongside some incredible ABC staff members who have highlighted the significance of celebrating and empowering innovative conservation work,” Chauhan said.
Emma Childs, whose “Quilting the Future of Our Forests” project brought together small-scale landowners and ecologically minded individuals in North Carolina in the act of quilting, something Childs sees as representative of “so many wildlife management and habitat goals, trying to stitch together an array of landscapes and their varied uses and the needs placed upon them.”
Binta Dixon, who is writing a reflective essay titled “Walking the Road with Cardinals.” The piece is exploring the ideas
of “home” and the associated feelings and memories birds can evoke.
Kaleb Friend, a photographer and ABC Ambassador, who helped organize a “Birds and Poetry” event in Rock Creek Park, in Washington, D.C., where local poets shared original work inspired by bird outings. Many attendees also took a bird walk with ABC staff and volunteers and then took time to reflect, write, and share their own work.
Sebastian Levar Spivey, who wrote an essay accompanied by three illustrations about “Ecological Grief.” The relatively new idea, sometimes also called solastalgia, recognizes feelings of loss, dislocation, sorrow, fear, and becoming overwhelmed associated with species extinction and climate change. Levar Spivey focuses on the imperiled birds of Hawai‘i, which has come to be known as the “extinction capital of the world.”
Andean Alder seedlings by ECOAN
Hopeful Results Found for Three Hawaiian Birds
Surveys of Nihoa and Laysan Islands, two of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, have uncovered promising data for three native songbird species, all of which are listed as Endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). According to a new report co-authored by Chris Farmer, ABC’s Hawai‘i Program Director, and researchers from the University of Hawai‘i, the U.S. Geological Survey, and USFWS, the birds’ numbers have been stable or rising since the early 2010s.
The authors found that the Millerbird (Ululu) increased on Nihoa Island from approximately 520 birds in 2010 to around 1,200 in 2022. On Laysan, where ABC and several partners
translocated 50 Millerbirds from Nihoa in 2011-2012, the population rose to about 600 by 2019, the most recent year the island was surveyed. (Read about the Millerbird project in our Spring 2024 issue, p. 18.)
The Nihoa Finch (Palihoa), the other focus of surveys on Nihoa,
increased from about 4,900 in 2010 to nearly 6,600 in 2022. Its close relative on Laysan, the Laysan Finch (‘Ekupu‘u), was surveyed in both open and dense habitats across the island in 2019. The researchers estimated its population that year at more than 17,600.
President Signs ‘Urgently Needed’ Bird Conservation Bill
Good news! In late April, President Biden signed into law the Migratory Birds of the Americas Conservation Enhancements Act, which reauthorized the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA) through fiscal year 2028. The House of Representatives and Senate each passed the bill overwhelmingly.
NMBCA is a federal grants program funding migratory bird research and habitat restoration throughout the Western Hemisphere. Since 2002, grants from the NMBCA have supported a remarkable 717 projects in 43 countries that benefit 400 migratory bird species.
“This legislation is urgently needed to help the diminishing
migratory bird populations across the Americas,” said Michael J. Parr, President of ABC. “Effective conservation projects like those supported by the NMBCA can help us turn these losses around. With increased funding, the door is opened to greater participation from Latin American and Caribbean partner groups, as well as larger projects that are more effective at meeting bird conservation needs throughout the hemisphere.”
One of the nation’s most important bird laws, the NMBCA has helped catalyze bird conservation and encourage collaboration. The law encourages habitat protection, education, research, monitoring, and other work to provide for the long-term protection of
neotropical migratory birds. Advances in conservation for many declining species, such as the Cerulean, Canada, and Golden-winged Warblers, owe a great deal to the NMBCA.
Golden-winged Warbler by Joshua Galicki
Laysan Finch (‘Ekupu‘u) by Cameron Rutt
ABC Friends Celebrate Our 30th Anniversary
In light of ABC’s 30th anniversary, a few of our partners and Board members recently shared their thoughts on our first three decades of bird conservation work. We’re grateful for their kind words and support!
“No other bird conservation organization has achieved as much on-theground habitat conservation as ABC. The organization is focused, disciplined, and fearless. Clear, tangible results combined with the highest ratings from charity ratings organizations is a winning combination. It is an honor to work with the staff and Board — their commitment to delivering superior results with integrity and respect gives me hope for the future of birds.”
—
LarrySeltzer,currentChairofABC’sBoard of Directors and CEO of The Conservation Fund in Arlington, Virginia
“As a Board member originally from Ecuador, I have been continuously impressed by the depth of ABC's collaboration with partner
organizations across Latin America. In recent decades we have seen a huge number of local organizations created to protect birds in the region, and ABC has been the leader in helping them build new reserves to protect habitats and build institutional stability to steward those areas for the long term. I am so appreciative of ABC staff for making me feel welcome in the organization, and making me feel my opinion is valued and that they care for my people and my land.”
MaribelGuevara,ABCBoardmemberandDirector of the ECOador International Film Festival
“When we started ECOAN in 2000, I told people that when it comes to saving nature, the solution is to work with local stakeholders and local communities, because they need to be part of the solution. Engage them to be allies providing them: capacity-building, jobs, leadership, and hope with real and concrete actions on the ground. Most organizations didn’t want to hear that. But happily, American Bird Conservancy did. ABC was the first international group to hear my message and support our work. Now, see where we are after 24 years working as a great family.”
— TinoAucca,PresidentofECOAN,Peru(oneof our longest-standing partners)
“Congratulations ABC on three decades of widening the birdwatching field of view to bring the avian conservation conversation into a more inclusively diverse focus. It’s been said that ‘many hands make light work.’ Since conservation means caring, I know that many hearts working together will mean more birds. Here’s to the next 30!”
— J. Drew Lanham, author, poet, public speaker, and scientist based at Clemson University in South Carolina
“We wish ABC a long life! For more than 10 years, ABC has been supporting the Aquasis Araripe
Manakin conservation program, with funding for forest restoration activities and enabling the recovery of the manakin’s habitat. ABC has also facilitated training courses that generate learning opportunities through exchanges with other conservation projects, thus strengthening our purpose and inspiring us through successful experiences. We are very grateful.” — Karina Linhares, Project Coordinator of the Araripe Oasis Project at Aquasis, an ABC partner in Brazil
Photo by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Join The 10 Million Acre Challenge!
As we mark our 30th year in bird conservation, we celebrate the more than 3,000 bird species that have benefited from habitat conserved by American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and our partners. Around 30 percent of the world’s total bird species have been helped thanks to YOU and all of the generous donors who make this important work possible. We are thankful for the birds saved and habitat conserved. Yet, we recognize there is still much to be done to conserve wild birds and their habitats.
Our bird conservation programs have never been more important. Five years have passed since the groundbreaking report co-authored by ABC on the loss of nearly three billion birds from the U.S. and Canada. Hundreds of bird species
throughout the Americas, including the Rufous Hummingbird, Black-capped Petrel, and Cherrythroated Tanager, are still facing population declines.
Will you support the next 30 years of bird conservation with a gift today?
Looking beyond 2024, ABC is implementing a large-scale vision to conserve the next 10 million acres of bird habitat. Through this ambitious “10 Million Acre Challenge” campaign, ABC will continue our critical work to prevent extinctions, reverse bird population declines, reduce threats to all birds, and build the bird conservation movement. This challenge also includes making all habitat safe for birds, ranging from the land, to the sea, to shorelines, and to the air. We do this, for example, by encouraging cat owners to keep their cats indoors, advocating for pesticide restrictions, and working to reduce impacts to birds from glass collisions.
Will you help kick-start ABC’s efforts to do even more for birds in our next 30 years of bird conservation? Please respond with a generous gift today.
Your support is crucial for the long-term conservation of birds and their habitats. Thank you for helping us conserve the next 10 million acres of habitat for birds!
Use the enclosed envelope, scan the code, or visit abcbirds.org/10MillionAcres
LEFT: Black Skimmer flock by Natalia Kuzmina, Shutterstock
RIGHT: Least Auklet by Alan Wilson
New Bird Atlas Benefits ABC
ABC is the sponsor of the newly published book
BIRDS in BRIEF
says or does, we are not going back. We will only move forward together.”
ABC Staffers Honored in Wisconsin
Birds of North America: A Photographic Atlas, and we are partnering with the publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press, to offer ABC Members an exclusive discount on orders from its website, press.jhu.edu. Use code HBIRDS24 at checkout for 30% off your order. Scan the QR code below to purchase the book! The code is valid through 2025, and a third of the proceeds from the book will support ABC. The 560-page hardcover atlas features accounts describing 1,144 bird species recorded in the United States and Canada, including Hawai‘i and Alaska. Author Bruce M. Beehler covers all of the expected North American birds as well as rarities and vagrants from the neotropics, Europe, Asia, and the oceans. ABC President Michael J. Parr wrote the foreword.
Christian Cooper Wins Daytime Emmy
Coffee Discount Available to ABC Members
ABC is partnering with Birds & Beans, an organic coffee company, to offer ABC Members an exclusive discount on orders from the company's website, birdsandbeanscoffee.com. Use code ABC15 for 15% off your order!
Birds & Beans sells only coffee certified as Bird Friendly by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. In addition to being fair-trade and organic, every Bird Friendly coffee bean is grown in the shade of trees that provide bird habitat!
On June 8, birder Christian Cooper, the host of Extraordinary Birder on National Geographic TV, won this year’s Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Daytime Personality (Non-Daily). The six-episode documentary follows Cooper as he introduces viewers to birds of various parts of the United States, including Puerto Rico, California, and New York City.
In May 2020, Cooper, a Black science writer and editor, took a video while he was birding in Central Park in which he endured racist accusations from a white dog-walker. The incident went viral and helped spark the first Black Birders Week, now an annual series of virtual and in-person events featuring Black leaders and experts in the birding community.
In his acceptance speech, Cooper reflected on being “a closeted queer kid in the 1970s and a Black kid in the almost totally then all-white field of birding.” He added: “I just have to say the world has changed happily, and no matter what anybody
The Wisconsin Society for Ornithology recently honored two Wisconsin-based ABC staff members in its 2024 Passenger Pigeon Awards. The society presented Shawn Graff, ABC’s Vice President for the U.S. and Canada, and Bryan Lenz, the Director of ABC’s Bird City Network and Glass Collisions program, with the Noel J. Cutright Award, which is presented to individuals, groups, or organizations that work on behalf of endangered, threatened, or common species; promote the establishment, management and protection of bird habitat; and educate the public on bird conservation issues.
Graff previously served as Executive Director of the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, based in West Bend, Wisconsin, where he led the 2008 purchase of a former golf course along the western shore of Lake Michigan and its subsequent conversion into a nature reserve. And before Lenz joined ABC, he was Director of the community conservation program at Bird City Wisconsin and Chief Scientist at Western Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory (now the Lake Michigan Bird Observatory).
At Bird City Wisconsin, he helped eight other states build similar programs, and now that effort has evolved into the international Bird City Network.
Study Reveals Lookalike Hummingbird Species
The largest hummingbird species in the world, western South America’s aptly named Giant
Christian Cooper © National Geographic
Hummingbird, is in fact two species, according to a new study.
Researchers who tracked the birds with geolocators and satellite transmitters found that birds of the northern population remain in the high Andes Mountains all year. By contrast, the southern population migrates from 14,000 feet in the mountains down to sea level for the breeding season. The two groups look identical, but the scientists say that behavioral and genetic differences are enough to make them distinct species. They’re proposing the split species be named Northern Giant Hummingbird and Southern Giant Hummingbird.
“It’s mind-boggling that until now nobody figured out the Giant Hummingbird mystery, yet these two species have been separate for millions of years,” said senior author Christopher Witt of the University of New Mexico. He noted that the species overlap on their high-elevation wintering grounds.
The study appeared recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Florida Bolsters Balloon Release Ban
Florida, one of about ten U.S. states that forbid intentional
balloon releases by the public, recently strengthened its ban by removing loopholes. In a new law that took effect July 1, the Sunshine State updated a previous statute that included exemptions for releasing balloons that were considered biodegradable or photodegradable and for anyone who released fewer than 10 balloons in a 24-hour period. Those exemptions have been removed in the new law, which also defines releasing balloons as littering violations. Anyone charged under the new law would face fines or jail time, depending on the amount of litter released.
Balloon releases endanger birds, turtles, and other wildlife that mistake deflated balloons for prey or become entangled in attached ribbons or string. Other states with balloon release bans are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Maine, Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Loon Decline Tied to Climate Change
Murky lake water that results from climate change appears to be the main reason Common Loons in northern Wisconsin are in decline, according to a new study published in the journal Ecology. The study, led by biology professor Walter Piper of Chapman University, found that
as water clarity in lakes worsened from 1995 to 2021, loon chicks had less body mass, especially in July, a critical month for chicks to grow.
Piper and his colleagues note that as the planet has warmed, rainstorms have increased in intensity, producing more runoff into lakes. Since loons rely on clear water to find prey, the increased sediment in lakes makes it challenging for them to feed. In a previous paper, the researchers, who have been studying northern Wisconsin’s Common Loons since the early 1990s, reported that the adult population has declined by 22 percent in nearly 30 years. Moreover, the number of nonbreeding loons (“floaters”) returning to the region has plunged 53 percent. The team is now studying loons in neighboring Minnesota to see if similar trends are occurring in that state.
Bird-Safe Buildings Law Approved in Maine
In mid-June, the city council in Portland, Maine, unanimously passed a bird-safe building ordinance — the first such law in a city in New England. In 2023, the state of Maine passed a birdsafe architecture law, becoming the fourth state to do so.
Portland’s new law, which is similar to one that is on the books in Madison, Wisconsin, requires new buildings or renovations of 10,000 square feet or more to follow ABC’s Bird-Friendly Materials guidance for glass windows. Two years of advocacy by Maine Audubon and others led to the council passing the measure.
ABC thanks the Leon Levy Foundation and David Walsh for their support of our Glass Collisions program.
Giant Hummingbird by FotoRequest, Shutterstock
Common Loon by Paul Rossi
SUMMER NIGHTS, BRIGHT LIGHTS, AND BULLBATS
Once a typical sighting at baseball games, Common Nighthawks have gone the way of the sacrifice bunt.
By Frederic J. Frommer
Along with peanuts, Cracker Jack, cold beer, and the seventh-inning stretch, many baseball fans of a certain age have another fond association of taking in a game on a warm summer night: watching acrobatic Common Nighthawks fly around the ballpark, feasting on insects drawn to the stadium lights.
In 2002, the late birding columnist and author Bud Starling of Indiana recalled seeing the birds at games of the Indianapolis Indians, the Minor League affiliate of Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team.
“Years ago, when I worked at hotels in Downtown Indianapolis, a trip to Lafayette Square or Glendale Mall always produced a display of these nocturnal birds as they searched the skies for flying insects attracted to the bright lights,” Starling wrote in the Indianapolis Star. “The floodlights of the Indians’ baseball stadium also drew a bumper crop of nighthawks to watch when the game was between innings or had settled into a pitchers’ duel.”
But he noted the decline of the birds since then, hoping — vainly as it turned out — that it was temporary: “Summer nights would be diminished without the nighthawk’s flashing white wing patch and peent! call,” Starling wrote.
As recently as a decade ago, the New York Times was still recommending baseball games as a way to spot nighthawks.
“At night, look for them flying under the bright lights at ballgames or in supermarket parking lots,” the paper wrote in a 2014 story.
Not unlike many other bird species, the Common Nighthawk’s English name is misleading. To borrow from Mike Myers’ Coffee Talk quip on Saturday Night Live — “Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island. Discuss” — the nighthawk isn’t strictly nocturnal, and it’s not a hawk either.
“The joke amongst people who study nighthawks is that this is a terrible name for a bird,” says Gretchen Newberry, author of the book, The Nighthawk’s Evening:NotesofaFieldBiologist. “It’s not always active at night. It’s mostly around at sunset and sunrise. It’s not a hawk, and it’s becoming less and less common.”
Nighthawks can be found in cities, where they often nest on flat roofs, and the countryside, where they nest on the ground, typically on dirt, sand, gravel, bare rock, and grasslands.
They are aerial insectivores, the outfielders of the bird world. Like a center fielder diving to catch a sinking line drive, nighthawks swoop to catch (and eat) insects midflight. Sporting long, pointed wings, the birds are mottled brown and black, which helps to camouflage them on the ground. They have distinctive white stripes on their wings.
“When I was a kid, we saw these birds hawking bugs above the lights over the baseball fields all spring and summer, and we knew these birds by the common name, ‘bullbats,’” wrote Paul Franklin in the Birmingham News in 2011. “And to this day when I see Common Nighthawks, I think of baseball fields and games played years ago.”
But such sightings are much rarer these days, especially in the eastern part of the United States.
Big Drop-off
From 1966 to 2019, the U.S. population of Common Nighthawks declined by 48 percent, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Partners
A Common Nighthawk flares its wings and tail in flight.
Photo by Rob Palmer Photography, Shutterstock
LEFT: A Common Nighthawk perches on a fence. Photo by Julie Urasaki, Shutterstock
Common Nighthawk by Larry Master, masterimages.org
in Flight, a network of more than 150 organizations from around the Western Hemisphere focused on conserving landbirds, has estimated their global breeding population at 23 million. Like other aerial insectivores, nighthawks have been diminished by pesticides that reduce populations of flying insects such as mosquitoes.
In 2016, ABC joined a lawsuit along with beekeepers, farmers, and public interest groups that argued that the federal government was insufficiently regulating neonicotinoids — insecticide compounds often found in seed coatings. (Such “neonics” are toxic to birds and invertebrates, a 2013 ABC study found.) More recently, ABC teamed up with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in 2023 on behalf of 65 nonprofit groups, urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make major reforms in how it regulates systemic insecticides, with a particular focus on neonics. And this year, ABC filed a “friend of the court brief” to support a Center for Food Safety lawsuit against EPA’s interpretation of pesticide-coated seeds. The brief brought attention to the “extraordinarily negative impacts of neonicotinoid-coated seeds on birds,” says Hardy Kern, ABC’s Director of Government Relations for the Pesticides and Birds Campaign.
The stakes are high for nighthawks and other aerial insectivores because as neonic coatings wash and blow off of seeds, they contaminate air, soil, and waterways; populations of invertebrates then crash, leaving less food for the birds.
Nighthawks are battling other trends too, such as loss of grasslands, prairies, dunes, woodland clearings, and other habitats — along with another culprit that might surprise you.
“Nighthawks used to be very abundant in cities and they used to nest on gravel rooftops, but there was a change in roofing practices where gravel was replaced with tar and that pretty much eliminated the ability of nighthawks to nest on gravel rooftops,” says Gabriel Foley, who runs the Maryland-DC Breeding Bird Atlas and, for his Master’s thesis, researched nighthawk habitat use in Canada’s boreal forest.
He says another challenge facing nighthawks is something called “temporal mismatch.” That refers to birds coming back from their southern migration spots expecting to find a bounty of insects — only to be behind schedule because the insects have moved up their hatching period due to climate change. It’s the insect version of Major League Baseball moving up Opening Day to March from April.
“The nighthawk population decline is especially notable in the eastern U.S.,” Foley says. “If you look at the nighthawks that are out on the prairies, they’re more abundant than they are here in the east, but it’s the boreal forest that seems to be their stronghold. The numbers that are breeding in the boreal forests seem to be pretty stable.” He adds that since the species has a large range, there can be substantial differences in abundance between locations. "Nighthawks are not evenly distributed across the boreal, for example. They're most abundant in more open areas, such as recently burned forest."
That has translated to a loss of nighthawks in populated areas — and explains why fans are less likely to find them at ballparks like they did 30 or 40 years ago, at least in the eastern states. “If you talk to folks from the ’80s or ’90s, nighthawks, which are also pretty loud birds, were kind of an expected thing. And that really has changed,” Foley says.
Foley points out that one obstacle to nighthawk recovery is getting better numbers on them — which is a problem with nightjars in general, the bird family nighthawks belong to.
“They are most active in the evenings, so they just don’t get picked up on [daytime] surveys,” he says. “So, we don’t really have good information on them. We’re trying to get around that by doing things like the Nightjar Survey Network, which is specifically focused on detecting nightjars.”
Newberry, the nighthawks book author, has studied the birds’ habitat in urban areas and the grasslands of South Dakota. She found that in recent decades, ethanol production has also had a detrimental impact.
“The amount of grasslands has decreased substantially in the last 30 years because of the push for ethanol,” she says. “So people who own land that has grasslands have converted a lot of it to corn. And so a lot of grassland birds like nighthawks have really suffered.”
But Newberry adds that the birds have found other habitats.
“There are places where they’re doing well like sagebrush and [elsewhere in] the American West,” she says. “There are a lot of open areas where they’re doing fine. They also nest on sandbars, and they’re not doing so hot there because they have to deal with people and dogs and all kinds of things that a lot of beach birds have to deal with.”
In her book, Newberry praises the birds’ adaptability: “There is something to admire about the Common Nighthawk, an animal that keeps trying to survive and is willing to give nearly anything a shot.”
Stepping Up to the Plate
Due to the nighthawk’s range throughout a wide swath of the Western Hemisphere and its large population, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List classifies the bird as Least Concern. But because of habitat loss, pesticides, free-roaming cats, collisions with vehicles, and other threats, the species is on some national and state conservation lists. Canada and New York list it
as a species of Special Concern, while Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont classify it as Endangered within their states.
Over many years, conservation agencies and nonprofits have tried to help nighthawks in various ways. Adding small patches of gravel to nongravel roofs can lure nighthawks to new nesting sites, but the practice isn’t widespread because high temperatures on roofs can imperil the birds, and rooftop nesting makes them more vulnerable to aerial predators. Long-term, the birds’ best hope is for more natural habitat — woodland clearings, beaches, coastal sand dunes, sagebrush, grasslands, and others — to be preserved, and for pesticide use, particularly herbicide runoff, to decline.
‘To this day when I see Common Nighthawks, I think of baseball fields and
games played years ago.’
Homeowners and others who care for lawns can help by using fewer synthetic chemicals. One reason people use chemicals is to control grubs, but nonchemical options are available. ABC’s Kern says it’s important to limit moisture and aerate a lawn to reduce grub numbers. And he highly recommends nematodes and neem oil for grub control (as long as users follow label directions).
continues on p. 22
Common Nighthawk chicks by Gabriel J. Foley
Game Birds
A variety of bird species turn up at baseball stadiums large and small around North America. Some are attracted to the insects lured in by the lights while others may be passing overhead or flying around the field itself. Here are a few species (active either during daylight or evening hours) that you might tally on your next trip to a ballgame.
1 Chimney Swift
2 Common Nighthawks
3 Peregrine Falcon
4 Northern Rough-winged Swallow (juvenile) 5 Cliff Swallow
Barn Swallow
Cedar Waxwing
Illustration by Christopher Vest. Stadium based on Fenway Park in Boston.
Count Nighthawks Near You
Anytime you encounter Common Nighthawks, it’s important to report your sightings on the app or website of eBird, the world’s largest biodiversityrelated citizen science project. But if you’d like to go a step further for nighthawks and the wider family of nightjars, you can participate in a volunteer survey project, such as one of these.
Nightjar Survey Network nightjars.org
Coordinated by the Center for Conservation Biology with the help of state and local partner organizations, this project relies on volunteers to count all nightjars seen or heard on one night per year during roadside counts along a predetermined nine-mile route. Routes are available in most U.S. states.
Canadian Nightjar Survey birdscanada.org/bird-science/ canadian-nightjar-survey
This Birds Canada project tallies the three nightjars found in Canada: Common Nighthawk, Eastern Whip-poor-will, and Common Poorwill. Volunteers count birds along roadsides once per year between June 15 and July 15 at dusk.
Chicago Nighthawk Project chicagobirder.org/chicago-nighthawk-project
This Chicago Ornithological Society monitoring program, now in its third year, relies on volunteers to count nighthawks on three nights each June.
continued from p. 19
As ABC’s point person on pesticides, Kern primarily helps nighthawks and many other species through his advocacy and lobbying work. He represents ABC in stakeholder meetings with the EPA’s Interagency Working Group on Endangered Species Act Mitigations. “This group includes environmental advocates, grower groups, pesticide industry, and farm bureaus all working together to understand each other’s
challenges and come up with possible yet effective measures to reduce the impact of pesticides on ESA-listed species,” Kern says. “The most recent workshop was specifically on herbicide runoff and developing new ways to limit pesticide contamination of waterways. We presented the wildlife view and had some great conversations with industry.”
Research is another important factor in conserving nighthawks. Studies about the species are published every year, helping scientists and conservationists better understand the bird’s migration, behaviors, and habitat needs.
One recent study, led by Canadian ecologist Elly Knight and published in the journal Ecography in 2021, is “probably one of the most important pieces of nighthawk conservation research,” says Foley. The researchers tracked 52 nighthawks from 12 breeding populations with GPS tags to determine their “migratory connectivity” — the degree to which populations are linked in space and time across the annual cycle. They found that no matter where they breed, nighthawks follow similar migration routes in spring and fall across the Gulf of Mexico. The paper could inform conservation work in the birds’ wintering and breeding ranges and along their north- and southbound paths.
Everyday birders can also help nighthawk conservation by assisting with surveys like the Nightjar
Common Nighthawks by Michael J. Parr
Survey Network (see sidebar). One of the only currently active local surveys is in Chicago. A few years ago, the Chicago Ornithological Society launched a volunteer monitoring program called the Chicago Nighthawk Project, designed to track, study, and conserve the birds in the city.
“Part of it was inspired by my early experiences of seeing them at a lot of these baseball games,” says Edward Warden, the society’s president. “We’re looking to try to start to address their population declines, at least locally, and try to conserve them.”
On Chicago’s South Side, where the White Sox play, Warden says that the nighthawk population appears to be holding steady. But his friends who watch Chicago’s other team, the Cubs, tell him they have noticed fewer nighthawks at Wrigley Field than in the past.
“The species across the United States is in decline,” he notes. “We’re no exception. Our region is also seeing declines with nighthawks, but it seems like it’s not quite as dramatic overall on average as the East Coast populations.”
Warden calls it a fascinating experience seeing the iconic birds at the ballpark.
“You’re in a large space full of screaming people, and all of a sudden you’ve got birds who are not there by accident but by design, that’s where they want to be, they intend to be, to hunt and find food,” he says. “And here you are with everything around you lit up as much as possible and these birds descending from the night sky coming out of the darkness around the stadium and then moving their way in and out of these massive floodlights. One moment you don’t see anything, and the next, it’s a full-blown photo shoot that you don’t really get in any other context.”
ABC thanks the Raines Family Fund, the Carroll Petrie Foundation and the Cornell Douglas Foundation for their support of our Pesticides program.
Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and sports and politics historian, is the author of several books, including You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals. In our Fall 2023 issue, he wrote about a 1970s TV show about the Eskimo Curlew. Follow him on X @ffrommer.
Stadium lights at PNC Park shine down on a Pittsburgh Pirates night game. Photo by Paul Brady Photography, Shutterstock
IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
A new predator-proof fence in Hawai‘i offers more than a dozen seabird species new nesting habitat high above the rising Pacific.
By Matt Mendenhall
In 2023, nine young Wedge-tailed Shearwaters (‘Ua‘u kani) waddled on salmon pink legs out of their burrows on Moloka‘i, one of the main Hawaiian islands, to join the millions of other members of their species that roam the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Successful fledgings of an abundant seabird species aren’t usually breaking news, but because the youngsters came from a special place called the Mokio Preserve, their survival is, in fact, a big deal.
Fossil bones of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters found at Mokio suggest the species once nested on the site, but non-native predators such as cats, rats, deer, and mongooses have made much of Moloka‘i Island unwelcome for nesting seabirds, especially those that burrow underground to nest, like shearwaters. Since 2009, Butch Haase, the Executive Director of the Moloka‘i Land Trust, which owns Mokio Preserve, has been working toward the dream of rolling out the welcome mat for seabirds.
With the assistance of ABC, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Coastal Program, USFWS Partners Program, Maui Nui Endangered Seabird Recovery Project, and other partners, that dream is now a reality. The Land Trust and its partners first put up a temporary fence to keep deer out of a 20acre section of the 1,718-acre preserve. The deerproof fence paid dividends quickly, allowing native plants to take root, and as it proved to be working, managers expanded the fenced area to 40 and later 60 acres.
In August 2020, Wedge-tailed Shearwaters were found to be excavating nest burrows on the site, and that fall, two chicks fledged. At the same time, crews began to build a permanent predatorproof conservation fence around nearly 90 acres overlooking the ocean on the northwestern side of the preserve. While construction continued in the following years, shearwaters kept coming back. In 2021, they fledged seven chicks, but in 2022, a single mongoose preyed on 12 adult birds, wiping out all of that year’s breeding pairs — a gruesome reminder of the urgent need for the fence to be completed.
Luck was on the shearwaters’ side in 2023, when they fledged nine offspring, and then, in April 2024, contractors completed the last section of the 5,612-foot fence down a steep, rocky cliff. Moloka‘i
Land Trust biologists banded all of the chicks that have fledged since 2020, as well as the adults that arrive to breed. This year, they counted a record 29 adult shearwaters. Any chicks hatched this summer will be banded in October and should fledge by late November.
They’re not the only seabirds that rely on Mokio. A Black Noddy colony uses caves nearby in the Anapuka Dunes, and Red-tailed and White-tailed Tropicbirds nest along the preserve’s cliffs. Brown Boobies and Great Frigatebirds also roost on the preserve.
Another factor that makes Mokio attractive to seabirds (and conservationists) is its home, Moloka‘i Island. While it sits between O‘ahu to the west and Maui to the east, it has far fewer human residents than its neighbors and does not have resorts or other infrastructure for tourists. All of that means the north shore of the island is almost devoid of human lighting, making it much safer for burrowing seabirds. Plus, two other natural areas on the island hold promise for potential future seabird sanctuaries.
High Hopes
The conservation groups and government agencies that built the $1 million conservation fence have high hopes for the protected area. More than a dozen seabird species, including the Laysan (Mōlī) and Black-footed Albatross (Ka‘upu), may breed on the site eventually.
Worldwide, seabird populations have fallen 70 percent since the 1950s, and as the climate crisis worsens, their numbers appear to be in further
LEFT: A new conservation fence winds through the Mokio Preserve on Moloka'i. Photo by Moloka'i Land Trust
A Laysan Albatross, lured to the Mokio Preserve by decoys, inspects the cliffside on Moloka'i. Photo by Butch Haase, Moloka'i Land Trust
Make Way for Seabirds
The Mokio Preserve’s new conservation fence has the potential to provide a protected breeding site for most if not all of the following seabird species.
Black Noddy (Noio)
Global population: 1.3 million; decreasing. Breeds at Mokio and on islands throughout the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
White-tailed Tropicbird (Koa‘e kea)
Global population: 400,000; decreasing. Breeds at Mokio and throughout Hawai‘i, on islands in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, and in the Caribbean Sea.
Red-tailed Tropicbird (Koa‘e ‘ula)
Global population: 70,000; decreasing. Breeds on islands in the Pacific (including the Mokio Preserve) and Indian oceans and on the southwest coast of Australia.
Laysan Albatross (Mōlī)
Global population: 1.6 million; stable. Breeds on Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, and Lehua Islands and has been spotted at Mokio recently. Occurs throughout the Pacific Ocean, from the coasts of Mexico to Taiwan. Midway Atoll, Laysan Island, and French Frigate Shoals support 90 percent of the global breeding population.
Black-footed Albatross (Ka‘upu)
Global population: 139,800; increasing. In the main Hawaiian islands, it nests on 285-acre uninhabited Lehua Island. Primary breeding sites are Laysan Island and Midway Atoll; also breeds on other Northwestern Hawaiian
Islands, and on islands off Japan.
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel (‘Akē‘akē)
Global population: 150,000; decreasing. Occurs in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Breeds on Kaua‘i, Maui, the island of Hawai‘i (in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park), and on Lehua. Also nests in Japan and on the Galapagos, and on several islands in the Atlantic.
Tristram’s Storm-Petrel (‘Akihike‘ehi‘ale)
Global population: 20,000; stable. Occurs in the central and western Pacific Ocean. Breeds on Nihoa and most of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and on a few islands in Japan.
Hawaiian Petrel (‘Ua‘u)
Global population: 7,500-16,600; decreasing. Endangered. Breeds on Maui, Hawai‘i, Kaua‘i, Lāna‘i, and possibly Moloka‘i. Spends the nonbreeding season in the central Pacific.
Wedge-tailed Shearwater (‘Ua‘u kani)
Global population: more than 5 million; decreasing. Nests widely throughout the Northwestern and main Hawaiian islands, and on many other islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Began breeding at Mokio in 2020.
Great Frigatebird (‘Iwa)
Global population: 120,000; decreasing. Occurs in the central Pacific and Indian oceans and in part of the Atlantic east of Brazil. In Hawai‘i it breeds in the
Northwestern islands and roosts in large numbers on islets around the main islands, including at Mokio.
Brown Booby (‘Ā)
Global population: 200,000; decreasing. Breeds across the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and on islets around the main islands; it roosts at Mokio. Also nests on islands around the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, the Caribbean and Red seas, and in waters north of Australia.
Newell ’ s
Shearwater (‘A‘o)
Global population: 10,000-20,000; decreasing.
Critically
Endangered. Nests only in Hawai‘i: on Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i, Moloka‘i, and Lehua, possibly on O‘ahu, Maui, and Lāna‘i.
Red-footed Booby (‘Ā)
Global population: 1.4 million; decreasing. Breeds throughout the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and on Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, and a few other spots in the main islands. Also nests around the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, Caribbean Sea, and seas north of Australia.
Scan for links to bird profiles and to learn more on the
Sources: “Assessment of Seabird Restoration Priorities for the U.S. Pacific Islands” by A. Raine, et al., 2022; Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species; Birds of the World, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
Mokio Preserve Fence.
Photo by Jim Denny
Photo by Jim Denny
jeopardy. Warming oceans and rising sea levels threaten nesting habitat and populations of prey fish, while stronger storms can be deadly. The seabird breeding habitat of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, consisting largely of low-lying atolls, is of particular concern.
For that reason, government agencies and conservation groups have been installing conservation fences in the much higher main Hawaiian islands for more than a decade. The fence at the Mokio Preserve is one of a growing number of fences to be finished in the state and the first on Moloka‘i. The sea cliffs at Mokio are 100 to 380 feet high — a perfect place for seabirds to avoid rising ocean waters. The high cliffs were a factor in the Mokio Preserve being ranked as a top-five priority location for seabird restoration across all U.S. Pacific Islands in a 2022 USFWS review that queried more than 70 seabird experts.
Conservation fences are 6.5 feet (2 meters) high, tall enough to keep mammals, such as deer, from jumping over, and they have hoods on the top that prevent small mammals, such as rats and cats, from climbing into an enclosure. The mesh openings are only 6mm wide, so even mice can’t squeeze through, and a skirt dug below ground level prevents animals from burrowing into the fenced area. The Mokio fence is an upgraded design and the first to use a U.S. manufactured material that provides superior saltwater corrosion resistance.
The first conservation fence in Hawai‘i, at Ka‘ena Point Natural Area Reserve at the westernmost point on O‘ahu, went up in 2011, and it protects about 50 acres used primarily by Laysan Albatrosses and Wedge-tailed Shearwaters. A few years later, ABC, other nonprofits, and government agencies constructed a predator-proof fence within Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge to create an eight-acre area known as the Nihoku Ecosystem Restoration Project. From 2015 to 2020, chicks of Newell’s Shearwater (‘A‘o) and Hawaiian Petrel (‘Ua‘u), two of Hawai‘i’s most threatened seabird species, were translocated into the site, and the petrels are already breeding there. In part because of the fence’s success, the Kīlauea Point NWR used the same style fence when it replaced an older fence around the refuge’s perimeter in 2023; at 11,200 feet long, it is the longest conservation fence in Hawai‘i.
Meanwhile, back at Mokio, the fence is complete, and Haase’s team is in the process of removing the remaining non-native predators — cats, rats, mice, mongooses, and a few deer that are inside the fenced area.
In addition, about 30 acres of the fenced land is covered with invasive kiawe, a species of mesquite tree native to South America that was first planted in Hawai‘i almost 200 years ago. The Land Trust is working to clear the kiawe, but it will take a while. The trees have to be cut down manually and “run through a chipper,” Haase says. A systemic herbicide is then applied to the stumps to keep them from resprouting. As the trees are cleared, more land will become habitable for native plants and wildlife.
Birds, Plants, and Pollinators
Sheldon Plentovich, Pacific Islands Coastal Program Coordinator at USFWS, expects “a cascade of positive ecological impacts” from the Mokio fence. “Increased numbers of nesting seabirds will bring marine-derived nutrients to the land and nearshore areas in the form of guano,” she says. “This will in turn provide nutrients to coastal plants, which will create more habitat for native insects, including endangered pollinators like the Hawaiian Yellowfaced Bee.”
Two centuries ago, Yellow-faced Bees of the genus Hylaeus were among the most common
Workers install part of the fence near a cliff. Photo by Moloka'i Land Trust
insects in Hawai‘i. More than 60 species are found throughout the state’s inhabited islands, but like so many native species in Hawai‘i, the bees have been reduced dramatically in range and population size. In 2016, USFWS listed seven of the species (two of which are found at Mokio) as Endangered.
‘Mokio has all of the potential to be a world-class multi-species seabird community.’
“Mokio has all of the potential to be a worldclass multi-species seabird community,” says Sea McKeon, ABC’s Marine Program Director. “At the same time, it’s hosting a locally specific vegetative community and pollinator community. Its coastal scrub is a habitat type that is fully endangered in and of itself. The mix of birds, plants, and pollinators — the whole gamut — is there, and it’s the first time that we've ever had that entirety in a safe place.”
The long-term promise that Mokio holds, of course, will only come to fruition if more seabird species find a home there. Conservationists have two ways to invite more species to Mokio (or any similarly fenced site): translocating individual birds, and attracting birds with decoys and playback of their calls. The strategy will be different for each species depending on factors like population size, nest requirements, and threatened status.
A Perfect Site for Albatross
One species that managers hope begins to nest at Mokio sooner rather than later is the Laysan Albatross. The vast majority of its population nests on a few of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, but in the 1970s, the species began colonizing islands from Japan to Mexico. In some cases, including Kaua‘i, the westernmost of the main Hawaiian islands, the birds were recolonizing places where they historically bred. The albatross later nested on O‘ahu and first fledged a chick there in 1992. The birds have continued moving southeast and started showing up on the northwest coast of Moloka‘i in the last 10 years. “It’s the next logical stepping stone in the progression down the island chain for these birds,” Haase says. “And so we’re really hoping that we see them establish a colony on the site. It's a perfect site for them.”
During the fence’s construction, the Moloka‘i Land Trust placed Laysan Albatross decoys within the protected area in hopes of luring some of the longlived beauties to Moloka‘i. “We had albatrosses land in the site and start to do nest scrapes, and according to state biologists, it was the fastest response time to the deployment of a social attraction site that they were aware of,” says Haase.
“We’d love to see a colony of Laysan Albatross followed by Black-footed Albatross on the site,” he adds. “All of those cliff faces are habitat for a lot of seabirds. It's over 100 acres when it’s all added up.
Laysan Albatrosses have been seen recently at the Mokio Preserve. Photo by Owen Deutsch, owendeutsch.com
There are flat dune areas to vertical rocky cliff faces and everything in between. The variety of habitat types within this protected site is rather diverse and as such can support a wide range of different seabirds without them having to be in close proximity to each other.”
McKeon says the two most endangered Hawaiian seabirds — Newell’s Shearwater and Hawaiian Petrel — are likely candidates for translocations of chicks to Mokio, as well as Laysan and Blackfooted Albatrosses, Bonin Petrel (Nunulu), and Tristram's Storm-Petrel (Akihike‘ehi‘ale). He notes that translocation has been successful in other places and that moving young birds “can jumpstart the process” of creating a new colony. “So instead of waiting five years for a wandering bird to find the area and decide that it's safe, all of a sudden you can kickstart it by directly translocating chicks before they imprint on the stars above their burrows,” he says.
The idea behind a conservation fence — to give native wildlife a place to raise young free from predators that they cannot defend against — is fairly simple. But as the warming climate continues to wreak havoc worldwide, such fences could prove to be species savers.
“What does it mean for a seabird to be safe from sea-level rise?” McKeon asks. “The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, while protected from direct
human impact, are for the most part low elevation, which will put many seabird nests at risk from coming sea-level rise. Moving some of those birds to a higher elevation site like this could be salvation for entire species.”
Haase, reflecting on the recent transformation of the Mokio landscape, adds: “It is now possible to stand in the middle of the project and see only native species and ocean, giving people a chance to experience what Hawai‘i used to be like. It is our hope that seeing this restored land will inspire others to do the same elsewhere across our islands.”
ABC is grateful to the following supporters for making this project possible: USFWS Coastal Program and Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program; Senator Brian Schatz's office; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; Lynn and Stuart White; the BAND Foundation; and the Sacharuna Foundation.
Matt Mendenhall is ABC’s Managing Editor. He previously worked for 22 years on the editorial staff of BirdWatchingMagazine
Tours Available, Volunteers Needed
Access to the fenced space at the Mokio Preserve is limited to help protect the recovering natural area and its wildlife. Butch Haase, Executive Director of the Moloka‘i Land Trust, says visitors can see the site in two ways: contact the Trust about taking a paid tour through its managed access system or offer to volunteer with the organization.
“Volunteering is a great way to get access to the site, learn more about our story, and actually be part of the solution for increasing federal critical habitat for our wildlife,” he says. Tasks that volunteers can help with include removing and chipping kiawe trees, collecting seeds, bird banding, planting, and weed control. Skilled birders are also invited to volunteer to help with seabird observations at Mokio. If you’re interested, sign up at molokailandtrust.org/ volunteer-registration.
Red-tailed Tropicbird currently nests at the Mokio Preserve. Photo by George Wallace
BOSQUE DE LAS NUBES NATURAL RESERVE, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
By Howard Youth
The Sierra de Bahoruco BirdScape (yellow outline) in the southern Dominican Republic includes five sites:
Loma Charco Azul Biological Reserve
Sierra de Bahoruco National Park
Bosque de las Nubes Reserve I
Bosque de las Nubes Reserve II Miguel D. Fuerte Natural Monument
Lay of the Land: Its name translating to “Forest of the Clouds,” this 581-acre, two-part reserve is located in the Dominican Republic’s southwest highlands, within the ABC-designated Sierra de Bahoruco BirdScape. The reserve protects hilly broad-leafed evergreen cloud forest, stunted semi-humid forest, highelevation pine forest, and former pasture being restored to forest. It was established by the conservation organization SOH Conservación in 2019, when 45 acres were purchased with ABC support. This part of the reserve was later expanded to total 105 acres with support from another partner. Then in 2022, ABC supported the reserve’s expansion in a new area with the acquisition of an additional 476 acres. ABC is currently fundraising to purchase an additional 140 acres.
Bosque de las Nubes Natural Reserve plays a key role in a growing network of conservation areas called the Bahoruco-Bahoruco Oriental Corridor, spearheaded by SOH Conservación in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment, ABC, and other partners. The staff there work hard to curtail illegal clearing, fire-setting, and poaching that threaten the corridor, including within the reserve and in two adjacent
public protected areas: the 278,200-acre Sierra de Bahoruco National Park and the 8,285-acre Miguel Domingo Fuerte Natural Monument.
Shade-coffee farms are also an important component of the wildlife corridor. On these properties, large trees remain standing, both shading coffee shrubs and sheltering migratory and endemic bird species. SOH Conservación collaborates with the shade- and organic-coffee company Finca Dulcikafé and plans to generate revenue to support reserve conservation through ecotourism (see p. 33) and shade-coffee cultivation on a portion of the reserve.
In addition to managing the reserve, SOH Conservación helps the Ministry of the Environment comanage the adjacent protected areas. It employs nine staff, including a reserve and coffee plantation manager, a nursery attendant, guards, and coffee growers.
Focal Birds: The reserve protects many of the 33 bird species endemic to the island of Hispaniola, and many wintering Neotropical migrants. Endemic birds found here and in the adjacent natural monument include the Endangered White-fronted Quail-Dove,
Coffee beans. Photo by Klahan, Shutterstock
Dominican Republic
Santo Domingo
Hispaniolan Lizard-Cuckoo, Hispaniolan Nightjar, Hispaniolan Mango, Hispaniolan Emerald, Ashyfaced Owl, Hispaniolan Trogon, Narrow-billed Tody, Antillean Piculet, Hispaniolan Woodpecker, Hispaniolan Parakeet (Vulnerable), Hispaniolan Pewee, Palmchat (the Dominican Republic’s national bird), Hispaniolan Euphonia, Hispaniolan Crossbill (Endangered), Eastern Chat-Tanager (Near Threatened), Black-crowned Palm-Tanager, Green-tailed Warbler, and Hispaniolan Spindalis. Wintering migratory songbirds include the Bicknell’s Thrush (Vulnerable), American Redstart, Louisiana Waterthrush, Ovenbird, and Black-and-white, Black-throated Blue, Blackthroated Green, Cape May, Hooded, Prairie, Swainson’s, Worm-eating, and Yellow-throated Warblers.
Other Wildlife: A wide variety of other fauna and flora find refuge here. These include two endemic mammals, the Endangered Cuvier’s Hutia and the Hispaniolan Solenodon. At least 17 amphibian and reptile species have been recorded, including the Endangered Baoruco Red-legged Frog. A survey of the flora within one cloud-forest area in the reserve registered 392 species, 138 of which are endemic to Hispaniola.
When to Visit: Neotropical migrants winter in the reserve from October to April. The breeding season
for endemic bird species peaks June to August; at this time, many of these resident species are easier to see. In this highland area, rains occur year-round but peak from May to October. Temperatures are mild, ranging from lows around 57 degrees Fahrenheit and highs of 70 in winter, to high temperatures around 80 degrees in summer.
Conservation Activities: In the last 100 years, the Dominican Republic lost most of its native forests to deforestation, making all the more urgent the need
Hispaniolan Crossbill pair by Guillermo Armenteros
to protect the remaining forests from clearing, fire, and fragmentation. Hanging in the balance are many endemic species, as well as wintering migratory songbirds including the Bicknell’s Thrush, which nests locally in New England and eastern Quebec and Nova Scotia but winters almost exclusively in the Dominican Republic.
ABC has been working with partners on conservation programs in the Dominican Republic since 2004. The Loma Charco Azul Reserve, which now forms the west end of the growing wildlife corridor, was the first Caribbean reserve ABC supported. It protects a key area for the endemic and Endangered Baybreasted Cuckoo.
ABC supports various activities within the Bosque de las Nubes Natural Reserve, including land acquisition to protect the Bicknell’s Thrush and other Neotropical migrants under Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA) grants. ABC also supports fire brigades trained and positioned to quell illegally set fires in and near the reserve. With funding from the Latin America Reserve Stewardship Initiative, a joint program of the March Conservation Fund and ABC, SOH Conservación in the last few years built new ecotourism infrastructure and a ranger station, among other things.
In the reserve, SOH Conservación recently planted a small area with coffee shrubs beneath mature tree cover, to start a crop that hopefully will help fund reserve management. The organization also removes invasive exotic plants from former pastures and reforests with native trees grown in a reserve nursery.
Directions: The most accessible part of the reserve is the eastern section located in Cortico, adjacent to Miguel Domingo Fuerte Natural Monument. This area and its accommodations are reached via a three-anda-half-hour drive from the capital city Santo Domingo. The last part of the journey requires a four-wheeldrive vehicle.
What to Do/Where to Stay:
At the reserve’s Cortico sector, birding is excellent along the access road and an associated trail, both of which lead into the connected natural monument. Most of the birds listed above can be seen in this area. A half-hour drive away sits the new Centro Ecoturístico Bosque de las Nubes, a SOH Conservación ecotourism project. Located on a working shade-coffee farm, the center provides visitor accommodations including a threeroom cabin with kitchen and bathroom, two threeperson simple cabins, and two campsites with tent platforms. The grounds often host interesting birds including the White-necked Crow and Ashy-faced Owl.
For More Info and Reservations: Contact SOH Conservación by phone at (809) 753-1388 or by email at SOH@SOH.org.do.
Ifyouareinterestedinlearningmoreabout supportingthisreserve’sexpansion,pleasecontact JustineHansonatjhanson@abcbirds.org.
ABCgratefullyacknowledgestheMarchConservationFund,theEstateofPhyllisH.Brissenden,Gulf CoastBirdObservatory-TropicalForestForeverFund, and Mark Greenfield and the Greenfield-Hartline Habitat ConservationFundfortheirsupportoftheBosquedelas Nubes Natural Reserve.
Youth is a Maryland-based writer and editor and a lifelong birder.
Bosque de las Nubes Natural Reserve, Dominican Republic by Jorge Brocca
Howard
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Red Knot, Sanderling, Dunlin, Ruddy Turnstone, and Semipalmated Sandpiper by Michael J. Parr
Narrow-billed Tody by Dax Roman, SOH Conservación