the barbecue capital of the Milky Way Galaxy hickory-smoked pig meat served on a bun with extra sauce and coleslaw spooned on top My carnivore’s lust goes beyond the DNA level Even the cruelty of factory farming doesn’t temper my desire I can somehow keep at bay all thoughts of what happened to the meat prior to the plate So why in the world am I a dedicated vegetarian a complete stranger to my fork at home and away The answer is simple: I have an 11-year-old son whose future—like yours and mine—is rapidly unraveling due to global warming And what we put on our plates can directly accelerate or decelerate the heating trend That giant chunk of an Antarctic ice sheet the one that disintegrated in a matter of hours the one the size of seven Manhattans—did you hear about it It shattered barely a year ago “like a hammer on glass,” scientists say and is now melting away in the Southern Ocean of the sort of ecological collapse coming everywhere on earth unless we hit the brakes soon on climate change If the entire West Antarctic ice sheet melts Since the twin phenomena of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gore most Americans have a basic literacy on the issue of climate change and greenhouse gases—emitted when we burn fossil fuels—are driving it is the role food—specifically our consumption of meat—is playing in this matter The typical American diet now weighs in at more than 3,700 calories per day and is dominated by meat and animal products what we put in our mouths now ranks up there with our driving habits and our use of coal-fired electricity in terms of how it affects climate change More than half of all the grains grown in America actually go to feed animals That means a huge fraction of the petroleum-based herbicides plus staggering percentages of all agricultural land and water use Stop eating animals and you use dramatically less fossil fuels as much as 250 gallons less oil per year for vegans and 160 gallons less for egg-and-cheese-eating vegetarians But fossil fuel combustion is just part of the climate–diet equation Ruminants—cows and sheep—generate a powerful greenhouse gas through their normal digestive processes (think burping and emissions at the other end) What comes out is methane (23 times more powerful at trapping heat than CO2) and nitrous oxide (296 times more powerful) livestock production worldwide is responsible for a whopping 18 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gases That’s more than the emissions of all the world’s cars So why do we so rarely talk about meat consumption when discussing global warming in America Green Party activist in America typically eats chicken wings and morning bacon like everyone else While the climate impacts of meat consumption might be new to many people the knowledge of meat’s general ecological harm is not at all novel Roughly three percent of all Americans are vegetarians according to the Vegetarian Resource Group a nonprofit that educates people on the benefits of a meat-free diet is the unfortunate belief that vegetarianism is a really tough lifestyle change much harder than simply changing bulbs or buying a better car and the explosion of local farmers’ markets a life without meat is many times easier today than when Ovid and Thoreau and Gandhi and Einstein did it many meat substitutes are made from soybeans a monocrop with its own environmental issues But most soy production today is actually devoted to livestock feed The next I cook stir-fried veggies at home with soy-based sausage patties so good they fool even the most discriminating meat connoisseurs Bottom line: Of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life gut-level (so to speak) reaction to vegetarianism as “unnatural.” We humans have canine teeth To abandon such food is to break thousands of years of tradition and But we also evolved as people who defecated indiscriminately in the woods and who didn’t brush our teeth Somehow we’ve moved to a higher level on those counts with potentially catastrophic climate change hovering around the corner and with our briskets and London broil helping to drive the process has been the idea of animals raised locally and organically Becoming a “locavore” who eats regional fruits and vegetables in season as much as possible makes abundant sense And animals from your area can lower the environmental impacts of your diet in many ways while simultaneously saving cherished local farmland and progressive farm families here’s the inconvenient truth about meat and dairy products: If you eat them regardless of their origin and how they were produced you significantly contribute to climate change If your beef is from New Zealand or your own backyard if your lamb is organic free-range or factory farmed it still has a negative impact on global warming the biological reality of ruminant digestion is that methane is released escaping into the atmosphere and trapping heat with impressive efficiency livestock makes manure that produces nitrous oxide an even more awesomely impressive heat trapper Livestock in the United States generates a billion tons of manure per year accounting for 65 percent of the planet’s anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions data released in 2007 by Adrian Williams of Cranfield University in England show that when all factors are considered free-range chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming than conventionally raised broiler birds That’s because “sustainable” chickens take longer to raise organic eggs have a 14 percent higher impact on the climate than eggs from caged chickens “If we want to fight global warming through the food we buy then one thing’s clear: We have to drastically reduce the meat we consume,” says Tara Garnett of London’s Food Climate Research Network So while some of us Americans fashionably fret over our food’s travel budget and organic content “Did it come from an animal or did it not come from an animal?” Which brings us back to vegetarianism and why I live a meat-free life we should change our lightbulbs and purchase hybrid cars and vote for politicians committed to a clean energy future I believe consumer habits are starting to change similarly to the way they’ve shifted with compact fluorescent bulbs Ten years ago people complained about the harsh quality of light from fluorescents and the hassle of switching them out But the bulbs are now made to produce a much warmer quality of light and the price has come down in seven years of using only CFLs at my home I’ve never had a guest make a single comment as we increasingly discuss the climate “facts” of meat consumption and as veggie cuisine gets still easier at home and at restaurants we’ll see more and more people changing their diets in the same way they’re switching to CFLs in droves now A holistic nutritionist in my neighborhood says one’s ideas about food reside in the same part of the brain that houses our ideas and beliefs about religion And I can’t count the number of environmental conferences I’ve attended where meat was served in abundance Even Michael Pollan’s 2006 bestsellerThe Omnivore’s Dilemma, wherein he dissects with encyclopedic thoroughness the eco-hazards and animal cruelty issues surrounding meat and egg production—even this book astonishingly mentions the words global warmingonly two times and climate change not at all All of which is to say that for people to care the climate–food discussion must be about more than just facts more than pounds of greenhouse gases per units of food And I don’t mean the usual morality of environmental “stewardship.” Or even the issue of cruelty to farm animals about the explicit harm to humans that results from meat consumption and its role as a driving force in climate change Knowingly eating food that makes you fat or harms your local fish and birds is one thing Knowingly eating food that makes children across much of the world hungry is another I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the mid-1980s living in a tiny rural village where the staple crop was hand-tilled corn This meant the two annual “rainy seasons” had to begin right on time Any deviation from this rainfall pattern virtually guaranteed a lower corn harvest And given the total absence of grocery stores or the money to buy extra food even if it existed is a dramatic shift in precipitation patterns worldwide including longer and more severe droughts as well as extreme rainstorms and flooding in non-drought areas Many scientists believe these impacts are already being felt by farmers worldwide and could spell future disaster especially for subsistence farmers like those I lived with in Africa Global wheat prices have jumped about 100 percent in the past year in part because a record drought in Australia—made worse by global warming—has devastated farmers across the continent Food production in China alone could drop 10 percent as early as 2030 The people I lived with in Africa contribute almost nothing to the problem of global warming If we in the West don’t alter course in the coming years if we allow extreme global warming to become reality diet could very well be a great reduction in the amount of meat on our tables—a reduction imposed on us by nature instead of achieved by us through enlightened lifestyle changes The wide and guaranteed availability of agriculturally productive land may simply cease The crop yields we see now could shrink significantly thanks to everything from weird weather to pest invasions But it’s a safe guess to say we’ll have space for a national diet of plant-based foods (some crops are expected to benefit from global warming) just not the option of consuming all those animals in places like Bangladesh and Peru and Vietnam severe climate change means food off the table It means the rains don’t come on time or at all in tiny villages like the one I lived in Are we clear now on the raw facts and urgent morality of our present meat consumption in America We need much more than just a few magazine readers to voluntarily stop eating meat but what we really need are national policies that encourage lower meat consumption by everyone This could be achieved using fees or other market mechanisms that properly price greenhouse-gas emissions according to the harm they cause The good news is we would finally have a fair and honest way to judge its danger and thus more incentives to do the right thing more incentives to switch to a healthy and convenient vegetarian diet of the sort I’ve joyfully embraced for years despite my great appreciation for the taste of meat just eat a lot less meat as an alternative to full vegetarianism a leading Australia-based expert on climate change and health issues He estimates that per capita daily meat consumption would need to drop from about 12 ounces per day in America to 3.1 ounces (with less than half of it red meat) in order to protect the climate.  I suppose I could measure out 3.1 ounces of meat per day Pledge to stand with Audubon to call on elected officials to listen to science and work towards climate solutions NOTE: First time signing on? Please register your purchase Here.** This registration is only required on your first login Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: Kenn Kaufman: Bird-guide author Melissa Groo: Professional photographer and 2015 Grand Prize winner Steve Freligh: Co-publisher of Nature's Best Photography Kevin Fisher: Audubon creative director Sabine Meyer: Audubon photography director Judging criteria: Technical quality, originality Camera: Canon EOS 7D Mark II with a Canon 500mm f/4 IS II USM lens; 1/1600 second at f/6.3; ISO 800 Snap Judgement: Seabeck is a small town on the edge of the Hood Canal In early summer Great Blue Herons and Bald Eagles converge here to feast on fish that get trapped in the exposed oysterbeds at low tide the eagles are especially fond of harassing the herons for their catch which at times release their prey with a loud squawk the eagles seem to take pleasure in trying to steal a meal Bird Lore: The majestic Bald Eagle and America’s largest heron are both top-level predators Where concentrations of fish bring them together the herons will usually yield to the eagles Camera: Nikon D700 with a Nikkor 600mm f/4 lens; 1/1600 second at f/7.1; ISO 400 Snap Judgement: I have lived in Florida all my life and watching the Ospreys around the bays is a constant delight For this shot I was photographing an active nest off the end of a dock on the south end of Siesta Key Both of the adults were active around the nest; this one was taking off from a nearby perch on its way back to the nest Bird Lore: Perfectly adapted for feeding on fish Ospreys are classified in a family by themselves They have keen eyesight like other raptors but the act of plunging feet-first to catch fish below the water’s surface requires special skills; young Ospreys must practice for some time before they master the technique Camera: Canon EOS 7D with a Canon 500mm f/4L IS lens; 1/400 second at f/8: ISO 320 Snap Judgement: In May 2014 I was fortunate to see hundreds migrating Eared Grebes floating in a tight flock between the ice and the shore on Yellowstone Lake their golden “ears,” and the way the flock created a colorful natural pattern With their heads tucked into their feathers They were silent—I never once heard a vocalization—and I felt a sense of gratitude that I could witness this tranquil and serene moment the Eared Grebe—called the Black-necked Grebe in the Old World—is probably the most numerous Its population in western North America has been estimated at more than four million and its nesting colonies on marshy lakes may include hundreds of pairs Camera: Nikon D7200 with a Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED lens at 300 mm; 1/2500 second at f5.6; ISO 250 Snap Judgement: On a family vacation in the Galápagos I was taking pictures when Great Frigatebirds started landing on our boat as well as the heat and brilliant Galápagos sun were a challenge which are graceful and acrobatic in flight and harass other birds like Blue-footed Boobies for their prey These two seemed to be challenging each other for a seat on our boat Bird Lore: Frigatebirds are the most aerial of all ocean birds and a lack of waterproofing in their plumage they are ill-suited for swimming or taking off from the water until they reach an island or ship where they can perch Camera: Canon EOS 70D with a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens Snap Judgement: A friend and I were taking pictures of hummingbirds in Costa Rica and decided that while some have to be shot from a specific angle to look good there are no bad angles for taking pictures of the Green Violetear and the birds were perching on an agave plant in front of the lodge the way the angle of the bill matched the point on the agave displaying that beautiful rainbow of color made me feel I had achieved a shot that managed to capture the bird's spectacular texture and color Bird Lore: One of the most widespread of all hummingbird species the Green Violetear lives in highland forests from Mexico south to Bolivia Such wanderings have brought it north of the Mexican border on many occasions Camera: Nikon D810 with a Nikkon AF-S 600mm F4G ED VR lens; 1/1000 second at f/6.3; ISO 400 Snap Judgement: Lesbos is one of Europe’s best-known birding spots because so many birds migrate through the numbers in early May 2015 were way down I spent my last day on a concrete slab by the salt pans I was finally able to get this shot of a stilt hunting water bugs Bird Lore: With thin bills and bizarrely long stilts are well adapted to wading in shallows It’s a successful niche for stilts on six continents but they represent only a few distinct types including the Black-necked Stilt of North America Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III with a Tamron SP 150-600mm; f5-6.3 Di VC USD lens at 600 mm; 1/250 second at f/8; ISO 640 Snap Judgement: Besides being known for their intelligence It was amazing to feel that these birds were comfortable in my presence Bird Lore: Classified in the same family as jays and crows the Common Raven is technically considered a songbird Driven from large parts of North America by civilization in centuries past this adaptable bird is now recolonizing many areas Camera: Nikon D7100 with a Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di VC USD AF lens at 150 mm; 1/3200 second at f/6.3; ISO 560 which are often excellent spots to find birds such as Gila Woodpeckers One evening I noticed a group of Turkey Vultures roosting in a stand of cardon cactus about 75 yards away I quickly positioned myself so that the colors of the sky after sunset would be behind the cacti and I was lucky to capture it with legs and wings outstretched for landing Bird Lore: Scanning the landscape for carrion but they gather in communal roosts at night These roosts may serve as “information centers”: Vultures that have failed to find food the previous day may wait to follow those that set off purposefully in the morning Camera: Canon EOS 7D MarkII with a Canon 600mm f/4 ISII lens and a ground pod; 1/1000 second at f/5.6; ISO 500 Snap Judgement: I was on a beach in Massachusetts pushing the camera equipment around on a ground pod trying not to turn the lens hood in a sand shovel and on those occasions it was a wonder to just observe capturing a rare pause in a usually frantic schedule of feed It reminds us to take in the joy around us Bird Lore: While many sandpipers use long bills to probe in mud for unseen prey plovers—the other major group of shorebirds—are visual in their approach Piping Plovers hunt tiny invertebrates on open sand or salt flats See this year's Top 100 here Over the last few months, we’ve committed to making Audubon an antiracist institution – a commitment built on years of learning and action Audubon’s presence in hundreds of communities across America gives us a responsibility to help correct centuries of racial injustice by changing our internal and external practices And that includes a reassessment of our own history We’re not alone among conservation organizations in taking these steps. A Washington Post article last week detailed the Sierra Club’s extraordinarily candid reckoning with the racist legacy of the iconic  John Muir and other founders That same piece details the equity and justice efforts of several well-known environmental non-profits—as well as the experiences of some staff of color in a largely white Audubon’s founding stories center on the groups of women who came together to end the slaughter of birds for their feathers (mostly for fancy hats) but we have glossed over the actions of the American icon whose name we bear as well as the racist aspects of our organization’s history Audubon did not found the National Audubon Society or any of the other organizations that bear his name; they were named after him posthumously beginning in the 1880s and 1890s because of his deep association with North American birds.  While most have come to know the National Audubon Society for its conservation and policy leadership, its science and its community-based education efforts, we owe our members and others a full accounting and reckoning with John James Audubon himself. As you’ll see in a piece we’re publishing today by John James Audubon historian Dr there is a lot of John James Audubon’s personal history that must be laid bare we condemn the role John James Audubon played in enslaving Black people and perpetuating white supremacist culture We’re partnering with leading historians and journalists to grapple with John James Audubon’s legacy on Audubon.org We’ve taken down the biography of John James Audubon that has existed on this site for many years because it largely ignored the challenging parts of his identity and actions We’ll be replacing that content altogether soon This is a time when Audubon magazine’s journalistic integrity which allows us to examine our field and ourselves will help air out our closets and illuminate the future We’re committed to working with partners and our network through this process We’ve received overwhelming support for our antiracist commitments from Audubon members They understand that questions of birds and conservation and questions of racial equity are not separate though they’ve been treated that way for far too long The artificial division between those concerns came crashing down when birder and New York City Audubon board member Christian Cooper was threatened in a racist incident in Central Park this spring and outdoor enthusiasts came together to share their stories during #BlackBirdersWeek shortly afterward It’s clear to us that the work Audubon does in the world—from our environmental advocacy in Washington to community engagement from coast to coast—must actively advance racial equity A lift-all-boats approach is not enough and in fact often deepens existing inequities From incorporating inclusion and equity in our staff’s goals to the creation of an equity task force within our very supportive board But words are only that if actions don’t follow There’s an important conversation happening in America right now about monuments Audubon submitted a letter of support last week for three bills in Congress (H.R 7550) that would result in the removal of two statues of Confederate officers on National Park Service lands and  initiate an inventory of other such monuments across federal lands There’s no justification for these monuments in places that belong to every American And it’s not just an issue of physical monuments: Many birds are named for human beings (mostly white men), some of whom did terrible things during their lives. There’s an important debate underway about whether to change the name of birds like McCown’s Longspur  A wide range of voices including scientists and birders – many young and of color – are petitioning for change The American Ornithological Society’s North American Classification Committee which is the group of scientists that maintains the official list of North American bird names is set to announce changes to its naming policies in August We’re eager to see what they announce and will have more to say after that Let us send you the latest in bird and conservation news Share on FacebookShare on X (formerly Twitter)Share on PinterestShare on LinkedInDAPHNE, Ala. (WALA) - Two people who were found shot at Audubon Apartments in Daphne Tuesday night are alive but in critical condition The Daphne Police Department said it was about 7:40 p.m when officers responded to reports of gunfire in the parking lot of the 10X Audubon Park apartments complex who are both residents of the apartment complex Both victims had received gunshot wounds to the head and neck and police and Daphne FireMedics rendered emergency aid on scene The victims were transported to the Intensive Care Unit at USA Hospital in Mobile with life-threatening injuries They remain unable to provide statements to investigators but detectives recovered evidence at the scene and are actively pursuing leads Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact Daphne Police investigators at (251) 620-0151 Looking for a more personal experience? Train with pros this summer at a series of free Canon- and Audubon-led workshops, bird walks, and festivals around the country; events will be held at the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge, the Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Mississippi, the John James Audubon Center in Pennsylvania, and more (click here for the complete schedule) Next year your photograph of a feeding frenzy or an intimate family portrait might make the cut Congratulations! You made it to the end. If you liked what you saw here, make a donation today to recieve Audubon magazine in the mail. A dream that started pre-COVID is starting to sprout along eastern reaches of Immokalee Road as Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary managers plan a $20 million renovation of the Audubon campus "This will help expand our capacity for education research and conservation," said Keith Laakkonen "We have a few cornerstone pieces and one of the pieces will be a brand-new laboratory We currently don’t have one and do ad hoc work but to have a lab to conduct research and scientists and to be able to offer that to graduate students and researchers from around the world." Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is home to some of the oldest cypress trees on the planet and it's one of the Naples' areas ecological gems Some trees at the swamp were alive when early Europeans explorers arrived 500 years ago Today they stand like ancient reminders of how south Florida was before manmade development changed the landscape Some of these massive trees can be seen from the sanctuary's 2.25-mile elevated boardwalk a staple for wildlife fans and tourists from all over the world "It’s literally America’s rainforest," Laakkonen said "It’s every bit as important to America as a national park because of the ecological component but also the community deciding to set it aside and to have that here in Southwest Florida is pretty amazing." Laakkonen said the sanctuary needs more space for research education and to host interns and researchers "We’re sort of capped out with space right now and we’re just not able to host larger classes," he said We have seasonal employees and interns and for them to come down for five or six months and find a place to live Laakkonen said the sanctuary needs more meeting space to collaborate with partners and overnight housing for burn crews "This will be key for staff who conduct prescribed fires and they typically stay here to overnight to make sure the fire doesn’t jump and right now they’re staying in trucks," Laakkonen said The sanctuary has more than 120 volunteers and the renovated campus will feature lunchrooms lockers and sleeping quarters for them as well "This is such a transformative time for Corkscrew Swamp," Laakkonen said "We have 70 years under our belt with wetland conservation and bird conservation and this will allow us to continue work for another 70 years." director of leadership and giving for the sanctuary said the non-profit has raised $15.5 million so far with donors coming from the Naples and Southwest Florida communities and from around the world honored and grateful we’ve been able to raise that money," Sauerland said "It’s really exciting that this big vision will come to life in less than a year And some donors haven't been here in a decade More than 80,000 people visit the sanctuary each year and now is the time of year to see the swamp come alive as the rainy season is coming within a matter of weeks "Everybody just missed the feeding frenzy and the drawdown but spring migration is still happening in periodic pulses," Laakkonen said when asked what visitors might see in May so it’s a great time to get out there and see the lichens." Hosted in Fairfield, Connecticut, and created in association with Audubon Americas, the film premiered at a sold-out Sacred Heart University Community Theatre following a vibrant reception at the official Canon Gallery at the Bruce S hundreds of guests explored a visual journey through the Atlantic Flyway one of the most vital migration pathways in the world The gallery showcased breathtaking photography and conservation work from across the hemisphere and served as a powerful reminder of what’s at stake “Photography and film help us connect with the natural world” “it inspires us to take action for our beautiful planet as it allows us to see nature up close and tell stories that otherwise would be overlooked”.  it was a love letter to the phenomenon of migration From tiny warblers that migrate thousands of miles across the flyway to the charismatic American Flamingo whose recent reintroduction to the Everglades was caused by hurricane Irma The film is intended to move the audience as well and not just emotionally Presented at the end of the show were more than a dozen non-profits that collaborated with the event Tomas encouraged those who wished to support conservation to look to support those that were listed.  leaders from the Connecticut Audubon Society who spoke about the efforts to protect critical stopover sites and breeding grounds Their message was clear: when we protect birds we protect the ecosystems we all depend on—from clean water and healthy forests to pollinator habitat and climate resilience and a beautiful affirmation of why we care so deeply The more than 5,500 photos entered in this year's contest Photographers from 49 states and eight Canadian provinces submitted images in three categories: professional the following seven images proved exceptional in addition to garnering cash and trip prizes, are being displayed within the 2017 Nature’s Best Photography Exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.  Species: Gentoo Penguin Camera: Nikon D90 with a Nikon 70-300mm lens; 1/800 second at f/5.6; ISO 200  Story Behind the Shot: I had just bought my first DSLR about two weeks earlier for my trip to Antarctica I noticed this penguin in a nest made of rocks touched me the most—the warmest love in the coldest place Bird Lore: Although many people regard penguins as the archetypal Antarctic birds only a few of the 18 species actually breed in the polar region has expanded its range in recent years as ice cover has declined Such gains are likely to be offset by reductions in food supply in the warming seas.  Species: Great Gray Owl Camera: Nikon D500 with a Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 Sport lens and Gitzo Tripod with Wimberley head; 1/1000 second at f/4; ISO 1600  Story Behind the Shot: On a soggy fall morning in Grand Teton National Park I expected them to be seeking refuge from the drizzle in the dark timber so I was surprised to see this Great Gray Owl sitting out in the open gripping tightly with its talons and flapping its wet wings as it struggled for balance a chick that hatched earlier in the summer Bird Lore: More than two feet tall and with a wingspan of more than four feet the Great Gray looks larger than any other North American owl Much of its bulk consists of fluffy feathers and this gentle giant preys mostly on tiny rodents these owls are uncommon and somewhat elusive throughout their range.  Species: Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese Location: Bernardo Waterfowl Management Area Camera: Nikon D5 with Nikon 200-400mm f/4 VR lens; 1/1250 second at f/13; ISO 6400  Story Behind the Shot: On a cold and stormy late January afternoon I stood watching a field as thousands of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes fed on corn at the Bernardo Waterfowl Management Area I turned around; statuesque trees framed this scene behind me Dramatic storm clouds surrounded us and there was nothing but flat gray light—until suddenly the sun broke through just as the birds lifted off.  Bird Lore: Lifestyles of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese differ in many ways but they converge in winter in central New Mexico where the mixed flocks provide an irresistible lure for photographers and birders Wildlife refuge managers there work with farmers to keep some fields of corn and other grains unharvested providing a ready food source near protected wetlands.  Species: Varied Thrush Camera: Nikon D7100 with Nikkor AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR lens; 1/500 second at f/5.6; ISO 1250 Story Behind the Shot: Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle has a beautiful mountain ash collection that attracts Varied Thrushes I went there on four of the coldest days this past winter and every day they were either in the tops of trees or in the back branches—or not there at all because of a marauding Cooper’s Hawk I walked slowly around to position myself; luckily the thrush was more interested in the tree’s berries and I was able to capture this eye-level shot Patience and persistence sometimes pay off.  Bird Lore: The color scheme of the Varied Thrush suggests an American Robin, but its closest relatives are probably among Asian thrushes. Shy and elusive, it hides in dense evergreens while its haunting whistles float through cool forests of the Pacific Northwest. Surveys suggest that populations are declining, perhaps as a result of a warming climate.  Species: Mute Swan Camera: Canon 1D X with a Canon 600mm II lens; 1/6400 second at f/5; ISO 640  Story Behind the Shot: As I photographed this family of Mute Swans I noticed the incredible reflection and light I felt that if the two parents would tip up at the same time with the baby swan (called a cygnet) in between them I would have something pretty spectacular—and that’s exactly what happened the photo represents the struggle for survival as this young swan is the only remaining cygnet of eight despite having such protective parents.  but their breeding behavior is notably different only females care for the young; males usually depart before incubation ends and while females do most of the incubating both parents tend to and guard cygnets.  Species: Southern Carmine Bee-eater Camera: Nikon D5 with a Nikkor 600mm lens and 1.4 teleconverter; 1/2500 second at f/8; ISO 1250  Story behind the shot: Along a Zambian riverbank in early August a colony of Southern Carmine Bee-eaters was busy battling for space to find a battling pair with a hand-held 600mm lens and to keep them in frame and in focus as they fought a Carmine battle is a short blur of color and beating wings It was not until I studied my shots that I fully appreciated the jousting and parrying I want to give others the opportunity to feel the same awe.  Bird Lore: Colorful birds that catch insects (including bees) in flight bee-eaters are restricted to the Old World Southern Carmine Bee-eaters form colonies of hundreds of pairs noisy spectacle as they gather around nest holes excavated in vertical riverbanks.  Species: Black Vulture Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T2i with Canon 100-400mm Mark II lens and B+W 77 010 UV-Haze 1x MRC f-pro filter; 1/800 second at f/5.6; ISO 800  Story Behind the Shot: Because of their plain black coats and rather disgusting eating habits But then the opportunity arose to photograph a large group feasting on road kill near my house As I watched them vie for position on a dead tree near their food I found the vultures to be incredibly feisty and formidable in appearance The cloudy sky made taking the picture difficult but by lowering my shutter speed and raising my ISO I was able to capture this Black Vulture just as he jumped to claim a higher perch Bird Lore: Shorter-winged and heavier than its cousin the Turkey Vulture this stocky scavenger is more restricted to warm climates where it can reliably find rising thermals for soaring Black Vultures often find food by watching Turkey Vultures following them to a carcass and then muscling in on the feast.  See the 2017 contest's Top 100 images Audubon is a nonprofit working to save birds and the places they need. To support our conservation efforts, please make a donation today.  best defense against wildlife poachers doesn’t look like much: just a ramshackle collection of tarps hidden in the dense understory of a tropical hardwood forest near the fraught and uncomfortably porous border between Belize and Guatemala It’s taken us hours to get here—the first leg an overland journey from San Ignacio in the Cayo District of western Belize haggling our way through military and ranger checkpoints and bumping over red dirt roads that are more rock and ravine than actual thoroughfares But reaching the banks of the Macal River was merely the first step At first it looked like any other dead log—and then it lumbered up the incline and disappeared into the forest (Editor's note: Scarlet Six Biomonitoring Team changed its name to Belize Bird Conservancy after this issue of Audubon magazine went to print.) Scarlet Six Biomonitoring Team is a group of roughly a dozen conservation-minded Belizeans (and one American) who are bent on protecting Belize’s Scarlet Macaw from the illegal pet trade To deter poachers—and monitor the nests for productivity data—the Scarlet Six rangers set up camps in the Chiquibul Forest There they live for the five months of chick-rearing season it’s because it is—one of the purest distillations of brute-force conservation imaginable because it works: Macaw nests are no longer being poached in the areas where the rangers roost using drone-captured footage and satellite mapping demarcates the bleeding edge of conservation it struck me as delightfully counterintuitive when I first got wind of Scarlet Six’s efforts and the accompanying notion that sometimes the metaphorical elbow grease of sleeping rough is still the best way to get the job done So I finagled my way into a trip to the Chiquibul to see what it’s like to be a Scarlet Six ranger and to investigate how a project like this is actually sustainable over the long haul I also swung this trip for the unbridled romance of seeing Scarlet Macaws in the wild; I will not be happy until I do One of the largest parrots in the world, the Scarlet Macaw is two-plus pounds and nearly 40 inches tip-to-tail of crimson-gold-azure glory only nesting in the cavities of trees (quamwood and others) that are within 200 yards of a riverbank The adult birds spend their days flying in pairs around the forest It’s rare to see a single Scarlet Macaw; instead they congregate in twos Macaw pairs usually lay a clutch of two to four eggs The chicks hunker down in their dark cave-like nest and squawk at anything and anyone who will listen The macaw’s range spans southern Mexico to Bolivia but the species is not yet considered threatened Ara macao cyanoptera now only exists in a few small populations in southern Mexico and the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala in Honduras and Nicaragua—and one completely isolated population of approximately 250 birds in Belize Without dedicated conservation and captive-rearing programs in these places it’s highly likely that this subspecies could become extinct The Belizean population served as the focus of the 2008 book The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw which chronicled the doomed fight against the construction of the Chalillo hydroelectric dam along the Macal River Little was known about the Scarlet Macaws in Belize at the time—even their population numbers were only the roughest of approximations Most conservationists feared that the bird’s breeding habitat would be destroyed when the river upstream of the completed dam overflowed its historical banks drowning the trees in which the macaws nest and the thousands of dead trees that rise from the sluggish Macal River water are testament to the ecological damage wrought But even years after the dam entered service its actual impact on remained something of a mystery Scarlet Six biomonitoring team got its start as so many things do: by happenstance the question of how the macaws had fared post-Chalillo Dam was still wide open; starting in 2009 for his master’s project at New Mexico State University he kayaked up and down the Macal River and hiked through remote parts of the Chiquibul Forest He fitted three females with satellite telemetry units to track their movements And he discovered that the macaws were actually responding decently well to the now-dammed Macal Then came the snag: When Britt and Martinez—recruited from his bird-guiding job at a local ecolodge to help monitor the macaws—tried to study nest productivity There was essentially no productivity to study Almost all of the nests—more than 90 percent—were being poached by guaceros and xateros Guatemalans who illicitly cross the border into Belize for economic reasons comb their way through the Chiquibul Forest and Maya Mountains looking for the xaté palm a plant in huge demand by the global floral-arrangement market The demand for xaté is so high that it’s been nearly extirpated in the wild in Guatemala so xateros cross into Belize and take the palm from there—11 million leaves of it were illegally extracted from the Chiquibul alone in 2015 They’ll plunder anything they think they can sell or use most macaw poaching is purely opportunistic Poachers generally don’t go into Belize expressly on the hunt for macaws which are simply not abundant enough in the densely wooded forest to be a draw on their own Martinez and one of the Scarlet Six rangers demonstrate for me how the poachers steal chicks: They wrap a wide strap around the tree trunk The quamwood tree that holds Nest #23 is densely pocked with the scars created by the poachers’ spikes an ugly series of marks that march in parallel tracks up the trunk It takes less than 30 minutes from finding a nest to absconding with the chicks which helps explain why for a long time there wasn’t much that anyone could do about it Britt tells me of the time he was kayaking up the Macal when he heard a warning shot and the calls of agitated adult macaws and neither I nor my survey partner had guns so there was nothing I could do but let them take those birds,” he says To combat the thefts Britt and Martinez hit upon an idea: Prevent the poachers from approaching macaw trees in the first place by having a rotating squad of regular Belizeans camp out under active nests during the breeding season long before the sun seeps above the horizon Discordant birdcalls—the screeches of kiskadees and harsh cries of macaws—filter through the mosquito netting on my jungle hammock I’d spent the night mostly awake and wedged uncomfortably in there at turns cold and desperately uncomfortable (hammocks are terrible for people who prefer to sleep on their sides) But now it’s time to get moving: Crawl out of the hammock shake any unwanted critters out of your shoes get the stove set up and water boiling for coffee pull out some of the dense and chewy wheat-flour journey cakes that Martinez hauled in with the gear The previous evening’s rain has made the riverbank treacherous and we skid-slide our way down to the tree stump where the skiff is moored Before we can go anywhere we have to bail out the boat Another boat—this one larger and fitted with a canopy—glides by filled with Friends for Conservation and Development (FCD) rangers who patrol the Chiquibul Forest and collaborate with Scarlet Six on the macaw project Once the skiff is mostly free of standing water we climb in and head upriver to a ranger camp under another macaw nest After a second inelegant trip up the riverbank I sit down with three of the Scarlet Six rangers: Luis Mai Luis Mai has been with Scarlet Six since its founding in 2012 and spends the offseason tending to his peanut farm in the town of San Antonio although his son is a ranger in the Chiquibul working for FCD The two middle-aged rangers answer me quietly—shyly almost—as I coax their stories from them is a 26-year-old hardcore bird guy with an ambition to be a full-time bird guide he’s doing raptor surveys with the Belize Raptor Research Institute and quizzing his fellow Belizean naturalists with bird-ID puzzles on Facebook Mai’s account of his day is best described as a list of the birds he typically sees and where Travel up and down the river to known sites that poachers might visit—a macaw nest or a stand of valuable hardwood or a copse with xaté Nothing new—the most recent indication of poachers is at least a month old So you haven’t seen any indication that xateros have tried to get into the nests The “thing” in question spun out in the Chiquibul and turned into a major incident between Guatemala and Belize prompting both governments to unleash harshly worded condemnations and amass troops along their shared border but what’s known is that while investigating illegal land clearing FCD rangers and the Belize Defence Force confronted Guatemalan nationals who were suspected of illicit activities gunfire was exchanged and a 13-year-old Guatemalan boy was killed The Guatemalans say that it was an act of aggression; the Belizeans claim that the Guatemalans shot at them first And this was not the first cross-border incident that culminated in violence Martinez told me of an incident in 2014 in which law enforcement officers in the Chiquibul confiscated the horses of a group of xateros or illegal loggers murdered a tourism policeman at the nearby Caracol archaeological site—a broad-daylight execution near one of the famed Mayan pyramids You can still find cellphone video of the immediate aftermath on YouTube The rangers assure me that there is no danger of the camp being overrun during my stay and they do an effective job of scaring off the idle poacher Martinez mentions that FCD isn’t just a partner for protecting macaws in the wild—they recently started a captive-rearing program modeled after successful efforts in Mexico and Guatemala Would I like to see baby macaws without having to haul my carcass 60 feet up a quamwood tree I’m suddenly reminded of phrases involving bears and woods five Scarlet Macaw chicks rest in their wood-framed wire mesh enclosure explains volunteer macaw caretaker Victoria Howard I can empathize— between the protein bar I have just eaten I can feel myself slipping into torpor right along with these birds Howard and FCD chief biologist Boris Arevalo explain that the five chicks in their care are between 58 and 60 days old each bird sports a disheveled mixture of adult plumage and spiky pinfeathers but Scarlet Macaws must content themselves with looking fabulous only after they’ve reached adulthood FCD’s hand-rearing program is only in its second year and they’re proud to show off their new lab and aviary both of which are constructed of decidedly low-tech materials The only concession to technology seems to be a digital scale to weigh the birds—that and the Tropican Parrot Food an expensive formula that must be imported from Canada but is the gold standard for raising macaw chicks by hand from the buildings to the standard-issue paper surgical masks that everyone wears (so the macaws won’t become habituated to human faces) is built to adapt to the vagaries of a tropical climate I pause to reflect that had it been created in the States the lab would be covered in stainless steel and would cost hundreds of times what this one did—and someone would have demanded that we all wear special Scarlet Macaw–shaped masks It certainly wouldn’t cost $400 per bird per month to raise them Sometimes money and hyper-specialization is not the only solution to a problem We leave the macaws to sleep off their meal and head into the aviary where Arevalo details the first 100 days of a captive-reared macaw’s life: If a nest can’t be effectively protected by the rangers while the chicks are growing or if a nest produces a third chick that won’t survive FCD removes the birds from the nest and brings them to the lab What follows is between 90 and 100 days of care as they grow into their adult strength and plumage The last step is a two-month stint in the aviary where the macaws learn to fly and to forage for food Minders gradually move the food and water onto ever-higher platforms in the aviary then onto a ledge next to a door at the top of the enclosure but they still come back to the feeding platform for extra snacks and water All eight macaws in 2015’s cohort successfully fledged but it took until January 2016 before they left the area for good that question dogged me in the weeks before I went to Belize imagining camps full of equipment and graduate students Once I learned that the Scarlet Six crew gets by on roughly $6,000 a year almost all of which comes courtesy of the National Audubon Society and lots and lots of hand-me-downs (that anemic outboard motor on the skiff is a prime example) Martinez has a plan for how to supplant some of the funding it currently gets from Audubon: Use bird-based ecotourism (with Audubon-trained bird guides) in the macaw’s wintering grounds in Red Bank to raise funding for the project but I get to meet some of these guides later in my tour through Belize and their enthusiasm for macaws is irrepressible But there’s another kind of sustainability that now fires my curiosity: How many macaws does Belize need to have a stable population Britt gives me his best “ballpark wince,” the face that pretty much every scientist makes when I ask them to speculate on something but he settles quickly and says “450 to 500.” <<You can help! Audubon's work makes a difference. Support our conservation efforts by donating to Audubon today!>> Five hundred macaws are about double the current roughly guesstimated population I remark that the 25 macaw chicks that Scarlet Six and FCD have protected to adulthood over the past two years add another 10 percent to the population this program could feasibly declare victory in 15 years or so although he cautions that expanded partnerships will be the best way to protect all of the vulnerable areas within the Chiquibul Forest and Maya Mountains and that it’s as yet unclear how climate change will affect food availability It takes us 45 minutes of puttering up and down the Macal and what my photographer dubs “a huge black turkey” (in reality before we spot 10 macaws feeding on cohune nuts They’re too far away to photograph from the water so we beach the boat and head off through the waist-high grass By now the sun is hot and high and the air is filled with the buzz of insects and birds On snags far above our heads sit a family of Bat Falcons Twenty itchy and uncomfortable minutes later hanging onto branches with their feet and swinging down to get more food They look impossible—nothing this bright should be this big and they certainly shouldn’t be this bright and big and be flying But the macaws launch their burly bodies and long tails into the air and flap to a nearby tree We stay until we’re dehydrated and sunburned our indication that it’s time to head back to camp for a grilled-chicken dinner as fat raindrops and thumb-size click beetles with glowing eyes bombard us in camp I find myself dwelling on the risks and privations that the Scarlet Six rangers endure while on duty like the ticks we’re currently pulling from our skin whose intensely itchy bites torment my arms and ankles on how successful the project is at protecting Scarlet Macaws Scarlet Six has reduced overall nest poaching from higher than 90 percent to less than 30—and this year is the second in a row that no known nests were poached last decade’s “last flight of the Scarlet Macaw” will be nothing but a distressing could-have-been from heatwaves and cold snaps to torrential downpours and droughts For millennia wildfires enhanced prairie soil and ensured grass’s dominance by burning back woody shrubs and saplings Bison followed the fires to graze on tender new growth of grasses and sedges; as they fed their hooves aerated and manure fertilized the soil The combined forces shaped the Great Plains and sedge species at various stages of growth spanning 550 million acres The patchwork of habitats supports diverse insects barely one-third of central North America’s historical grasslands persist today Farming and development have razed 90 percent of its tallgrass prairie “It actually dwarfs what we’re seeing in the rainforest in the sheer scale and size and intensity of the crisis,” says Marshall Johnson That destruction has in turn hit grassland birds which have declined by more than 40 percent since the 1960s; some species have seen even steeper declines Audubon’s North American Grasslands & Birds Report highlights the added perils that climate change poses to the Great Plains’ avian denizens and drought may make significant areas inhospitable to certain species within decades Audubon scientists built climate models that incorporate temperature and other characteristics of the habitats 38 grassland-bird species occupy They found that 16 species will likely see most of their current range become uninhabitable if Earth’s temperature rises by 3 degrees Celsius; if we limit warming to 1.5 degrees the number facing this threat drops to just three conservationists are working with ranchers to shore up these strongholds and safeguard birds’ survival When they took over Deanna’s family ranch in North Dakota in 1999 they observed practices inherited from their grandparents This songbird eludes predators by hiding in wetter mixed grass or tallgrass near prairie potholes so keeping northern prairies intact is critical Its entire breeding range will be lost if carbon emissions aren’t curbed sharply.  A decade later, the couple was tens of thousands of dollars in debt. They were determined not to sell to mega-farms, which would plow under the fertile mixed-grass prairie and its seasonal wetlands, or “potholes,” that supply plant and invertebrate food for breeding waterfowl, shorebirds, and grassland birds. Desperate, they took a course through the North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition The instructor offered a new perspective: Manage their grass The Sands soon instituted rotational grazing: corralling one large herd through a series of small pastures moving the animals before they overgraze to give grasses time to rest and recover A $300,000 farm bill grant covered the up-front costs of fencing 64 paddocks and supplying water to each the Sands had tripled their grass per acre cultivating enough to graze cattle through the winter and eliminate the costs of supplemental grain They also shifted their calving schedule to early summer and numerous birds flourish on their ranch which has earned Audubon’s bird-friendly designation (see "Recipe for Success.") "I didn’t give two shits about a butterfly or a duck 10 years ago,” Cody says Now he keeps an eye on three Sharp-tailed Grouse leks on the property The first time Mark Sears visited Soapstone Prairie but he could have sworn he was in the Serengeti Grazing in the wide expanse of mixed prairie were herds of pronghorn which support predators like black bears and mountain lions Prairie dogs guarded entrances to underground burrows and the property had a complete suite of grassland birds male buntings perform an elegant mating flight singing while slowly descending on fluttering wings this grassland endemic will lose the majority of its breeding range Soapstone Prairie’s 22,500 acres are also home to Lindenmeier one of the nation’s most important archaeological digs In the 1930s excavators uncovered a spear point embedded in a vertebra of Bison antiquus a seven-foot-tall extinct ancestor of modern bison The find offered definitive proof that humans inhabited North America 11,000 years ago—and earned the site designation as a national historic landmark Sears’s job is to conserve land for wildlife first and public recreation second So when Soapstone Prairie went up for sale in 2003 he moved fast: “We knew we had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Colorado is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation which places its grassland patches on a crash course with development especially near expanding cities like Fort Collins He tapped conservation funds generated by county and city sales taxes to obtain the nearly $15 million needed to purchase the property in 2004 Sears then took steps to make the grassland healthier He instituted prescribed burns to replenish the soil and vegetation and leased the land back to the previous owners with the understanding that they would continue grazing sustainably and rotate herds and rest pastures more frequently they’ll chew grasses down to the ground and even extract the roots Overgrazing ultimately upsets the complex ecology that builds rich soils providing ample nutrients for diverse grasses denser patches of grass where birds nest and hide The practice imitates the historical movements of bison when enormous herds of hundreds of thousands of animals roved the Great Plains mowing the grass down to the sheath and fertilizing the soil allowing grasses to recover and send up new shoots Fort Collins had been managing Soapstone for about a decade when Sears hit upon the idea of bringing bison back In November 2015 the city introduced one bull and a dozen or so cows related to the Yellowstone National Park herd with a plan to manage them carefully to replicate their ancestral grazing behavior Sears’s team partnered with Colorado State University’s animal reproduction lab to ensure the animals were free of brucellosis a bacterium that induces abortion and can infect cattle and people perhaps a little faster than we had anticipated,” Sears says Managers have tripled the pasture size to accommodate the 70 shaggy behemoths and may offer some to other bison restoration efforts As wild as Soapstone looked when Sears first saw it Last summer Baird’s Sparrows—the grassland birds most vulnerable to climate change according to Audubon’s report—were recorded nesting at Soapstone In 2002 Nancy Ranney was working as an environmental designer and raising her family in California when she left that life to take the reins of her parents’ ranch in central New Mexico She viewed the opportunity as a grand challenge: to manage the land more in line with the ecological principles she’d observed during her landscape-planning career which each grazed continuously on its own pasture and ultimately combined them into one that was frequently moved through 34 pastures of varying sizes “He was sure we’d be back to the old style in a couple of years,” Ranney says Ranney Ranch’s blue grama grass monoculture had transformed into a mosaic of 35 different species of shortgrasses; these drought-tolerant varieties maintain 90 percent of their biomass beneath the surface “There was seed bank in the ground that never had the opportunity to emerge before with constant Today an estimated 50 grass species thrive and the land supports nearly 300 cows and eight bulls A look across the fence line makes that clear Some neighboring grasslands have not burned or been grazed for years Whereas grass covers roughly 80 percent of Ranney’s pasture the other land is barren or dominated by brush Her property supports the rare Montezuma Quail a secretive bird not usually found on a conventional ranch due to its need for dense grass cover most of its breeding range will contract with only 2 degrees of global warming maintaining the dry shortgrass prairies of the Southwest “These systems evolved under frequent fire and grazing,” says Jon Hayes and fire suppression now limit natural blazes other types of plants overtake grassland habitat The encroaching vegetation—typically woody shrubs or invasive grasses—varies by region native juniper tends to invade undisturbed grassland they have the same effect: “They crowd out the native grasses,” Hayes says which drives out grassland birds like McCown’s Longspurs and Mountain Plovers that require sparse cover Energy development is another threat to the state’s remaining grasslands now the world’s highest-producing oilfield The infrastructure required to move that oil—well pads pipelines—transforms grassland habitat into an industrial zone inhospitable to birds and most of them have appeared since Ranney implemented rotational grazing combined with longer rest periods Originally, a handful of predominantly warm season species dominated—effectively a monoculture of blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), a perennial bunchgrass that provides little soil protection and little herbage Now they have approximately 50 cool and warm season species; biodiversity is the name of the game for surviving periods of increasing drought. Photos: Minesh Bacrania Conserving this region’s extensive shortgrass prairie will be particularly important as the climate grows warmer and drier are projected to look more like mixed- and shortgrass prairies as their typical 40-50 inches of annual rainfall decreases which are accustomed to as little as 15 inches of rain annually “Some of these places could be the last best place for some of these grassland birds,” he says “because they’re already arid grasslands.” The  key  is  maintaining  the  right  amount  of  grass;  neither  overgrazed  bare soil nor undergrazed shrubland will support grassland birds there’s a middle ground that benefits ranchers Arvind  Panjabi had been conducting grassland-bird surveys in the Chihuahuan Desert for nearly a decade when he heard the first alarming reports: Field crews returning to study sites “It happened multiple years in a row,” says Panjabi conservation scientist at the nonprofit Bird Conservancy of the Rockies “We’d come back and more sites would be gone.” Panjabi found this particularly disturbing because he was just beginning to document which birds use these desert grasslands Grasslands make up 15 percent of the Chihuahuan Desert’s 140,000 square miles 9 out of 10 migratory bird species from the Great Plains funnel here As the main wintering ground for grassland birds the Chihuahuan Desert is already a conservation hotspot and Audubon’s report finds that large swaths will remain grassland even as the climate warms To determine the loss so far, Panjabi examined satellite imagery from 2006 to 2011. He found that 270 square miles of corn and cotton had materialized in Valles Centrales a 2,600-square-mile grassland considered a conservation priority area by Mexico “We estimated that 350,000 grassland birds had been displaced by that habitat loss in just five years,” he says These colorful birds historically lived alongside bison and are most successful nesting in grazed prairie They are vulnerable to climate change in the northern prairies where they breed as well as in the Chihuahuan Desert where they spend the winter The first step was figuring out what was happening on the ground He learned that a recent expansion of the area’s electric grid now allowed farmers to drill down 700 feet into deep-water aquifers to irrigate fields; previously lack of water made the land non-arable “That created a lot of insecurity in the rural areas,” Panjabi says All at once Mexican ranchers wanted to flee drug-fueled violence and their land was more valuable to farmers many of whom are Canadian Mennonites who immigrated to the area Enrique Pérez Carrillo knows firsthand the challenges of desert ranching become unpredictable; it doesn’t always come when the grass needs it “We hear ranchers complaining about the rain that ranching is not a good business anymore,” he says “If we are not making money and someone comes here to ask Pérez Carrillo is one of 20 ranchers working with Panjabi to find ways to stay profitable and keep hold of their property He started in 2011 by subdividing his eight pastures to let the land rest after grazing; he currently rotates 500 cows through 40 paddocks and aims to ultimately have at least 80 paddocks adding more as he finds the funds to install infrastructure to pump groundwater to each pasture Pérez Carrillo has seen the growth of more shortgrass in some areas and an increase in wildlife including Baird’s Sparrows and Chestnut-collared Longspurs They also keep hopeful watch for Aplomado Falcons In 2012 Panjabi found only three breeding pairs of the endangered raptor within 24 historic territories in the Chihuahuan Desert When grassland and shrubland are cleared for agriculture Aplomados lose their prey base—including grassland birds—as well as elevated nest sites Pérez Carrillo’s open shortgrass ranch with scattered trees and shrubs is seemingly ideal falcon habitat so Panjabi’s crew has installed a nest platform on his property and at other ranches in the area 11 pairs nested across the Chihuahuan Desert Their presence serves as a sentinel for the health of grassland birds generally from resident desert-dwellers to seasonal visitors from the prairie potholes and beyond Cows might not be an obvious solution for saving grassland birds, but they work. Audubon’s Conservation Ranching Program collaborates with ranchers to practice rotational grazing A third party then certifies the property as bird-friendly but we’re not good marketers,” says North Dakota rancher Cody Sand He proudly affixes the label on his grass-fed beef which Audubon staff help place in specialty markets Today more than 40 retailers in seven states and 11 online companies carry meat with the Audubon label (visit audubon.org/meat) Some 1.8 million acres are enrolled on 63 ranches across 11 states and program director Chris Wilson aims to add 1.5 million acres by 2021 He’s eager to find participants in the strongholds identified in the Audubon report protecting vital grassland bird habitat for decades to come This story originally ran in the Summer 2019 issue as “Grassroots Revival.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today Focusing our attention on the winged wonders that share our planet can reveal everything from the finest details to the largest patterns of life as shown by many of the 8,770 images and 261 videos entered in this year’s contest From the admissions focused on native flora for our Plants for Birds category to the more artistic compositions for the Fisher Prize our judges were once again amazed by the beauty and breadth of entries We thank all 2,416 photographers for sharing their visions with us This year we expanded the competition with two new prizes: a Video Award awarded to the best photograph of a female bird across all divisions We also continued our tradition of bestowing the Fisher Prize on the image that takes the most creative approach to photographing birds and a Plants for Birds Award to the top photograph depicting the relationship between native plants and birds One trend became clear after the judging was completed: In contrast to recent years few of the winning images emerged from far-flung expeditions Most were taken by photographers working close to home This may be a reflection of the many ways that birds provided solace during the challenging and restrictive conditions brought on by the pandemic These winning images originally ran in the Summer 2021 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today Drew Lanham and I’m a Black American ornithologist I confess here and declare now multiple identities—race and ethnicity My love of birds lies at the intersection of these and renders me and the minuscule percentage of others who would declare themselves the same Like the seldom-seen skulking sparrows so many of us seek we are few and far between among an overwhelmingly white flock but like far too many of us “living while Black,” I have also felt the frustration and pain of being discounted or disrespected Here we go again, some of you may be thinking “Wasn’t Black Birders Week over months ago?” “That overblown Central Park thing was put to rest right?” But just as I don’t forget assaults with deadly words against friends I must expand my Blackness and bird love beyond a week. Race is an issue in every aspect of American life and environmentalism writ large. For birders it is an issue fledged from the nest of its “founding father,” John James Audubon and flies fully feathered now in present day John James Audubon is American birding; the name falls wistfully and like Edison and the light bulb or Zuckerberg and Facebook more people than not will associate the name with a singular thing: birds But what do we do when an origin story begins with a rancid “Once upon a time?” What do we do with a racist slave-owning birding god almost 200 years dead And what do we do with such a man who might have been in denial of his own identity?  You may have entered the realm of Audubon magazine to escape such a discussion. But it belongs here The person whose name graces the publication and shapes how we perceive birds was more than most of his acolytes know—much less want to openly address inhumane legacy carries forward will define the future course of the movement he inspired They also hold truths about our ability to help birds I’m also pushing beyond that exhumation to dig into current affairs I’m concerned with how birding and bird conservation rest too comfortably in a homogenized stasis I’d like to show what they can and should be They are an obsession that first took hold at about eight years old when my designs on boy-powered flight fell hard to gravity After an arduous migratory route from childhood dreams of being a Red-tailed Hawk through expectations of an engineering career Today I’m a cultural and conservation ornithologist who spends most waking hours (and some sleeping ones) thinking about birds Some of my thinking is about others similarly given over to chasing I understood the almost mythical power of Audubon While others on the playground pretended to be cowboys or astronauts I imagined myself in buckskins with a telescope and shotgun I would kill the birds as he did and paint them Audubon roamed the continent in the early 19th century cataloging its avifauna in a way none of his contemporaries did (and no one really has since) bringing attention to its amazing diversity of birds and opening the door to North American ornithology It must have been shockingly beautiful to behold: life-size bird paintings in a series of three-foot-tall plates engraved on “double elephant folio” paper (The price for a set was certainly shocking: about $30,000 in today’s dollars.) These plates were later bound into enormous books and now people visit the extremely rare copies in libraries and museums to reverently watch the pages turned by gloved docents and John James himself akin to birders’ Jesus anything the name “Audubon” touches is somehow imbued with ascendant conservation powers The litany of North American bird noticers/naturalists/conservationists have all belonged to the same storied club—Wilson It is a pantheon that speaks to the white patriarchy that drives nature study in the Western world Rachel Carson and Rosalie Edge—two women who played a pivotal role in bird conservation—break the pattern or Indigenous figures are hardly ever acknowledged as contributors to the cause of “saving things.” As important a role as George Washington Carver played in protecting the soil of the South and Majora Carter plays as a founder of the environmental justice movement their contributions go mostly unnoticed outside of Black History Month And I’ve seen firsthand how the organizations that grew from this foundation are likewise predominantly white I resigned in 2020 because the essential work of diversity and inclusion remained siloed Audubon’s policies and practices diverged from my own and I had to remove any conflict of interest in order to maintain my personal agenda of connecting conservation and culture environmentalism and conservation are inarguably worthy causes But without consideration for human injustices they are wildly unbalanced in ways that are coming home to roost like so many homeward-bound crows at dusk to the tall pines in the midst of isolation and quarantine and a nearly yearlong the nation faces an identity crisis of its own The seemingly innocuous world of watchers who hold birds and birding as escapes hasn’t itself escaped a glancing blow Injustice and inequity don’t have statutes of limitations and don’t cease to exist where people sling binoculars Racism doesn’t stop at the borders of migratory hotspots the Sierra Club denounced its first president as a racist unworthy of organizational adulation Muir is a founding father of the American wilderness movement; he also characterized Blacks as lazy “sambos” and Native Americans as “dirty.” The National Audubon Society followed suit He mostly referred to them as “servants” and “hands,” but never seemed especially concerned that the people helping him could be bought Audubon’s callous ignorance wouldn’t have been unusual for a white man It would have been de rigueur—an expectation of race and class that he enjoyed Both Muir and Audubon were “men of their time” and judged accordingly but could have been men ahead of their time and judged otherwise The stories of icons and heroes are critical but what happens when truth rubs the shine off to reveal tarnished reality and the closely allied sin of racism persist how many monuments to environmentalism and conservation need to come down—or at least be rigorously inspected And as we consider how we treat past memory laying Audubon or any other mostly white character as a 10-year-old Growing into adulthood as a Black American race is ever present and too frequently brought to my attention as bias or prejudice wrought by individuals and institutions including that portion of it dedicated to loving birds and bird-loving people And so I am forced to think about it even when I’d rather be doing something else like watching birds or thinking about the people I like watching birds with A simple question from my non-birding wife brought another facet of Audubon’s identity to mind She was in the New Orleans African American Museum of Art did you know that Audubon was Black?” she said It was one of those questions to which she already knew the answer but took premature glee in knowing that I might not I knew there was a question about it.” In fact I didn’t know for sure that Birding Jesus was possibly a person of color “apparently they know it down here ’cause I’m standing here looking at James John Audubon” (she usually gets his name reversed for some reason) “and he’s on the wall of the museum They obviously know something y’all don’t.” I didn’t have a problem with Audubon being Black-ish but it was clear that Audubon’s identity was more fact to her than to me Like many birders it was some sort of tangent I hadn’t paid much attention to Audubon’s father was a French ship captain who traded slaves Audubon’s mother was French or Haitian Creole a Creole is a person of mixed white and Black descent Definitions of race and identity have morphed over time to both cover and expose truths so we may never know who John James Audubon’s mother was But my wife saw his portrait hanging on the wall because there was a belief in his Blackness strong enough to ignore the biographers who say there was no doubt about Audubon’s whiteness Blackness in America is a function of perception by some Proof sometimes lies in what cannot be proven The difference between white burden of proof and Black knowing is emblematic of our national cognitive dissonance on race Maybe I’d been blinded by the brilliance of Audubon’s art and still stuck in the boyhood hero stories that didn’t mention his parentage Maybe I’d been made myopic by a mutual love of birds But that someone with no stake in the birding game could call him as others saw him brought home the glancing blow That one drop of knowledge was enough for my wife to definitively ID him but it opened a whole line of questioning for me Historians continue to debate Audubon’s Blackness let’s just say the birding icon wasn’t who he appeared to be What if he was really just good at “passing”—being a Black man of passable whiteness such that he was able to travel around 1800s America without pause or fear Look at paintings of Audubon (some of them selfie portraits—J.J would have LOVED cell phone cameras) and he’s as robust and white as any wilderness explorer ever was An aquiline nose and sun-flushed face always peering into whatever wild place he would next venture to watch Audubon was a master at marketing his own image and by all accounts sought to distance himself from any ideas about his background that would taint his privileged skin As I made the speaking circuits over the next few years talking bird science but also trying to connect dots between conservation and culture I began to float the idea of Audubon’s questionable heritage “What about holding him up as a multiracial role model?” I asked there was a Black POTUS (half-white) and a “Cablinasian” (Tiger Woods’s contrived name for Caucasian and Asian heritage) golfer who found widespread acceptance and acclaim There seemed to be a different standard for John James The first time I posed the question at a meeting in Arizona There were plenty of other issues to dredge up that dealt more immediately with making birding more colorful; why this Maybe their parking meters were running out I had no definitive answer to the question I asked I dropped it as an exercise in heuristic exploration one that might begin to open some binoculared eyes to larger questions of identity and inclusion I asked again at talks all over the country The question isn’t just about Audubon’s identity but our own For years I had assumed that all the hybrid cars at birding festivals with leftish-leaning bumper stickers meant I was in a world of allies who would understand “the struggle” of Black people I know better now and cast those assumptions aside to understand more realistically who we are—a subset of the whole s we tear down monuments that deserve to be dismantled and hopefully melted down and cast into monuments of truly heroic—not perfect what difference would it make if an ancestry test revealed the “taint” of sub-Saharan African in John James Audubon Would the Great Egret flying proudly white on the emblem of the national organization have to be changed to something Would those birders who left the room where I made such audacious mulatto claims come back in And does the possibility that John James Audubon may have been a man of mixed race give him a pass on his racism Racists do not get passes because of identity confusion or historical context I do not believe perfection should ever be the standard The public watches unarmed Black people being killed and assaulted daily in high def and the protests that ensue and attempts to deconstruct democracy by white people who’d just as soon have those Black people remain in a certain space Almost all of this is rooted in a history that Audubon witnessed near the apex of its horrific turn What choices will be made now by conservation organizations Will there be excuses of context to brush over with paint the truths that need to be revealed Seeing beauty and advocating for justice are not mutually exclusive acts I would argue that one can feed the other powerfully Perhaps that might appear in a mission statement somewhere I own a budget reprint of Birds of America a treasured gift from my older brother Jock I’ve picked up a palm-size version I keep in my writing shack as well as a compressed copy of The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America John James’s go at mammals; several biographies; and a few replica prints bought from consignment and thrift stores I look at his portraits of “southern birds”—my birds the ones I know best from my South Carolina home: Loggerhead Shrikes The birds would seem to fly or flush from painted page into present time But then there’s something behind what was portrayed and I’d like to know more about what we can’t see One of my favorite portraits is of Carolina Parakeets (Carolina Parrot the way the now extinct Psittacids poked their dexterous feet outward and looked beyond two dimensions into a world they would disappear from forever Perhaps it was the final look before Audubon laid waste to them Maybe in their super-intelligent parrot minds they knew something we didn’t I’m wondering how many of the Black people Audubon encountered saw what he seemed to work so hard to hide I venture deep into Google to try and shake loose some definitive answer as to who he was I talk to knowledgeable sources who volley identity back and forth with me sometimes prickish birder who had little regard for anything other than himself or the birds he sought John James Audubon had that elephantine blind spot that opened his eyes wide for birds and shut them tight to humanity Maya Angelou advised that when people show you who they are Audubon showed his full hand in “The Runaway,” a story he published in the five-volume companion to Birds of America Whether Audubon was Black or not holds little sway to me considering his own account of a chance meeting in a Louisiana swamp where the Lord God Birds still reigned and flocks of Carolina Parakeets huddled in the hollows of thousand-year-old cypress trees I can see Audubon there in the glow of firelight probably with a sack of dead birds he intended to skin I wonder if he shared that flesh with the likely hungry and exhausted family he encountered and sold until the father reunited them all for an attempt at a free life They tell a distracted John James of the cruelties they endured Audubon barely hears them; he is probably preoccupied with the birds he’s seen and wants to see He needs to pose the empty skins and paint But then there are these Negroes in the way Their stories and pleas fall on ears tuned in to hear a Barred Owl calling who momentarily recognizes something human and perhaps even familial in the faces of the free Black people sitting with him tells the family that he will return them to their owner I imagine he’s convinced it is the white thing to do and here in Louisiana he must keep the story straight the horror of the moment of being Black and free but knowing you’d soon be re-chattled I wonder in that moment what I would have done it all leaked out into the murky waters that night—or into the story he concocted to double down on his own white supremacy and a persistent reckoning with its racist past and present few have paid attention to the perceived progressive bastion of environmentalism If the Muir revelation might be likened to one of the giant redwoods he worshipped falling hard in a forest where we can all see and hear it then John James Audubon’s racism is the albatross rotting around the necks of those who would hold him in reverence It is past smelling foul and beginning to reek That is evidence enough to recast the hero into a different role The organizations bearing Audubon’s name must press forward in this new light and decide who and what they want to be Most of their members are white people with enough disposable income to dump into the coffers of overwhelmingly white-led organizations who have no need or desire for John James to be anyone other than the myth No one willingly pays memberships for discomfort Why muddy the ornithological water with race Because racism pervades everything—even our love of birds To see it blatantly codified in black and white is sad proof of a deeply ingrained bias South Carolina Audubon Society reports from the early 1900s blame Black people for the decline in songbirds and waterfowl a luminary among South Carolina ornithologists placed “negroes” among a litany of agents (alongside raccoons and house cats) deleterious to bobwhite quail in the book Birds of South Carolina Racism even found its way into later ornithological texts Sprunt and Chamberlain’s seminal book South Carolina Birdlife cites the colloquial name of Double-crested Cormorants as “niggergeese”—a name for a bird perceived as deceptive and useless that’s still being thrown around in duck blinds today and there is every reason to be concerned if institutions insist on not changing for the sake of tradition or donors easily offended he passed on the chance to be a better human being That is weight that should bear heaviest on all the preconceived notions and I for one will have to tear down any monuments I’ve erected to him Race and racism are immutable facts of my life I am consistently punished for that identity I hold all these thoughts as I hold on to my Audubon books and prints but I’ll see the Carolina Parakeets and every other bird or animal he painted in a different kind of slanting light A few years ago I had a close encounter with an elephant folio myself my friend Jason Saul rushed me to the New-York Historical Society to lay eyes on a rare copy of Audubon’s masterpiece we got there only to find the gallery closed trying my best to see the ornithological Holy Grail then implored one staffer after another to let us in for “just a glance,” I caught sight of an exhibit at the other end of the hall: “Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow.” It was the worst kind of bird exhibit Blackness defined and then institutionally defiled It was an American blind spot wrought over almost a century I lost sight of the off-limits Audubon and immersed myself in the hard and heroic history of my people He’d somehow gained entrance to the gallery With my mind still lingering in the story of segregation looming even larger than I could’ve imagined the folio’s pages were opened to Baltimore Orioles—two brilliant orange-and-black males and an equally beautiful muted brown-and-ochre female perched on a pendulous nest.  a genius consumed by a system of bias he bought into I later posted a photo of me staring at the black birds under glass just down the hall from an exhibit on Black folks trapped under a ceiling that never let them see upwards One was a history of which I had become a part the other a history of which my ancestors had been a part I made my train to Philly and thought about the irony all the way south.   t's been a long haul from my early childhood­ flight-and-feather obsession to this complex thinking about just how the lives of birds can be “saved” even as we try to save ourselves from one another It’s critical to not just say the words or change some bird’s colonialist name sustainable acts to make the words live in policy and practice.  These days I sit in my side-yard writing shack I’m spending hours pondering who I am in the context of who we are as a community of bird adorers and Americans divided into extreme factions It’s no easy feat watching birds without some echo of societal racism interrupting the songs of Carolina Wrens I hope that Evening Grosbeaks will magically show up at my feeders in this finch irruption year; in the next I know it won’t be magic that makes things better in America but hard work and the people and organizations who say they care showing it I’ve been buoyed by an overwhelmingly positive and inclusive cadre of kindred spirits—good people who treat me with respect and love people who want better for humans and birds there are organizations trying to do better they are digging deep and deserving of affirmation and support we need to call truth to power—past and present—where it is stuck or regressive I look over my shoulder as I work on this essay He was a despicable racist birder of his time I’m hoping such an identification isn’t one I have to make often But I know many blind spots remain in the wake of a legacy that can either be ignored to a fate of stagnancy and decline or be learned from to move framed picture of George Washington Carver the nature-loving Black man who saved the South’s soil and was rumored to have loved birds as I do I desire a better view and believe I’ve found just the spot for the Tuskegee professor This piece originally ran in the Spring 2021 issue.​ To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today Drew Lanham is a conservation ornithologist and endowed faculty at Clemson University where his work focuses on the intersections among race He is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts Adrian Brandon is a Brooklyn-based artist who focuses on documenting the Black experience and digital illustration to capture Black love in addition to highlighting injustices that plague the Black community.  More than 800 North American birds at your fingertips—all for free.  a 60-foot fishing and seabird touring boat steamed away from North Carolina’s Outer Banks on a recent winter morning is widely considered the godfather of pelagic birds along the Atlantic Seaboard He was taking me out to find a transient spot along the continental shelf where Northern Gannets gather By mid-morning I could see a stark delineation in the water off our bow nutrient-rich water cooled by the Labrador Current flowing south from the Arctic; on the other swift current that originates off the tip of Florida This boundary is ever shifting off the Outer Banks—sometimes as close as a few miles from the coast As we coasted to a corkscrewing bob above the swells their heart-shaped shells rolling in the current Below them circled 20 or so hammerhead sharks What brought us here was the spectacle off our starboard side Hundreds of Northern Gannets jostled for space among 3,000 seabirds Pelicans and gulls scrummed near two shrimp boats occasionally making their trademark daring dive: hurtling toward the water then tucking their wings in just above the surface as if they were feathers on the shaft of an arrow The gannets’ vocalization reached a fever pitch Soon a cloud of more than a thousand of the six-foot-wide seabirds amassed around us shrieking as they whizzed through the air and rained down upon the ocean at dizzying speeds “That’s the thing about gannets,” said Patteson “They don’t think anything about picking up and moving from one state to another in a single day.” frequently flying and diving faster than 60 miles an hour The species spans the North Atlantic; here in North America gannets breed in six colonies in southern Canada and overwinter at sea from New England to the Gulf of Mexico to keep up with the schools of menhaden and other forage fish they pursue gannets zipping along the Eastern Seaboard will encounter unprecedented obstacles In the United States 17 offshore wind sites are under development in the Atlantic from Cape Cod at the north end down to North Carolina’s Outer Banks just miles from where Patteson and I observed the gannets’ feeding frenzy Once completed these wind farms will create a network of turbines along the East Coast continental shelf like nothing else on Earth While nobody knows what toll the looming structures might take on seabirds scientists say gannets may be especially vulnerable North American populations have stopped expanding over the past decade Scientists pin the leveling off on warming oceans near their breeding grounds that have altered their prey base A decade ago Patteson and I would never have seen shrimp boats in January: Back then the North Carolina shrimp harvest was negligible in cold winter waters Now nearly 40 percent of the annual harvest is caught between December and March “You can’t help but notice things are changing,” Patteson told me as the Stormy Petrel II headed back to port and more changes are expected to intensify and accelerate over the coming decades as global temperatures warm But much damage can still be slowed or even reversed if carbon emissions decline Doing so will require society-wide changes electricity sources from carbon-emitting fossil fuels to clean energy generated by wind and the sun are in an unfortunate bind: They are seriously threatened by climate change but offshore wind—one of the most aggressively sought correctives—may prove deadly to them Scientists understand the potential impacts of offshore wind on Northern Gannets better than they do for many other marine animals thanks to research on the species’ interactions with existing wind farms in Europe But it’s a trade-off many are willing to make “Global warming is coming at us so fast we don’t have a choice but to adopt offshore wind,” says wildlife biologist Shilo Felton field manager for Audubon’s Clean Energy Initiative “This isn’t even as simple as ‘damned if you do damned if you don’t.’ Gannets are certainly damned if we don’t.” The Northern Gannet’s life history is as riveting as an operatic melodrama The seabirds raise their young in packed colonies on cliffs in the North Atlantic’s upper latitudes—cramped places marked by fierce competition Gannets will injure or kill each other over nest sites slicing neighbors or even errant chicks with a rapier-sharp beak chicks hurl themselves off the cliff’s edge sometimes falling 50 feet before gaining the momentum they need to glide down to the ocean In the weeks before their flight feathers fully grow in they bob along ocean currents learning to fish But lean foraging seasons can cause crisis for young gannets still unable to fly Those that survive range far and wide along the continental shelf for three or four years in search of prey By the time they return to the breeding colonies as mature adults what makes them so vulnerable to collisions with turbines The binocular view that allows them to spy prey fathoms deep keeps their focus trained on the ocean below rather than on obstacles in front of them It’s not uncommon to see gannets collide with each other while in a feeding frenzy plus their preference for flying at the same height as a turbine’s rotor sweep zone has led scientists to suspect that they have an especially high risk among seabirds for fatal collisions while some gannets will forage amid turbines most tend to avoid them altogether—a kind of habitat loss that scientists call “displacement.” “It seems counterintuitive that gannets could be at both collision and displacement risks,” Felton says What remains unknown is how the extra energy spent to avoid the turbines combined with the potential drop in food availability if they lose all hunting grounds associated with the wind farms but they can’t say how significant those impacts will be Those potential future threats pile on top of existing ones gannets are poisoned by toxins in the food chain and they are prone to deadly entanglements with ocean debris and fishing nets a biologist at Memorial University in Newfoundland are the cause of gannets’ reduced breeding success in North America mackerel may swim deeper in the water column presumably out of range of even the gannet’s impressive dive depths abandonment has become more common on Cape St gannets in North America keep returning to the same colonies No matter how densely packed or food-scarce the sites become the birds haven’t made any known attempts to establish new colonies even when there appears to be suitable habitat nearby “These are probably the most aggressive birds They fight the bloodiest battles and are capable of horrific bloodletting but they won’t expand beyond these six colonies.” even as their breeding habitat and food sources degrade around them then their best hope lies in our ability to curb emissions and our wider environmental impact the upper deck of the Stormy Petrel II offers a good vantage into the uncertain future of pelagic seabirds like the Northern Gannet From this perch the Outer Banks seems almost a mirage: miles of shimmering sand punctuated only by the insinuation of lighthouses Seventeen miles to the northeast amid the flat expanse of sea is the 122,405-acre lease site destined to become one of this country’s first offshore wind farms The plan for Kitty Hawk Wind is ambitious: up to 69 wind turbines with towers rising as high as 500 feet each equipped with blades spinning in a circumference that may reach heights of 1,000 feet above sea level at their apex will ferry the generated electricity—2,500 megawatts annually enough to power 700,000 homes when it’s completed in 2026—to onshore substations Sixteen similar projects are planned from here to Cape Cod where construction has begun on Vineyard Wind located 14 miles off Martha’s Vineyard and planned to be up and running in 2023 will include 62 turbines each set a nautical mile apart which will come online over the next decade will dwarf the nation’s single existing offshore wind farm which consists of five 300-foot-tall turbines that have been spinning off Rhode Island since 2016 Seventeen wind projects under development along the U.S Atlantic Coast are slated to go online in the next decade The scale of these installations is unprecedented across the world Europe has led the way in offshore wind development are smaller in scope: a dozen or so turbines each around 100 feet tall and set so close together that their 30-foot rotors create a veritable wall of white when seen from the air Studies there suggest that wind farms tend to displace auks as well as Red-throated Loons and many sea ducks There are practically no data on bird collision risks but gulls in particular and gannets may be vulnerable These studies are only so instructive for North American birds given the notable differences between European projects and the more massive installations planned for the United States Kate Williams directs the Center for Research on Offshore Wind and the Environment at the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) is the distance between the turbines in European waters The dense placement creates a barrier effect such that many birds perceive the wind farm as a single obstacle and avoid it entirely “Now we’re looking at turbines that are a kilometer apart or more and it seems very possible that birds would stop seeing the wind farm in its entirety and start responding to individual turbines,” Williams says “We don’t know because these really big new turbines haven’t been installed anywhere yet.” Scientists know that dozens of bird species use the offshore wind lease areas and Ruddy Turnstones that migrate over the Atlantic and a solid seafloor—characteristics that make good hunting grounds for birds like the gannet there’s a dearth of data showing where most birds go and the altitudes at which they fly has tagged several dozen Northern Gannets and found they roam widely over areas where offshore wind leases currently exist that gannets can be maddeningly inconsistent such as the kind we saw from the Stormy Petrel II This makes it difficult to predict how much time wintering gannets will spend in the vicinity of offshore wind farms It also makes it difficult to plan for mitigation. At some terrestrial wind farms, operators can slow or turn off turbines during peak migration periods and when species of concern are nearby It’s unclear how effective those strategies would be offshore they would be difficult to evaluate: Any killed birds would sink beneath the ocean’s surface and approving offshore wind projects is the purview of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) an agency within the Department of the Interior The bureau began identifying such sites in 2012 The typical lease is 25 years; rights to leases are sold at auction for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars In February six leases offshore New York and New Jersey attracted a record $4.37 billion in bids Authorities and wind developers acknowledge the risks to wildlife Last year BOEM concluded that Vineyard Wind would have “moderate” negative impacts on birds as well as the commercial fishing industry says their primary objective now is collecting data on how species interact with wind farms The lack of usable information frustrates Stenhouse “People look to us as scientists wanting to know what the risks are here and we just can’t tell them with any degree of certainty,” he says “There are lots of holes in the data.” As developers jump through final regulatory hurdles and start breaking ground a new scientific endeavor is racing to fill those gaps Late last year BOEM and the Department of Energy announced a plan to award a $7.5 million research grant to Duke University’s Wildlife and Offshore Wind project a transdisciplinary consortium of more than 20 universities and scientific organizations to study the impact of offshore wind on marine animals and their habitats but will involve extensive monitoring at the wind lease sites and during construction of specific farms Notably the research will not focus on collisions with turbines Williams and other scientists I spoke with agreed that collision detection and deterrence technology is a distraction from the real threat: large numbers of birds shifting their behavior the Duke study will concentrate in part on how wind installations may displace animals and affect their fitness Williams hopes the funding will let them pursue more sophisticated satellite tracking which will unlock the movements of birds like gannets and reveal how they interact with or avoid wind farms Williams and Stenhouse begrudgingly prioritize the health of a species over losses of individual birds They don’t love the idea that some gannets could die because of wind farms But their driving concern is saving species—and the entire ecosystem It’s a matter of scale: Montevecchi reckons the North American gannet population can probably handle 6 or even 60 extra fatalities a year in exchange for preserving their habitat long-term That’s a calculus the scientists are prepared to accept “We have such a hard time grasping how big a problem climate change is that it’s sometimes easier to focus on the immediate risk of a structure in the water,” Felton says “These birds are going to lose all of their habitat if the planet keeps warming The best we can do is minimize that threat.” Research conducted over the next 5 to 10 years will help developers and authorities adapt wind farms to reduce risks to wildlife would like to see wind developers held accountable for any and all bird fatalities that occur “The reality is that if you put something out there “We are responsible whether it’s one bird or a thousand We have to assume responsibility for those deaths.” A settlement that followed the Deepwater Horizon oil spill provides one model four million barrels of crude oil from a damaged deepsea well despoiled the Gulf of Mexico which included killing at least hundreds and likely thousands of gannets arrived at a $20.8 billion settlement intended to restore the ecosystem and compensate for the animals lost— ecological reparations A similar approach could compel wind farm operators to create a fund intended to replace lost habitat and animals has agreed to pay commercial fishermen $4.2 million for direct losses to their take and to create a $12.5 million trust for additional losses Wind developers could create a similar fund for wildlife conservation But we could better help wildlife if we addressed the core issue behind offshore wind and other energy development “We don’t have an energy-shortage problem; we have an energy-use problem,” he says which comprises 4 percent of the world’s population accounted for 17 percent of its energy consumption The reality is that we haven’t mustered the collective will to cut back enough to help wildlife “If we’d start conserving instead of consuming this entire equation would change dramatically and we could start taking real responsibility for the animals we harm,” Montevecchi says we could reduce the climatological threat instead of creating a new obstacle course for gannets and other birds to navigate Scientists say we’re fast approaching ecological tipping points—ice sheet melt and other processes—that will accelerate planetary warming That urgent timeline is out of step with the science needed to appropriately site offshore wind projects to reduce harm to birdlife at least five of the proposed offshore wind projects should be up and running crucial data from the bird studies may well come in time to inform the other 12 projects that have already received approval and more installations that will undoubtedly come after Scientists and developers can then use that information to protect as many birds as possible from any deleterious effects of wind farms—giving both gannets This story originally ran in the Spring 2022 issue as “A New Migration Gauntlet.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.  Properly sited wind power can help protect birds from climate change the judges of the Audubon Photography Awards gather at Audubon's headquarters in Manhattan to review their favorite images and select the finalists this year's awards had to be handled differently due to pandemic-related travel the judges assembled in an epic day-long Zoom meeting to winnow down the remaining pool to just the 10 winners and honorable mentions shown here.  the task was simultaneously unenviable and inspiring The thousands of submissions from nearly 1,800 entrants showed birdlife in all of its splendor and 7 Canadian provinces entered images that captured the creativity and beauty of species small and large This year we also continue with two new awards introduced in 2019: The Fisher Prize which recognizes an image that is as artistic as it is revealing and the Plants for Birds category, which honors the top photographs illustrating the crucial relationship between native plants and birds.  Steve Freligh, publisher, Nature’s Best Photography  Melissa Groo, wildlife photographer and winner of the 2015 contest’s Grand Prize Allen Murabayashi, chairman and co-founder, PhotoShelter senior director of bird-friendly communities Jason Ward, bird expert and host of “Birds of North America” Editor's note: After learning about serious allegations against Jason Ward, the National Audubon Society has severed its ties with him These winning images originally ran in the Summer 2020 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today But one rule that is wordlessly respected is you never look directly at South Beach because South Beach is the designated bathroom sited on a gravel sandbar so flat you can take a headcount of all inhabitants from a mile away Another rule is you shouldn’t go out alone you should take a walkie-talkie and a shotgun because you never know when a polar bear might show up you don’t want the polar bear between you and the cabin the only structure on the island that might sustain a clawed assault much less how to disable a starving bear keen on making me its meal When camping on an island a short boat ride from the northernmost point of Alaska one of the few remaining animals that make humans prey they’re still not the most charismatic megafauna on Cooper Island a septuagenarian who’s spent nearly 11 cumulative years here By the time I reach Cooper Island on August 7 Between his mop of gray hair and unkempt beard—there are no mirrors in the South Beach bathroom—shine bright darting eyes that don’t miss much He wears what you might expect of an Arctic field ornithologist: rain pants and a parka flecked with splatters of bird poop and undergirded with wool-sweater strata.  But few remember Divoky for his appearance; it’s the words that pour from his mouth like water from a burst dam that define him Any object in his periphery can inspire a story told in fractal spurts and with oppressive detail another thought—he’ll return to his story minutes later as if the world paused in wait of his next word His lingual floodwaters can be disorienting and Divoky commands a conversation and is prone to unwittingly drowning out its more subdued participants with his contrarian convictions Even so, the island’s other seasonal inhabitants—the colony of Black Guillemots that nest here every summer—hold a greater claim to Cooper than Divoky when a Coast Guard icebreaker dropped him off for a seabird survey that he discovered 10 pairs of the handsome seabirds nesting under scattered debris—ammo boxes and innumerable wood planks—abandoned by the U.S His find was a northern range expansion for the species in Alaska Like a kid flipping rocks to find salamanders a 26-year-old Divoky flipped boards and boxes to search for eggs and create new nesting crevices his nest count for the island was up to 18 he couldn’t stop thinking about Cooper Island He was struck by the scientific potential of its accessible nest sites and seduced by the opportunity to indulge himself in solitary nature and by 1975 got his hands on enough funding to return to Cooper Island for an entire summer serially sacrificing employers and girlfriends who demanded he choose between them and the guillemots “You have to be careful what you fall in love with in your twenties,” he says Divoky returned each summer to watch the colony mature and Divoky now cares for an island and its birds in decline and they had an 85 to 90 percent chance of flying away,” he says fledging just 45 chicks out of 120 hatched—not enough to maintain the colony’s population Nearly all the causes for this decline—changes in food all symptoms of global climate change caused by carbon dioxide These molecules build up in the atmosphere and trap heat like the layers of blankets required to sleep through the night on a sandbar on the Beaufort Sea guillemots may never have nested on Cooper in the first place: Until the late 1960s snow blanketed the ground for too much of the summer Cooper Island will no longer be able to support this species,” Divoky says And yet he keeps coming back to watch his beloved island decline collecting as much data as he can along the way Divoky has created one of the few ecological studies with enough long-term rigorously collected data to illuminate how climate change will force populations through an evolutionary bottleneck unlike any seen since the last ice age And the only reason we have even this glimpse is because of Divoky (Story continues below infographic.) Mandt’s Black Guillemots gather at Cooper Island to breed A single pair—they mate for life—may produce about two dozen chicks during their 20-year lifetimes the guillemots’ numbers have been dropping; fewer of those chicks are surviving to adulthood Because George Divoky has collected 43 years of data at Cooper Island Cooper Island was once ideally situated for Mandt's Black Guillemots offshore waters have grown warmer and more ice-free by September—and less favorable to prey Shown here: September sea-ice extent by year where they feed on plankton common along the edges Mandt’s Black Guillemots feed the cod to their young almost exclusively but their bonier bodies are more difficult to digest Percent of chicks that starved before fledging in a typical year cod dominated chicks' diets for the entire season the dominent prey has shifted mid-summer to sculpin each year except for 2006 chicks grow more slowly—and more of them starve polar bears that used to hunt from atop the sea ice have made their way to Cooper Island instead and the number of Horned Puffins has also increased—with deadly consequences for guillemot chicks puffins and polar bears together took 80 percent of the chicks when Divoky installed predator-resistant plastic nest cases for the birds Percent of guillemot chicks killed each year by predators Number of polar bears sighted on Cooper Island those same years Top: Percent of guillemot chicks killed each year by predators Bottom: Number of polar bears sighted on Cooper Island those same years With worse food sources and more predators fewer chicks than ever are fledging from Cooper Island each breeding pair fledges 0.5 guillemots annually on average—far behind the 1.1 needed to hold the population steady very day goes about the same on Cooper Island and begin the rounds: visiting every nest to check up on the chicks’ growth Divoky gingerly lays his shotgun on the ground then sits cross-legged in front of a nest and slowly lifts its lid until rasping peeps resound from the interior—that’s the chicks and then releases the chick back to its nest He repeats the process with the second chick it weighs 35 grams (a little over an ounce) it needs to bulk up by an order of magnitude and grow wings long enough to navigate rough waters—rapid development requiring a lot of fish to fuel it a subspecies that lives wedged between Alaska and Russia along the sea ice edge They’re fatty and common and easy to find because they feast on plankton blooming at the ice edge Parents spend their days winging to the ice to catch cod and ferrying it back to insatiable chicks To keep track of the parents’ comings and goings Divoky added a few data-collection gadgets in recent years: geolocators to follow their locations year-round and time-depth recorders to let him calculate how far and how often guillemot parents dive to chase fish A guillemot chick’s view from the inside of its nest on Cooper Island but now he gets outside help during the busiest weeks Often crouched beside him in early August is Penelope Chilton a field technician who’s worked with Divoky for a decade a McGill University undergrad and Cooper first-timer he relates stories about a nest’s prior inhabitants: “Over 22 years WOGy [named for its white-orange-gray leg bands] was the only vertebrate I saw annually because sometimes I didn’t see my family members WOGy was the constant.” Or he narrates the chicks’ relative progress: “The chicks aren’t gaining weight like they did yesterday But then all the world’s carbon would be caught up in guillemot chicks.” “The strength of George’s work has been in his utter tenacity to go back and go back and go back and get those data every year,” says Julia Parrish a University of Washington ecologist who studies seabirds as monitors of ocean health She compares him to the carbon-dioxide sensor near the peak of the 13,680-foot-high Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa that documents the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide as the infamous Keeling Curve “That is a long-term dataset collected year in and year out in the same way and in the same place,” she says “Applying that same technique to biodiversity means that researchers have to be there The number of people in the world who are willing to do that is vanishingly rare His study also has particular power because of dumb luck: It happens to cover a period of rapid atmospheric warming Most scientists studying the biological impacts of climate change can’t define “normal” for a given species or ecosystem and now it’s too late; the effects are manifest But Divoky spent his first 28 years following individual birds through their entire lives—surely enough data to describe a normal functioning Mandt’s Black Guillemot colony he had the whole story told in his mind,” says Stan Senner vice president of bird conservation for Audubon’s Pacific Flyway and Divoky’s long-time friend But in 2003 parents began serving fourhorn sculpin an ugly fish with a lumpy head and spiny fins Divoky would find chicks choked dead with enormous sculpin lodged in their throats Parents eventually learned to catch smaller sculpin “It takes a long time to break down all that cartilaginous mass” in sculpin fins Just one fish is enough to fill a chick’s stomach I’ve still got the last sculpin head in my stomach.’" The ensuing hunger makes siblings turn aggressive: In many nests the larger chick bullies the smaller one thin feathers on the back of one beta’s neck—physical evidence of aggression chicks grow more slowly and fledge at less than 300 grams but the parents are doing their best as they face a novel Arctic landscape The sea ice that previously drifted and persisted near the island through the summer is now melted and effectively gone—sometimes hundreds of miles away—by August or even July Arctic cod can’t survive in warm water south of the ice and guillemot parents can’t fly fast enough to make additional trips to the edge every day Seabird parents at other colonies face the same conundrum as Cooper’s guillemots Four-hundred miles southeast is Herschel Island a conservation biologist at the Yukon Department of Environment monitors the descendants of Mandt’s Black Guillemots found nesting beneath floorboards in the 1970s the birds switched from Arctic cod to eelblennies Another 1,600 miles southeast is Coats Island a McGill University ecologist (and Erin Brown’s thesis advisor) studies Thick-billed Murres who switched from cod to capelin “What we’re seeing is not necessarily about where we’re studying It’s happening across the Arctic,” Elliott says And as the ice disappears and [the birds’] range moves farther north eventually they’ll be squeezed out at the top.” If seabirds are barometers of ocean health then Arctic birds are screaming that there’s a major shift in the system a shift so extreme the barometers themselves are now changing are entering a period of rapid natural selection that will lead to either their extinction or evolution Mandt’s Black Guillemots, the ice-adapted subspecies of Black Guillemot, likely evolved some 25,000 years ago, according to evidence from mitochondrial DNA Their speciation may have been triggered by a very different evolutionary bottleneck Divoky speculates that most ancestral Black Guillemots who found themselves iced in couldn’t survive the new conditions but a small number may have had an advantage: They could find Arctic cod in small cracks in the ice and today descendants of those survivors nest on Cooper Island Now the population is marching through another bottleneck and this time the survivors will be birds who can hunt for anything besides cod “There are guillemots here who have just gotten by,” Divoky says it’s going to be the ones that are really fit [that survive] and rehydrated mushrooms cooked on the cabin’s two-burner stove I stand outside and squint at a clump of snow about three-quarters of a mile from camp at Arctic Terns dive-bombing overhead as it climbs atop a green mound of beach ryegrass Its hips relax; its shoulders press into the ground; and finally its head rests on its front paws But then you see them all tuckered out,” Divoky says and all I can do now is sleep because I’m just exhausted.’” Most polar bears used to hunt seals on the ice all summer long. But over the past 16 years, the average Beaufort Sea summer gained 36 days of open water, and more bears have been coming ashore, spending an extra 31 days on land to match they sometimes undertake monumental swims; one GPS-tracked mother swam 420 miles in nine days A guillemot chick is chump change compared to an ice seal In 2002 12 polar bears visited Cooper Island—more than double the total number Divoky observed in his first 26 years He installed his 8-by-12-foot fortress the very next year a worthwhile endeavor because the bears haven’t relented bears have been constant features of Cooper’s landscape—and constant terrors for the guillemots bears raid nests to snack on chicks and any adults they can catch themselves coping with climate-change-induced food scarcity must also cope with the fallout as other species adapt Horned Puffins migrated north from subarctic waters and began nesting on Cooper Island which are scarce in the open water north of Alaska and any tunnel excavated in permafrost will warm and collapse on itself So puffins compete with the guillemots for territory to have an older chick that’s almost ready to fledge and it looked like someone took vice grips and just crushed the skull,” Divoky says In 2009 the pressure from the pair of interlopers overwhelmed the colony: From 184 hatched chicks he destroyed the wooden nest sites and replaced them with plastic cases with guillemot-sized holes cut into the sides The cases aren’t entirely resistant to polar-bear intrusions—occasionally a bear manages to shake a chick free—but bears don’t have the thumbs required to unclip the lid “I wouldn’t [put out the cases] if I thought it would make any difference in polar bear survival,” Divoky says “But if they’re opening [a chick’s] body cavity and only eating the livers his study’s value in documenting climate-change adaptation is too great to sacrifice to a few hungry bears “I’m not trying to conserve [guillemots]; I’m trying to study them,” he says but the rest of the island’s human inhabitants are stuck in tents Our encampment is surrounded by what Divoky calls a “polar-bear-proof” electric fence but the fence is barely a meter high; it’s not hard to imagine a bear plowing right through it So I sleep with a shotgun by my side and hope that if the worst comes to pass Divoky’s voice crackles through the walkie-talkie: “Polar bear outside camp.” I extract myself from my sleeping bag What can only be a primal fear response sublimates my thoughts My entire being focuses on the predator; space and time still I don’t remember that I left my gun inside the tent The bear doesn’t even pause to investigate like countless Arctic animals facing novel “I don’t know what it is one can do” to help these animals “In the end you circle back to the idea: ‘Well we have to do what we can to reduce carbon emissions.’ You want to try and maintain areas like the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where the wildlife at least have a chance to adapt to changing conditions free from the stress of industrial development And you want to have big areas that are protected to give birds as much opportunity as possible for their own Plan B and Plan C.” and nearly all of the remaining nests fledged a single underweight alpha and then delicately tears its breast open like the skin on rotten fruit from all this death emerges something like hope: six parents “There were six individuals who were reproducing like it was 1979,” Divoky tells me after his return to civilization in September “And they weren’t just getting two chicks out the door: One of them had a 400-gram chick!” 360-degree video of Black Guillemots on Cooper Island Click and drag the video to give it a whirl If those chicks thrived because of advantageous genes—maybe the chicks can process sculpin or the parents are generalists who can hunt in open water—they’ll pass those genes on to their progeny Maybe those genes will lead some birds through the bottleneck and into the next iteration of Mandt’s Black Guillemots “It would be both very interesting and very depressing to see the colony get down to less than 10 pairs but 10 pairs who can figure things out,” Divoky says Next year a postdoctoral researcher will be dedicated to Divoky’s dataset full-time the first step in understanding how populations and species adapt to rapid climate change—and whether people can do anything to help them “That is not a system that we’re going to maintain by flying in frozen fish for all the chicks,” Parrish but you actually can’t make the ice closer You might be able to ward off a bear here and there but the large-scale changes that are also making those predators hungrier—that’s going to overwhelm.” “There’s a point at which the world is going to overwhelm George and overwhelm that colony,” she continues “He’s going to end up on a barrier island with no birds and/or a barrier island that’s underwater Indeed, Divoky is already fundraising for his nonprofit Friends of Cooper Island to gather as much data as possible during these crucial years of adaptation He’s hoping to continue his work on Cooper Island until at least 2025 the 50th anniversary of his study as well as the year when some models predict an ice-free Arctic summer the renewed urgency is only an excuse; Divoky would return regardless He didn’t dedicate his life to Cooper Island to document the effects of climate change; it’s something that happened to him—and the birds—along the way He returns because guillemots comprise a significant part of his social circle and because he needs to know what happens next you have to keep things interesting,” Divoky says “and Cooper Island has stayed interesting.” A new study confirms that the oceans are absorbing heat from climate change at a faster rate We asked seven of the scientists who recently spoke out against drilling in the refuge what it would mean for this special place A months-long investigation shows how the energy giant pressured the Interior Department during the company's gung-ho Arctic push—and got most of what it wanted (except oil) as the winners and honorable mentions of this year’s contest The images that won the 2019 Audubon Photography Awards presented in association with Nature's Best Photography, are as impressive as ever but attentive readers might notice a few more images than usual The Plants for Birds category is inspired by Audubon's Plants for Birds program, supported by Coleman and Susan Burke, which provides resources for choosing and finding plants native to zip codes in the United States This category poses a new challenge to photographers: Don't just capture an incredible moment—make sure it also features a bird and plant native to the location in which the photo was taken in order to highlight the critical role native habitat plays in supporting bird life And in the spirit of Kevin Fisher, Audubon's longtime creative director who recently retired the Fisher Prize recognizes a creative approach to photographing birds that blends originality with technical expertise which Kevin himself selected from among the finalists pushes the bounds of traditional bird photography We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all 2,253 entrants and sharing the wonder of birds and the landscapes they inhabit inspires us now and throughout the year.  Steve Freligh, publisher, Nature’s Best Photography  Melissa Groo, wildlife photographer and winner of the 2015 contest’s Grand Prize Kenn Kaufman, bird expert and Audubon magazine field editor chairman and co-founder, PhotoShelter Judging criteria: technical quality, originality These winning images originally ran in the Summer 2019 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today Editor’s note: Per our Audubon Photography Awards official rules which state that a person can only win one category in a given year we have updated our awardees so that both video finalists are co-winners With their stunning looks and captivating behaviors birds often enthrall us when they cross our path Many people spend hours or years seeking them out we stumble upon unique moments in a stroke of luck Sometimes all it takes is simply stopping to appreciate an everyday scene with fresh eyes Regardless of the time and effort invested all meaningful experiences with birds require a common ingredient: our attention Almost 2,500 photographers and videographers submitted nearly 10,000 entries to this year’s contest—sharing the fruits of their boundless attention with us. In a world filled with endless distractions, that is a gift. Notice what is offered by the images and videos honored here, selected by three expert panels who judged anonymous image and video files From the bold action of a raptor to the subtlest detail in the feather patterns of ptarmigan take a moment to revel in what you might otherwise miss Founders of the Galbatross Project: Brooke Bateman Story Behind the Shot: I studied White-tailed Kite behavior for three years before I got this close-up and angles of the individuals all right at the same time Wildlife does spectacular things—people walk by without even knowing My passion is to capture that beauty and behavior and share it with people who don’t have the time to see it in nature Bird Lore: Graceful grassland fliers of North and South America Some other raptors seek such prey by watching from a perch or soaring slowly across the landscape but this bird does almost all its hunting by hovering in one spot This technique requires great dexterity in flight and adult White-tailed Kites may devote several weeks to training young who have left the nest Story Behind the Shot: I was hiking on a narrow rocky trail when I saw a Western Grebe with two chicks on her back I unpacked my gear and knelt at the shore’s edge A male arrived with a fish and passed it to the mom who turned to face me and made eye contact The rivalry brought back happy memories of my siblings Bird Lore: Western Grebes hatch out of eggs in nests that float on the water’s surface the baby grebes scramble up onto the back of their attending parent; the adult grebe soon swims away carrying them For up to four weeks the male and female adults take turns at parental duties one toting the young while the other hunts for food to bring back for them Story Behind the Shot: I’ve spent countless hikes searching for the elusive “mountain chicken,” also known as the White-tailed Ptarmigan The small group was so well camouflaged I didn’t notice it until movement caught my eye Wanting to capture these remarkable birds in the context of their domain and I captured this image of an individual posing in front of the stunning mountains Bird Lore: Beautifully adapted to the cold ptarmigan thrive year-round in harsh conditions of the Arctic and high mountains where few birds could survive and twigs of willows and other shrubby tundra plants seeking out windswept spots where stems extend above the snow Their thick plumage provides superb insulation They even grow snowshoes: Thick feathers develop on their feet in winter helping them walk across the snow’s surface Story Behind the Shot: This clip from the pre-sunrise hours captures Sharp-tailed Grouse males dancing and chirping at a lek As much as I love the power of photos to tell a story some scenes need more than a frame to capture the bigger picture Bird Lore: All of North America’s prairie grouse have impressive courtship dances that have been inspiring humans for millennia Many Native American peoples of the Great Plains and the Interior West have stirring elaborate ceremonial dances based on those of the grouse The Sharp-tailed Grouse is a close relative of the two species of prairie-chickens but it’s less dependent on open grasslands and often moving into wooded areas in winter Story Behind the Shot: I planted a scarlet bee balm beneath my office window the mass of flowers blooming midsummer in time to feed juvenile hummingbirds the seedheads shelter insects and attract snails Birds inspect them and feast off their finds lens poking through a hole in the mesh I use to screen my open window I’m ready for any opportunity—such as this warbler snatching a tiny snail Bird Lore: The Nashville Warbler’s name reflects an era when bird migration was poorly under­stood ornithologist Alexander Wilson journeyed west He discovered three warbler species new to science and named them for places where he saw them The Kentucky Warbler does nest in Kentucky but the Tennessee and Nashville Warblers were only traveling to forests of the far north Story Behind the Shot: The whipping wind and bitter cold on a dreary winter Michigan morning made it hard to stand and keep my lens steady I noticed groups of Northern Shovelers feeding and was drawn to the swirling motion as they circled their bodies covering the water’s surface and heads down in water a drake rose from the center and spread his wings he looked statuesque for a second or two before dropping back to feed Bird Lore: Some birds stay far apart when foraging but the Northern Shoveler often feeds in tightly packed groups Fine comb-like structures inside its oversized bill allow it to strain tiny items from the water they provide a rich supply of food for all Story Behind the Shot: Seeing Great Blue Herons with full breeding plumage up close is not an everyday business The La Chua Trail is a go-to place to watch alligators and birds and I witnessed these birds build a nest without needing binoculars The couple chose a notable surface: a solar panel but not before I shot a slow-motion clip of one heron flying toward it with a branch Great Blue Herons might not look like they’d nest in high places But they are such graceful and powerful fliers that they can gather large sticks and carry them up to 100 feet above the ground forming a cradle for their eggs in treetops or at other raised sites Nest building is a shared task for mated pairs: Males typically gather sticks and other items but females do most of the discerning work of placing materials in the nest Story Behind the Shot: I spent the night in a freezing cramped blind so I could be in position by dawn to photograph Greater Prairie-Chicken spring courtship displays and fight other males to defend their territories That morning one bird flew onto my blind and began to dance I captured its intricate and beautiful feather pattern as it emitted a loud cackling cry.  At that distance the bird would pick up any movement and flush Bird Lore: On spring mornings a few centuries ago prairies of the North American interior echoed with a deep moaning sound that pulsed across the landscape This was the “booming” of male Greater Prairie-Chickens coming together at their ancestral display grounds to posture and dance in a bid to attract females The sound from a large booming ground could carry more than two miles across the grasslands Prairie-chickens still gather at isolated sites across several states but their numbers today barely hint at their former abundance Story Behind the Shot: My partner and I came upon this couple on the last day of 2021 as we plowed through heavy snow in cold that settled into our bones The larger raven groomed its mate’s head feathers as it clicked I could not miss photographing this intimate interaction I pulled my camera out and clicked several shots the ravens continued to indulge in playful displays on the ground and in flight but this raven encounter is one that will be hard to beat Bird Lore: Belonging to the same family as jays and crows the Common Raven is classified as a songbird—the largest one in the world seeming to communicate with each other by using a wide variety of calls and nonvocal signals Members of a pair often perch close together and take turns preening each other’s feathers with what looks for all the world like a display of sheer affection Story Behind the Shot: It had been several frigid hours since I had climbed into a blind in a remote valley arriving before first light to avoid disturbing a Greater Sage-Grouse lek While I was usually pointing my camera at fighting and strutting males this photograph of a hen pausing between snow-draped shrubs became my favorite With her calm eyes and intricately patterned plumage the female almost took my frosty breath away While I huddled in my bulky coat and two pairs of long underwear the grouse seemed unbothered by the temperature I am amazed at how these hardy birds live year-round in this harsh environment and yet a species this tough is imperiled by so many threats to its existence Bird Lore: Few birds are so tightly linked to a particular plant as the Greater Sage-Grouse is to sagebrush is found almost entirely in habitats dominated by various species of sagebrush with sage leaves making up the majority of its winter diet It’s not just a matter of preferring their taste: The digestive system of this grouse is uniquely adapted for consuming sagebrush Story Behind the Shot: I set out along a dike and levee system that puts you at eye level with trees and saw a pair of Black­ bellied Whistling­-Ducks sitting on a hollowed ­out palm “What an idiot.” My friend and I burst out laughing but now I look back and think: That was a nice shot of the birds interacting with their environment Showcasing those relationships is important to me Bird Lore: Whistling­ ducks make up a highly distinctive group of lanky and both sexes incubate eggs and tend to young In the past they were often called tree ducks usually nesting in holes in trees—or nest boxes provided by human admirers Story Behind the Shot: After heavy December rains native trees flowered and Hawaiian honeycreepers This Hawai‘i ‘Amakihi was a regular visitor to an ‘iliahi Their interaction illustrates an interdependent relationship that coevolved over millennia the scene alludes to how much Hawaiian avifauna and flora have been lost—a moment that was once common has become relatively rare I was so focused on the bird that I didn’t see the bee below it when I snapped the shot Bird Lore: Hawai‘i once had nearly 40 species of honeycreepers a distinct group of finches unique to these islands The Hawai‘i ‘Amakihi is one of the few that has a healthy population perhaps because it is somewhat less specialized than others and protection of native forest is probably key to its long-term survival Story Behind the Shot: One of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced in nature is a Sharp-tailed Grouse lek where males gather to perform courtship displays for females The birds arrive in darkness and dance and display through the morning These birds are notoriously flighty and sensitive to disturbance I hiked for 45 minutes to reach my hide outside the lek’s perimeter Each male on the lek defended his small territory and fights regularly broke out This shot was one of thousands I took that morning male Sharp-tailed Grouse gather in impressive numbers—sometimes 50 or more—and dance to attract the attention of females Mating success doesn’t just go to those with the most alluring moves; position on the lek is important with most females gravitating to males holding the prime spots at the center competition for those central locations is intense and the dancing is often interrupted by violent fights as males spar for better position These winning images originally ran in the Summer 2022 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today It was still early enough in the pandemic that my Zoom meetings felt novel and spring birdsong brought hope of a swift return to normalcy Then the roar of a gasoline-powered blower drowned out both You’re likely fortunate if loud lawn care is high on your list of problems in the past year Some produce more than 100 decibels of low-frequency wall-penetrating sound—or as much noise as a plane taking off—at levels that can cause tinnitus and hearing loss with long exposure gas-powered lawn care of all kinds spews pollutants linked to cancers and blowers blast air up to 280 miles per hour Workers who spend hours a day with equipment are most at risk people speaking out about the issue have been getting louder too—especially as more adults and kids work from home cities and towns now ban gas-powered leaf blowers or limit their use became the first northeast town to pass a complete ban where some 80 cities have issued regulations has considered phasing out gas-powered garden tools altogether councilor-at-large Peter Yacobellis has heard constituents bring up the environmental and health issues of blowers on a near daily basis in 2020 “It’s sort of a triple whammy in terms of addressing multiple quality-of-life issues at the same time,” he says The city has had some restrictions on their use since 1995 such as allowing leaves to remain where they fall. To that end they encourage leaving some leaves for overwintering insects; returning mulched leaves to garden beds to act as fertilizer for plants and habitat for salamanders and toads; and waiting to spring to cut back perennials so insects can overwinter and birds to feed on the seeds The number of lower-emission landscapers around the country is also growing with some building in other sustainable services such as using organic fertilizer and replacing invasive species with natives and drought-tolerant plants “A lot of people who come to us seem to be dog owners and families with young kids,” says Craig Martin which is one of some 40 franchises around the country “They’re concerned about their family’s health and safety lists more than 20 landscaping companies proactively embracing the trend and we encourage people to hire them,” says volunteer Albert Kaufman who notes many of these businesses seem to be “busier than ever.” technology and costs can limit the pace of change Although battery equipment for electric equipment is continually improving it does not yet match the power of gasoline-based tools it may take longer or be costlier to do the same work owner of EcoQuiet Lawn Care in Massachusetts encourages customers to take a more relaxed approach to their yards for those looking for a project this spring there’s an alternative: getting rid of high-maintenance yards and seeding native plants instead This story originally ran in the Spring 2021 issue as “Birdsong, Interrupted.”​ To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.  OSHKOSH – May is “bird month” and the Winnebago Audubon Society will celebrate with a series of bird walks at local birding hotspots on Wednesday evenings The sessions are free and open to the public and are open to all ages and experience levels Those who join can see what birds are migrating through the area as the spring migration progresses according to a news release from the society Read more: ‘Just being a bear’: Black bear visits Fond du Lac golf course Monday, likely has moved on Visit winnebagoaudubon.org or find “Winnebago Audubon Society” on Facebook for up-to-date information about activities Contact Brandon Reid at breid@gannett.com Amanda Wilhelm stood inside an observation tower nestled among Joshua trees at the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area monitoring the movements of a California Condor She wasn’t peering outside at the hundreds of brilliant white turbines but down at a string of letters and numbers on a monitor field operations manager for Alta Environmental Services, those numbers were clues one of 80 that inhabit this pocket of Southern California the previous day the north antenna picked up its radio transmitter signal which means it wasn’t very close,” she said the possibility of condors colliding with turbines concerns the U.S ‘How in the world are we going to address the event of a condor perhaps flying through a wind farm?’ ” said Kevin Martin which operates the bird-monitoring system here He realized the situation was unique: USFWS has outfitted most free-flying condors with a radio transmitter “Since they're so closely monitored,”  Martin said “it gave us an opportunity to use that system The system Martin devised is based on two principles: Know if a bird is coming and make sure blades aren't spinning when it arrives Two 50-foot antenna towers continuously scan for the birds' radio frequencies and one member of a three-person team drives around with a handheld antenna; when an approaching bird pings in an invisible Google Earth—enabled “geofence” around the farm's perimeter texts the team if any GPS-tagged condors cross over If a bird comes within two miles of a turbine an employee in the tower figures out which company owns the unit in question and calls the operator to recommend a “curtailment,” or temporary shutdown like when dozens of condors descended on the area in 2016 speakers emit warning sounds; if it comes closer a more alarming noise plays and a curtailment can be automatically triggered As Martin pointed out, the condor situation is unique: one small flock of birds, the vast majority conveniently sporting transmitters. But the condor-detection system is just one of a host of technologies being developed and tested at government labs and tech companies across the country that aim to make wind energy safer for birds "Climate change is the biggest impact on birds," says Garry George director of Audubon California's renewable energy program The rapid deployment of clean energy will be crucial to avoiding that fate And if wind is part of the mix—as it must be—high-tech safeguards will help ensure birds fly into that future unharmed Tech: ThermalTracker's heat-sensing cameras record birds at potential offshore sites and measure their altitude; algorithms analyze flight patterns to determine avian family The industry recognized it would need to invest more in solutions executive director of the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI) a partnership between wind companies and green groups that's a hub of siting and technology research the wind industry and environmentalists have a shared interest "That dynamic allows us to have conversations with the industry so we're part of the solution to help them succeed and they're part of the solution to help us reduce bird deaths." even after millions of dollars have been invested noting that no known methods can make a turbine built in a high-risk spot safe Tech: IdentiFlight's cameras detect birds near turbines; if its artificial intelligence software determines any are eagles at risk of collision Correct siting and design—locating a farm outside a migration corridor or turbines back from ridges where eagles concentrate—remains the gold standard But the possibility of reducing expected bird deaths at existing farms or of expanding the number of feasible sites Most rely either on the detection-and-curtailment principle or on deterrents that keep birds away from turbines entirely The Department of Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) has funded the development and testing of several of these tools Meeting the Obama administration’s ambitious goal of wind supplying 35 percent of power by 2050 involves resolving avian conflicts: 73 percent of wind energy’s technical potential might be affected by wildlife issues estimated a 2016 National Renewable Energy Laboratory exploratory study Geological Survey researchers are examining whether the nation's network of weather radar could be used to measure the density and altitude of migrating birds and bats Since 2014 WETO has invested $8 million in grants to researchers and tech developers working on technological wind/wildlife solutions “The goal is to help catalyze the development of effective and make sure there's a pipeline of technologies,” said Jocelyn Brown-Saracino who runs WETO’s environmental research portfolio A new detection or deterrence system might help fill that void—if it’s confirmed to be effective Confidence that a technology does what developers promise also matters to potential buyers. Tom Hiester dreamed up IdentiFlight which uses artificial intelligence software to identify Golden Eagles after wildlife issues forced his wind-company employer to scuttle two developments into which it’d sunk some $20 million When Hiester showed wind company executives IdentiFlight in 2015 ‘Get independent proof that this works,’ ” he recalled site of most of the deaths that led to its MBTA settlement has become a testing ground for IdentiFlight such as installing biologists in a lookout tower using a loud noise to try to dissuade birds from the site They tried a detection methodology using Doppler radar the kind that's used to track incoming missiles Tech: When accelerometers deployed by researchers at Oregon State University detect vibrations in blades that might signal a bird strike a camera captures the moment—a useful record offshore So he agreed to install four IdentiFlight beta units in 2016 He's since given Hiester feedback on the system’s function and ways to refine it to meet a wind company's practical needs such as avoiding unnecessary turbine shutdowns The revenue loss could be just $100 per hour per turbine but scale that over multiple units and hours and it adds up “We’re trying to figure out that sweet spot where we curtail enough to minimize risk to eagles and yet not so much that the site becomes economically unviable,” said Hayes In 2016 AWWI organized an IdentiFlight test at Top of the World conducted by the raptor nonprofit Peregrine Fund to evaluate the system’s ability to detect raptors and identify eagles The results aren’t yet public—Arnold said they’ve been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal—and further testing will begin in June But the findings convinced Duke to purchase 24 IdentiFlight units for Top of the World in January The units will communicate directly with turbine operation systems to trigger shutdowns eliminating the need for a human middleman and should provide an opportunity to assess if the swath IdentiFlight covers actually sees fewer eagle deaths than that monitored by humans Tech: Radio antennas and a “geofence” automatically send alerts when tagged condors approach; employees then track birds and curtail turbines as needed Nobody wants to see any of them be the next Altamont few days after visiting the Tehachapi wind farm I drove to Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge hoping to glimpse the birds the condor-detection system was created to protect USFWS California Condor Recovery Program field coordinator led me to the flight pen—a chain-link enclosure where captive-bred juveniles acclimate before being released Perched on top were a dozen meaty black condors their wings adorned with brightly colored vinyl ID tags This mix of free-flying adults and juveniles had likely stopped here to warm up in the mid-morning sun before scavenging along the mountains 328 had opened his wings into a raised M-shape over his hunched head as he waddled from side to side and last year they fledged their first chick—one of more than five dozen wild fledglings since the recovery program began “It was a long time before they first did that display dance and nesting was successful.” the Southern California flock will eventually grow so large that putting a transmitter on each bird won’t be feasible a more advanced technology—perhaps IdentiFlight or a nascent cutting-edge system—might be the next step toward protecting this ancient species that once roamed the American West Condors survived a world that saw woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats go extinct the myriad threats humans have thrown at them As they steadily reclaim their historic range condors will continue to face numerous challenges but there’s good reason to hope wind turbines won't be among them This story originally ran in the Spring 2018 issue as “Surveil and Protect.” To receive Audubon magazine in print, become a member by making a donation today. Receive the tools to make sure your actions have a lasting impact: Bring Audubon on Campus with the Audubon on Campus Program you will connect with and engage people of all backgrounds to transform institutions and support to help you build leadership skills relationships—and your resume—while collaborating to create meaningful change on and off-campus You may even find a career path you hadn't considered yet There is more than one way to get involved Read more to discover what other students are doing on campuses across the United States then sign up to become a campus ambassador or certify an existing club as an Audubon campus chapter today Want to know more? Here's a good overview of Audubon On Campus Sign up to become a campus ambassador, establish a campus chapter, or certify an existing club as an Audubon campus chapter today! We’ve made it easy to get started Local community chapters that already partner with nearby colleges, universities, or other student conservation clubs are encouraged to connect with the Audubon on Campus Team at campuschapters@audubon.org for support and strengthen partnerships with institutions of higher learning It’s not easy to get owls to mug for the camera. Even in captivity the birds remain aloof, unruffled by the flash and unmoved by attempts to bribe them. Photographer Brad Wilson learned that lesson firsthand after trying to win over owls from the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis and The Wildlife Center near Española “It’s hard to get animals to look at you like humans do,” he says Wilson is an expert at point-blank portraits. His series “Affinity” features 65 species But owls were the most compelling and challenging subjects It takes years of building mutual trust before an owl will accept physical contact from a single person and “owls don’t extend that privilege to other humans.” Wilson wanted his images to accentuate the nobility and independence of each captive bird minimizing its dependence on its caretaker The owls’ human perches likewise hid themselves contorting their bodies to stay out of the frame a way of saying that although their wild days are behind them Size: 7-9 inches tall; less than half a pound Range: Southeastern Alaska through western Canada and the western U.S The Western Screech-Owl plays host to a surprising houseguest: blind snakes—worm-like reptiles that dwell underground—that the owls ferry This unlikely act of mercy is actually a child-rearing strategy: Parents that share their nests with the strange bedfellows have better success at raising young That’s because the snakes devour pests like ants and flies whose larvae consume food reserved for owlets nests on six continents but avoids the northernmost reaches of North America The constellation of spots that spreads across the Barn Owl’s head and décolletage are not just ornamental: The more spots a female has the more resistant she seems to be to parasites A seemingly supernatural ability to pinpoint noises and spot prey in low-light and even blackout conditions makes these owls the perfect night stalkers No bird is safe from the Eurasian Eagle-Owl—not even its kin The mighty strigiform goes after Tawny and Snowy owls as well as such larger birds as Gray Herons the eagle-owl and the Upland Buzzard hunt the same voles and beady-eyed pikas The buzzards conduct their business by day; the owls take over after dusk it’s also been known to hunt foxes and fawns Size: 6-10 inches tall; less than half a pound The Eastern Screech-Owl can thrive in the most chaotic urban environments It is one of the few raptors to live in New York City the screech-owl has learned to skim off songbirds at feeders and squat in human-created crannies stymying ornithologists eager to learn more about it.  though females are 50 percent heavier when breeding Range: Common in summer from southwestern Canada through the western U.S to Mexico; winter range in Mexico is poorly known The Flammulated Owl’s husky voice doesn’t quite fit its pint-sized body It can slow down its vocal vibrations by slackening the layers of skin around its throat In spring and summer the owl idles in western mountains but its insectivorous habits and recent studies showing that it’s unable to go into torpor Range: All of continental North America and much of South America Great Horned Owls are natural foster parents A single female in captivity has been known to play surrogate to more than a hundred owlets in her lifetime In the wild these birds are just as nurturing with females keeping constant tabs on their young Couples will fend off neighbors through hooting contests and even set upon them with fistfuls of talons with some wintering south to Mexico and southern China The Long-eared Owl is a frequent target for other birds of prey including Great Horned Owls and Barred Owls It might pull in its plumage and stand up straight or flop around its nest while screeching owlish imprecations Range: From Mexico north through Arizona and New Mexico to Utah and Colorado Of the three Spotted Owl subspecies It doesn’t breed every year; when it does it prefers spacious tree hollows in old-growth trees the bird will adopt secondhand nests of other birds or occupy shallow caves in canyon cliffs Range: Mexico and Central America to the northern two-thirds of South America The Spectacled Owl has little to fear from predators since it roosts in the canopies of rainforests and gallery woods It eats almost anything; during one lurid encounter in Panama The bird is aptly named for the bandit-like mask around its eyes—black spectacles on a fleecy white head for the young Freebie Alert! Don't stop with these nine owls. Download our Audubon Bird Guide App to learn about more than 800 North American species.  A madcap comedy/murder mystery set in the White House it quickly drew fans for its ingenious plot But birdwatchers took note for an extra reason The show’s main character is not only the world’s greatest detective—she’s also an avid birder Insights and skills gained from birding help her spot clues and solve cases That avian element came as a surprise to most birders But I knew about it already because for more than three years I had been a birding consultant for the miniseries friends have peppered me with questions about it so I decided to write about my experience as the behind-the-scenes bird guy It began with a request from a stranger in August 2021. Eileen Hutchinson was working with producer and writer Paul Willam Davies on a new miniseries in which one character was a birder. Eileen had seen my “Ask Kenn” column for Audubon magazine so she proceeded to ask: Could I help with a few questions about birds Of course I said yes. Popular culture in America tends to treat birding as a joke, so it’s a pleasant surprise when a TV producer takes it seriously enough to want accuracy And of course I scoped out the work of Paul William Davies Impressive guy—he had been a writer on multiple TV series from production company Shondaland and had created and written For the People. (He has degrees in history and law he was the furthest thing in the world from a Hollywood big shot: friendly He and Eileen already had read dozens of books and articles about birds to be totally convincing as an avid birder—even for avid birders in the audience So at first we just discussed what Cupp might say about hawks and falcons in a certain scene But by several months later I was an official consultant on the show reading full scripts and providing written comments detective Cupp mentions staying awake for 43 hours looking for a particular bird We discussed possibilities and settled on Buff-collared Nightjar—elusive day and night One scene required Cupp to be on a remote beach looking for a rare bird—we made it a Tuamotu Sandpiper he wanted to make sure the scarcity of visible sand wouldn’t be a problem and I assured him that many sandpipers (despite the name) are not tied to sandy spots they sent me images of bird-themed wallpaper in one room on the set and asked if any bird there could spark Cupp’s thoughts about deceptive clues but one elongated individual reminded me of the Malaysian Rail-Babbler of Southeast Asia So now there’s a scene in which Cordelia Cupp lectures a roomful of suspects about the Malaysian Rail-Babbler—not a bird I ever expected to hear mentioned in a TV comedy-drama I got involved in other aspects besides the scripts A few birds in the show were created with computer animation and I got to review those in multiple stages of development and suggest changes I reviewed recordings for background sounds in outdoor scenes to make sure the birds were appropriate And when the brilliant Uzo Aduba was cast in the lead role as detective Cupp I enjoyed a video conference with her to talk about birding practices She’s a delightful person with phenomenal acting skills and her portrayal makes Cupp into an unforgettable character Friends have asked me about specific things in the show. For example, why do we use the name Purple Grackle for the bird now known as Common Grackle? We actually had a whole discussion about that. Cupp arrives on the scene with a copy of Teddy Roosevelt’s list of the birds of the White House grounds Roosevelt was a birder.) We figured that Cupp would channel Roosevelt here and that she’s enough of an expert to distinguish between the Purple Grackle subspecies in Washington that he listed and the Bronzed Grackle subspecies of the Midwest Others asked me why Cupp had spent so much time trying to see the Giant Antpitta in Ecuador. Why didn’t she just drop in at the Angel Paz refuge near Mindo, where semi-tame individuals will hop out of the forest to be fed choosing to seek this intensely elusive ground-dweller in a truly wild place and why is it flying around outside the White House at night how did Cupp spot some of those other birds at night It’s based on the general shape and actions of a Peregrine but it’s intended to be just a generic large falcon It’s flying around at night because that’s when certain actions are happening and because symbolic birds can fly whenever they like spotting a grackle and a Song Sparrow in the dark is a stretch—but the story required Cupp to be out there at night Sometimes you have to suspend disbelief just a little starring a great detective who is totally cool and a dedicated birder 1/52Baseball: Audubon defeats Kingsway, 51st Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic 2nd Round, May 3, 2025.st1{fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;fill:#2a2a2a}By Kevin Minnick | NJ Advance Media for NJ.comLance Furness made his first start of the season well worth the wait the senior right-hander struck out three and scattered seven hits over six innings Saturday as Audubon defeated Kingsway in the second round of the 51st annual Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic at Overbrook “I came out just trying to throw strikes and get us through to the next round,” said Furness “I was losing my stuff at the end a little but battled through.” “We’ve been using him as a big reliever and he’s done well,” Audubon coach Rich Horan said “Figured we’d run him out and see how many (innings) he could give us He did an excellent job against a very good team.” Gabe McCracken (11) of Audubon with the go-ahead hit in the bottom of the sixth inning during the 51st Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic baseball game between Audubon and Kingsway at Overbrook High School in Pine Hill NJ on 5/3/25.Scott Faytok | NJ Advance Media Audubon (13-3) will face Mainland in the quarterfinals next Saturday at Ocean City Trailing 2-1 heading into the bottom of the sixth Audubon scored four runs on three hits and took advantage of three errors to seize command Gabe McCracken and Tyler Wiltsey delivered RBI singles while pinch-hitter Colin Phillippi worked an RBI walk you have to put the ball in play and put pressure on them “Good things happen when you put the pressure on the other team.” and has been for years,” Kingsway coach Bill Alvaro Jr “If you make any mistakes and open the door for them at all It puts you in a position to get ready for the playoffs That’s the mindset that these kind of games start getting you into it Audubon collected just four hits in the contest with Cade Schofield also collecting a single Dylan Rickards and Austin Schmidt were each 2-for-3 with an RBI for Kingsway The N.J. High School Sports newsletter now appearing in mailboxes 5 days a week. Sign up now and be among the first to get all the boys and girls sports you care about, straight to your inbox each weekday. To add your name, click here Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription Kevin Minnick covers South Jersey baseball. He can be reached at kminnick@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @kminnicksports Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, (updated 8/1/2024) and acknowledgement of our Privacy Policy, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (updated 1/1/2025) © 2025 Advance Local Media LLC. All rights reserved (About Us) The material on this site may not be reproduced except with the prior written permission of Advance Local Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site YouTube's privacy policy is available here and YouTube's terms of service is available here Ad Choices Mark Hauber doesn’t fit the classic field-biologist archetype A professor of animal behavior and conservation at New York City’s Hunter College Hauber has been collecting data at his study site for five years or moldy (they’re actually crisp and black); he’s not covered in scratches or insect bites; his face is clean-shaven and his haircut fresh He lacks the thousand-yard stare that marks longtime researchers toiling in remote locales But then his site isn’t exactly the norm either—it’s a former city dump. And though the 2,200 acres of meadows, woodlands, and marsh that comprise the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island’s western shore can look deceptively bucolic there’s no escaping the fact that approximately 150 million tons of garbage—everything from dirty diapers and televisions to Big Wheels and greasy takeout containers—lie beneath fields abloom with purple and yellow flowers Hauber is wading through knee-high grasses toward a wooden nest box at Fresh Kills he unscrews the front of the box and notes based on the presence of either sticks or straw whether a tree swallow or house wren is responsible for the elaborate architecture inside He checks for nestlings against the back wall with the mirror (he finds none) then turns his face to the sky and blindly feels inside with his fingertips for eggs (he counts four) “Touch is best if you don’t see anything,” he says which have really small eggs.” Hauber enters this data in his notebook and moves on to make stops at 69 other stations similarly situated among mounds of garbage of course— it’s buried under more than two feet of soil and multiple underground barriers But its presence is palpable in the four grassy monadnocks rising up to 225 feet tall in the intermittent exhalations of landfill gases from passive vents in the 386,000 gallons of leachate that daily ooze from the mounds into an on-site treatment plant and in the hundreds of protruding gas wellheads and monitoring pipes Roughly 17,000 years ago the Wisconsin ice sheet retreated from Staten Island setting the stage for what would eventually become the Fresh Kills wetlands complex—a diverse marshland American eels and Atlantic silversides flashed through creeks; bitterns Staten Islanders drained and ditched the meadows and cut salt hay for their livestock They cultivated corn and wheat in the uplands and processed grain in a tidal mill at the head of Fresh Kills Creek The muskrat trapping was reportedly excellent But a shadow would soon fall upon this arcadia In 1917 the Metropolitan By-Products Company built a reduction plant at Fresh Kills that converted the city’s festering dregs—mostly food waste and dead animals—into fertilizers Politics closed the plant after just a year but Staten Islanders continued to tip their rubbish at Fresh Kills into pits that had been excavated for brick making Army Corps of Engineers still dumped atop the marshes the spoils it dredged from the rapidly industrializing Arthur Kill the volume of waste was penny-ante compared with what was to come New Yorkers were buying—and trashing—ever more stuff Landfills in the other boroughs were maxing out and no one wanted an incinerator in his or her backyard and within seven years Fresh Kills had become the largest landfill on the planet—sprawling over more than 2,600 acres By the early 1970s it was annually receiving enough waste to fill both towers of the World Trade Center The once-resplendent tidal marshes had taken on a nightmare quality Machinery dripping with garbage juice clanked and roared over roads made of trash so much airborne litter collected on chicken-wire fences that it could topple their wooden supports Although the landfill’s original plan called for filling and flattening the marsh—the better to create a platform for building—engineers were by now mounding the waste They layered garbage with soil in an attempt to tame the stench and the scavenging birds and shoppers held their noses while bolting from parking lots into the Staten Island Mall By 1991 the volume entombed at Fresh Kills exceeded that of the Great Wall of China the landfill accepted the equivalent of more than 2,800 garbage trucks of residential waste: stained mattresses The transfer of waste groaned on until March 2001, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sent what was meant to be the city’s last barge of garbage across New York Harbor In early September the City of New York announced the start of an international design competition to transform the heaps of trash into a world-class park Just one week later the city reopened the dump to absorb 1.2 million tons of debris from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Processing this material continued until July 2002; by then 48 design proposals had been winnowed to six teams all three designs emphasized active recreational opportunities and major ecological restoration played with themes of regeneration and reuse and advocated the eradication of invasive phragmites imagined moving visitors around on amphibious buses powered with biogas generated by the digestion of landfill plants Its design also called for a corn maze; a rodeo in which sanitation workers would race to lift eggs off traffic cones with bulldozer buckets; and 100 acres of solar collectors that resembled tree crowns on metal poles JMP Landscape and John McAslan + Partners called for the construction of ecospheres with tropical In June 2003 the Department of City Planning announced the winner: Field Operations the design studio behind Manhattan’s rabidly successful High Line Park Critics praised the plan’s embrace of flux and indeterminacy over so-called “architectural heroics.” In the group’s “Lifescape,” the long march of time would eventually shape vast swaths of landfill into scenic landscapes the park would undulate over more than 2,000 acres of lawns and grasslands rising to four distinct (garbage-filled) humps Bands of hardwoods and pine-oak barrens would cast welcome shadows and three saltwater creeks would nourish extensive tidal wetlands spaces closer to roadways and ferry landings would be developed for recreational and cultural activities that have since been hashed out in public meetings the master plan now calls for more than 40 miles of multi-use trails sanitation workers used to careen down the mounds on improvised sleds and saucers.) but most of the interior is accessible to the public only on tours offered periodically throughout the year.  But permit-carrying scientists like bird researcher Mark Hauber can visit whenever they like He is one of at least a half dozen researchers wading through Fresh Kills’ weeds in pursuit of knowledge a biologist who teaches at the College of Staten Island (CSI) is working with students to capture and band big brown Forest Service is collecting and breeding birches and willows hoping to identify a cultivar that will best withstand the landfill’s unique climate native and invasive turtles and how they colonize and use the park’s retention ponds Much of the work is basic science: What species are present or are they taking up residence and raising young Each of these researchers was invited to embark on his or her Freshkills studies by park administrator Eloise Hirsh a cherub-faced woman with gentle waves of silvery brown hair Though Hirsh served as the first deputy commissioner of the city’s Parks Department from 1978 to 1981 But she knew plenty about it; her husband had been the commissioner of the city’s Sanitation Department in the early 1970s the civic-minded couple moved to Pittsburgh where Hirsh spent seven years directing the Office of City Planning specializing in transforming industrial dead zones into assets like parks and so-called new-urbanist communities she learned about the plans for Fresh Kills from the city’s latest parks commissioner She vividly remembers that spring morning when she visited for the first time I saw two pheasants doing their mating dance and I just fell in love.” Hirsh was named park administrator in September 2006 and as a direct counterpoint to the landfill’s stigma immediately began to organize public tours and events that would attract people from the community “Staten Island has been dumped on for 50 years,” Hirsh says “and you’re not going to get over that because the City of New York declares that they’re doing this nice project.” Now when Hirsh brings Staten Islanders onto the mounds Former residents remember their homes being taken by eminent domain in the 1950s—for a park They recall how quickly their marshes and meandering streams were filled and then piled with trash many older residents insist the landfill contains toxic material illicitly buried; they blame the dump for their poor health (Although Fresh Kills accepted only residential waste it still contains plenty of household heavy metals and pesticides.) Now they wonder if their suggestions It was partially in response to this last concern that Hirsh opened the park to scientists “I want people to see that the natural health of the place is being restored,” she says “I want people to see that Freshkills is worthy of study and that it’s safe for people to be here.” Perhaps most important “I want the site to exist as something other than a dump.” Mark Hauber was the first researcher Hirsh invited to Fresh Kills. Here, and in three other study sites around the city and state, Hauber is documenting the age, sex, and health of nest-box occupants and tracking whether they successfully fledge their young He’s also testing the minus-cule feathers of baby birds for toxins Swallows (and occasionally wrens) eat insects that have an aquatic phase which means they could potentially pick up contaminants that leach from the garbage piles into the park’s various wetlands Since the park plan calls for catch-and-release fishing and kayaking areas water quality is of great interest to its administrators (as is the health of the soil and air) With a more complete understanding of how birds use Freshkills Hauber hopes eventually to make the park more suitable as a stopover site for migrants All coastal migrants must fly past New York City will be critical for increasing available sites for feeding Might the park be equally hospitable to bats “You’ve got this huge area of grasslands now,” Richard Veit says “and it’s filled with grasshoppers and other insects.” In other words “But there aren’t a lot of trees for bats to rest in around here.” For now Foresters are currently clearing invasive plants (with the help of goats) Freshkills may not have the cachet of a classical research station but scientists are eager to work here because the park presents a novel opportunity to document rapid changes and to influence park policy and land-use decisions of which there are still plenty to be made it needs a great deal of constituent support “So we have to listen to what everyone says,” Hirsh tells me A golf course is under consideration (it would generate much-needed revenue) And so many people clamored for easier access to the Staten Island Mall that crews will soon construct a four-lane road through the park’s center That’s a worrisome thought for Seth Wollney and tattoos paying tribute to the Grateful Dead Wollney fears that cars will crush his reptiles as they move between ponds about the city spraying Freshkills with larvicide to control the spread of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus It’s hard to say without knowing how those animals use this space today “That’s why you want scientists here,” Wollney says “To get baseline data to answer these questions.” Researchers do know that Freshkills’ biodiversity is on the rise In addition to the pheasants Hirsh noted in 2006 there are herds of deer (which locals hunt on the down low) with fewer men and machines clanking around Birders are excited about Freshkills because so much marsh and grassland on Long Island and in New England has been lost to development or to the consequences of climate change Open space is a rare commodity in dense cities; that’s why Central Park is so important to resident and migratory birds the city’s mountains of garbage continue to grow New Yorkers are still generating enough waste daily to fill the Empire State Building then exporting it by truck and train to landfills in Ohio most of which are unlikely to hold international design competitions once their dumps max out But the Freshkills scientists have plenty to focus on before pondering such matters which is breeding and then planting the park’s poplars and willows Freshkills is “a perfect place to test new ways of creating green space in urban areas There are so many urban areas like this”—brownfields and other post-industrial sites—“so there’s a great need to know how they can grow forests The methodology we’re using is portable to other cities and situations.” Staten Island is starting to reimagine itself as a vibrant and two new hotels have popped up on the landfill’s perimeter It’s fair to assume that at least a few guests have little idea of what lies beneath the windswept meadows just outside their windows Today the park represents different things to different people the history—and even the mythology—of these much-maligned acres may hardly matter Freshkills will be an oasis in a hot and clamoring city While we’ll likely never see the profusion of birds and plants that delighted Fresh Kills’ earliest human visitors if we’re wise enough to leave most of this place alone something of equal value: a testament to nature’s vast power to heal New York writer Elizabeth Royte is the author of the books Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash; Bottlemania: Big Business and the Battle Over America’s Drinking Water; and The Tapir’s Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest Correction: An earlier version of this story mistated that Mayor Bloomberg announced the design competition; in fact the City of New York made the announcement.  When you see a wildlife photo or film that looks too good to be true This story originally ran in the March-April 2010 issue as "Picture Perfect." Birds spend their waking hours seeking to survive the creators of the photos and videos on these pages capture those meaningful moments it’s clear that a photographer’s journey to document these scenes are often what makes the resulting images so special to them That’s not an experience any artificial intelligence can replicate So while we can only feature a few standout submissions we celebrate the stories behind all 9,000 entries to this year’s contest.  Story Behind the Shot: They may be common and non-native across most of the globe including where few other species can: a city center Purposefully exposing for the brighter parts of the image I used the shadowy environment to create a studio-like black background for these remarkable iridescent birds I hadn’t planned on photographing pigeons that day but I’m glad that this couple’s beauty captured my attention Bird Lore: Many people tend to ignore pigeons fast-flying birds abound throughout history and include Charles Darwin Rock Pigeons have been domesticated for thousands of years and escaped birds have established feral populations the world over Pairs of Rock Pigeons stay together during all seasons and generally mate for life with both sexes taking a full share of incubating their eggs and caring for their young Judge’s Take (Preeti Desai): When you take a minute to look closely at a pigeon their iridescent neck feathers appear to glow This photo captures not only that beauty but also a behavior that many humans can identify with: The pair are allopreening I hope photos like this will lead to more appreciation for pigeons and other common birds we see daily Story Behind the Shot: My wife and I were on a road trip in Iceland and we took a ferry to the Westman Islands where we’d heard there was a puffin colony We pulled over at a beautiful spot to stretch our legs There we saw a lone bird perched on the most amazing lava rock cliff which was covered in colorful lichen and blooming wildflowers I knew this moment was special: It was the first Atlantic Puffin I’d seen even though most people have never seen one The Atlantic Puffin is widespread in the North Atlantic and adjacent areas of the Arctic Ocean but Iceland is their epicenter: Up to 2 million pairs nest there representing close to half the breeding population Rising sea temperatures have reduced the availability of small fish that puffins need to feed their young leading to major breeding failures at some Icelandic colonies Judge’s Take (Preeti Desai): This photo evokes a painting for me pastel colors and especially how they pop against the gray backdrop My eye immediately goes to the puffin because the white and orange stand out my eye easily roams around the rest of the photo Another judge also pointed out that the upper rocks almost form a puffin head with a bill sticking out Story Behind the Shot: Since I was a child Baltimore Orioles have nested on our property I have always loved watching the females: aerial acrobats that collect dried grasses and long gossamer strands of horsehair from my sister’s adjacent farm The birds use the materials to build their pendulous What miraculous feats of avian engineering Once they arrive in May after their long migration north I use a tiny blind to observe the birds without disturbing them This female barely landed to grasp a tangled clump of horsehair and natural hemp and sisal fibers caught on a branch Off she flew into the woods with her prize trapped in her slender bill the female Baltimore Oriole weaves a hanging pouch to provide a secure cradle for her eggs A key to success is choosing the right materials flexible plant fibers to create a durable structure they’re incorporated into the nest as well Construction usually takes at least a week but some females have been known to complete the task in less than five days Judge’s Take (Purbita Saha): We usually see the grace and inventiveness that goes into a Baltimore Oriole’s nest manifest in the final product we get to witness the female oriole literally wrapped up in the process It conveys urgency and a healthy dose of whimsy which is one my favorite ways to think about birds I was in a Zodiac touring an iceberg-filled cove The rough water tossed the little rubber boat around As I watched Gentoo Penguins leap onto the rocky shore and march to their nesting colony I spotted a Chinstrap Penguin standing alone on a blue iceberg capped with fresh snow I caught it just before it slipped beneath the waves and got both eyes and its perfect shape Bird Lore: Contrary to their public image as birds of Antarctica most of the 18 penguin species live in the south temperate zone The Chinstrap Penguin is among the few true denizens of the zone of pack ice Chinstraps feed primarily on the small shrimplike crustaceans called krill often pursuing them more than 50 feet below the sea surface probably helps it maneuver when swimming underwater Judge’s Take (Melissa Hafting): This photographer brilliantly captured the stark contrast of the mostly black penguin against its blue Chinstrap Penguins are having a difficult time adapting to a warming climate—just like the Indigenous peoples and northern communities who have contributed little to climate change but are experiencing the worst of its effects It’s easy for people in far-away cities to ignore these problems But these penguins are an indicator species that everyone must pay attention to The photo is a good reminder how we are all so connected Story Behind the Shot: I’ve spent the past four winters setting out every free moment to document Short-eared Owls They survey the grasslands for voles close to sunset but many times the birds don’t come out at all or are too far away The birds locked talons and cartwheeled downward releasing each other just before hitting the ground Bird Lore: Most owls are creatures of mystery lurking in dense forest and calling at night Its range across five continents adds to its everyman’s owl aura Local concentrations may develop in winter where prey are abundant Judge’s Take (Rina Miele): The videos I selected were very intentional They demonstrated the videographer was actively engaged and took advantage of the moving-image medium especially the photographers’ ability to capture difficult or spontaneous events: Short-eared Owls fight and bicker and engage each other in combat but this spiral is one of the best I’ve seen Capturing this was certainly an amazing achievement Story Behind the Shot: I birded the Sweetwater Wetlands while visiting Tucson and saw Verdins for the first time I found a pair building a nest in a cane cholla we photographed the busy pair gathering insects and caterpillars for their chicks I love this image because it captures the Verdin’s high energy Bird Lore: A tiny desert dweller of the Southwest and Mexico Its closest relatives in Africa and Eurasia are best known for building elaborate nests Its nest is a large globular structure with an entrance low on one side An outer layer of thorny twigs surrounds inner layers of much softer materials: leaves Judge’s Take (Marlene Pantin): In this photo we see the role that native plants such as cacti play in providing critical food and shelter for birds—even in the harshest environments The photograph also does an exceptional job of capturing the contrast between the large cane cholla and tiny Verdin I am struck by how the cactus seems to envelop the bird providing a sense of care and protection for it The wonderful mix of textures and vibrant and muted colors add gravity to the photo Story Behind the Shot: On a winter trip to New Jersey my goal was to capture images of Harlequin Ducks I became enraptured by a flock of sandpipers feeding on the rocks They would all fly out of the way when a wave crashed onto shore so I hunkered down between boulders and waited It was a challenge not to fall between the wet After more than an hour of unsuccessful attempts I picked out a nearby sandpiper and hoped it would take flight I eagerly reviewed my photos: I had finally captured a Dunlin as it narrowly avoided being dragged into the sea Bird Lore: The 24 sandpipers in the genus Calidris are all migratory and many evade winter by flying to the southernmost reaches of the southern continents migrating only short to medium distances from their northern high-latitude breeding areas flocks of this hardy sandpiper winter along coastlines north to Canada and southern Alaska often on rocky shorelines pounded by the surf Judge’s Take (Melissa Hafting): This shot is a spectacular feast for the eyes The photographer caught the bird as it jumped up and both the water and Dunlin are perfectly frozen in motion You can feel the crashing waves and the mossy wet rock I can almost hear the bird’s wings flapping and the chattering it would have made when it was disturbed from roosting or feeding Hopefully this image makes people want to protect intertidal habitats on wintering and migration grounds where these shorebirds rest and feed Story Behind the Shot: On a cruise in the Galápagos with my family The lights of the docked boat had attracted many fish drew several Galápagos sharks and a Brown Pelican An interaction of species like that is a photo opportunity The pelican would jump out of the water when the shark got close so I hoped to time my shots to get both in the frame I was able to photograph a few interactions I didn’t know if this sort of photograph was common Bird Lore: Small fish near the sea surface must be aware of predators from above and below In offshore waters from the United States to the Galápagos Brown Pelicans are among the main aerial threats plunging into the waves headfirst to scoop up fish in an expandable bill pouch Adult pelicans have little to fear from other creatures while in the air Judge’s Take (Morgan Heim): This image is like a present that you get to open over and over again The light and curves are so elegant as to be painterly but as you look longer you realize the layers of story The Brown Pelican appears to sense something below it and its bowed head prompts you to linger longer You realize its reflection in the water is not only a reflection The shark curving just beneath the pelican’s body completes a perfect arc and it is a prime example of a photographer composing a dramatic juxtaposition that pays homage to two species’ lives Story Behind the Shot: I enjoy taking pictures of wildlife in snow but this winter was one of the least snowy on record just as I was beginning to think the season would end with no snowfall the forecast predicted flurries the next morning I went to the marsh soon after sunrise and waited These two Green-winged Teals were some of the only subjects in the marsh that day they began their courtship ritual and mating just as large flakes started to fall I hung my lens over the boardwalk to get a water-level view The snow and smooth water created a serene image that I was happy to capture Green-winged Teals mostly pair up on their wintering grounds with courtship behavior beginning by late fall with up to two dozen males vying for the attention of one or more females Courting males perform a variety of displays Ultimately the female chooses from among her suitors and the mated pair migrate together to the breeding grounds The male leaves after the female begins incubating eggs Judge’s Take (Sabine Meyer): I really like that this young photographer set out intentionally to capture this image in adverse weather parlaying snowflakes and the gray overcast light into assets that created the cool mood of this mating scene It’s also a tender moment and unusual in that the female is nearly submerged except for her head The colors on the male pop beautifully against the overall muted color palette Story Behind the Shot: Despite my spending time in Northern Hawk Owl habitat over the years my encounters with this elusive and stunning species were few and far between when the owls are locally scarce and harder to find I spent several days hiking and searching this winter I was finally rewarded with several unforgettable encounters with a Northern Hawk Owl pair as they hunted and courted I captured this image as one perched at the tip of a frosty tree Bird Lore: A unique owl with no close relatives the Northern Hawk Owl ranges across boreal forest zones of Eurasia and North America Adapted to the long light of northern summers Unlike owls that rely on sharp hearing to hunt by night which consists mostly of voles in summer and some birds in winter suggesting the behavior of the Accipiter hawks Judge’s Take (Sabine Meyer): Less is more for this photo of a Northern Hawk Owl: It exudes a peaceful pared-down elegance built on a very limited color palette and its shapes and lines easily draw the eye to the crowning jewel at the tip of the frosty tree I like that the dramatic composition achieves a perfect visual balance even though the tree limbs are not fanning out in total symmetry And there is something ghostly yet magical about the bird that appears to stare us down Story Behind the Shot: I was enjoying the quiet of a secluded sunrise in my kayak when I heard a loud hum I couldn’t imagine what could make such a persistent sound My ears guided me to the source: thousands of Tree Swallows hunting insects on the wing and water surface Their collective wing-beating generated the noise I had a second wondrous realization: The swallows that were not actively hunting rested on bare old-growth bald cypress trees; the birds crowded together so tightly that the branches looked as if they had leaves experimenting with focal lengths and angles until the flock burst up as one and departed Bird Lore: Aerial insectivores like swallows and swifts forage in flight nabbing insects in midair as they sweep gracefully over open fields or water swallows rest on convenient perches when they can give the Tree Swallows access to a prime feeding area: a wide-open bayou where insect swarms often gather low over the water’s surface Judge’s Take (Marlene Pantin): On first glance it appears that the limbs of the Bald Cypress Only on closer inspection is it obvious that birds cover the branches serene colors that blend seamlessly into each layer this photo appears to be a painting rather than a photograph I kayaked to a local spot where Reddish Egrets fish It’s amazing to capture the craziness of this bird’s feeding behavior—how they stab their bills into the water I took this photo as the light over my shoulder illuminated water droplets and a small fish right as the egret flipped its breakfast into its bill Bird Lore: The Reddish Egret is famous for its wildly varied feeding repertoire abruptly spreading and closing their wings All the action serves to startle fish into moving the egret expertly tosses it up to reposition it before swallowing it whole Judge’s Take (Sabine Meyer): A decisive moment perfectly captured There are so many elements coming together in this photo: the Reddish Egret glowing in the misty light of the rising sun; the fish suspended vertically in the air just before it is swallowed; the water’s motion frozen in the beak’s opening and the droplets shimmering against the golden backdrop the reddish light beautifully matches the bird’s neck and belly I can capture Ospreys pulling fish from the water at eye level unstable rocks; I remember this day vividly because I nearly tumbled down The cloudy day and low tide allowed me to shoot for six hours without worrying about shadows I finally got a video of an Osprey grabbing a large fish and flying directly toward me I use my tripod as a walking stick to help me navigate the rocks Bird Lore: Osprey hunting behavior is a feat of skill and strength: soaring or hovering over the water plunging feet first to grasp a fish from just below the surface They are known to capture and carry fish that are more than half their own weight Tales of “fish hawks” being dragged underwater and drowned after snagging large prey are almost certainly false; the Osprey will simply let go of a too-heavy load Judge’s Take (Mick Thompson): There are so many things to love about this video The videographer was not only able to get in close on the bird but also found a way to shoot at eye level The Osprey shows off its powerful wings as it rises out of the water with such a heavy load I was impressed with the videographer’s ability to keep the Osprey in focus which is often difficult when birds are flying towards you I love the detail we can see in the bird and the fish as we marvel at the Osprey’s ability to hang on The small waterfall in the background enhances the composition These winning images originally ran in the Summer 2023 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today According to the tracking app on my phone, the cat was in the alley, right in front of me. He should’ve been easy to spot: He’s bright white and, for the past week, he’d been sporting a blue GPS collar I peeked behind a dumpster and under a discarded truck topper so I stepped on a junk tire for better vantage into a yard when my similar behavior prompted a passerby to ask suspiciously I stepped back and finally saw him: 15 feet up perched atop a defunct chimney beside a tree dropped into a yard with a No Trespassing sign but pivoted when he began swatting stuff off shelves For months I’d wished Bad Kitty would stay inside away from the irresistible lure of my garden (read: litter box) and bird feeders (snacks and sport) But his outdoor escapades are perfectly legal since The thought of raising the issue with my neighbor my in-laws hadn’t appreciated my suggestion that keeping Ethel indoors might be safer for her and birdlife like politics and religion.) To create common ground this time I pitched Jennifer on following Bad Kitty’s every step for a few weeks with the GPS device It turned out we were both curious about his exploits: I was mostly interested in his impact on wildlife while Jennifer was concerned about his safety scientists and conservationists have found that people don’t view 16-foot snakes as they do creatures that purr when petted and have a long history of roving as they please.  Our feline companions’ freedom is such a deeply ingrained quirk of the social contract that even our other favorite pets get far more rigid treatment leash laws and anti-roaming regulations abound When I see Bad Kitty leave scat or robin remains Dogs, too, were once largely unrestricted, but over time public sentiment changed and policies followed No longer giving Bad Kitty and other cats the run of the place would be a significant cultural shift would it take for us to treat Fluffy as we treat Fido?  and 2 reptiles—all on islands or in Australia Their presence threatens the survival of at least 367 other species In the United States, pet cats date to the late 19th century, when they were useful as mousers in booming cities. At the time, spaying and neutering were rare, and kittens were often abandoned to fend for themselves. Soon scientists wondered how birds were faring in an increasingly catty world. In a 1916 report ornithologist Edward Forbush painted a grim picture: Vagrant cats abounded—in the previous decade more than 210,000 had been euthanized in Boston alone—and nearly all pets roamed at night allowing the crepuscular creatures to hunt when they prefer.  The first national catfight ensued. Scientists and conservationists were alarmed by the threat to songbirds, which kept crop-destroying insects in check before the wide use of pesticides. Many avian species were also newly protected under the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act “Probably none of our native wild animals destroy as many birds as do cats,” said Henry Henshaw accused avian proponents of hysteria and balked at recommendations to confine felines during nesting season the National Association of Audubon Societies launched a cat licensing campaign reasoning that people would keep fewer felines due to the cost; they didn’t and in 1933 the organization lamented the reluctance of city officials to take up or enforce cat-restrictive measures the Humane Society of the United States and other animal groups began encouraging more responsible pet ownership to curb the creation of more kittens the answer is simple: Keep Pearl under lock and key That number is up from 35 percent in the 1990s; around that time more municipalities across the country began to enact cat licensing laws and pass ordinances that limited felines on the landscape spurred by animal welfare concerns and two highly publicized studies pointing to a massive avian death toll.  And the cat population has more than doubled in the past half century That means more cats than ever may prowl the outdoors He frequents a mouse-y schoolyard dumpster and meets up with a tabby frenemy; they either screech and part ways or sit side by side I’ve spotted Bad Kitty batting a Dark-eyed Junco sometimes I’ve simply homed in on Black-capped Chickadees belting an alarmed chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee or squirrels barking kuk kuk kuk kuk conservationists largely considered the cat situation handled an Auburn University ecologist: “They said ‘We’ve given you the evidence; you’ve done something; we have other problems we need to talk about.’” In 2013 ornithologist Peter Marra and his colleagues found that the problem hadn’t gone away The study generated an uproar unusual for a scientific paper delivered a petition with 55,000 signatures to the Smithsonian Institution The group wasn’t convinced that outdoor cats killed so much wildlife or had a significant environmental impact Yet finding after finding continues to place paw prints all over the ecological scene. I got the idea to track Bad Kitty from North Carolina State University zoologist Roland Kays, who worked with scientists and cat owners to uncover the secret lives of 925 felines in six countries in 2020 The pets rarely traveled more than 0.2 miles from home (ditto for Bad Kitty) but killed up to 10 times more animals per acre than native carnivores it really concentrates their hunting,” Kays says the average bird is more likely to be killed by a cat even though each individual native predator takes more prey over a larger area.  While not all pet and feral cats fed by people hunt a companion-animal ecologist at University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Conservationists want to know which species cats kill and are especially concerned about impacts on sensitive populations an avian ecologist at University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science Much of the information about what cats kill comes from owner surveys, which don’t capture the full picture. Kitty camera studies have found that the occasional carcasses that Tucker and James bring home represent only about a quarter of their quarry owners: Your cat isn’t presenting that dead sparrow to you “It’s not a gift,” says Cecchetti; like a wildcat Norris aims to refine cat predation estimates across the continent and create a database of which species are hit hardest and when which might reinforce keeping cats inside at least during those times Nemes is taking a different approach to determining their diet by analyzing the DNA in scat This local snapshot might reveal whether cats are preying upon endemic species migratory species that stop over or winter on the island other cities don’t have to start from scratch While such data help pin down nuances of the problem and guide more targeted solutions scientists I interviewed said there’s no question that outdoor cats pose a serious environmental threat “We don’t really need more evidence,” Lepczyk says “Society really struggles with: At what point do you stop doing research and move the needle on policy or management?” The Humane Society and PETA acknowledge that cats are a significant risk to wildlife and should be kept indoors But plenty of people still believe cats can’t be content inside and influential advocacy groups continue to maintain that the compassionate option is to let them roam; Alley Cat Allies insists these nonnative animals are a natural part of the landscape.  it’s analogous to the climate change debate: “You can give people all the facts but a lot of times science alone doesn’t convince people We need to understand what their concerns are to find alternatives that are humane for cats and wildlife.”  On a sunny fall day, I joined 1,000 attendees for a tour of homes in Portland, Oregon. Instead of goggling stunning interiors, we perused outdoor cat enclosures. I wasn’t sure what to expect at my first stop on the Catio (a.k.a. cat patio) Tour “We sit out here for hours with them,” Debbie Orozco told me She and her husband built the structure after a previous tour They’d kept the trio indoors since moving to traffic-filled Portland Now the felines nap away warm days and watch birds flit about The Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon (FCCO) and the Bird Alliance of Oregon (an Audubon chapter) started the tour in 2013 as part of their joint Cats Safe at Home program, which works to humanely reduce outdoor cat populations. The structures, which come in all shapes and sizes “Catios have been covered in Martha Stewart Living,” says Bob Sallinger Bird Alliance of Oregon’s former conservation director As catios continue to pop up around towns and in popular culture people may start to think differently about what responsible cat ownership looks like who is now executive director of Bird Conservation Oregon several cities host similar tours organized by groups with a shared concern for animals its lineage goes back to a pet,” says Karen Kraus which aims to reduce unowned cat populations through sterilization and education there will be less predation and fewer future ferals.” satisfying Tomato’s instinct to hunt can help stave off boredom “The cat knows it’s not going to eat a feather toy,” Sizemore says “But they’re still engaging in the exact same behavior that would be lethal outside.” Ten to 15 minutes of play twice a day will keep most cats fit and stimulated And conveniences like automatic feeders and self-cleaning litter boxes make ownership easier than ever Everyone I interviewed agreed that keeping cats indoors is best for wildlife and their own safety. Barring that, some noted that poofy colorful collars visible to birds might curb cats’ kill rates (bells are largely ineffective) student Mohammad Alyetama is developing a collar that emits an avian alarm call when a feline starts hunting but a cat’s mere presence can also cause harm conservationists would like to see colonies removed: Healthy and those too sick or feral would be housed in sanctuaries or euthanized and roaming restrictions would likely further reduce populations Versions of such policies have gained ground elsewhere: In Iceland several towns require cats to be inside at night or always is removing all feral cats from the landscape where cats are sterilized and released back to their colony Several groups argue it’s the humane way to reduce unowned cats Alley Cat Allies and Best Friends Animal Society vehemently oppose any lethal control and have successfully encouraged municipalities to legalize “community” colonies and allow inhabitants—identifiable by missing ear tips thousands of colony caretakers fill food and water bowls and provide insulated boxes to help cats survive winter it may be exacerbating the problem by encouraging people to abandon pets at least 75 percent of a colony has to be sterilized and new cats can’t join “That rarely happens in an open system,” Marra says The group PETA agrees that the practice isn’t a solution: “TNR makes humans—not cats and certainly not wildlife—feel better.”  One place TNR hasn’t made inroads is state and federal agencies: None use or endorse the practice wildlife managers focus on removing cats from biologically important areas—though they tend not to publicize it After Florida’s Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge was rid of cats and Burmese pythons endangered Key Largo woodrats increased quickly science director of environmental consulting nonprofit Archipelago Research and Conservation In Hawai‘i, cats that come knocking at some seabird colonies increasingly can’t get in. Agencies and organizations, including Raine’s group, are installing tall fences with curved tops that cats can’t scale. They’re expensive, but effective: The largest safeguards more than 600 acres of nesting habitat of the endangered ‘ua‘u understands why people have sympathy for cats but says most don’t see the devastation they cause: “When there’s no management In a move that might herald a larger shift on public lands the National Park Service is permanently removing all cats from San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico citing concerns about feline-borne disease The agency will hire an animal welfare group to take away feeding stations and find homes or shelters for the estimated 200 felines and then contract a removal agency to euthanize any remaining after six months Ten years ago, seeing a cat on a leash or in a stroller might have stopped most people in their tracks. In the past few weeks alone, I’ve seen harnessed felines walking through an airport, in the woods, and on a circuit around my neighborhood—not to mention on countless TikTok accounts And more towns are treating cats like dogs Denver is actively encouraging owners to comply with licensing laws Amid public complaints of unowned cats being an unsanitary nuisance city council said it was considering a ban on providing food or shelter for feral or stray cats; one resident told a news outlet he supported the measure for fear that his neighborhood was “just going to turn into one big litter box.” My furry neighbor is the family’s first cat and the shelter said he’d previously roamed outside Jennifer let him out after two frenetic weeks indoors and there were other advantages: “He rarely uses his litter box.” (I died a little but Jennifer likes that he’s more visible to cars and that so far he’s stopped bringing home birds gaining a better understanding of where we’re each coming from feels like progress “Kestrel!” says Maddy Kaleta from the passenger seat pointing to a tiny black blob on a power line ahead She whips out binoculars and confirms the bird isn’t banded University of North Texas ecologist Jim Bednarz Kaleta grabs a ring-shaped wire mesh cage the size of a small throw pillow with two oblivious mice scampering inside gently sets the contraption on the grassy shoulder Kaleta snaps back inside as Bednarz quickly reverses The American Kestrel bobs its tail as it scans the muddy fields of a future housing development strewn with construction equipment “You’re an apex predator,” Kaleta says to the distant falcon urging the bird to strike: “You’re an eagle the colorful predator flies to a wire above the trap After trying to catch the just-out-of-reach mice the kestrel flaps its wings—but goes nowhere it had slipped a foot through a loop of fishing line sprouting from the trap both graduate students who work with Bednarz leap out and scoop the trap and falcon off the ground The robin-size bird doesn’t squawk or flail; it just glares indignantly at the jubilant humans as they untangle it from the fishing line Texas is the place to be if you’re looking for kestrels The state is thought to host one of the country’s largest winter populations with the feisty falcons flocking to its vast grasslands and booming neighborhoods to hunt for insects Kaleta will scour sprawling Denton County to band Relatively little research has been done on the birds up and down North America’s central corridor Her findings could help answer a question that raptor researchers and conservationists across the continent are racing to answer: Why are kestrel populations declining and other raptor species have rebounded in North America since the banning of DDT in the 1970s American Kestrel numbers have continued to drop No one knows exactly what’s driving the losses or where the birds are running into trouble—making it difficult to figure out how to stop or reverse the trend From their perch in northern Texas, Kaleta and Bednarz are perfectly positioned to help find out. They’re working to fill some crucial gaps in the kestrel’s life cycle, capturing valuable information about how birds fare over the winter, their migratory routes, and their survival rates. Still in the early days of their investigation researchers are making the most of what they’ve got: lots of kestrels the kestrel that Kaleta caught this morning—a male given his slate gray wings—isn’t going to play a starring role in uncovering the cause of his species’ decline she keeps him calm by slipping him into a tube made of two frozen-juice containers taped together clip metal identification bands around his legs and mark his chest with a smear of blue nontoxic dye so they can tell from afar that they’ve already captured him But Kaleta can’t attach the location tracker that is essential to her research The bird must weigh at least 123 grams to safely carry the load of the 3.5-gram tracking device kestrel one of the three-month field season and most widespread falcons in North America They live in semiopen areas ranging from meadows Kestrels are found across much of the continent from Alaska and Canada down to Mexico; they also occur in Central and South America Kestrels in warmer regions tend to be year-round residents Those that breed in colder climates typically migrate south in winter and many migrants follow a leapfrog pattern—traveling from a more northern latitude and settling even farther south for the winter The exact paths kestrels take and the ultimate winter destinations for many populations are mysteries Their smaller-scale movements are also an enigma: We know kestrels need open space but we don’t know enough about where they prefer to hunt or what they do when their preferred habitat disappears Despite advances in tracking technology that have unlocked the pathways of birds as varied as Golden Eagles it’s been tricky to find a gadget that’s a good fit for kestrels The vast majority of knowledge has come from data collected during a fraction of their annual cycle scientists and scores of kestrel-loving volunteers across the continent have set out to learn as much as they can about the birds Some take part in the North American Breeding Bird Survey they see on a single day at regular stops along established routes Over the past half century the number of kestrels that participants have sighted has dropped throughout North America A single kestrel pair fledges three to four chicks on average The puzzling problem: “They’re not showing up.” In at least some parts of the West, kestrels are showing up, but they are breeding weeks earlier than they did in the 1990s. Curious about the change, Julie Heath a biologist and raptor researcher at Boise State University discovered that farmers are taking advantage of significantly warmer winters by planting crops earlier to avoid the hotter summers The bounty draws insects and rodents—prey for kestrels—to the fields “It looks like kestrels are really tracking that change,” she says Researchers have spent years looking for a smoking gun that explains the declines. They’ve tested blood droplets and feathers for chemicals, but to date no pollutants have popped up as a prominent culprit. Genetic analysis of samples revealed five distinct kestrel populations—Alaska (This finding opened the door to yet another question: If populations aren’t mixing Experts now believe multiple complex factors are likely the problem Possibilities include loss of insects and other prey due to climate change and habitat alteration Pesticides may be killing rodents and insects or weakening the falcons themselves; neurotoxic insecticides called neonicotinoids are especially concerning because they’re potent European Starlings may be outcompeting the native birds for natural nest cavities and predation by larger Cooper’s Hawks might play a role and how they might differ across geographic areas In total, North America has lost an estimated 2 million kestrels since 1970, says Chris McClure, executive vice president of science and conservation at The Peregrine Fund. No one disputes kestrels have long been declining but the pace of the drop-off has also been a subject of debate Some research suggests there’s been a steady decrease a trend that would ultimately lead to extinction if unchecked A more recent analysis concluded that the rate has lessened in the past several decades There’s still time to ensure the kestrel remains the most abundant falcon on the continent but doing so will require embracing new tools and looking in places—and during parts of the species’ life cycle—that are understudied “It’s my personal opinion that the problems that are causing the American Kestrel decline are happening outside of the breeding season,” McClure says “And Texas is a really concentrated wintering area for the American Kestrel.” our hours after Kaleta’s team caught their first kestrel the gray winter sky has given way to a clear blue They’re still out prowling back roads and eyeing treetops and utility lines for falcon-shaped blobs Driving past a field of long golden grasses and live oak thickets She pulls over and checks on her furry accomplices and the four others in a glass habitat in the trunk She’s named all six after cheeses and jokes about their distinct personalities: Blue has a mild temperament wily Chimay and fleet-footed Charcoal Cheddar soon prove their value once again this time luring a female hefty enough to be fitted with a tracker Kaleta loops a harness made of thin black Teflon around the kestrel’s wings and secures it and a thimble-size tracker with two antennae high on the bird’s back She fixes the knot with waxed cinnamon dental floss soaked in Krazy Glue But getting to this point took trial and error—and technological advances Bednarz started UNT’s American Kestrel project in 2016 and enlisted undergraduate students to estimate annual kestrel survival by banding and resighting the birds took over the project a couple of years later Bednarz and Biles wanted to expand the focus to track where kestrels that winter in Texas go to breed Just figuring out how to track the birds was a challenge satellite tags weren’t an option: They transmit location information but the battery power they require makes them too heavy for pint-size kestrels Weight wasn’t a concern with nanotags that emit radio signals but the birds’ locations would be recorded only when they flew close enough to a stationary antenna site on land and wouldn’t provide the granular picture of kestrel movement the researchers were after but they proved to be a bust: The tiny sensors record daylight to estimate location and kestrels spend too much time in dark cavities to provide useful information which had been developed only a few years earlier These satellite tags store position data until scientists recapture the bird and download the information; they require far less battery power than tags that transmit on their own and thus are light enough for a kestrel to carry Biles put the GPS tags on 10 birds in the winter of 2019–2020 Although seven of the Teflon backpacks had withstood the kestrels’ razor-sharp beaks Biles quickly realized she couldn’t get them off—because she couldn’t recapture the birds The kestrels returned to the same areas where she’d first snared them but they refused to be enticed by her mice Apparently you can fool a kestrel only once The Peregrine Fund supplied the team with archival GPS tags paired with a radio beacon that beams data at a preset time enabling the scientists to download data from several hundred feet away using a handheld antenna No recapturing suspicious kestrels required Biles and Bednarz tagged 20 kestrels from December 2020 to March 2021 and the following winter she spotted seven birds sporting backpacks She successfully retrieved data from two (either the others had dead batteries or Kaleta missed the window when they were beaming the data) One bird had spent the summer about 600 miles north in a riverside wildlife refuge in Nebraska The other kestrel’s tracker battery died in April but the data Kaleta managed to recover suggested it may have migrated to northern Kansas She also found seven birds tagged the previous winter but she was unable to retrieve their data immediately due to technical glitches “New technology is definitely tricky,” Kaleta says Her team is still trying to recover the data and hopes that what they learn will help improve the gadgets the team bands kestrels in winter and surveys birds year-round now conservation director at Houston Audubon determined that 90 percent of the kestrels in Denton County in winter are migrants the team has collectively banded about 400 kestrels Survey efforts step up in the winter months with Kaleta and a small team of field technicians scouring the county looking for kestrels that were banded the year before and tracking when and where they return The team gathers an unprecedented wealth of information Kaleta plans to analyze the data on resighted kestrels to determine survival rates whether birds are dying in high numbers during the winter Tracking more kestrels throughout the year could also help the researchers determine if certain migratory pathways or stopover sites are associated with lower return rates by pointing to areas where the birds are running into trouble only the UNT team and a few other scientists have outfitted the birds with archival GPS tags but Bednarz has heard from other kestrel scientists who are interested in using the same technology The Peregrine Fund may distribute them to kestrel researchers in other areas where the birds overwinter and pass along the methodology pioneered in Texas And as more kestrels are tracked in the coming years the bigger picture of their migration and how they interact with the various landscapes they inhabit may come into focus riving around north Texas is a sobering reminder of the fragility of the open-space habitats that kestrels need Denton is part of what locals call the metroplex: Dallas the population of the metroplex is expanding and sprawling rapidly What were once prairie and woodland are increasingly big-box stores and cul-de-sacs Kestrels gravitate to the edges of these developments Such sites provide seemingly ideal kestrel habitat with open undeveloped fields for hunting on one side and human structures full of cozy cavities for roosting on the other But the development front is constantly expanding This encroachment creates an ecological trap for the birds Kestrels that spend one winter hunting in a field may return to find it has disappeared under concrete and new shopping attractions the next “My hypothesis is it’s a contributing factor in the decline happening all over,” he says A new effort spearheaded by researchers in New Mexico could help identify whether urbanization is indeed a main pressure driving kestrel losses The scientists plan to feed the growing volume of kestrel data from bird bands and surveys conducted by thousands of experts and volunteers into one giant Their work is rooted in the field of “decision science,” a high-concept term created in the business world and adopted by the U.S Department of the Interior and other wildlife policymakers It involves integrating everything scientists know about a species into a powerful model Researchers then work with species experts to develop hypotheses about possible causes of declines and actions that might address them they build smaller-scale population models that vacuum up all relevant information—including factors like land cover and climate data—to tease out the most plausible explanations As anyone who has ever tried to make a complex decision with limited information and resources knows, there’s usually no single “right” answer, but the scientists hope the model will inform the best possible choices. The project is led by Abby Lawson a population ecologist at the USGS New Mexico Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit based at New Mexico State University She’s led similar work on species including Eastern Black Rails Though data on the secretive marsh birds are scant the coordinated effort allowed researchers to identify two credible hypotheses to test in the field—one that targets reducing woody vegetation and another focused on identifying optimal irrigation regimes They also worked together on several big-picture proposals to win competitive research grants possible actions may include putting up nest boxes in new areas managing or restoring specific kinds of habitat The model can then estimate the impact of those actions on kestrel populations indicating which measures may slow or even reverse population declines and are therefore worth prioritizing and funding Scientists hope the model will also point out the more significant causes of decline Such insights will likely yield widespread benefits. “Birds like kestrels, they are such good conservation tools because they’re colorful; they’re charismatic; people love raptors,” says Chad Witko, Audubon’s senior coordinator of avian biology for the Migratory Bird Initiative “If we can protect them and protect their open-space habitats you’re going to protect a lot of other species that fall within those habitats.” No one knows what happens to kestrels when they return to their hunting grounds after a summer away and find not a field but a gas station or a block of apartments the scientists in Denton might just be the ones to figure out how adaptable these raptors really are—and what challenges they need our help to overcome This story originally ran in the Spring 2023 issue as “The Perplexing Decline of the American Kestrel .” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today you’re creating an environment where they concentrate and mix in ways that are rare in the wild sometimes making it easier for diseases to spread among them as avian flu has surged among wild bird populations and spurred advisories to take down feeders in many states While the dangers your bird's face around the feeder can come and go your drive to keep them healthy all year should not it is key to completely dry a feeder before refilling it with food. Leaving moisture inside is a sure way for fungus or bacteria to flourish replace water frequently—ideally daily or every other day—to prevent mosquitos Growth can occur even inside a seed’s shell Every other week is a good starting point for seed and suet feeders but cleaning more frequently is best—most especially in humid and hotter weather says Audubon’s bird-friendly communities director John Rowden Hummingbird feeders need more regular maintenance because sugar solution is a petri dish for bacteria If you notice white or colorful streaks or spots says Allisyn Gillet, an ornithologist for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.  Hang a feeder out of direct sunlight and where it’s likely to stay dry Put baths where plant debris and animal poop won’t easily fall inside (i.e. Placement near brush will offer birds an escape route from predators To minimize deadly collisions, feeders and baths should be either at least 30 feet away from windows or very close to them. At in-between distances, reflections cause confusion and birds have room to pick up speed before striking. (Even better, treat windows to make them more visible to birds) Don't forget about other animals in your care: Be sure to keep your cats indoors, and keep any other pets or livestock away from feeder areas—including backyard chickens keep a close eye on birds that visit your yard If you see a bird that looks ill or injured and unable to fly away lidded cardboard box lined with a paper towel or smooth fabric find a licensed wildlife rehabber and call for further instructions if you see a sick bird that is still highly mobile If you’ve seen sick or dead birds in your yard take your feeders down and drain your baths for a few days and report the sighting to your local state wildlife agency.  This story originally ran in the Winter 2021 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today we always enjoy picking some favorites that didn't make the final cut.  we've selected 100 additional photographs shown here in no particular order. During this year of collective tragedy and canceled plans we are especially grateful to share a gallery that displays even a small slice of global birdlife in all of its stunning and joyous variety, from acrobatic Ospreys to hungry hummingbirds to busy woodpeckers.  you could find your shot at taking top honors in our 2021 awards It's early April and American Woodcocks have begun twilight mating displays but to abide by social distancing rules you decide on a solo trip Then you recall the sound of gravel behind you as a police car followed you to a trail head the other day You quickly but calmly grabbed your binoculars and pointed them to a nearby tree but to prove your innocence—to de-escalate what you feared could unfold It’s cold outside and will be colder tonight when the woodcocks dance In the United States more than 45 million acres—an area eight times the size of New Jersey—are carpeted with them And we’re adding 500 square miles of turfgrass every year Maintaining all that lawn is a huge undertaking and homeowner spends the equivalent of at least a full workweek pushing or driving a mower.  You could say the quest for perfect lawns—richly green and insect-free—is almost as American as baseball But this national preoccupation comes at a cost Consider how many gallons of water and pounds of pesticides it takes to keep lawns lush a 25-by-40-foot yard can drink 10,000 gallons of water in a summer Lawn care accounts for 70 million pounds of pesticides applied in the United States each year 10 times more than even what is used in farming The toxic runoff percolates into groundwater What you get is a cookie-cutter landscape whether you’re in Palo Alto, Houston, Cincinnati, New York, or Phoenix. “All around the country you can find the same few species of grasses and foundation shrubs making up a national, undifferentiated residential landscape,” writes Pam Penick in her new book Lawn Gone! “It’s like driving cross-country on the interstate and seeing the same four fast-food restaurants at every exit.” And wherever green grass grows there was once habitat—a forest Which is why many gardeners concerned about disappearing wilderness and wildlife declines are trying to grow the habitat back With support from conservation groups like Audubon and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center—or just for the love of it—they are digging up their yards and replacing the grass with trees and flowering plants that can again provide birds and other wildlife with food Their spadework is unquestionably restoring varied and colorful homes where chickadees can sing and butterflies can flutter But until recently few scientists could say for sure whether such efforts are having a meaningful impact on wildlife Now they are finding proof that even small habitats can make a big difference when Doug Tallamy bought 10 acres of former farmland near Oxford in southeastern Pennsylvania he wasn’t looking for a new research laboratory He simply wanted a pleasant place to live with his wife and a reasonable commute to the University of Delaware where he has now worked for 32 years as an entomology professor and multiflora rose—the whole gang was there,” he says  The exotic plants (nearly all from Asia) overwhelmed most of the landscape He bought a sturdy pair of hand loppers to cut through the thorns Most of those nonnative plants had little to no leaf damage from insects Was he witnessing a troubling consequence of the exotic plants that are spreading everywhere If insects that spent millions of years eating native plants passed up a buffet of aliens—because they either couldn’t or wouldn’t eat them—did that mean areas dominated by foreign plants would support fewer insects Tallamy did an exhaustive search of the scientific literature to see whether he could find answers to those questions So he began studying how throngs of proliferating exotic plants are affecting insect populations and Healthy bird communities are inextricably linked to healthy insect populations Ninety-six percent of terrestrial North American birds raise their young on insects caterpillars are essential for a bird trying to keep up with the demands of a hungry family It takes 390 to 570 caterpillars a day to feed a growing clutch of four to six chickadees in the 16 days from when they hatch to when they fledge from their nest “That can be more than 9,000 caterpillars to make one batch of chickadees,” says Tallamy “We know they’re not flying five miles down the road to forage We know that almost all of a chickadee’s foraging happens within 50 meters [164 feet] of the nest That’s why you need so many [caterpillars] in your yard.” One of Tallamy’s studies examined the moth and butterfly larvae that develop on indigenous and exotic plants in the mid-Atlantic region (Virginia where you can find roughly 3,000 of the country’s total of 11,500 caterpillar species From his findings he created a ranking system of regional trees and plants by the abundance and diversity of caterpillars they can host First place on the top 20 list went to the oaks which supported 534 species of caterpillars which were home to 456; willows came in third gardening has taken on a role that transcends the needs of the gardener gardeners have become important players in the management of our nation’s wildlife It is now within the power of individual gardeners to do something that we all dream of doing: to make a difference the ‘difference’ will be to the future of biodiversity to the native plants and animals of North America and the ecosystems that sustain them.” Many gardeners and botanists regard Tallamy’s book as the seminal source and sales remain strong—the paperback is in its seventh printing because he says “it implies that these are so terrible we have to hide them in the backyard We’re not talking about creating ugly landscapes A beautiful oak tree in your front yard is a highly functional plant there.” Homeowners who landscape with native trees and plants such as oaks and sunflowers are planting bird food factories that ship caterpillars in bulk and make regular deliveries of fruits and seeds that help fuel bird migrations over thousands of miles and multiple continents “The plants in our yards are just as effective as the bird feeder you put up in wintertime,” Tallamy says “because the plants are making the food that feeds the birds in the summertime.” For a bird searching for a nice place to raise a family the classic suburban yard—a tidy bed of grass and a row of leafy foundation plantings imported from China—must be like a foreclosed fixer-upper in a bad neighborhood The accommodations are spare and all the local restaurants are dives offer all the perks of a Park Avenue suite with a stocked pantry and a view and a brilliant stage upon which a bird can sing without competing against the din of a lawn mower compared two such types of landscapes in southeastern Pennsylvania One property in each of six pairs had a higher proportion of native plants with an indigenous tree canopy casting shadows on lawns fringed by alien ornamental bushes and ground covers like pachysandra Not surprisingly Burghardt found a greater diversity and abundance of birds and caterpillars in the yards filled with naturally occurring plants Birds of conservation concern in the area where the study was done—wood thrushes and scarlet tanagers—were eight times more abundant and significantly more diverse on those parcels “There was a big jump in their ability to use these properties,” says Tallamy The well-watered oasis yards were ruled by grackles and European starlings—everyday birds that wouldn’t normally survive in such a hot and dry place “You’re not going to see those species naturally in the desert because they can’t make it without water,” she says On the properties most closely resembling the arid desert surroundings she found Gila woodpeckers nesting in saguaro cactuses Anna’s hummingbirds sipping nectar from mesquite and curve-billed thrashers nesting in cholla cactuses She also discovered that the birds frequenting those xeriscaped properties were staying longer and eating until they were full “They could stay in one patch and do all of their activities If you’re a bird that doesn’t have to fly from yard to yard desperately trying to find food you can go off and do other important things like attracting a mate or feeding your young.” Lerman worries about one potential hazard of creating a bird retreat in a desert of grass and pavement In the right set of circumstances it could become a Bates Motel “We have to be really careful that when we do create these habitats we don’t create ecological traps.” (This refers to the inadvertent bait and switch that can happen when wildlife is drawn to an area that ultimately jeopardizes its safety.) “If you create a wildlife habitat You’re attracting all these birds to your yard with beautiful plants a recent study by scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute reported that between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds are killed each year by cats roaming outdoors “This is a huge and complicated issue,” Lerman says “because you can’t control other people’s behavior.” “Their research gives us solid information that shows how important the native plants are.” But he emphasizes that selecting plants that host the insects birds eat is only part of the equation Fruiting plants and seeds fuel birds during migration and are thus equally essential in any habitat plants should also be selected for other features than food such as shelter during extreme weather and usefulness for nesting structure Just as some plants sustain diverse caterpillar populations others provide good options for nesting structure and safety from predators.” Nest boxes hung on posts or standing trees are another key feature because people tend to remove downed trees and other structures with cavities that birds would use naturally birds need sitting perches where they can keep an eye out for predators; a place to get out of the sun on a hot day or to weather a winter storm; water for drinking and bathing; and even some thorny shrubs like hawthorns that can provide a fortress against prowling animals At the same time scientists are taking a hard look at nonnative invasive species that provide birds with food but also harm the ecosystem. Porcelainberry is firmly on the National Park Service’s “least wanted list” for its habit of forcefully twining through woodlands and smothering native plants “[They] eat porcelainberries up the wazoo,” says Michelle Frankel a conservation biologist who is leading Audubon’s Bird-Friendly Communities initiative in the Atlantic Flyway But Frankel says you have to also consider the plants that porcelainberry displaces A recent study revealed that the highest fat content and energy densities in fruits that migrant birds ate at two field sites in Rochester The birds were choosing the higher-octane fuel and eating it more voraciously citizen science projects continue to deepen our understanding Two such programs were launched this spring “These initiatives are designed to look more closely at bird and plant associations and answer some of the questions particularly having to do with backyard habitats,” says Frankel so they can also keep track of the birds they see,” says Frankel She says that the program is being promoted to Audubon chapters around the country and municipalities receiving mini-grants to create “Urban Oases” demonstration habitats will be asked to track their sites with YardMap The second program, called Hummingbirds at Home, joins Audubon’s citizen science programs such as the Christmas Bird Count and the Great Backyard Bird Count by enlisting people to log observations of hummingbirds on flowers and note blooming patterns Several recent studies indicate that the arrival of hummingbirds on their foraging grounds is out of sync with food availability and flower pollination “The Hummingbirds at Home program aims to gain insights into what’s going on and how people can help,” says Audubon chief scientist Gary Langham There is plenty of evidence to show that anyone can play a vital role in preserving bird habitats, says Tallamy, who even goes as far as to call it a moral imperative. “Our success is up to each one of us individually,” he writes in Bringing Nature Home “We can each make a measurable difference almost immediately by planting a native nearby we have never been so empowered—and the ecological stakes have never been so high.” Take Audubon’s Healthy Yard Pledge to promote bird-friendly communities Pledge to remove invasive exotic plants; plant native species; reduce pesticide use; conserve water; protect water quality; and support birds and other wildlife.  2. Begin small and have a plan. “Someone always comes up [after a talk] and says, ‘I’m going to run home and rip out all my lawn, ’ ” says Doug Tallamy, author of the renowned gardening book Bringing Nature Home be ready to replace it.” He suggests an easier pace If you already pay to have your lawn cut and cared for you might consider putting at least part of that budget toward managing your yard in a way that’s more beneficial to birds 3. Convert the salespeople at your nursery. If you go to one with the name of a native plant that you want to buy, they will likely take you to the closest thing in stock. “What you say to them is, ‘That’s not what I want. Can you get this for me?’ And if they can’t, you walk away,” says Tallamy. “If they hear that enough they’ll start carrying this stuff.” (Find plants adapted to your region with Audubon’s native plant database.) Try to avoid cultivars of the native plants you’re buying When the horticultural industry tweaks a plant’s features (for instance the plants may become less desirable or even incompatible with the insects that evolved to eat them Shun the misconception that gardens brimming with native plants look weedy many of the plants they display are from North America," says Tallamy “So this notion that just because a plant grows down the street it can’t be used formally is just an urban legend.”  For some domestic inspiration Tallamy points to a new 3.5-acre native plant exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden that is both beautiful and beneficial for wildlife in one of the world’s most crowded cities 6. There’s power in numbers. Enlist your neighbors and wider community to help incorporate bird-friendly plantings in yards, parks, workplaces, schoolyards, and other public areas. Join a growing army of citizen scientists collecting data about how birds can coexist with us and become part of Audubon’s Hummingbirds at Home program. Visit www.hummingbirdsathome.org where you can also download the mobile app 7. This winter participate in the Christmas Bird Count (birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count) and the Great Backyard Bird Count two ongoing citizen science programs that help track long-term bird population trends Register your plot of habitat at YardMap and document its value to birds as you make improvements Half the nation’s lawn equals about 20 million acres—roughly the collective size of 15 national parks “We have to get rid of the notion that nature is something you must drive to,” Tallamy insists You can do that right at home—every time we look out the window or go outside.”      A version of this story ran in the July-August 2013 issue under the title “Food Network.” Native plants provide birds with the food they need Use our database to discover the best plants for birds in your area.  Birds and people face unprecedented challenges from climate change with two-thirds of North American bird species at risk of extinction Transitioning to clean energy is one of the quickest and most effective ways to protect them from climate impacts and offshore wind offers key advantages over other clean energy sources which generates more electricity over longer periods.  Audubon's January 2025 report, Birds and Offshore Wind: Developing the Offshore Wind that Birds Need and outlines a science-based path to environmentally responsible development amid a changing climate.  Audubon is part of a coalition of conservation groups that have reviewed the latest science-based research on offshore wind development and whales. More information is available here.  Audubon staff and local chapters advocate for responsible siting and operation of offshore wind projects to avoid and minimize environmental impacts and ensure conservation measures for birds are integrated.  For more information, visit our Birds and Clean Energy page Report highlights the latest research and outlines science-based path to environmentally responsible development in a changing climate Audubon's report shares how offshore wind can be balanced with the needs of communities and wildlife To create the side-by-side images that accompany contributor Allen Murabayashi’s essay below, we asked the six photographers who won 2023 Audubon Photography Awards to describe their photos in a few sentences to someone who can’t see the image. With their permission we fed their descriptions into a popular AI image generator In 2012, footage of an endangered Bengal tiger marooned in a lifeboat captivated moviegoers. Ang Lee’s Life of Pi adaptation was clearly fiction, but many viewers didn’t realize that the majority of tiger shots were computer-generated Hundreds of artists worked for years to create the cutting-edge visual effects A decade later, a photographer’s stunning images of an elusive snow leopard near Mount Everest went viral. When media covered the work uncritically, Alpine Mag’s experts revealed some of the images as composites—carefully stitched collages of preexisting photos rather than real moments and jaw-dropping digital manipulation aren’t new to photography Yet these illusions still took human labor and expertise to make convincing “generative” artificial intelligence (AI) technology has dramatically reduced the need for such effort As a tech entrepreneur in the photo industry and former Audubon Photography Awards (APA) judge I’ve been stunned at the rapid transformation publicly available programs can conjure into a visual whether a realistic image or fantastical artwork no matter how far-fetched—“snow leopard on Everest” or even “Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Central Park”—and software such as DALL-E 2 and Midjourney will quickly render a synthetic image in a style or level of detail you specify These systems still have limits of verisimilitude often producing uncanny and strange effects AI models analyze and learn from millions or billions of captioned images Some use open-source databases or photos scraped from the internet while others aren’t transparent about source material or insufficiently nuanced—as seems to be the case for many birds—results vary Midjourney struggled to render the delicately curved beak of the ‘I‘iwi generative AI models are improving at creating images and making art These giant steps are forcing many industries to grapple with existential crises To ensure the highest industry standards and guard against photography practices that may harm wildlife or violate our contest rules we closely examine the original image files (and data embedded in them) for finalist photos and compare them with the images submitted Experts in ethical bird photography and bird behavior also review the images along with information that photographers share about how the scenes were captured to spot red flags that may prompt judges to take a closer look studied the behavior of White-tailed Kites for three years before capturing a perfect midair shot of a father teaching a fledgling to hunt on images from photographers like Zhi might produce scenes of hard-to-capture behaviors—and a person scrolling on a phone may not know the difference Even photo contest juries have already been fooled by AI-generated imagery and current vetting mechanisms may be insufficient to detect the best attempts but also conservationists who must contend with these developments Photography has long been used to build wonderment of the natural world and to bolster arguments for protecting declining species and boosting public trust in the reality of climate change generative AI makes it easier to sow doubt and spread disinformation designed to alter our beliefs and behavior these dynamics may also make it harder to trust remarkable yet real photos Meme culture fueled by generative AI could further weaponize images by turning complex issues into punch lines The tendency for generative AI to “hallucinate,” or confidently present a wrong answer Even well-intentioned misuse could erode trust: Amnesty International recently faced criticism for using AI-generated images to depict a protest in Colombia—ostensibly protecting activists’ safety but risking the credibility of their cause AI is also a powerful tool for conservation scientists have harnessed advances in AI to better protect wildlife Automated machine-learning programs now comb through camera-trap especially in remote areas that few people visit Predictive models based on such data are helping to proactively combat threats such as poaching generative AI holds the potential to assist conservation causes by spurring innovation Visuals in particular have the power to enhance our emotional connection to issues in ways words or data alone cannot; this ability is democratized as generative AI tools become available and technological frameworks that might constrain its use and protect society from harm We don’t want a system that is reliant on experts to detect hallucinations nor to have to fix a broken technology after it has inflicted harm and consumers need to seriously and quickly consider negative consequences as these tools proliferate Just as I can hardly imagine families forgoing a holiday photo to render one instead I doubt AI will end our drive to document everyday wildlife moments Photos capture our experiences; generative AI captures our imagination My own experience has reinforced time and again that we can’t predict how technology will evolve I find it unlikely that it will turn human effort The joy of observing a bird and the effort to trek into the backcountry to capture an exquisite photo remind us of nature’s beauty and necessity This story originally ran in the Summer 2023 issue as “These Birds Are Fakes.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today “Here ends our happiness,” the driver says approaching the end of the pavement and stopping the government truck and apparently very little in the way of shocks despite how the particulars of their expedition may have struck others—say the writer and photographer also on board—as uncomfortable went through worse in their searches for Campephilus woodpeckers in other countries before they landed in Cuba to look for the granddaddy of all finds the elusive and by most accounts extinct Ivory-bill No one has looked hard here for a long time people who know and care about such things have been saying not much they aren’t willing to do—suffer; die—to get that done There was the crush of last-minute getting-ready Gallagher tying up loose ends as editor-in-chief of Living Bird at his office in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology There was Lammertink on a 22-hour bus to a Brazilian airport from interior Argentina where the Dutch ornithologist works for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council followed by 19 hours of airports and planes to Ithaca There were the two of them at Walmart together buying pots and pans and tents and staying up late packing and waking up early to drive more than four hours to Toronto and then landing late in Holguín Gallagher more than two personal airline bottles of prosecco deep to deal with the even later arrival of the photographer No sooner had they had breakfast at their budget homestay the next morning after four hours of sleep for Lammertink and maybe five for Gallagher than maps were spread open across a table and Carlos Peña This is where you might be able to pick up some mules to help with transport Then it was out to a grocery store for rice and pasta and eggs and water before a quick lunch and into the car for the first leg of the long trip The rented car was a 1955 Willys: two and a half seats in the front and two very narrow benches bolted longways into the back and luggage were piled up in between and on top of half of them leaving Gallagher and the photographer to squeeze onto the ends of opposite little pews hunching over to keep their heads off the low metal roof At breakfast the writer again expressed her wish that there were seatbelts which she generally tries to secure on work trips when she is in charge of logistics; while the photographer kindly validated her feelings by saying this was a normal human desire had slapped her knee and laughed about it the night before as their young driver sped the proto-jeep away from the airport around the proliferation of horse-drawn carts on the street in the dark as they prepared to drive the first three of the many many hours they’d spend on Cuban roads over two weeks Lammertink invited the writer to cram herself into the only place she would fit “It’ll just be much more fatal in an accident,” he said of sitting in the front the fact that car accidents cause the most American deaths abroad being funny an area beyond Farallones in the mountains of Parque Nacional Alejandro de Humboldt Cuban biologists Giraldo Alayón and Alberto Estrada found Ivory-bills there and a few weeks later they and the eminent woodpecker specialists Lester Short and Jennifer Horne confirmed the sightings there Lammertink himself spent eight months in 1991 and 1993 looking for them there Ojito de Agua has been protected for 30 years now—since the sightings—so maybe the habitat might now be more hospitable to Ivory-bills Gallagher bounced his old bones about in the back with zero complaints and inhuman patience Dust swirled in through the open and broken windows five miles an hour and less when the pavement expired and the road turned uphill and rocky and deeply He cheerfully schlepped in his Wellingtons through mud and across narrow planks over ravines to a jungle shack lent to them by a coffee farmer who never ever buttons his shirt—then back out again after the regional Protected Areas official told the foreigners by phone that he wouldn’t allow them into the forest from there And that nor were they allowed in Farallones at all it has no amenities or services for visitors including—most importantly—permission to host them a lovely if mildly shabby beach town four and a half hours of mostly jolting non-road farther east to meet with the evicting regional Protected Areas official whereupon he sent them back again some two hours west to the national park’s visitor’s center on Bahía de Taco a parking-lot-size patch of grass separating the non-road from the ocean where the group was to sleep for two nights in a different more official jungle shack while the Protected Areas agency considered whether to allow them to venture deep into the national park There was no plumbing but a vat of carried-up river water from which the group could draw buckets to bathe beside the non-road a multiperson outhouse that did not enjoy much in the way of maintenance When the supply of potable water they’d hauled in ran out the writer taught herself how to use the $250 worth of water-filtration and UV-sterilization equipment she had bought before embarking (she and the photographer who are accustomed to hardships but of a different kind have discovered that they are wearing matching new pairs of technical wicking antimicrobial quick-drying underpants) Gallagher helped her purify water for the group impressed with how much more convenient it was than a camping straw which filters bacteria one sip at a time and does not filter viruses and which was all he carried in his bag though he has neither a naiveté about waterborne illness nor an ironclad digestive tract A partial list of places where Gallagher has suffered severe gastrointestinal distress includes: Mexico that would be something like—speaking of—Mexico a possibly also extinct and even larger—the largest—woodpecker species were headed into cartel lands so dangerous that every one of the Mexican biologists who had been recruited to go with them dropped out one man kidnapped for ransom; as they drove through the area crossing paths with armed traffickers and enlisting smugglers and Uzi-carrying locals as guides Gallagher praying that if he got killed his wife would find his notes and finish the book he was working on and when they emerged from those mountains alive the forest ranger who had—under great protest—helped them get in broke down crying a hard trip would be something like Argentina where Gallagher and Lammertink trekked high and low and  high and higher and low and high again following radio-tagged Helmeted Woodpeckers (a species that indisputably exists) over the jungle hills starting at 4 a.m daily and for 14 hours a day while it poured relentlessly and mosquitos infected with botfly eggs bit them and dropped maggot larvae onto their bodies but Gallagher caught him flinching once as one crunched away at the shoulder tissue under his skin (Gallagher himself finally reached a breaking point and dug his infestation out wholesale with a knife.) Living in Argentina and tramping often into the jungles after Helmeted Woodpeckers Lammertink averages 40 botfly cases per year In the shower on the first morning here in Cuba he squeezed a mass of yellow pus and partly liquefied dead-botfly parts out of a hole in his forearm the driver of the government truck is right the team has driven back east again to Baracoa and then south through the mountains and switchbacks to the ocean clear on the other side of the island and west again from there the views gorgeous with beach to the left and dramatic desert rock to the right on the way to Guantánamo and finally secure the coveted clearance into Ojito de Agua They have left the rented Willys and loaded more provisions into this government jeep driven by this government employee though after a too-brief stint at the mechanic’s it is barely or in the opinion of at least one national park staffer not at all ready to complete the trip up the half-road on the mountain ahead it is unlikely that the group will reach their destination a manned national park station seven miles up deep mud and rock which will render the way unpassable by jeep for sure He takes a deep breath and gathers himself when the pavement ends and they crash forward through the uneven landscape jeep rocking violently and Gallagher and the media trying to keep from slamming into one another in the backseat and rocks are collected and thrown under the tires and into the muck ahead And then more crashing—and some very near tipping—and then they get stuck again And the driver kills the battery trying to drive out and the gear and luggage and provisions are offloaded and after a long time he returns leading two yoked oxen from a farm somewhere and they’re tied to the truck and everybody pushes and rocks it while the farmer beats the oxen relentlessly breaking branches and then entire small trees over their backs and across their faces until they break free and escape and don’t trample anybody but have to be chased down and wrangled and re-tied to the truck “This gives you a little idea of how hard it is to study these birds the Ivory-bill has something human about it There’s a sentience to the weirdly alert yellow eyes combined with a wide stance—rare in the bird world—reads almost like standoffishness In pictures from 1938 of a large juvenile perched on naturalist J.J slightly opened beak looks a breath away from expressing fully formed sentences the Ivory-bill looks like a raggedy nightmare the ones in the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s vault were only depressing to behold when Gallagher and Lammertink brought them out past multiple security doors for the writer to inspect before heading to Cuba was previously a decoration out on someone’s smoking porch or something another mounted specimen has its serrated tongue intact and extending between open bills but when the thing was gingerly lifted up for the writer’s closer review No wonder Gallagher was so thrilled to see a live one tear through the sky in the Arkansas bottomland swamp in 2004 He had been obsessed with birds for as long as he could remember once in his early teens lying facedown on the ground in the sun of the California mountains for hours looking dead so a Turkey Vulture would land on him (By the time the experiment was reluctantly abandoned as a failure he was so burned and dehydrated that he barely had the strength to ride his bike back down the hill and home.) And then there he was rediscovering the bird world’s most coveted and iconic ghost species and several other searchers whom the Lab of Ornithology subsequently enlisted to scour swamp forests across the South for five years maintains—though the only video they captured is highly contested as proof tried to attract the close attention of a vulture attempting first to buy a dead sheep but ultimately resorting to sprinkling a doll in tomato-sauce blood and leaving it under the raptors’ flight path (This experiment also failed.) He was one of Cornell’s Ivory-bill searchers 10 years ago but not a beholder of one of the six other sightings named in the paper the Lab eventually published but he thinks the bird or birds they saw have probably since died He is highly skeptical that any Ivory-bills still survive in Cuba the only other place besides the Southeast United States they’ve ever been known to live: The title of the paper he published after searching here in the ’90s is “Status of Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis in Cuba: almost certainly extinct.” He wrote another piece for the journal of the Neotropical Bird Club called “No more hope for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis.” But maybe in the few remaining patches of pine forest where American researcher George Lamb definitely saw (and obtained photographic proof of) them in 1956 the last such universally accepted records on Earth Maybe they found suitable habitat in the lowland hardwoods nearby where maybe they held on until the newly protected pine forest regenerated enough for them to return On that note: The national park guide assigned to the group at Bahía de Taco said he saw an Ivory-bill with his father just 24 years ago where the birds would generally not be expected to live From Bahía de Taco they set out on what Gallagher invariably calls a “death march”: 12 hours and 99 flights of stairs’ worth of elevation over often extraordinarily slippery red clay scouring for Ivory-bill markings or oval nest cavities in trees It was on that day that they first broke out the double-knocker The double-knocker is an innovation of Lammertink’s own design and construction An online video documents him using it to attract another Campephilus woodpecker strapping the small wooden box to a tree with rope pulling out a contraption made of two dowel rods that he sways back then swings into the box one dowel and then the other making contact mimicking the distinctive Campephilus sound: BAM-bam from a distance: A Pale-billed knocks back Lammertink trudged off the path beaten for park visitors and through the brush up an incline finding a pine tree in a growth of quebrahachas the type of tree El Indio said were dominant where he had his sighting not far from there Everyone stood silently as Lammertink prepared He marked down the time and GPS coordinates He pulled out an MP3 player attached to a speaker wrapped in camouflage holding the speaker aloft as the recording of an Ivory-bill the only existing recording of an Ivory-bill Kent-kent. Lammertink turned in slow circles blasting it and Gallagher kept his ears alert as the sound played for 90 seconds A double-knock session takes about 30 minutes Lammertink has waited as long as 20 minutes afterward for them to respond to a call When he thought they’d waited long enough this time the group all sitting and standing silently there in the forest they picked up the bags and waters and cameras they’d set down and took off again hiking 500 meters farther into the forest to try again so to maximize exposure in the limited amount of time available to any one man and mosquitos landed on the motionless party Gallagher sat down farther back on the path and rested The writer practiced her yogic Mountain Pose A huge bird suddenly broke through the trees and soared into view sweeping and grand and even with some white underside buzzing close to remind them that life is fleeting There have been times when Lammertink used the double-knocker in places where he knew for a fact Campephilus woodpeckers were nearby (-slash-existed) To get one to do so on this trip in a territory this large and especially not after Lammertink walked to El Indio’s father’s house and interviewed him and asked him what sound the Ivory-bill had made when he saw the bird with his son 24 years ago and the man made the wroooong his recollection likely colored by his father’s identification of the species both of the accounts of these two—the only two—witnesses to the exciting possibility that the Ivory-bill did or could live in non-pine forest in eastern Cuba were therefore called into question one that Lammertink would henceforth refer to as “The Twist.” So not a moment to waste getting out of Bahía de Taco—though the forest there was chockful of other species sightings: Scaly-naped Pigeon and Cuban Trogon and Stygian Owl; Cuban Amazon Not a moment to waste getting to Guantánamo and getting permission—no time to care or alert the authorities about the endangered parrot being kept illegally caged on the floor of the kitchen in the restaurant where they ate in town—and getting back out to push up the mountain not a moment to wait for a new day with more light remaining and less chance of rain or a fully fixed vehicle that might not die when it gets stuck after hours of human pushing and oxen pulling But it cannot make it up the now rain-slicked mountain rock though the driver tries for a terrifying 20 minutes with all the equipment and group again loaded inside There is a Cuban military outpost a ways back down; the group makes its way there in the downpour and begs a patch of concrete floor to sleep on in a dwelling containing what Gallagher will refer to for the rest of the trip and maybe the rest of his life as The Worst Toilet in the World “This will be a great story to tell later,” he keeps saying But the writer is in no mood to agree with the principle that a good story is better than a good time partly because she has become afflicted with diarrhea—the group has concluded that there must have been an accidental ingestion of a drop from the Bahía de Taco vat of river water—but also because people (read: men) who constantly tell stories of bad times are tedious and she is basically certain she could write an equally compelling scene if this Cuban restricted-jungle military outpost in the mountains above Guantánamo had turned out to be home to a team of scrappy dogs attired in miniature formalwear and trained to serve cocktails to visitors—which would be a good time—rather than a toilet that in addition to being The Worst has no door to separate anyone who’s using it from her comrades the photographer sidled next to the writer and asked as they both turned their faces away from the merciless beating of the oxen a patch of protected Cuban forest being deforested with the tearing down of ever-larger branches and trees with which to assault them “Do you ever wonder if this is all worth it For a bird?” The two of them snickered darkly a chunk of wood had cracked off an oxen-beating club as it broke over the animal’s hide and shot past the photographer’s head “One that almost definitely doesn’t exist?” “There is definitely a subset of people who are driven to this,” famed birder and Pulitzer finalist Scott Weidensaul will later explain to the writer There are birders (and other field biologists) “Let’s save 45 minutes of field time tomorrow by finishing this hike tonight in the dark even though we may fall and break our necks.” He has himself made “really bad decisions,” he says along with premier neotropical botanist Alwyn Gentry and leading Ecuadoran conservationist Eduardo Aspiazu Estrada in a plane crash doing a treetop survey; so did Phoebe Snetsinger Nathaniel Gerhart died in 2007 in a car accident in Indonesia—three years after he discovered previously unknown habitat of the Selva Cacique—and so did Siarhei Abramchuk in 2010 from an encephalitis-bearing tick bite in Belarus head of conservation biology at the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History in India died in 2014 after slipping down a hill and landing with a bamboo spike in his eye “I’m not saying that that’s a decision I would necessarily make,” Weidensaul will say of the hypothetical dangerous night hike Though “part of that just becomes if you’ve gotten away with it in the past you assume you’re gonna get away with it in the future,” he’s taking fewer risks now But “I certainly understand what drives somebody to make that kind of a decision Just this driving passion to push yourself to the limit because you don’t know what’s on the other side of the next hill Because you don’t know what you’re gonna find and if at the end of the day you haven’t done everything you possibly can what if I had?” Of Parque Nacional Alejandro de Humboldt “If there’s a reason there’s an Ivory-bill anywhere it’s because those are the places that are most difficult to get into.” When the group wakes up at dawn in the military outpost below Ojito de Agua Lammertink secures four mules to carry gear Two national park guards also arrive to accompany them When they make it to the manned station several miles up in the afternoon they stop for a moment—but then continue on five miles more to the clearing at Ojito de Agua where Lammertink wants to make camp and mount searches who has been ingesting food but has effectively not eaten in two days because of the diarrhea becomes too weak to stand; they put her on a mule They reach Ojito de Agua shortly before dark and it starts to rain as they set up their tents The Cubans fill the designated treated-water receptacle with untreated water; Lammertink has not explained to them that the Americans are designating such a receptacle or why because he personally is not bothering with water treatment from this mountain spring A partial list of untreated-water tragedies that have occurred in Lammertink’s previous fieldwork includes: the death of a human man That time even Lammertink didn’t trust the water so sketchy were the sources they were pulling it from in the Bornean jungle Diphtheria came on fast after he went back home and turned worse quickly; by the time his family went for medical help The photographer almost drinks the untreated water before the mistake is discovered The writer has already drunk a liter of it everyone in the small camp bathes and washes their hands and dishes in a stream that the mules are pissing and shitting in and near moaning and thrashing and crashing around; it lies down to the great astonishment and helplessness of its Cuban masters “This is not what normal birding is like,” Gallagher clarifies at some point to the writer they break dead-mule camp for fear of infection and rotting-mule smell and hike three miles to another perched on the side of a cliff where mosquitos are swarming in great clouds It rains again when they arrive to set up for three nights among the trees and underbrush which in this area are covered with sharp thorns and spikes of varying lengths he brushed up against a plant that turned his forearm into a bloated yellow-pus-seeping rash of open blisters that didn’t close for five months and then didn’t fade from scarring for “years.” He doesn’t know which plant it was Between sweating and getting snagged and rained on slipping over wet rocks in the middle or right on the side of a mountain 20 flights of elevation before even 7:30 a.m one day (the writer climbing under her own power as her stool has miraculously solidified): it’s easy to understand how an anticipation broken by a bird finally bursting forth would evoke sobs as it immediately did in the guy Gallagher saw the Ivory-bill with in 2004—after they’d dodged countless close calls with poisonous water moccasins in the southeastern American swamp there are not even any signs in this place the last place in the country where Ivory-bills lived none of the bark-scaling and bark-stripping Ivory-bills do The forest is not even as Ivory-bill-friendly as Lammertink would like The regrowth pines don’t have enough light and space to grow into big Ivory-bill habitat not even crappy secondhand rumors that one has been seen or heard in decades excepting one witness who they will go check out when they leave the woods All of the interviews with potential witnesses they’ve tracked down so far have been hopeless: The one with El Indio’s father that contained The Twist the one with the former logger they passed on the way to the national park station who said no one had seen the bird after the ’80s the one with the 91-year-old in Farallones who said Ivory-bills were everywhere when he was a kid but not since and kept trying to steer the conversation away from extinct birds (“He says ‘We’re all made out of dust and to dust we will return,’ ” Lammertink translated or something”) as Lammertink mightily steered it toward extinct birds again and again (“There’s probably at this age more pressing questions than Ivory-bills,” he said as he finally gave up) Lammertink pronounces that the worst day in the field is better than the best day in the office He became captivated by woodpeckers in general and Ivory-bills in specific when he picked up a book on the bird family by chance in a library at age 11 he worked at a dairy factory to save money to finance his trip to come here and look for them he is satisfied with how much ground he’s covered since he ate only a handful of stale crackers for lunch on another hard-charging day of traveling and double-knocking since he lost his water bottle at some point in doing so Having observed the character of his interactions with the other members of the group for almost two weeks the writer has circled in her notes to ask him if he likes birds better than people but on this last night she sits down next to him and asks instead if he cares more about birds than he does about himself He allows when pressed that the botflies are a gross and painful annoyance but a small one and maybe he should put more DEET on his clothes But when you’re getting up close on a bird and you feel a mosquito land you can’t just be swatting around like a maniac He doesn’t think he would kill himself over a bird when he and a field assistant were swarmed by thousands of bees in Borneo They were in and out of consciousness after ferocious puking and diarrhea while some villagers tried to pluck thousands of stingers from their faces and backs and arms and others stood around saying they wouldn’t make it for sure that had whipped them up and caused the whole event; Lammertink had never seen one of the birds and he was pretty excited until the bees attacked He and the field assistant are married now and have two children why not do it for another 25 years?” He is not a thrill seeker He acknowledges that some of the work he does is risky “but it’s always for some kind of conservation project who can endure almost anything but cannot abide an unshaven face They march eight miles over a mountain ridge and out of the forest finally coming out the side opposite the one they entered—north that it does seem like the Ivory-bill is dead in Cuba The little bit of hope he was holding is squashed After a night of sleep back at the first jungle shack while the photographer and writer are out of earshot who someone said saw one in 2008 and heard one in 2011 They are on their way to interview him this morning they will ditch the writer and photographer and round up some mules and hike right back into the mountains for another double-knock session tonight and then try to race back out and to a driver and to the airport hours away over barely-roads to make their flight tomorrow in which he barely staggered out of the woods just yesterday His throat is thick with grief and near-crying when he comes into the writer’s hotel room the next day to confess the plan to jettison her and continue the expedition foiled only by the confirmation of a faulty report “I thought: These birds are really gone.” His swallows are heavy I’m the most optimistic person in the world It was really like having a loved one on a ventilator or something and you just have to make that decision to give up.” He thinks other people should keep looking here Even though he feels sure the birds aren’t here He will continue to float the rivers and bayous of the American Southeast looking—Oh yes! He will never give up the dream of finding one in America though he’s been mired in controversy since the first time he proclaimed that he had—the catalyst of the highest-profile birder fight in modern history when saying on the record that he considers Gallagher’s sighting “persuasive,” equates that admission to “driving nails into the coffin of my professional reputation.” to exclude the possibility that they’re there,” Lammertink had said at the Toronto airport and probably nothing will happen,” Gallagher had said the same day there’s no chance you’re gonna catch anything And I’ve caught trout in some really unusual places.” If he can keep that kind of hope up for trout with which he’s been in love since he was talking to them out on his grandmother’s porch as a three-year-old while his father a sailor who was sunk three times in World War II and came back a scary drunk The writer and the photographer don’t understand But one could argue that the writer and photographer do—that they are on this very trip doing—the same for their own work The birders’ passion does bring maybe balance but certainly conservation successes sometimes to this planet The sightings in the ’80s got the forest they’ve just exited protected and perhaps not a moment too soon—three of the areas where George Lamb photographed the Ivory-bills in the ’50s are completely logged and mined out in a country that is really just now opening up and increasing infrastructure and investment Gallagher’s alleged 2004 sighting helped get more of a singular and threatened American landscape preserved It’s hard to argue that it was a bad outcome regardless of whether there were Ivory-bills in it early explorers did outrageous things to discover the world when it was still wild and unknown the group stopped by the side of the road for a bathroom break Though it’s currently the only road connecting all the cities in Cuba’s northeast After they’d all returned from their visits to the surrounding woods they stood stretching their legs quietly until Gallagher intoned in his best voiceover impression as he gazed toward the trees there was an Ivory-bill!,” his face lit brighter than two bottles of prosecco at the possibility.  Now read the story from Gallagher's perspective, as daily entries on audubon.org Silas Fischer, a PhD candidate at the University of Toledo, has been studying Gray Vireos since they were an undergraduate songbirds of the arid woodlands of the Southwest often described in field guides with phrases like “one of North America’s most nondescript birds.” “I can’t think those [labels] would inspire people to want to go out and see that bird or study it,” says Fischer who’s noticed how birders and scientists alike seem more drawn to “flashy Fischer wondered whether these aesthetic biases influenced what birds ornithologists chose to study. And after analyzing the subjects of more than 27,000 ornithology papers published over five and a half decades, they and their colleagues have determined that the answer is yes—the higher a bird ranks for characteristics humans find beautiful the more likely it is to be the subject of scientific research ornithologists would choose bird species to study based on how little we know about them scientists are subject to conscious and unconscious biases “The things that we choose to study ultimately shape our broad knowledge base about the world,” Fischer says “Scientific interest and output are part of this broader overarching cycle this complex feedback loop that drives public awareness of a species and potentially the conservation status designations and decisions that we make.” Fischer’s study adds to growing calls to devote more research attention to overlooked birds. In January, a group of women and nonbinary ornithologists and birders who’ve dubbed themselves the Galbatross Project published a paper calling for more research on female birds which also suffer from scientific biases and are often left out of data collection.  I was really excited to see it,” says Joanna Wu a PhD candidate at the University of California Los Angeles and the lead author of the January paper Preferences for more attractive birds “are subconscious and not malicious,” she says the consequences of these biases are real.” were the focus of zero papers included in the analysis drab birds in the Southwest—especially those far from large concentrations of universities—seem to be particularly understudied Of course, there are many reasons why an ornithologist might choose to study one bird species over another. “Some of the results reported in this paper are no doubt due to implicit bias, as the researchers indicate,” commented the University of Northern Colorado’s Lauryn Benedict, who has been involved in efforts to gather better data on female birdsong “But some others might be due to thoughtful selection of study organisms that are best suited to important research questions.” Studying species with very large ranges at multiple locations across that range lets scientists answer intriguing questions about within-species variation even if it means those species end up overrepresented in the scientific literature “Papers like this are important because they remind the research community of where we are putting our effort and they help us to think about what we might be missing.” they say they’re “still salty” about their beloved Gray Vireos being dismissed as the most boring-looking bird on the continent Most doctors in training don’t begin a new semester expecting to learn about birds But after her first year studying at Harvard Medical School “It’s become one of my favorite activities,” she says Hur came to the hobby courtesy of associate professor Rose H who incorporates bird identification into her Practice of Medicine class to help sharpen students’ clinical diagnostic skills Goldman asks students to differentiate between a Great Egret and Snowy Egret by homing in on details such as size and foot color that distinguish the slender Until classes went virtual during the pandemic it might not seem like cardinals and carcinomas have anything in common But Goldman believes the process of discerning similar birds isn’t all that different from examining the subtleties of a patient’s rash to determine whether to treat eczema or test for skin cancer “I personally feel that my powers of observation and memory have really improved from doing birding But I have no way to prove that,” Goldman says Goldman is hitting on something that neuroscientists know well: Gaining deep expertise in a subject area can change your mental scaffolding brain and memory researchers have long turned to birders (and occasionally med students) as a go-to group of test subjects—even in foundational cognitive research most neuroscientists theorized that humans’ keen ability to distinguish between similar faces was somehow special They even suspected our brains had a particular area dedicated to face processing then a young cognitive neuroscientist at Yale University and now at Vanderbilt University went looking for this fabled region in the late 1990s she quickly discovered that this “face area” of the brain was actually several sectors involved in recognition By scanning brains of experienced birders using a recently invented functional MRI machine, she and colleagues found that these areas weren’t dedicated to sorting facial information alone: A bird and a friendly face could activate the same brain regions “They’re a case of expertise.” As it turns out people can fine-tune their ability to distinguish among any similar-looking objects from faces and cars to skin conditions and birds This observation helped open the door to new avenues of perception and cognition research—and birders continued to participate another Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who has recruited volunteers through the American Ornithological Society and local Audubon chapters birders make excellent subjects because it’s easy to find enthusiasts with a wide range of skill levels and they are more likely to participate in community science–style surveys In his work studying visual expertise and memory retrieval Palmeri ran his subjects through a series of bird identification tests He used the data to build computer models that simulate real-time decision-making processes in the human brain is that all birds share the same broad set of features—feathers a birder might spot and synthesize its markings “It’s identifying a specific species and even subspecies.” Developing this kind of perceptual expertise shifts the patterns of firing brain cells the more often a signal moves between neurons may enable experts to distinguish between objects more quickly seeing them as a whole and ignoring distracting or superficial features a Harvard School of Dental Medicine student and another alum of Goldman’s bird outings recalls experiencing this rewiring firsthand you automatically gather all these context clues and your brain just converges very fast on what it is,” Kim says expertise can even change the structure of the brain itself Parts of the cerebral cortex may become slightly thicker as a person’s visual and auditory know-how deepens This makes it easier for experts to add new information to their mental repertoire a neuroscientist at Rotman Research Institute in Canada Wing, a birder himself, studies how these changes influence memory. In research published in 2022 Wing recruited birders of varying experience levels and asked them to identify images of both familiar and non-familiar birds The results demonstrated that long-term knowledge of avian species helped people to more easily remember new birds an experienced Boston birder visiting San Francisco might be unfamiliar with local species at first experts will have a relatively easier time learning and may even retain knowledge better as they age can medical students in Goldman’s class improve their diagnostic skills by birding “It’s not like because a person is really good at birds they’re going to be better at cars,” says Gauthier breaking open that field guide could help uncover innate skills in perception a person who has a knack for birding might also be gifted in a visual diagnostic field And vice versa: Someone who naturally gravitates toward the visual side of medicine might be a sharp birder Wing’s research also suggests that developing the frameworks and tools for birding helps a person sharpen their focus in other areas “If you get practice tuning your attention toward different features that are more diagnostic or less diagnostic,” says Wing Harvard students Kim and Hur have continued to enjoy birding since Goldman’s class it’s become an indispensable outlet for dealing with medical school and pandemic stress They’ve even begun sharing their hobby with classmates by coleading a student birdwatching club And though she can’t always escape into the woods Hur tries to sneak in birding as much as she can “I’m in a busy part of my medical education right now,” she says “But I do carry my binoculars in my backpack at all times.” This story originally ran in the Spring 2023 issue as “The Birding Brain Boost.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today birds are suffering rapid population declines across the United States That’s the finding from the latest State of the Birds report a status check on the country’s avian life published every few years by a coalition of science and conservation groups The 2025 report shows that birds across most habitats have suffered major losses since 1970 Grassland and aridland species have been dealt the heaviest blow: Both groups lost more than 40 percent of their total populations over that period.  the trends for many habitat groups have gotten worse which had previously been a conservation bright spot amid the alarming declines have seen their numbers drop since the last edition of the report are of high or moderate conservation concern according to the report—dealing with low population levels or other threats that call for conservation action to step up every time we do one of these,” says Mike Brasher a senior waterfowl scientist at Ducks Unlimited and co-chair of the report’s science committee “It reminds us that the threats to birds [and] bird habitat are as great now as they have ever been The State of the Birds report, which has been published since 2009, pulls together data from a range of bird monitoring programs to understand how birds are faring across different ecosystems. Those data sources include the U.S. Geological Survey’s Breeding Bird Survey, Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count Much of this monitoring is built on the efforts of community scientists who are the “eyes on the ground” to show when bird populations are changing says the report’s science committee chair Amanda Rodewald a conservation biologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology “This report is powered by people,” Rodewald says This year’s installment signals that despite the renewed attention to conservation after the 2019 “3 billion birds” study—a wake-up call that found North America has lost around a quarter of its avian population since 1970—the trajectory for birds has not turned around “We’re showing that even five-plus years later America continues to lose birds,” Rodewald says “And we are seeing the same sort of patterns.” For one, grassland birds have remained in dire straits as their habitat has disappeared, often converted for agriculture. Despite efforts to preserve or restore prairie habitat, such as Audubon’s partnerships with ranchers to promote bird-friendly grazing practices the Great Plains region is losing 1 to 2 million acres of grasslands each year—threatening species like the Mountain Plover and Baird’s Sparrow “We’ve had loss and degradation of all habitats but grasslands have been hit the hardest,” says Nicole Michel director of quantitative science at the National Audubon Society who worked on the grassland birds section of the report “The tallgrass prairie really stands out as an area where there’s a five-alarm fire.” long-suffering shorebirds have also continued to see declines facing threats from rising and warming seas on top of coastal habitat losses across their expansive ranges. Some of these birds' migrations stretch all along the Western Hemisphere highlighting the need to work across borders to conserve them shorebirds have the highest number of “tipping point” species identified in the report—those that have lost more than half their populations in the past 50 years these birds have been slipping through the cracks,” says Ken Rosenberg a conservation scientist with the Road to Recovery initiative who worked on the report which range from Chimney Swifts to Black Rails may need more targeted science efforts to figure out what’s driving their declines and how to turn them around have seen a reversal in their fate—but in the wrong direction These species had long been touted as a conservation success story and their populations are still up 24 percent since 1970 largely due to expanded protections for wetlands and dabbling and diving duck populations are now 10 percent below their long-term averages That short-term decline is likely due in large part to drought in the Prairie Pothole Region an area of the northern Plains that is crucial for breeding ducks There’s hope that ducks will get back on track when these weather cycles shift again but the reversal is a sign that environmental groups can’t get complacent he says: “We can never take our foot off the gas and say we’ve succeeded in our conservation mission.” this year’s findings drive home that conservation efforts do make a difference for birds—but that much more action is needed “The status quo of conservation that’s been practiced in the United States has not been adequate to recover the birds that we’ve lost,” says Bradley Wilkinson coordinator for the North American Bird Conservation Initiative or it may be arresting more significant freefalls But it’s not doing enough to really bring birds back.” Still, Wilkinson is hopeful that the growing interest in birds and birding can help spur support for the kinds of investments birds need. As he points out, more than one-third of U.S. adults identify as birdwatchers, and the hobby has become a major economic driver across the country.  The continuing challenges for bird populations are also a warning sign for deeper environmental threats If these habitats are struggling to support bird species it’s a sign that they’re not healthy for other wildlife or even humans—but working to restore them will have benefits across ecosystems “It’s not a matter of: Which do we choose to help But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember and at long last only the hills will know.” a 20-year-old Potawatomi tribal leader named Simon Pokagon was camping at the headwaters of Michigan’s Manistee River during trapping season when a far-off gurgling sound startled him It seemed as if “an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests towards me,” he later wrote I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear and beautiful.” The mysterious sound came “nearer and nearer,” until Pokagon deduced its source: “While I gazed in wonder and astonishment I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons at the time the most abundant bird in North America and possibly the world witnesses had described similar sightings of pigeon migrations: how they took hours to pass over a single spot darkening the firmament and rendering normal conversation inaudible Pokagon remembered how sometimes a traveling flock would “pour its living mass” hundreds of feet into a downward plunge “I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America,” he wrote and admiration been so stirred as when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors from heaven.” more than four decades after his Manistee River observation By then he was in the final years of his life In 1871 their great communal nesting sites had covered 850 square miles of Wisconsin’s sandy oak barrens—136 million breeding adults wild flock sizes numbered in the dozens rather than the hundreds of millions (or even billions) except for three captive breeding flocks spread across the Midwest Not once in her life had she laid a fertile egg This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passenger pigeon’s extinction researchers have agreed that the bird was hunted out of existence victimized by the fallacy that no amount of exploitation could endanger a creature so abundant bird groups and museums will commemorate the centenary in a series of conferences Most prominent among them is Project Passenger Pigeon a wide-ranging effort by a group of scientists an unrelated organization called Revive & Restore is attempting something far more ambitious and controversial: using genetics to bring the bird back Project Passenger Pigeon’s leaders hope that by sharing the pigeon’s story they can impress upon adults and children alike our critical role in environmental conservation “It’s surprising to me how many educated people I talk to who are completely unaware that the passenger pigeon even existed,” says ecologist David Blockstein senior scientist at the National Council for Science and the Environment “Using the centenary is a way to contemplate questions like ‘How was it possible that this extinction happened?’ and ‘What does it say about contemporary issues like climate change?’ ” They were evolutionary geniuses. Traveling in fast gargantuan flocks throughout the eastern and midwestern United States and Canada—the males slate-blue with copper undersides and hints of purple the females more muted—passenger pigeons would search out bumper crops of acorns and beechnuts using their sheer numbers to ward off enemies a strategy known as “predator satiation.” They would also outcompete other nut lovers—not only wild animals but also domestic pigs that had been set loose by farmers to forage an arriving flock was a spectacle—“a feathered tempest,” in the words of conservationist Aldo Leopold described a “growing cloud” that blotted out the sun as it advanced toward the city “Children screamed and ran for home,” it said “Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium and several dropped on their knees and prayed.” When the flock had passed over “the town looked ghostly in the now-bright sunlight that illuminated a world plated with pigeon ejecta.” forming what John James Audubon in 1831 called “solid masses as large as hogs-heads.” Observers reported trees crammed with dozens of nests apiece collectively weighing so much that branches would snap off and trunks would topple In 1871 some hunters coming upon the morning exodus of adult males were so overwhelmed by the sound and spectacle that some of them dropped their guns “Imagine a thousand threshing machines running under full headway accompanied by as many steamboats groaning off steam trains passing through covered bridges—imagine these massed into a single flock and you possibly have a faint conception of the terrific roar,” the Commonwealth and their arrival guaranteed an abundance of free protein “You think about this especially with the spring flocks,” says Blockstein “The people on the frontiers have survived the winter They’ve been eating whatever food they’ve been able to preserve from the year before It must have been a time for great rejoicing: The pigeons are here!” (Not everyone shouted with joy frustrating farmers and prompting Baron de Lahontan a French soldier who explored North America during the 17th century to write that “the Bishop has been forc’d to excommunicate ’em oftner than once upon the account of the Damage they do to the Product of the Earth.”) The flocks were so thick that hunting was easy—even waving a pole at the low-flying birds would kill some harvesting for subsistence didn’t threaten the species’ survival But after the Civil War came two technological developments that set in motion the pigeon’s extinction: the national expansions of the telegraph and the railroad They enabled a commercial pigeon industry to blossom fueled by professional sportsmen who could learn quickly about new nestings and follow the flocks around the continent “Hardly a train arrives that does not bring hunters or trappers,” reported Wisconsin’s Kilbourn City Mirror in 1871 and children are active in packing the birds or filling the barrels They are shipped to all places on the railroad The professionals and amateurs together outflocked their quarry with brute force They shot the pigeons and trapped them with nets They poisoned them with whiskey-soaked corn “These outlaws to all moral sense would touch a lighted match to the bark of the tree at the base when with a flash—more like an explosion—the blast would reach every limb of the tree,” he wrote of an 1880 massacre describing how the scorched adults would flee and the squabs would “burst open upon hitting the ground.” Witnessing this Pokagon wondered what type of divine punishment might be “awaiting our white neighbors who have so wantonly butchered and driven from our forests these wild pigeons the most beautiful flowers of the animal creation of North America.” the pigeons’ survival strategy—flying in huge predator-proof flocks—proved their undoing “If you’re unfortunate enough to be a species that concentrates in time and space a professor emeritus of conservation at the University of Wisconsin Passenger pigeons might have even survived the commercial slaughter if hunters weren’t also disrupting their nesting grounds—killing some adults “It was the demographic nightmare of overkill and impaired reproduction If you’re killing a species far faster than they can reproduce the end is a mathematical certainty.” The last known hunting victim was “Buttons,” a female in 1900 and mounted by the sheriff ’s wife (who used two buttons in lieu of glass eyes) Almost seven decades later a man named Press Clay Southworth took responsibility for shooting Buttons “there was virtually no effort to save them,” says Joel Greenberg a research associate with Chicago’s Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and the Field Museum “People just slaughtered them more intensely Contemporary environmentalism arrived too late to prevent the passenger pigeon’s demise But the two phenomena share a historical connection “The extinction was part of the motivation for the birth of modern 20th century conservation,” says Temple even before Martha’s death in the Cincinnati Zoo Lacey of Iowa introduced the nation’s first wildlife-protection law which banned the interstate shipping of unlawfully killed game has entirely disappeared from the face of the earth,” Lacey said on the House floor “We have given an awful exhibition of slaughter and destruction which may serve as a warning to all mankind Let us now give an example of wise conservation of what remains of the gifts of nature.” That year Congress passed the Lacey Act followed by the tougher Weeks-McLean Act in 1913 and which protected not just birds but also their eggs The passenger pigeon story continued to resonate throughout the century In the 1960s populations of the dickcissel and some ornithologists predicted its extinction by 2000 It took decades to uncover the reason: During winters the entire world population of the grasslands bird converged into fewer than a dozen huge flocks which settled into the llanos of Venezuela rice farmers who considered the dickcissels a pest illegally crop-dusted their roosts with pesticides of wiping out double-digit percentages of the world’s population,” says Temple “The accounts are very reminiscent of the passenger pigeon.” As conservationists negotiated with rice growers during the 1990s—using research that showed the dickcissel was not an economic threat—they also invoked the passenger pigeon extinction to rally their colleagues in North America and Europe The efforts paid off: The bird’s population has stabilized Today the pigeon inspires artists and scientists alike creative director of the Lost Bird Project has crafted enormous bronze memorials of five extinct birds; his passenger pigeon sits at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus The Lost Bird Project has also designed an origami pigeon (like the one bound into this magazine) and says thousands have been folded—a symbolic recreation of the historic flocks The most controversial effort inspired by the extinction is a plan to bring the passenger pigeon back to life In 2012 Long Now Foundation president Stewart Brand (a futurist best known for creating the Whole Earth Catalog) and genetics entrepreneur Ryan Phelan cofounded Revive & Restore a project that plans to use the tools of molecular biology to resurrect extinct animals The project’s “flagship” species is the passenger pigeon which Brand learned about from his mother when he was growing up in Illinois Revive & Restore hopes to start with the band-tailed pigeon and “change its genome into the closest thing to the genetic code of the passenger pigeon that we can make,” says research consultant Ben Novak The resulting creature will not have descended from the original species “[But] if I give it to a team of scientists who have no idea that it was bioengineered ‘Classify this,’ if it looks and behaves like a passenger pigeon ‘This is Ectopistes migratorius.’ And if the genome plops right next to all the other passenger pigeon genomes you’ve sequenced from history Revive & Restore plans to breed the birds in captivity before returning them to the wild in the 2030s Novak says the initial research indicates that North American forests could support a reintroduced population He hopes animals brought back from extinction—not just birds but eventually also big creatures like woolly mammoths—will draw the public to zoos in droves generating revenues that can be used to protect wildlife “De-extinction [can] get the public interested in conservation in a way that the last 40 years of doom and gloom has beaten out of them,” he says They question whether the hybrid animal could really be called a passenger pigeon They doubt the birds could survive without the enormous flocks of the 19th century And they question Novak’s belief that the forests could safely absorb the reintroduction it could be disruptive to a new dynamic equilibrium It’s not altogether clear that putting one of these extinct species from the distant past back into an ecosystem today would be much more than introducing an exotic species It would have repercussions that we’re probably not fully capable of predicting.” Blockstein says he wanted to use the 100th anniversary as a “teachable moment.” Which eventually led him to Greenberg who had been thinking independently about 2014’s potential The two men reached out to others until more than 150 institutions were on board for a yearlong commemoration: museums conservation groups (including Audubon state offices and local chapters) Project Passenger Pigeon has since evolved to be a multimedia circus of sorts Greenberg has published A Feathered River Across the Sky a book-length account of the pigeon’s glory days and demise Filmmaker David Mrazek plans to release a documentary called From Billions to None At least four conferences will address the pigeon’s extinction “We’re trying to take advantage of every possible mechanism to put the story in front of audiences that may not necessarily be birdwatchers may not necessarily even be conservationists,” says Temple The commemoration goes beyond honoring one species Telling the pigeon’s story can serve as a jumping-off point for exploring the many ways humans influence Today an estimated 13 percent of birds are threatened according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature So are 25 percent of mammals and 41 percent of amphibians Hydropower and road construction imperil China’s giant pandas has been driven almost to extinction by hunting and the difficulties of doing conservation work in war-torn Syria Hunting and the destruction of wetlands for agriculture drove the population of North America’s tallest bird into the teens before stringent protections along the birds’ migratory route and wintering grounds helped the wild flock build back to a few hundred Little brown bats are dying off in the United States and Canada from a fungus that might have been imported from Europe by travelers Of some 300 species of freshwater mussels in North America thanks to the impacts of water pollution from logging Rising sea temperatures have disrupted the symbiotic relationship between corals and plant-like zooxanthellae leading to a deadly phenomenon called coral bleaching One-third of the world’s reef-building coral species are now threatened If public disinterest helped exterminate the passenger pigeon then one modern-day parallel might be public skepticism about climate change In an October poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press only 44 percent of Americans agreed there was solid evidence that the earth is warming because of human activity Twenty-six percent didn’t think there was significant proof of global warming at all 40 percent of Americans considered climate change a major national threat compared with 65 percent of Latin Americans and slimmer majorities in Europe This denial of both the threat and our own responsibility sounds eerily familiar to those who study 19th century attitudes toward wildlife “Certainly if you read some of the writings of the time,” says Blockstein “there were very few people who put stock in the idea that humanity could have any impact on the passenger pigeons.” (Audubon himself dismissed those who believed that “such dreadful havoc” as hunting would “soon put an end to the species.”) Today attitudes toward climate change sound similar “It’s the same kind of argument: ‘The world is so big and the atmosphere is so big; how could we possibly have an impact on the global climate?’” Even the political rhetoric of those who don’t want to address climate change aggressively has 19th century echoes “The industry that paid people to kill these birds said people will lose their jobs,’ ” notes Greenberg—“the very same things you hear today.” Project Passenger Pigeon might not change the minds of hardcore climate skeptics it could serve as a call to take responsibility for how our personal and collective actions affect wildlife and climate Maybe a close look at the history of human folly will keep us from repeating it This story is in the May-June 2014 issue with the title "Billions to None." In March, the USA TODAY Network-Florida Opinion team reached out to Floridians seeking their input into House Bill 209 and Senate Bill 80 introduced to protect Florida state parks from the kind of development proposed in 2024 USA TODAY Network-Florida journalists have reported on this the past year, including efforts by Treasure Coast state Rep. John Snyder and Sen. Gayle Harrell to pass the protection bills Indian River County's Pelican Island students step upAt the same time, Rory Ellison, an assistant environmental educator at the Pelican Island Audubon Society in Indian River County reached out to the network and asked if his students could learn more about the issue Shortly before the eve of a Senate vote April 29 on the bill, the network received a digital package from the Audubon Advocates, an after-school science education program of the Pelican Island Audubon Society The members are fifth-graders at Indian River Academy The program is designed for fifth-graders in four Title I schools in Indian River County, and addresses "nature deficit disorder," the society says. Its program website says participants go outside exploring trails and habitat on conservation areas." They learn "science vocabulary words technology and math) scores as they progress to higher grades." Scientists serve as role models Ellison explained why he had students work on a project addressing the issue: "I read (editor Adam) Neal's article in the newspaper several weeks ago asking people to speak out in support of the campaign to save the parks and prevent a situation like last year when the state government had a secret plan to put golf courses and hotels on park land," Ellison said in an email "This is meant to be seen by elected representatives and is part of the campaign to convince them and the Legislature to pass the bill While youngsters did their own work — shown in the accompanying photo gallery ― they also submitted the following letter Opinion: USA Today Network-Florida Opinion campaign to preserve and protect our state parks "We want Florida lawmakers to prohibit inappropriate damaging development in any of Florida’s state parks and to make sure that any planning activities for park usage be transparent and made with public involvement "Please protect Florida’s state parks from harmful development by adopting the strong language of House Bill 209 when its companion "HB 209 has broad support from Floridians and was approved unanimously in the House It will close loopholes that would leave our state parks vulnerable to environmentally damaging development such as golf courses and hotels We the People of Florida showed our strength by working together to defeat those threats last year We need to make SB 80 stronger to be sure plans for bad development on park lands don’t re-emerge in the future "Thank you for standing up for state parks "The Audubon Advocates of the Pelican Island Audubon Society" This article is part of a campaign by the USA Today Network-Florida Opinion Group to support Senate Bill 80 and protect Florida's state parks from development. Email letter, op-eds, even photos to RChristieParks@gannett.com