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Climate Change is Beginning to Take Its Toll on Bird Populations

By on June 3, 2015 in BirdWords, Conservation, In the News
Western Meadowlark

Western Meadowlark

Last month I wrote about insect-eating birds swarming into Shasta County to raise their young. Unfortunately, I was indulging in a bit of optimistic nostalgia. The migration itself is as real as ever, but our nesting numbers are dismally down.

It can’t really be a surprise. Everything needs its habitat, and in actions that seemed reasonable, we have converted much wildland to more prosaic purposes. But the yellow-headed blackbird can’t nest where the marsh is drained, nor can the meadowlark make a home where grasslands are converted to row crops. The thrasher can’t sing where the chaparral is cut for houses, or the pet cat kills its young. The kestrel can’t nest where old woodpecker holes have been cut down to reduce hazards, and the pygmy owl can’t stalk grasshoppers where the woodland is paved into yet another retail center.

Driving up the valley as a kid it seemed there was a hawk on every telephone pole. But we reasonably want produce, and farmers pragmatically maximize their production. So after forty years of our plowing through the lairs of fieldmice, gophers, and snakes, of course the hawk numbers are down; after forty years of pesticides to kill hungry insects, of course the songbirds are reduced; after more recent advances to mow right to the fenceline, of course the hedgerow birds are gone.

Unfortunately, our personal perceptions of too-quiet treetops, empty telephone poles, and vacant fencelines are confirmed by research around the globe. Complementing the 115 year old Christmas Bird Count, the North American Breeding Bird Survey has run each May since 1966. It documents declines of 40-60% in a quarter of our birds, and up to 96%, depending on the species and region.

And that’s what has happened already. Now farm produce is being bio-engineered to withstand yet more pesticides, and their application has begun. Climate change is beginning to take its toll. At current carbon emission projections, 314 of 588 species studied by Audubon will lose at least half their seasonal habitat within the lifetime of this year’s graduates.

Many birds will face challenges as seasons unsynchronize: hummingbirds can’t sip on flowers that have already fruited, and fields gone dry offer fewer insects to bring to the nest. Some birds will be unable to shift northward as quickly as this climate change is demanding—especially if they need vegetation that moves north more slowly. Those who successfully shift will encroach on existing nesting grounds; ravens, which eat eggs and nestlings, are already increasing in the arctic, and invaded tundra birds have no Farther North to flee to.

As in most places, in Shasta County we have not, to my knowledge, lost any entire bird species in recent history. But the music is fainter, the voices fewer. Not so long ago, when the canaries started dying we recognized a problem and acted on it. We should be so wise and disciplined today.

BirdWords: The Belted Kingfisher

By on March 27, 2015 in BirdWords

Belted Kingfisher Female

The Belted Kingfisher by Linda Aldrich

If you’ve ever heard a loud rattling call and seen a flash of blue and white splash into the water, you have spotted a Belted Kingfisher, one of the more interesting denizens of the waterways of our area.

Follow the flight of this bird to a perch above the water and you will see a 13 inch stocky, big-headed creature with a stout dark bill, shaggy topknot of feathers on its head, small feet and a relatively short tail. The male bird has a slate blue head, wings and tail. The breast is white and encircled with a blue band which is the belt that gives it its name. The female has all of those features plus a second rusty red belt and reddish flanks. In most birds with plumage differences between the sexes, the male is more colorful; however, Ms. Kingfisher is the one sporting the flashier feathers in this species.

The feet of the Belted Kingfisher and its kin are unusual, too. Like a chicken, three toes point forward and one points to the back; but, unlike other bird groups, the forward-facing toes are partly fused together at their bases – a characteristic that probably comes in handy in nesting season. Belted Kingfishers dig a tunnel in a vertical bank above water to raise their families in.

They start work by flying full tilt into the bank beak first, then kick loosened soil out behind them with their feet. Both male and female construct the tunnel which is usually 3 to 6 feet deep (although one ambitious pair tunneled for 15 feet). At the end of the tunnel, they hollow out a chamber in which the female lays 5 to 8 white eggs. Both parents participate in incubating the eggs for about 3 weeks and then feed the voracious chicks (each eats 8 fish a day) for 4 weeks until they exit the tunnel. In past years, a pair of Belted Kingfishers has nested in a bank above the Sacramento River visible across the river from Anderson River Park.

The Belted Kingfisher’s fishing behavior is fun to watch. One of these birds will sit on a branch over-hanging water until it sees a fish near the surface. It will splash into the water (stop-motion videos show its eyes closed) and grasp the hapless fish firmly with its stout bill. The kingfisher than flies to a near-by branch and “tenderizes” its catch by bashing it against the branch, finally swallowing it whole. Occasionally, the bird will hover above the water to spot and catch a fish.

Although the Belted Kingfisher is the only kingfisher in most of the United States, there are about 90 species worldwide. These include the smallest, the tiny 4 inch African Dwarf Kingfisher, a forest dweller that eats insects (in common with many non-fishing species) and the Giant Kingfisher of Africa which is an 18 inch sturdily-built lunker. Surprisingly, the famous Laughing Kookaburra of Australia is actually a kingfisher.

BirdWords: Beaver Dams Help Bird Habitat

By on March 24, 2015 in BirdWords

Beaver Dam

Article by Jeannette Carroll

Last October found the Sacramento River dropping lower and lower. The slough along Redding’s Cascade Park dropped to ankle-deep water. The ducks were gone. But wait, despite low Keswick Dam releases, residents along the slough noticed the water level begin to rise.

Puzzled, they followed the slough down to Cascade Park and discovered an amazing beaver dam more than 50 feet in length and 3 feet high, constructed of tree limbs and branches, twigs, grass and mud. Its height gradually increased to 4 or 5 feet. The dam survived December’s downpours and, even after our dry January, continues to hold water in a pond that extends over a quarter mile. The pond is well appreciated. Birds, like all creatures, need the right habitat. The Cascade beaver pond is creating a winter home for mallards, wigeons and other dabbling ducks. The dabblers are those who tilt bottoms-up to browse for pondweed, snails and underwater insects.

Along the pool’s edge, an egret patrols in its sharp-eyed hunt for fish, frogs,or just about any animal it can gulp down its long white neck. A steel-blue kingfisher rattles over the pond, taking advantage of the still water to spot its prey. Even a Barrow’s goldeneye, a diving duck typically found in the deeper river, has found a place to rest in the quiet pond.

Of course, any engineering project has costs, too. Without the dam, the slough would now be a riddle of exposed rocks. Shorebirds such as killdeer and yellowlegs, and also jays and sparrows, might pick for food in the trickles through those rocks. As it is, they will be confined to the drier habitat below the dam.

For people, beaver dams can be positive or negative, too. Fortunately, the Cascade pond is only wetting the slough, not posing a threat to area homes.

In the Midwest beavers are being reintroduced in some areas to hold water, a sort of substitute snowpack in the face of dry summers.

Beavers are native in Shasta County and throughout most of North America. Like the dipper, a bird of our mountain streams, they have an extra set of transparent eyelids that enables sight under water.

Beaver families form colonies and may have as many as eight members. Reaching maturity in three or four years, they breed in January or February, and usually have three or four kits. Because they are mainly nocturnal mammals, beavers are not often seen. Residents near Cascade Park have found a second dam on Olney Creek, but checking early and late, have not seen these great engineers at work. Still, they are out there, shaping habitat that some birds and people can enjoy.

BirdWords: Help out with the Great Backyard Bird Count

By on January 25, 2015 in BirdWords
Acorn Woopecker

Acorn Woopecker Juvenile

Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time.

Why do we count birds? Because bird populations are dynamic and constantly in flux, no single scientist or team of scientists could hope to document and understand the complex distribution and movements of so many species. This is why citizen science is so important.

Birds are known as sentinel animals. They can detect risks to humans by providing advance warning of a danger, whether it be exposure to a particular hazard (the canary in the coal mine), or changes in the environment (climate change).

Scientists use information from the Great Backyard Bird Count, along with observations from other citizen-science projects, such as the Christmas Bird Count, Project FeederWatch, and eBird, to get the “big picture” about what is happening to bird populations. The longer these data are collected, the more meaningful they become in helping scientists investigate important far-reaching questions like climate change.

The best thing about the GBBC is that it’s easy to do and it’s fun too! The event runs for four days starting February 13th and ending on the 16th. All you have to do is tally the numbers and kinds of birds you see for at least 15 minutes on one or more of the count days, from any location, anywhere in the world! Although it’s called the Great Backyard Bird Count you can count birds, at a nearby park, nature center, your schoolyard, or neighborhood, anywhere you find birds!

In addition to accepting bird observations from anywhere in the world, you can now use the eBird/GBBC program to keep track of your bird life list, yard list, and any other lists which will be automatically stored and updated. You may explore what is being reported by others and you can keep on reporting your birds year round through eBird. Every sighting reported in the Great Backyard Bird Count becomes part of a permanent record that anyone with Internet access can explore.

This year during the GBBC, we’re issuing a call to all of the more experienced birders to introduce someone new to bird watching! Take them out on a bird walk with you or watch feeders together from indoors. Sharing your enthusiasm about birds and showing them how to participate in bird counts is what matters most.

“People who care about birds can change the world,” said Audubon chief scientist Gary Langham. “Technology has made it possible for people everywhere to unite around a shared love of birds and a commitment to protecting them.”

Get all the information you need to participate at http://gbbc.birdcount.org/

BirdWords: Snow Geese Flock to Central Valley

By on January 10, 2015 in BirdWords
Snow Goose

Snow Goose at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

My sister is not a bird watcher, but as she and her family drove back to the Bay Area after a Redding Thanksgiving we received her text: “What’s a big white bird with black wingtips?”

After confirming that they were near Willows and that there were many of the birds we told her “snow geese.”

Small wonder that the birds grabbed her attention. Every winter hundreds of thousands of them, in squealing tornadoes in the sky and squawking blankets over fields and ponds, inundate the Central Valley after nesting in the high arctic, mostly on the islands between Alaska and Greenland.

First the arctic story. The tilt of the North Pole toward the sun in the spring and summer creates a polar season in which the sun never sets, for up to as much as six months right at the North Pole. This abundance of daylight spurs plant growth, in which the grasses, sedges and algae lock great quantities of solar energy into their cells through photosynthesis. That energy is then available to feed geese and ducks and shorebirds by the millions. The birds eat either the plants or the hordes of invertebrates that eat the plants. It’s calorie-rich season, perfect for raising hungry offspring.

Snow geese typically lay a handful of eggs in a tundra tussock, usually in late May. The eggs hatch in some 23 days. Both parents then tend to the young, which follow them about, foraging on their own within a day of hatching. The goslings grow quickly, developing the strength to migrate south in the fall.

Spring snows can disrupt nesting, but mild weather has helped our Pacific flyway geese do very well over the last 10 years. Their numbers grew 53 percent from 2012 to 2013 alone, up to nearly 1.4 million.

In the Redding area, the geese and many arctic nesters find winter habitat at refuges like the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge in Willows. While some 95 percent of original Central Valley habitat has been paved, built upon or turned into farms, the refuges and unburned rice fields help compensate. Many farmers flood their fields through the winter, providing rich grazing and resting grounds that have helped geese thrive, perhaps to record numbers.

However, our drought limits the extent of field flooding both on farms and refuges. The birds, with less water available, squeeze into wherever the water is — a crowded condition that risks spreading disease. For the snow geese, nesting success may be countered with winter die-offs.

Still, in a time when so many species are in decline, the snow geese are flourishing. They remain a sight and sound that harkens to a wilder and inspiring time, and make it well worth a visit to the refuge or at least an open eye as you drive south on Interstate 5.

Note: The Wintu Audubon Society will be conducting a trip to the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 24. See our calendar page for all the information.

Send your bird questions to education@wintuaudubon.org