2009 Great Backyard Bird Count

The annual Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up February 13-16.  You can grab a web button for your blog or website here.  Or join up and promote it to your friends on Facebook here. 

Mark your calendars and get ready for a weekend of fun birding with friends and family!

How to Manage Your Land to Help Birds: Eastern U.S.

Birds Without Borders – Aves Sin Fronteras^® recently published a new manual for Wisconsin and eastern United States landowners: The Birds Without Borders – Aves Sin Fronteras^® Recommendations for Landowners: How to Manage Your Land to Help Birds (Wisconsin, Midwest and Eastern United States edition) (pdf).

The manual summarizes five years of research in Wisconsin and years of follow-up data analysis. It provides information on habitats and food resources found to be important to birds. It also includes ways bird lovers and lay people can help birds.

A grant from the USFWS (Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act) covered the majority of printing costs. The print manual is being distributed free of charge at educational outreach talks. For a schedule of the talks, go to www.zoosociety.org and click on Events. If there are no talks scheduled near your location, please send your contact information to kariw AT zoosociety DOT org to request a copy of the manual, which will be mailed in March 2009 if there are printed copies remaining after the scheduled talks.

Birds to Help: Common Nighthawk

The Common Nighthawk, or bullbat, started nesting on the gravel rooftops of large buildings in the 1860s, and have been popular urban dwellers for generations.  While still a fairly common nocturnal bird in some areas, it has declined by 51 percent over the last 40 years.

In 1986, Vincent Marzilli studied the nighthawks nesting on rooftops at the University of Maine.  Noting that many of the gravel rooftop nesting sites were being replaced by rubber roofing, he installed gravel pads on these rooftops as artificial nesting sites.  Marzilli put up 14 gravel patches on 7 buildings, and was able to attract nesting nighthawks to 3 of the patches located near the southern corners of buildings.

In several areas, bird conservationists are trying to repeat Marzilli's experiment and attract nesting nighthawks to gravel nesting pads on rooftops.  In Northwestern Pennsylvania, Tim Hoppe with the PA Game Commission has put up 21 nest pads on buildings in Erie, Meadville, Oil City, and Warren.  So far, no nighthawks have used any of the pads--which are made by putting 400 lbs of pea gravel on landscaping fabric in the corners of rooftops (see photo right).

Elsewhere, New Hampshire Audubon has started Project Nighthawk, and over the past two years has installed 35 nesting pads on rooftops around New Hampshire (see photo below, more photos online here).  Again, none have been used yet, so we need more experimentation to figure out exactly how large the gravel pads need to be, as well as how else to create acceptable nesting sites for rooftop nighthawks.

Audubon has identified Common Nighthawks as an Audubon At Home urban Bird to Help (see fact sheet here), and there are a number of ways individuals, bird clubs, or Audubon chapters can assist in figuring out how to help these birds:

• Survey and Monitor Nighthawk Nesting Sites:  If you have nighthawks in your area, you can help us better understand their nesting requirements.  Look for nighthawks displaying over buildings, and if you can arrange access to the roof, search for nests and let us know what you find--how big is the roof, what does the gravel look like, and where on the roof is the nest.
• Make your own Nest Pad Experiment:  Check out NH Audubon's Gravel Patch Handbook, put up your own patch, and register your site with NH Audubon. 
• Encourage local building owners to install or maintain pea gravel roofing.  These rooftops may be costlier in the short term, but they usually lasts longer and can provide better nesting habitat than rubber rooftops.  
• Buy organic.  We aren't exactly sure what else is contributing to nighthawk declines, but as with all birds that eat flying insects, the use of pesticides here in the breeding range or on the wintering range in South America probably isn't helping the birds.  Buying organic produce builds a market for bird-friendly agricultural practices.
  

Photos: Common Nighthawk by Daniel Berganza, PA nesting pad courtesy of Tim Hoppe; NH nesting pad courtesy of Rebecca Suomala.

2009 Christmas Bird Count Buttons

Steal these buttons to promote the Christmas Bird Count on your blog or web page!  And have fun counting birds this year during the CBC.

Birding for Everyone

If your Audubon chapter or birding club is trying to expand its membership and reach new audiences, you should take a look at John C. Robinson's new book Birding for Everyone.  A birder for nearly 30 years, and an African-American, Robinson has a lot to say about why we don't see as many Black, Hispanic, or other minority birders--as well as what is needed to reach groups such as these without a strong birding tradition.

Birding for Everyone is almost two different books.  Much of it seems written to encourage members of minority groups to take up birding.  These include great personal stories showing how much birding means to Robinson, as well as a handful of other minority birders that he profiles.  He also includes basic instructions on birding--such as how to identify birds and how to chose binoculars.

The rest of the book addresses a wider audience interested in promoting birding among minorities.  Robinson's biggest claim is (surprise!) that we don't have more minority birders because we don't have many minority birders--that until there are more visible birders among minority communities, it will be tough to convince members of that community to be more involved with birding.

So how do we get more minority birders--at least a core of them so that they can attract other members of their community?  Robinson gives five main suggestions:

• Home and Parents.  Birding groups need to market birding as an activity that families can do together--and take that message to minority households.
• Schools.  Audubon chapters and birding clubs, as well as individual birders, need to volunteer to work with schools to engage young minority audiences in the joys of birding.
• Community Programs.  Many minority kids and others are engaged in after-school and other community program.  Birding groups need to help develop a birding component to these programs that are already accepted in the community.
• Public Communications and Advertisements.  We need to craft pro-birding messages targeted to minority communities.
• Role Models and Mentors.  We need to support minority birders and help them as they reach out to their own community members.     

Through most of the book, Robinson focuses on birding--the serious persuit of birds with field guides and binoculars.  There is also a need to promote more casual bird watching and bird-feeding among minority communities.  Casual birding is an order of magnitude more common than serious birding--but minority participation lags behind in this arena as well.  The same strategies mentioned above can be used to attract casual birdwatchers as well.  While only briefly mentioned in the book, the wild bird feeding industry has a potentially significant role to play in this regard.  We need them to take a more proactive role in marketing their products to minority audiences.

One weakness of this book, as with birding outreach in general, is a reliance on the mostly unproven assumption that if only more people enjoyed watching birds, they would do more to help protect them.  However, to the degree that this may be true and in light of demographic shifts that are creating a non-Caucasian majority in the United States, there is the strong possibility that if minority audiences don't learn to more fully appreciate birds and nature, than we may be faced with even more difficulty in maintaining popular support for conservation programs in the coming decades.

So take a look at Birding for Everyone, and make a greater effort to engage all of our neighbors--no matter what their background--in enjoying, appreciating, and helping birds in our communities. 

Making Landfill Methane Burners Safe for Raptors

Two years ago on Good Friday, kids home from school found a burned hawk when they snuck over to go sledding on the snowy slopes of the Janesville municipal landfill in Wisconsin.  Then last month, a woman driving past the landfill on her way to the grocery store noticed another burned hawk in the ditch alongside the road.  Fortunately she was able to throw a laundry basket over the young hawk and take it to Dianne Moller, a bird rehabilitator who operates the Hoo's Woods Raptor Center nearby.  Two weeks later, some folks living next to the landfill spent a day chasing another burned hawk around their neighborhood before finally catching it and taking it to Dianne (photo above).     

These hawks were all burned when they landed or flew over burners installed to flare off the methane that accumulates inside of sanitary landfills.  While raptor rehabilitators across the country and around he world have known about this problem for years, it is just now getting wider attention after the Wisconsin State Journal ran a story about the Janesville birds.  Last year the Tulsa Audubon Society posted a story about this issue, including suggested ways to deal with the problem, and in The Wilson Bulletin, a couple of researchers reported dead Turkey Vultures found near methane burners at a landfill in Pennsylvania, where the birds actually use the rising hot air created by the burning methane to help them fly.  Birds are probably killed at active and capped landfills wherever methane is burned--as the hawks are attracted to the burners as hunting perches.

How to make landfill burners safe for raptors:

• Check out your local landfill.  If methane is being burned, find out if landfill operators have found any burned raptors there.  Check with local bird rehabilitators to see if they have had any burned birds brought to them.  Raptors and other native birds are protected by Federal law, so make sure your local landfill knows this is a serious issue, and that you can help them avoid problems with regulators as well as bad publicity. 
  
• Excluder devices for methane burners.  Work with landfill operators to develop and install spikes or other excluders on the methane burners to keep raptors from landing on them or flying too closely over the flames.  The landfill in Janesville welded metal spikes onto their burner after the latest incidents (see image at right).
• Tell us more.  Help publicize your solutions to this problem by sharing your approach and results here and with others.  There is a lot of room for innovation, and it may take some trial and error to devlop the best types of excluder spikes or other devices.
  
• What about installing additional hunting perches to lure birds away from the burners?   While this is a popular suggestion, there are two main problems with this possible approach--a) landfills cannot put up poles if it involves puncturing the liners that cap landfills to protect ground water, and b) some birds will still land on unprotected methane burners even when other perches are available, so at best this is only a partial solution.
• Support wildlife rehabbers.  These folks usually help injured birds at their own expense, and it isn't cheap.  Find a rehabber to support near you, or help Dianne's work with burned hawks at the Hoo's Woods Raptor Center.

2009 Great Backyard Bird Count Buttons

Steal these buttons and add them to your own blog or website to promote the 2009 Great Backyard Bird Count.  Make sure to link them to the main GBBC count page (http://birdcount.org).

Birdscapes You Can Hold

How can you get your friends and neighbors more interested in birds?  What if they have a bird feeder, or enjoy watching the park ducks, but would never consider themselves a birdwatcher?  What if there was a magic device you could give them that would suck them in, turn them on to birds, and maybe even inspire them to create a birdscape in their backyard?

Thanks to Chronicle Books, just such a magic device has just arrived in the form of Birdscapes: A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound.  This amazing creation, technically a book, features seven intricate pop-up landscapes, complete with birds and bird sounds.

Your friends will see it sitting on your coffee table, will pick it up, and will quickly and effortlessly start learning more about birds.  Birdscapes is a tractor beam that will draw them in.  When they get their own copy, their other friends will get sucked in as well.  After your friends have enjoyed these birdscapes, you can take them out to see some real birdscapes--including the owls and songbirds that they will now recognize from holding them in their lap.

Birdscapes is currently featured in the December 2008 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, so you know it will attract lots of interest.  Take advantage of the buzz and introduce your friends to Birdscapes.  Then send them here to Audubon Birdscapes or Audubon At Home so they can learn more about how to create a real birdscape in their own yard or neighborhood.

A Healthy Country Home

You've finally arrived! You have that nice home out in the country that you've always wanted.  How do you keep the place attractive and inviting, both for yourself and for wildlife?

Audubon has a whole suite of tools to help you manage your country home or ranchette:

• An Invitation to a Healthy Country Home (poster/brochure)
  
• Getting Started Workbook (see cover right)
• Creating Healthy Country Homes and Ranchettes (website)

These resources were developed by Audubon At Home with support from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

So, if you want to take care of your country home, or encourage your neighbors to do the same, check out these resources online.  

Then take the Healthy Yard Pledge and use these materials to help you chart a course towards a healthier and more sustainable future for yourself and your land.

Bird Helping Hero: Malcolm Wells

What would the world be like if homebuilders and developers actually created new habitat, rather than destroyed it?  What if we saw buildings as potential bird habitat instead of just places for people?  For over 40 years, architect Malcolm Wells has pursued this vision through building and writing projects.  

Wells's 21st Century vision is simple, as illustrated by the following cartoon:

Wells has designed everything from homes, to airports, and gas stations (see below) as earth-sheltered structures covered with native plants that can serve as habitat.  So if it isn't imagination that is keeping us from creating greener and more bird-friendly buildings, what is?  What will it take for us to value rooftops and buildings for what they give back to the planet, rather than what they take away in building supplies and energy costs?

In addition to bird-friendly buildings, Malcolm Wells has even rethought how we might make birdhouses themselves more interesting architecturally.   For more information on his thoughts and books, with many more illustrations of what a more bird-friendly world might look like, check out MalcolmWells.com.  

All images copyright Malcolm Wells.

Dimming the Way

Past posts have mentioned Lights Out programs to help birds from crashing into lit skyscrapers, as well as Birdsafe Building Designs.

For the latest on these issues, check out Audubon magazine's online exclusive about making buildings safer for birds.

Birds to Help: Wood Duck

Early in the 20th Century, some observers suggested that Wood Ducks were “rapidly decreasing and seems in a fair way to extinction, unless some very unusual efforts are made in its behalf” (Trafton 1910).  The “unusual effort” suggested by Dr. A. K. Fisher of the Bureau of the Biological Survey, was to provide nest boxes, or even a “stout nail keg” for the birds. 

In 1937, as Wood Duck populations continued to decline, the U. S. Biological Survey set out 486 bark-covered wooden boxes designed by biologists Gil Gigstead and Millford Smith at the Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge in Illinois.  Frank Bellrose and Art Hawkins of the Illinois Natural History Survey continued the effort, installing over 700 Wood Duck houses across Illinois over the next two years. 

As other Federal and State game officials began promoting nest box placement for Wood Ducks, the population recovered enough that officials reauthorized hunting of the species in 1941.  Thanks to the efforts of individuals like Laurel Van Camp, an Ohio county game protector who placed 100 Wood Duck boxes over the course of ten years, nest boxes have remained important for the survival of the species.  Ducks Unlimited estimates that 300,000 nest boxes produce 100,000 ducklings annually in North America.  Many of these boxes are installed along city creeks and rivers, making Wood Ducks a common sight in many suburban areas across the country.

For more information on Wood Ducks, and what you can do for them, see the Audubon At Home Birds to Help fact sheet How to Help Wood Ducks.

Photos: Wood Duck: Doris Simonis; Wood Duck Nestbox: South Carolina DNR

Local Bird Refuges ca. 1937

Audubon has encouraged landowners and local governments to establish bird refuges or sanctuaries since the early 1900s in articles in Bird-Lore (the forerunner of Audubon magazine).  The federal government also promoted this idea through official publications including the United States Department of Agriculture's Farmer's Bulletin..

Here's a 1937 version of an earlier bulletin outlining how to create Local Bird Refuges.  You can read the text of the brochure online thanks to University of North Texas Libraries Digital Collection (here).

While a few of the tips are a bit outdated (conservationists don't recommend shooting Cooper's Hawks anymore!), this nice brochure by the great U.S. Biological Survey economic ornithologist W. L. McAtee covers managing all types of urban, suburban, and rural lands for birds--including woodlots, roadsides, parks, schoolyards, cemeteries, reservoirs, and golf courses.

Its great to take a look into the past to see the rich heritage of prior efforts to make our neighborhoods and communities better for birds.  And to realize how much we still have to do after all this time!

Fun Cat Poster Contest

Outdoor pet cats and feral cats kill 1 billion birds in the United States each year.  Audubon is resolved to "work with the scientific, conservation, and animal welfare communities to educate the public about the dangers that feral and free-ranging domestic cats pose to birds and other native wildlife" (read the 1997 National Audubon Board resolution here). 

A comprehensive solution to the cat predation issue will require an informed public, and cooperation with civic authorities and cat advocates.  In order to help people better understand the issues, last year Tampa Audubon Society held a children's poster contest to promote Cats Indoors!   Taking on the big issues doesn't always have to be a chore.  Here's to having some fun while making the world a better place--for birds and cats!

For more information on dealing with this issue, see:

• Audubon At Home Safe Cats page. 
• Cats Indoors Campaign (American Bird Conservancy)
• Save Birds, Play with your Cat

Pesky Geese

Over the past few decades, the nonmigratory Canada Goose population in the United States has increased to over 3.5 million birds. Many of these resident birds spend most of their time in urban parks and waterways, where they have almost no predators and are increasing by 15 percent each year. Such large numbers of geese often become a nuisance by overgrazing the edges of ponds and polluting water and lawns with their large droppings.

Municipal attempts to cull excess goose populations have spawned opposition from local residents horrified by lethal means of goose population control, at times leading to confrontations between citizens and animal control officers.In Seattle, protestors and city officials routinely clashed over the killing of 5,600 geese between 2000 and 2003. In 1998, a similar conflict in Lake Barcroft, Virginia led local residents to create GeesePeace, an organization to promote non-lethal means of controlling resident geese.

GeesePeace works with local communities to create an integrated program to control goose populations levels.  They train volunteers, and help them get the U.S. Fish and Wildlife permits needed to addle eggs and wary geese away from sensitive areas with Border collies, kites, or kayaks (more info here).  They also offer advice on landscaping shorelines with cattails or aquatic grasses that geese will avoid.  There are currently more than 20 GeesePeace demonstration programs in ten states, and other communities have adopted similar non-lethal methods, including Seattle, where several animal welfare groups created their own humane program which led to a moratorium on “lethal removal” of geese from city parks.

Canada Goose image: David Monniaux