Common Birds In Decline

What's happening to birds we know and love?


Audubon's unprecedented analysis of forty years of citizen-science bird population data from our own Christmas Bird Count plus the Breeding Bird Survey reveals the alarming decline of many of our most common and beloved birds.

Since 1967 the average population of the common birds in steepest decline has fallen by 68 percent; some individual species nose-dived as much as 80 percent. All 20 birds on the national Common Birds in Decline list lost at least half their populations in just four decades.

The findings point to serious problems with both local habitats and national environmental trends. Only citizen action can make a difference for the birds and the state of our future.

Which Species? Why?

The wide variety of birds affected is reason for concern. Populations of meadowlarks and other farmland birds are diving because of suburban sprawl, industrial development, and the intensification of farming over the past 50 years.

Greater Scaup and other tundra-breeding birds are succumbing to dramatic changes to their breeding habitat as the permafrost melts earlier and more temperate predators move north in a likely response to global warming. Boreal forest birds like the Boreal Chickadee face deforestation from increased insect outbreaks and fire, as well as excessive logging, drilling, and mining.

The one distinction these common species share is the potential to become uncommon unless we all take action to protect them and their habitat. Browse the species and learn what you can do to help.


http://www.audubon.org/bird/stateofthebirds/CBID/index.php














Jim Turner writes:

>But I would doubt that
>human activity before 1600 had the kind of environmental impact that would
>have decimated speciation.

The evidence suggests otherwise. It used to be the common wisdom that the
wave of historic bird extinctions did not really begin until European
explorers began their voyages, and in particular until the wave of
settlement, colonization and exploitation began in the 16th
century. However, subfossil remains of birds began to be unearthed on
island groups in many parts of the world after the pioneering work of
Storrs Olson and Helen James on Hawaii. The picture that has emerged is of
a wave of extinctions occurring at about the same time, or shortly after,
the date of first human colonization. It is now believed that Hawaii, for
example, lost at least a third of its avifauna as a result of forest
clearing and hunting pressure from the native Hawaiians - comparable to the
loss that occurred in the 19th and early twentieth centuries after western
settlement. The losses included a number of flightless species including
some peculiar large geese and a flightless ibis.

Other island groups are also known to have suffered losses - there was
another flightless ibis on Jamaica, for example, and a giant megapode on
New Caledonia. The moas of New Zealand (and probably other extinct birds
of that country as well) are now believed to have been exterminated by
overhunting from the first Polynesian settlers. The first human settlers on
Madagascar deforested most of the interior of the island; human activity is
probably responsible there not only for the loss of the elephant birds but
of several species of giant lemur and other mammals.

The picture that has now emerged is that a wave of extinctions tends to
follow the first settlement of humans on island groups, either as a result
of habitat loss, hunting pressure or the effects of introduced
species. After that, though, things tended to settle down until the
introduction of new technologies and new waves of settlement placed new
stresses on the avifauna. These, of course, are the ones for which we have
direct historical evidence - but in most cases the faunas on the islands
they affected were already depleted.

The biggest exception to this were the Mascarenes (Mauritius, Reunion etc),
because these islands were uninhabited before European explorers arrived
and therefore did have a pristine avifauna that was extremely rich and
contained numbers of flightless species. That avifauna, as I mentioned
previously, has been almost completely destroyed.

The big question is whether the same thing happened on the continents,
which of course were settled much earlier than oceanic island
groups. There is still tremendous controversy about the role of early
humans in the wave of extinctions that followed the ice ages. However,
there is growing evidence that the extensive extinctions of the megafauna
in Australia (which included the mihirungs, giant flightless birds that may
have overshadowed even the moas and elephant birds) can be linked to the
arrival around 50,000 years ago of the first aborigines who, among other
things, burned huge areas of the country.

>even volcanic eruptions have probably
>exterminated quite a few endemics in such places as Krakatoa

Krakatoa had no endemics to our knowledge, and was unlikely to have had as
it was extremely close to the island of Java. In fact only two extinctions
are known as a result of volcanic eruptions: an unnamed megapode from the
Kermadec Islands and the San Benedicto race of the Rock wren.

>, so humans
>are not always a factor in extinctions of species, even in modern times.

However, there are actually extremely few threatened birds in the world
today for which no human agency can be blamed. Of course a combination of
factors can contribute to extinction or endangerment; for example, if human
habitat destruction restricts the range of a species to small fragmented
areas, the species then becomes more vulnerable to the effects of climate,
volcanism etc. For example, the recent eruptions on Montserrat probably
posed more of a threat to its endemic oriole than they would have done were
it not that human settlement has restricted the bird to areas around the
mountain (fortunately, it survived).

> Precisely because we are in a poor position to judge the number of
>extinctions prior to 1600, I think it would be useful to use caution in
>assuming that there has been a straight-line trend of human-caused
>extinctions throughout the millenium.

No one is suggesting a straight-line trend. As pointed out above the
actual trend would be for a series of rapid extinctions following
colonization, followed in turn by a period where things are more or less in
equilibrium.


> It seems improbable to
>me that eleventh-century man was extirpating avian species at the rate of
>100 per century.

http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9911b&L=birdchat&F=&S=&P=10521




The Animal Protection Institute (API) in coordination with the Avian Welfare Coalition (AWC) is calling on activists around the U.S. to take action on behalf of captive birds by drawing attention to the exploitation of other countries' native birds by the U.S. pet industry on January 5 — National Bird Day.
"National Bird Day" is not only a good day to take time to appreciate the native wild birds flying free outside our windows, it is also a perfect time to reflect on how we treat the native birds of other countries. While we have enacted laws to protect our native birds — such as blue jays, cardinals, and crows — from commercial exploitation, we fail to recognize the inconsistency in allowing the pet industry to exploit the birds of other countries.
Even when bred in captivity, exotic birds are not considered domesticated animals, and all their inherent behavioral and physical needs remain intact. Sadly, when it comes to birds, deprivation of their natural behaviors (to fly and flock, for example) is an inescapable component of their captivity.
Each year thousands of birds are sold into the pet trade to individuals who are under the mistaken impression that a bird will make a perfect pet. Eventually, whether due to frustration, disinterest, or concern, many people attempt to rid themselves of the responsibility of caring for their birds. Unfortunately, few of these birds will find a loving home, and most will spend their days isolated and confined to their cages. Others will bounce from home to home as their caretakers tire of them, and some may be abandoned at local shelters and birds rescues, set free to fend for themselves or euthanized.
Meanwhile pet stores across the country including Petco and PetsMart continue to treat birds like merchandise peddling them into the pet trade. The in-store care of animals in pet shops is always suspect because store managers are often faced with conflicting responsibilities of caring for animals, even when the animals are sick, and making a store profitable. Since the cost of veterinary care can easily exceed the commercial value of an animal, common sense leads to the conclusion that profits and animal care inherently conflict, especially in a retail environment.

http://www.nationalbirdday.org/