This week in birds - #15

Long-billed Curlew on a beach on Bolivar Peninsula.

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I've written here several times about the two Rufous Hummingbirds that spent the winter and part of the spring in my yard, but would you believe that one of the birds also spent the winter at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan? It was indeed a mild winter in North America.

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The American Bird Conservancy is trying to stop the expansion of the airport in Lake Apopka, Florida, because they fear it would be devastating to migrating birds.

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Reports by the World Wildlife Fund and others who are tracking them indicate that the population of Monarch butterflies continues to decline because of adverse weather and the loss of stands of milkweed across the country because of the use of herbicides. Experts estimate the population is down by 30% this year.  

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The Big Garden Birdwatch began in the U.K. in 1979. Since then, records for the yearly survey (which is similar to our Great Backyard Bird Count) reveal that the population of House Sparrows has fallen by 55% in British gardens and European Starling numbers have fallen by 79% . I don't really have a problem with starlings in my yard, but I would surely like to see the sparrow population fall, preferably by 100%!

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Environmentalists believe that as many as 20 million birds may die needlessly in this country each year after consuming lead shot left in the field by hunters. They are pressuring the EPA to try to get lead banned from the production of shot. There are other alternatives for the shot which would not be toxic to a bird that accidentally consumed it. 

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It isn't only Monarch butterflies that are declining. In Europe, at least seventeen species of butterflies have declined by as much as 70% in the last 15 years. Scientists believe that part of the answer to their survival may be the protection of habitats - or even the construction of habitats - that contain more open, meadow-like areas.

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The beautiful Golden-winged Warbler is one of the most rapidly declining species of birds in the country. It's all because of development and habitat loss. The key to saving the bird, scientists say, is the protection of appropriate habitat areas. That could be said of so many endangered and threatened species.

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The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has issued a report which implicates a particular type of pesticide - neonicotinoids - in the die-offs of bees. Such pesticides are absorbed into plant tissue and may then be present in pollen and nectar which could be toxic to pollinators.

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Studies in Australia reveal that birds flee from areas where mining occurs and they do not necessarily return to the areas even if they are later replanted and rehabilitated.

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It's a familiar story here and in many parts of the world but now it is happening in Turkey. A development boom there is posing a serious threat to the biodiversity of the country. The challenge, as always, is to balance development with the protection of the environment.

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Around the backyard:  Last week I told you about the ongoing battle in my yard between the Carolina Chickadees and the Eastern Bluebirds over one particular nesting box. I watched every day as the drama played out, but by the middle of the week, it appeared to me that both sets of birds had abandoned the box. Finally, on Thursday, I decided to check it. There was the chickadee nest of moss with a bluebird pine straw nest on top and in the pine straw were two speckled eggs! Well, bluebird eggs are blue, so they definitely were not bluebird. Chickadee eggs are speckled but I thought these looked too big for a chickadee and I worried that they might be House Sparrow eggs. Today, though, I saw a chickadee flying into the box, so maybe they have won the dispute after all. I believe the bluebirds have moved on to occupy a box in my next door neighbor's yard.

Meantime, on the other side of my backyard, another pair of Eastern Bluebirds is checking out the old nesting box where bluebirds have raised families in each of the last two years. I don't know, of course, if this is the same pair that has nested there before, but maybe.

I checked the box this afternoon and it was still clean. They haven't started building a nest yet but I am hopeful that they will.

It is really gratifying to see the increase that has occurred in the bluebird population in our neighborhood in the past few years. Even five years ago, they were almost never seen in my yard. Now, not a day goes by that I don't see them and hear their voices. Happiness is a warbling bluebird!