Round Robin

Not many of the things you do that are good for the planet—carrying cloth bags to the store; screwing in compact fluorescent light bulbs—can compare with the sensory abandon of a fresh-brewed cup of bird-friendly coffee. If you haven’t tasted it for yourself recently, then this weekend at the Cornell Lab is your chance.

There are two starkly different ways of growing coffee in the tropics: the traditional method of raising coffee bushes under a canopy of shade trees, and a newer method of growing coffee out in the full sun. The second method produces more coffee but requires more fertilizers and pesticides, and offers few places for birds to live.

Scientists have been alert to this issue for two decades, and the word has been slowly, er, filtering out to the birding community about how different the two growing methods are. And yet many birders still aren’t aware that they can buy organic, shade-grown, and even “bird-friendly” certified coffee in most good coffee shops. It’s a win-win. The coffee is often the same price as other premium coffees (you can brew your own for far less per cup than you pay over the counter). And the deep, rich flavor—redolent of dappled hillsides, strangler figs, and tanagers—far surpasses the flatter taste of sun-grown coffee.

If you’re near Sapsucker Woods this Sunday (11 a.m.-3 p.m.), come by the Cornell Lab for a free tasting, information on the various levels of coffee certification, and how and where to ask for shade-grown coffee. Or visit us the next evening for our free Monday Night Seminar series. Russ Greenberg, director of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, will talk about the science behind shade-grown coffee and the good it does for migratory songbirds.

(Personal experience: In the early 1990s I studied birds in a Panamanian shade coffee plantation for the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. It was one of the most phenomenal places I’ve ever lived: teeming with tanager flocks, Red-headed Barbets, Emerald Toucanets and Fiery-billed Aracaris, the occasional Turquoise Cotinga, swarms of army ants, giant indigo snakes, amazing golden scarab beetles, even a Resplendent Quetzal—all on work time! I’ve been drinking shade coffee ever since.)