The Cornell Lab of Ornithology bestowed its prestigious Arthur A. Allen Award for 2013 to Dr. Robert Ridgely, at a ceremony May 14 at the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library. The award, named for Cornell Lab founder Arthur Allen, was established in 1967 to honor those who have made significant contributions to ornithology by making it accessible to the general public.

“No individual alive today has contributed more to the understanding and widespread public appreciation of South American birds than Bob Ridgely,” said Cornell Lab director John Fitzpatrick. “Through his own pioneering explorations in the Andean wilderness, his meticulously researched books and articles, and his relentless pursuit of conservation milestones in Ecuador and beyond, Bob embodies everything that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology strives to achieve and support. ”

“As founder of the Cornell Lab, Arthur Allen broke important ground by blurring the lines between amateur naturalists and professional scientists,” Fitzpatrick said. “Today we honor Allen’s vision by recognizing other leaders who help build this vital bridge, and nobody does this better than Robert Ridgely.”

Dr. Ridgely is an expert on Neotropical birds and coauthor of The Birds of Panama, The Birds of Ecuador, and The Birds of South America. Ridgely and fellow birder John Moore discovered a new species of antpitta in Ecuador in 1997.  Subsequently named the Jocotoco Antpitta, it has gangly blue legs, a white cheek patch, and vocalizations that range from a soft hooting to a sharp bark. The endangered bird was given the scientific name Grallaria ridgelyi to honor Dr. Ridgely.

Jocotoco Antpitta by Patty McGann via Wikipedia

Listen to the bird’s call and song, recorded by Dr. Ridgely in 1997. The recording is archived in the Lab’s Macaulay Library collection.

Ridgely is the cofounder and president of Fundación de Conservación Jocotoco, which runs 10 nature reserves in Ecuador. He has worked tirelessly to promote bird conservation during his tenure at the Academy of Natural Sciences and the American Bird Conservancy, continuing to the present in his role as Honorary President of the World Land Trust-US.

“Dr. Robert Ridgely is a trailblazer in conservation as well as one the world’s foremost field ornithologists and tropical researchers,” says Dr. Paul Salaman, Chief Executive Officer of World Land Trust-US. “His no-nonsense approach to conservation has resulted in the purchase of private lands for the protection of birds and their environment, producing real world results.”

Ridgely has been awarded the Eisenmann Medal by the Linnaean Society of New York (2001); the Chandler Robbins Award from the American Birding Association (2006); and the Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award by the American Ornithologists’ Union (2011).

Past Winners of the Arthur A. Allen Award include Roger Tory Peterson, Alexander Wetmore, Sir Peter Scott, Alexander Skutch, Tom Cade, Victor Emanuel, and Linda Macaulay.

(Image: 2013 Allen Award recipient Robert Ridgely, center, with two past recipients, Linda Macaulay and Victor Emanuel. Photo courtesy John Fitzpatrick.)

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2013/04/bith_genaro.jpg

  Bicknell's Thrushes are rare Northeastern songbirds that winter in the Caribbean.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2013/04/map_potential_550.jpg

  The entire population winters in the Caribbean, where potential habitat (green, from McFarland et al. 2013) is scarce.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2013/04/cutting_550.jpg

  Fieldworkers surveying inside Sierra de Bahoruco national park discovered extensive illegal clearings.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2013/04/map_habitat_550.jpg

  Bicknell's Thrushes live in cloud forest (red), which is threatened by agricultural expansion (yellow).

  

Surveys for a rare North American songbird are shedding light on illegal forest clearing in the Dominican Republic, according to researchers from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies and Grupo Jaragua. The ongoing cutting in Sierra de Bahoruco National Park threatens some of Hispaniola’s last remaining undisturbed cloud forest. The park’s forests are a winter home to many North American migrants, refuge for 32 endemic Hispaniolan species, and an important source of freshwater for the people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The deforestation was discovered as researchers surveyed for Bicknell’s Thrushes in the national park. These small, delicately spotted birds have flutelike songs and breed in mountaintop forests from New York and New England through Quebec and Nova Scotia. The entire population spends winters in the Caribbean, mostly on Hispaniola with lesser numbers in parts of Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico.

“It’s a cruel irony that as our Grupo Jaragua colleagues conducted surveys to document where Bicknell’s Thrush occur, they ended up documenting severe habitat loss in one of the species’ important strongholds,” said Chris Rimmer, director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. “They were literally counting thrushes while watching the cloud forest disappear.”

Because of severe population declines, Bicknell’s Thrush has been called the most threatened migrant songbird in northeastern North America and is under review for listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act.

Cutting in the park has been going on since at least 2009, said Yolanda Leon of the Dominican nonprofit Grupo Jaragua. To date, an estimated 30 square miles of forest inside the park boundaries has been cleared. Surveys this winter indicated that clearing was creeping farther upslope and into the sensitive cloud forest.

“A lot of people get confused because they see a huge expanse of pine forest [higher in the park] and they say ‘Oh, the forest is fine,’” Leon said. “But we are looking at this fringe of forest that has a very specific band of occurrence, where the clouds meet the forest. It’s a very complex, beautiful forest, where you have a lot of migratory birds, and a lot of endemic birds.”

In this 2009 aerial photo, agricultural clearing along the park's southern boundary is already evident. Red dots mark locations where the survey team found ongoing clearing. Map courtesy Yolanda Leon, Grupo Jaragua.

In November 2012, Leon and two colleagues, Esteban Garrido and Jesús Almonte, found high concentrations of wintering Bicknell’s Thrushes near the regions of Las Abejas and Los Arroyos on the mountain’s southern slopes. When they returned for more surveys in the first week of April, they discovered that patches of forest had been cleared to the ground. Some had already been planted with avocado, potatoes, beets, carrots, and beans. Elsewhere, cows grazed and makeshift ovens were turning felled timber into charcoal.

Deforestation is a major problem on Hispaniola, where economic conditions force many people to clear forests to collect firewood and grow crops. However, much of the current clearing appears to be a well-funded project of several influential Dominican landowners rather than subsistence agriculture, Leon said. They have instituted a sharecropping system, encouraging Haitian immigrants to clear and farm the land in return for a small share of the harvest.

Complicating the issue is the fact that the southern boundary of the park, though it appears on maps, is not marked on the ground. “A lot of people, they don’t want to get into trouble,” Leon said. “But if they don’t see a marker… they think they are just using fallow land.”

The cloud forest is one of the most important and threatened habitat types in Hispaniola. Sierra de Bahoruco is a part of the Jaragua-Bahoruco-Enriquillo UNESCO biosphere reserve and is a center of biodiversity for birds, amphibians, orchids, and other species. Beyond Bicknell’s Thrushes, other species that depend on the park’s forests are the globally endangered Black-capped Petrel and La Selle Thrush, and more than 30 unique species such as the Hispaniolan Parrot, Hispaniolan Trogon, Hispaniolan Crossbill, and Golden Swallow (more info in a BirdLife International PDF fact sheet).

Preserving intact forest is directly important for humans, too. “The montane forest is the sponge that captures moisture from the clouds. If we don’t have these forests, there’s no freshwater for Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” said Eduardo Iñigo-Elias, who coordinates the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Neotropical Conservation Initiative. The cloud forest of the Sierra de Bahoruco, specifically, feeds the Pedernales River, which forms part of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and supplies towns in both countries.

A separate pressure on the Sierra de Bahoruco’s drier, lower-elevation forests is the harvest of a shrub called guaconejo, or torchwood (Amyris spp.). Fragrant oils contained in the bark put this plant in high demand from the perfume industry, but few sources remain outside of parks, Iñigo-Elias said. Harvesters have begun to freely infiltrate the Dominican Republic’s protected lands, cut the trees, and bring them back to Haiti to ship to France, he said.

The Ministry of the Environment in the Dominican Republic is in charge of enforcing the regulations in national parks, Iñigo-Elias said. Representatives from Grupo Jaragua and Vermont Center for Ecostudies wrote to the ministry and met with staff to describe the situation and express their support for action to curtail the illegal activities. The main goal, according to Leon, is to begin negotiations with the landowners who are underwriting the clearing to arrive at an amicable resolution that protects the park’s lands without unfairly treating the Haitian immigrants hired to do the work.

In the meantime, Grupo Jaragua has launched a Friends of the Sierra de Bahoruco Facebook page (largely in Spanish) for people who want to keep up with developments. They also hope to raise funds to conduct a land occupation study so they can help make effective conservation interventions. The Cornell Lab is a longtime research partner of both Grupo Jaragua and Vermont Center for Ecostudies, and has trained Hispaniolan biologists in mist netting, acoustic surveys, and radio telemetry, and studied threatened species such as the Black-capped Petrel, Golden Swallow, and Bicknell’s Thrush. This work has been made possible by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the Cornell Lab.

“This is the wintering ground for so many species that we share with the people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Iñigo-Elias said. “It’s an area of high humanitarian crisis given the lack of freshwater and the lack of fuel. And then on top of that, the last remaining resources are being cut for a few crops. I hope that all involved can come to an agreement that allows the park to do its job in protecting some of these last undisturbed remnants, and continue to provide ecosystem services to the local inhabitants.”

(Images: Bicknell’s Thrush by Pedro Genaro Rodriguez; other photos and maps by Yolanda Leon of Grupo Jaragua.)

UPDATE 2: Owing to public interest, the Fish and Wildlife Service has extended the public comment period. If you have not already commented, you can submit comments here until April 2, 2013.

UPDATE: We received many requests from readers for information on how to submit a public comment on the proposed listing of the Gunnison Sage-Grouse. You can comment on this page anytime up to Tuesday, April 2, 2013. The page also includes links to the proposed rule (for reference) and other ways to comment. Our thanks to reader Erin Mooney for help finding this information.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a call for public comments to inform their decision on listing the Gunnison Sage-Grouse. The deadline for comments is March 12, 2013. The following position statement was prepared by Cornell Lab director John Fitzpatrick. 

The most remarkable discovery in a century of American ornithology came in the late 1990s, when scientists described a new species: the Gunnison Sage-Grouse. Hiding in plain sight across a swath of sagebrush in southern Colorado and Utah, the species had been hunted for food by generations of pioneers and twentieth-century ranchers. Yet it took an industrious graduate student named Jessica Young to recognize that this southerly population differed substantially in size, plumage, display behavior, and voice from the Greater Sage-Grouse that lives across the remainder of the West’s vast sagebrush country. The Gunnison Basin of western Colorado was home to the new species’ largest remaining population, and so it was named for that beautiful landmark.

There was little joy in this stunning discovery, however. It was instantly recognized that this flagship of the southern sagebrush country had disappeared from most of its ancestral range because of human impacts: habitat conversion for agriculture; oil and gas development; residential development; pinyon-juniper encroachment; and effects of invasive plants such as cheatgrass. Today, the Gunnison Sage-Grouse is our choice for the most biologically endangered bird species in North America. The need for legal protection under the Endangered Species Act is urgent.

Some private landowners, including those who lease public lands from federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, have argued against listing Gunnison Sage-Grouse as an endangered species, and state agencies have tended to side with them. They cite the importance of voluntary conservation measures such as habitat set-asides and detailed monitoring.

Private landowners are indeed essential partners for conservation in the West, but the plight of the Gunnison Sage-Grouse now requires more than voluntary efforts. All the monitoring data, without exception, point to one unambiguous conclusion: Gunnison Sage-Grouse numbers are plummeting. Everywhere. This species is going extinct, right before our eyes. Nobody on any side of the listing debate questions the numbers—fewer than 5,000 birds. There are so few left that we essentially know where they all are, and we can count them as their numbers go down each year. Recent, prolonged drought across the western U.S. has reduced reproductive output, making matters even worse.

Today, the Gunnison Sage-Grouse is confined to seven genetically isolated populations in southern Colorado, plus one tiny population barely hanging on near Moab, Utah (see USFWS map). They are increasingly subject to the dreaded “extinction vortex”—loss of genetic variability reduces fertility and survival, which limits recruitment, thereby reducing numbers in the next generation. (The grouse’s unusual lek mating system makes them especially prone to this, because only a few males breed in any generation.) As populations become tiny, genetic variability shrinks even further, and random effects such as storms, drought, or even one especially savvy coyote, have greater and greater probability of extirpating the population entirely.

In the face of these threats, and considering that no major population is fully protected or stable—in the wild or in captivity—Gunnison Sage-Grouse must rank as the most biologically endangered bird species in all of continental North America. The only other serious candidates are California Condor, Whooping Crane, and Kirtland’s Warbler, but all three of these species are beneficiaries of copious federal spending, public-private partnerships, and captive breeding or parasite control. And they all now have steadily growing populations within large, protected landscapes.

In 2006 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to place Gunnison Sage-Grouse on the Endangered Species List. In 2010, in response to a lawsuit, the Service issued a “warranted but precluded” finding—the correct first step. We believe it is time to take the next step, as no serious biologist can escape the conclusion that this species meets all the criteria for Endangered listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Examining the facts rationally, we can reach only one conclusion in this case.

1. Efforts by public agencies and private landowners to stem the declines and stabilize local populations of Gunnison Sage-Grouse (e.g., private land easements, voluntary conservation plans, community education) have failed.
2. The Gunnison Sage-Grouse is now in imminent danger of a series of local population collapses which, when they occur, will result in extinction of the species.
3. The Endangered Species Act has repeatedly proven itself to work extremely well, especially for high-profile species that are threatened by forces we understand and can reverse.
4. Gunnison Sage-Grouse is an American emblem worthy of investment and preservation. It is a flagship for the uniquely American sagebrush ecosystem; it will stand forever as a stirring discovery of a new North American species in the modern age; and it is widely invoked as a classic example of how, under certain social and ecological conditions, evolution produces distinctive behavior and ornamentation in isolation.

Conclusion: It is now urgent that the Gunnison Sage-Grouse be listed as an Endangered Species, and that a Recovery Team be assembled and charged with fast-tracking a series of recommended steps for halting the decline and imminent extinction of this remarkable bird.

Imagine you walk into the neighborhood coffee house for your morning cup of joe, and on the counter is a tip jar with a sign reading, “$ for wintering warblers” with a photo of a Chestnut-sided Warbler in a tropical forest.
You’d drop your change in, right? Any proud bird watcher would do their part for the wellbeing of the sprightly warblers that delight us so much come spring.

It’s not such a stretch of the imagination, York University researcher Bridget Stutchbury told a packed audience at the Cornell Lab’s Monday night seminar series last week. Many of the colorful songbirds that are just now leaving us for the winter, including warblers, tanagers, orioles, and grosbeaks, will spend the next five months in and around shade coffee plantations in Mexico and Central and South America.

But only if the birds can find them. Shade-coffee plantations—particularly ones that grow coffee under a natural forest canopy—are increasingly being deforested, leaving North American migrants with fewer places to spend the winter. The good news, Stutchbury said, is that you can have your dark roast and your songbirds too if you buy sustainable coffee, particularly Bird Friendly coffee.

Stutchbury recapped recent research on Wood Thrushes, sweet-singing birds of Eastern forests whose numbers have dropped by half since the 1960s. Yet, with regenerating forests in the Northeast, Wood Thrushes now have more breeding habitat than they did decades ago. “What does that tell you?” Stutchbury asked her audience. “Must be a problem on their wintering grounds.” (Although some researchers point out that the quality rather than quantity of forest in North America might still be limiting this species.)

And indeed, when Stutchbury tracked individual Wood Thrushes from the U.S. to Nicaragua and back, she found that regional Wood Thrush population declines matched deforestation trends in Nicaragua, where forest cover has dropped 30 percent in just the past two decades.

This deforestation likely affects other wintering songbirds, too, such as Baltimore Orioles and Chestnut-sided and Kentucky warblers, which have also declined in the last half-century, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.

Can shade-grown coffee help these birds? Most coffee drinkers figure the answer is yes. But as it turns out, the words “shade-grown” on a package of coffee can refer to a range of habitat conditions that offer varying degrees of refuge for migratory songbirds.

Making Sense of Sustainable Coffee Labels
They’re those little rectangular icons lined up on your favorite gourmet coffee bags—a tree, a flower, a frog, a harvester, each trying to tell you something about how the coffee was grown. But what does each one mean, and how do they differ? Here’s a list of common labels and their benefits for birds. For more specifics, see the list of links below.

Bird Friendly. Certified by scientists from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, this coffee is organic and meets strict requirements for both the amount of shade and the type of forest in which the coffee is grown. Bird Friendly coffee farms are unique places where forest canopy and working farm merge into a single habitat. By paying a little extra and insisting on Bird Friendly coffee, you can help farmers hold out against economic pressures and continue preserving these valuable lands. The good news is that there’s more Bird Friendly coffee out there than many people realize—we just need to let retailers know we want it (see below).

Organic. As with other organic crops, certified organic coffee is grown without most synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and is fairly sustainable—although there are no criteria for shade cover. Because of coffee’s growth requirements, it’s likely that organic coffee has been grown under some kind of shade. However, many farmers shade their coffee using other crops or nonnative, heavily pruned trees that provide substantially less habitat for birds, and the organic label offers no information about this.

Rainforest Alliance. The most popular environmentally friendly certification for coffee as well as tea, cocoa, and fruits, Rainforest Alliance requires alternatives to chemical and pesticide use (though they stop short of organic certification), erosion control, restricted water use, and ecosystem management efforts. Because Rainforest Alliance develops standards for a wide range of farms, their shade-cover requirements are not as demanding as Bird Friendly coffee. Also, Rainforest Alliance allows coffee blends to be sold with the Rainforest Alliance label even if only a percentage of the beans (currently only 30 percent, with plans to scale up to 90 percent) carry the certification. Rainforest Alliance has a laudable goal to make a difference on a fairly large scale (they certified 540 million pounds of coffee in 2011), but there is no guarantee their certified coffee farms meet the wintering needs of migrant songbirds.

Fair Trade. Inspired by humanitarian concerns, Fair Trade labeling helps to ensure that the workers on coffee farms get paid fairly for the work they do. The higher prices that Fair Trade products earn help to provide an alternative to the price leverage that large coffee buyers can wield. However, a Fair Trade label does not automatically indicate that any environmentally friendly practices were followed.

Shade-grown. “Shade-grown” labels often appear on specialty coffees, but unfortunately this designation is not regulated and doesn’t tell you much about the growing conditions at the farm. When the idea for Bird Friendly coffee was hatched by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in 1996, plans for the certification process faltered while coffee companies quickly adopted the term “shade-grown” as a marketing buzzword. Unfortunately, this type of coffee can be grown among sparse trees on farms that lack diverse forest structure. Some shade-grown coffee is even grown under only the flimsy cover of banana trees fed artificial fertilizers and pesticides.

Sun-grown. Most coffee grown at an industrial scale is grown under full sun. Acres upon acres of coffee bushes planted in hedge-like rows are sustained by fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. If a coffee brand bears no labels at all, it is likely produced with these methods and is unsustainable.

Bird Friendly Farmers Offer Half a Solution—We Can Be the Other Half
Bird Friendly certified coffee can be hard to find on store shelves and in coffee shops. One reason is that the standards for certification are so rigorous that only a small fraction of coffee farms can qualify. The total amount of Bird Friendly coffee certified in the past 12 years amounts to less than 2 percent of the Rainforest Alliance–certified coffee in 2011 alone.

But there’s another, paradoxical reason: coffee sellers don’t always advertise that their coffee is Bird Friendly. “Probably about only 10 percent of coffee from Bird Friendly certified farms carries the Bird Friendly stamp on the package,” said Robert Rice, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

For example, Starbucks and Whole Foods sell some coffee from Bird Friendly certified farms. But they don’t see the need to make room on their packaging for a separate label that appeals to a relatively small—and silent—minority: birders. And without the consumer demand and higher prices for Bird Friendly coffee, past history in Central America suggests that the market pushes coffee farmers toward partial-shade and sun-grown practices.

That’s understandable, said Stutchbury. “We can’t demand that they don’t cut down their forests, and give up money, unless we’re willing to give them something as compensation,” she said. That’s the central idea behind Bird Friendly certified coffee: paying a price premium to growers on rustic coffee plantations so that they can continue to provide prime bird habitat.

The good news is, birders can make a difference—by asking retailers to stock Bird Friendly coffee, and by buying it. Think of it as a tip jar next to your coffee maker. More than 46 million Americans say they watch birds, and half of all Americans drink coffee. “If every birder in the U.S. committed to drinking Bird Friendly coffee, the market would grow 1,000-fold,” said Bill Wilson, owner of Massachusetts-based Birds & Beans, an online coffee retailer that specializes in selling only Bird-Friendly coffee.

Stutchbury closed her talk on Monday by saying it’s time for birders to assert themselves in the coffee marketplace. “Buying Bird Friendly coffee is one of the best ways you can do your part to preserve wintering habitat for our migratory songbirds,” she said.

Where to buy Bird Friendly Coffee
Grab a supply of Bird Friendly coffee with the help of these Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center pages:

• Find a store near you
• See a map of stores that carry Bird Friendly coffee
• Order Bird Friendly coffee online

More resources on coffee and bird habitat

• For much more detail about coffee labels and their meaning visit the Coffee and Conservation blog, operated by University of Michigan biologist Julie Craves.
• Not all coffee retailers advertise that their coffee is Bird Friendly. If you’re unsure whether your favorite coffee source is Bird Friendly, you can check this list of certified Bird Friendly farms organized by country.
• The Committee for Environmental Cooperation is a joint effort by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. They provide background on sustainable coffee and a wealth of information and research.

(This article was written by Cornell Lab science editor Gustave Axelson. Image: Hugh Powell.)

On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, twin spotlights once again shot into the night sky above Manhattan to offer a tribute to the men and women we lost during the 2001 attacks.

It was a clear and cool night, almost calm and with a hint of a southerly breeze. In another long-repeated annual event, thousands of birds passed over New York City on their way to winter homes in the southern U.S. and Central and South America. Cornell Lab scientist Andrew Farnsworth was on hand to count them.

Farnsworth spent the early evening until about 10:00 p.m. atop the Empire State Building and then watched from the Tribute in Light itself until 12:30 a.m. (accompanied by other birders and a Wall Street Journal reporter). In all he saw at least 2,000 birds and heard the faint chip notes of many more. He identified 28 species passing overhead and at times flying through the beams of light, where the rush of bodies looked like flurries of snow, he said.

Watching carefully with binoculars, he was able to identify a bewildering diversity of the tiny, 5-inch songbirds as they passed through the beams, recording Magnolia, Chestnut-sided, Black-and-white, and Blackpoll warblers, as well as Common Yellowthroats, Ovenbirds, Northern Waterthrushes, and 43 American Redstarts. Five male Black-throated Blue Warblers were still in such bright plumage that they “stand out like a sore thumb in the lights,” he wrote in his eBird checklist for the night. He also recorded Wood Thrushes, Swainson’s Thrushes, Veeries, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Gray Catbirds, and Baltimore Orioles.

The lights illuminated a few larger birds as well, including a young Laughing Gull that was trying to catch insects, three Green Herons, an unidentified rail (likely a Sora)—as well as a Peregrine Falcon that made repeated hunting dives at the smaller birds. Farnsworth said he saw at least five successful attacks on warblers.

The Tribute in Light happens during a time of peak migration in the Northeast. The birds often become briefly disoriented in the lights, and most years the lights are briefly shut off throughout the night to allow circling birds to reorient themselves. This year, on a night with only moderate migrant traffic, Farnsworth saw no evidence of casualties (aside from the peregrine’s catches).

The Tribute serves as a double reminder: that city lights, when left on en masse, nationwide, for an entire migration season, take a major toll on migrating birds (see the Fatal Light Awareness Program for more); but also, of the great spectacle of bird migration that accompanies us through fall. An invisible river of animals, rivaling any scene from the Serengeti but consisting of half-ounce birds that pass quietly overhead, in the dark.

Farnsworth is a lead scientist in our BirdCast project. Its ambitious goal is to produce accurate, real-time forecasts of local migration by combining data from radar, weather conditions, and acoustic recordings of the birds’ own brief call notes, which can be identified to species. While it will be a boon to anxious birders wondering what might turn up near them (you can check predictions at the BirdCast website), BirdCast also aims to provide advance knowledge of hazardous conditions at wind turbines so they can reduce their impact on birds.

The project is still in its first year, although researchers have been applying technology to the study of migration for decades. Weather radar is good at detecting flying birds, even allowing Farnsworth to estimate the numbers of birds aloft on Tuesday night, for instance. Judging by the radar readings, he said, one cubic kilometer of New York City sky probably contained 100–200 birds at any one time on September 11. That’s not bad, according to Farnsworth, but the two previous nights had been even better, when some 600–1,000 birds filled the same volume of sky. They were audible even over city noises—cars in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, sirens, construction work—the birds’ short, sibilant call notes raining down at the rate of 3 to 5 per second at times.

Which brings up a third reminder from the Tribute in Light: if dozens of species, and thousands of birds, routinely pass over a metropolis in pitch darkness, night after night, then doesn’t that make autumn one of the most exciting times to be a bird watcher?

BirdCast is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation, and involves partners at the Cornell Lab, Microsoft, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

(Image by Greg Chow via Creative Commons.)

Writing intern Abby McBride explores the caged bird industry with help from Cornell Lab scientist Eduardo Iñigo-Elias, who coordinates our Neotropical Bird Conservation Initiative. Here’s Abby:

Environmental crime officials cracked down on wildlife trafficking between Latin America and Europe this summer, seizing more than 8,700 contraband animals in an Interpol bust dubbed Operation Cage. Authorities arrested nearly 4,000 people during raids on coastal ports, airports, post offices, markets, pet stores, and taxidermists in 32 countries. The sting focused on South and Central American birds, but it also uncovered illegally traded mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects—along with guns, ammunition, trapping equipment, and animal products such as elephant ivory.

“The trade of wild-caught birds has a long history,” said Cornell Lab biologist Eduardo Iñigo-Elias, who has studied parrot conservation and bird trafficking for the past 29 years. “It’s so difficult to trace because it’s a network—a very dynamic trade.” Iñigo-Elias works with government agencies, research institutes, and conservation organizations to combat wild bird capture. I listened with special interest because I have an exotic pet of my own: a Green-cheeked Parakeet, whose great-grandparents probably roamed the cloud forests of Bolivia, Brazil, or Argentina.

In many countries, including the United States, the only birds that can be legally sold in pet stores are ones that were hatched and raised in captivity. And it’s illegal to sell wild-caught birds from country to country, thanks to international regulations such as CITES and rules implemented after an outbreak of avian influenza in 2007. But illicit trade continues all over the world, and some bird species—like the Palm Cockatoo of Australia, a big black parrot with red cheeks and an extravagant crest—go for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market.

It’s uncertain how much wildlife trafficking goes on across the United States, but one problematic area is the state of Florida. An enforcement operation in 2006 caught smugglers importing birds into Florida from Cuba and other Caribbean islands. People are willing to pay $15,000 for a Cuban Bullfinch in Miami, Iñigo-Elias said, because the finch’s song reminds them of Cuba.

Wild bird trapping—a cultural tradition across the Caribbean—has become a problem in Florida. Iñigo-Elias has spent years combating the trade of Painted Buntings, which are captured both on their Florida breeding grounds and on their wintering grounds in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. Trappers take only the showy adult males, skewing the sex and age ratios in the population as well as reducing overall numbers. In part because of trapping and habitat degradation, the Painted Bunting population in Florida declined by 3.9 percent per year between 1966 and 2000, compared to nearly level populations in the rest of the U.S.

It’s been a little over a year since Olivia Bouler came to visit the Lab and taught an arts workshop for local kids. Olivia made headlines during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, when she raised more than $200,000 for wildlife by painting pictures of birds. Since then, she hasn’t looked back, taking her art and her irrepressible personality to tours, exhibitions, schools, and festivals to talk about what’s possible if people—and kids in particular—believe in our ability to change the world.

In May, Olivia, who’s about to enter the eighth grade, was named one of the top 25 most powerful and influential young people (age 5–25) by Youth Service America. The award came with a cash grant, which Olivia donated to the Cornell Lab. Congratulations and thank you, Olivia! Ever since her first letter to Audubon during the Gulf oil spill, she’s been outspoken about her support of the Lab and her desire to attend Cornell someday.

I called her up to say thank you, and got the chance to hear what she’s up to—birds she’s seen recently, her belief in the power of a “kid army” for conservation, and her thoughts on high school now that it’s “just around the corner.” Personally, we can’t wait for her college days to get here.

Thank you for thinking of us—donations play a key part in making the work we do possible. Can you tell me what the award is and what it’s for?

It’s basically a grant, and if you win it you can donate to whatever cause. Cornell is my favorite place in the world, so why wouldn’t I donate it to you?

How did you come to have such a soft spot in your heart for Cornell?

Ever since I was little I kept on hearing, when I read about Audubon, Cornell was always associated with it, and a top ornithology school. I found out it was a college, and that the Lab’s there, and I immediately wanted to go there.

 Did your parents get you into bird watching?

Well, my dad is a green architect, but I was the first bird watcher in the family. I was the first real bird nerd.

I always went to the Gulf [of Mexico] when I was little, and my grandmother would always tell me about the pelicans. She would just tell me how they used to be endangered, all this cool stuff about them. And then I wanted to know more so I got this bird book, I think when I was about 4 or 5, and it was all about birds—you know, the Great Auk and how it’s been hunted to extinction…. It sparked my imagination, my creativity, and I absolutely fell in love with birds. And when I realized what I was hearing in my backyard and what I was seeing, the history behind all the birds, something clicked.

Is the Brown Pelican still your favorite bird?

I personally don’t have a favorite bird because that wouldn’t be really fair for the rest of them—I don’t want to offend them or anything [laughs]. But there is a soft spot in my heart for the pelican.

Have you had any cool new sightings recently?

I saw a loon for the first time up in Maine, last weekend. It was absolutely amazing. And I went to Florida a little ways before, and I saw an Eastern Towhee. It was calling in the bush and then it flew out at me, it was pretty awesome.

In Maine you went to Hog Island, right? What were you doing there?

It was a teachers and educators camp. I was speaking to teachers about how in every classroom, they have a kid army, and they just have to teach them the right things and they can spark their own creativity and take action. Because everybody has a talent, no matter how young and no matter how old. Kids want to make a change, it’s just they don’t know how to do it. They don’t think they can make anything, and sometimes parents even put them down on it.

There’s this story about a boy (I forget which beach), but there were tons of starfish that washed up on the beach. And he started tossing them in one at a time, you know, they’re still alive. And there was a man on the beach and he said, “That’s not going to make any change. There’s thousands of starfish on this beach.” And then the boy threw a starfish into the water, and he said, “Well that just made a change to that starfish, didn’t it?”

So sometimes kids, they don’t have reality weighing on their shoulders yet. They just want to do whatever they can, and even if it’s that little boost it still makes a change.

 Well that’s a great message—do you still think there’s hope for the environment then?

Definitely, there are new resources, and green opportunities for energy. And I’m not just saying that because my dad is a green architect [laughs].

I remember when you were here last year, you had a Pileated Woodpecker puppet that you were flying around all over the place. Do you still have it?

Oh of course I still have it. I use it for my birding events when I go to schools and stuff. I have this whole array of puppets…. It’s very fun bringing them to schools and pretending like they’re real. And my brother’s like the puppeteer guy and he goes around and makes the noises and everything, and the kids always love it. I say, “This is my friend the Pileated Woodpecker. He lives in such and such an area in this range and he loves to eat insects, and this is how he gets it. And then Jackson does the drumming noise, and then he moves on to, say, a Bald Eagle or a Great Horned Owl or something.

I try to make it as fun as it can be, because i know what it’s like to sit through an assembly that you aren’t really paying attention to because, you know, it’s really far out there. So I try to make it as interactive as possible.

 You’re starting eighth grade this fall. Are you excited?

Excited? Yes and no. Pretty much yes. I do like summer because I get to do more birding events and I’m not really on a schedule, I get to sleep in more. You know, with high school on the horizon it’s slightly… it brings the birds in the belly. That’s what I say instead of “butterflies in the stomach.” I like “birds in the belly.”

If you were going to Cornell right now instead of eighth grade, what would you study?

Definitely ornithology. Probably all of it. I’d get a degree, maybe work to rehabilitate birds… I don’t know if my heart could take it if they didn’t make it though.

And what’s this about designing a board game?

Oh yeah, I’m doing a board game and part of the proceeds are going to go to Cornell. My target with my book was to inspire kids and this is another type of thing like that. I’m going to have a puffin from Maine, a Western Bluebird from Arizona, stuff like that. I’m doing a lot of brainstorming. It’s kind of like “Sorry” except a litttle different, with the regions of the U.S. are like the [birds'] homes. You start in one area and it’s like the yearly migration, and the nest is your home, and you’re going back to your mate.

There’s also things like special spaces where you have to draw a card and it could be a good thing or a bad thing. If you answer a question correctly it could help you. Or if you answer it wrong, like say, “What does a Red-tailed Hawk eat?” and if you say, uh, “Flowers,” you move back a couple spaces because one chased you or something. We’re hoping for this Christmas.

And you’re coming here in October to show some of your artwork?

Yes, it’s basically my traveling exhibit, it’s some of the paintings from the book, and some of the newer ones. it’s at Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art right now in Pennsylvania [through September 15], and then it’ll travel to Cornell and who knows where after that?

(Images: Brown Pelican painting by Olivia Bouler. Olivia poses with her book before a portrait of Louis Agassiz Fuertes, one of the premier bird artists of the 20th century; image by Tim Gallagher.)

A highly accomplished group of young birders will gather here at the Cornell Lab this weekend for our fourth annual Young Birders Event, sponsored this year by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics.

Their agenda is packed with opportunities to go birding—but they’ll also spend time inside, learning about bird-centered careers from professional ornithologists and students here at the Cornell Lab. They’ll get to try their hand at recording birds in the field with professional sound and video equipment; and they’ll learn from our experts about Neotropical birds, taxonomy, the night-flight calls of migrants, and the art of field notes and sketches. (Read more about the 2010 and 2011 events.)

Admission to the Young Birders program is competitive, and enrollment is limited to 10 students each year. In their applications, this year’s 10 expressed a common theme: their hunger for contact with others their own age who are as passionate about birds as they are. “Birds are what I think about during the day and what I dream about at night,”  wrote one eleventh-grader from Ohio.

Each of the teens has something else in common—they’ve put their passion into action. Many are already licensed bird-banders, lead bird tours, or have set up birding clubs for young people in their area. They are dedicated eBirders, submitting observations to the online checklist program, sometimes on a daily basis. They run birding blogs, write for birding newsletters, and take their own pictures of birds.

And they have big dreams. They want to be field researchers, become involved in wildlife conservation, or teach. They are fascinated by bird diversity, flight, and sound. They have favorites: gulls, owls, warblers. They are as diverse as the birds they love but united in their profound attachment to birds. In some cases, birds have been a bridge to normalcy in the face of injury or illness.

“Many times I was overwhelmed by the task before me and what I was bound to face,” says a Connecticut ninth-grader dealing with serious health issues. “Birds were my allies. I had so many experiences where I was reminded how special life is and how I must fight for mine every day, just like the birds do.”

“These young birders will be the next generation of leaders in ornithology and conservation,” says the Cornell Lab’s Jessie Barry, one of the hosts of the event. “Though we started this event in 2009 as a way to connect young birders with each other and inspire them, we come away just as inspired by their passion and enthusiasm.”

If you know of a promising young birder in grades 9 through 12, tell them about the Young Birder’s Event and have them contact Jessie Barry at jb794@cornell.edu to find out more about the 2013 session.

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/redheads_after.jpg

  Two members of Team Redhead went the extra mile and dyed their hair for the competition. Clockwise from left: Hope Batcheller, Brendan Fogarty, Jack Hruska, Eric Gulson, Ben Barkley.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/antipetrels_camp.jpg

  The Anti-Petrels in camp before the big day: Hugh Powell, France Dewaghe, Charles Eldermire. Photo by Benjamin M. Clock.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/antipetrels_midnight.jpg

  At just before midnight, the Anti-Petrels were a blur of activity as they prepped for the day's birding. Photo by Benjamin M. Clock.

  

With hordes of migrant songbirds fluttering in the bushes of southern New Jersey on Saturday, two Cornell teams posted strong finishes in the 29th annual World Series of Birding. The student Redheads team scored 168 species with their new lineup, enough to take second place in the Cape May County division. And the bicycle-powered Anti-Petrels netted 164 species while riding 102 miles, winning the Carbon Footprint Challenge for the third straight year.

But on a day like Saturday, that winning feeling was spread liberally throughout the competition. Birders walked into Sunday’s brunch still reeling and bemused from the onslaught of warblers, thrushes, grosbeaks, and orioles they’d seen—a daylong kaleidoscope of blue, yellow, black, orange, red, and green flashing from the bushes. Almost every team, when asked how their day went, summed it up the way Redheads captain Hope Batcheller did, saying “It was just a really phenomenal day; we had a blast. Several people on the team were like, ‘That’s the best day of birding I’ve ever had.’”

If you ask me, that potential for surprise is why people participate in this conservation fundraiser—to witness a natural spectacle that can occur on a scale that people can scarcely imagine. It can occur, but it’s not guaranteed to occur, and that’s what turns people into bird watchers and conservationists. Serendipity is a feature of nature—it’s the thing that sets natural entertainments apart from the digital and the electronic. A favorite movie is the same every time you watch it. A favorite walk in the woods is different every time, and in that difference is the magic of the world.

Redheads score “phenomenal” day

For the Redheads, good omens arrived before dawn, with a Long-eared Owl and Least Bittern in Tuckahoe marsh. By the time they hit Cape May point at dawn there were “five or ten warblers in every bush,” Hope said (including the aptly named but uncommon Cape May Warbler). An odd call emanating from a grassy field led them not just to a Dickcissel—another coveted mark on the day’s checklist—but also a Bobolink, perched right next to it.

The best days often include a painful miss, but even this had a touch of good humor to it. One of only a handful of Cattle Egrets in southern New Jersey lives right next door to the Redheads’ motel. On Friday it was the first bird they saw on their way out the door, but on Saturday it refused to show. On Sunday morning the egret was right out front on the lawn again, bright and early.

Hope was happy with the performance of the young team and with their route, though she said next year the team might try to time their visits to the coast to hit a tide that produces better shorebirds. The team will have one other hurdle as well: they’ll probably need a new captain, as Hope has plans to study tropical ecology in Costa Rica next spring. But several crackerjack young birders have enrolled at Cornell for next year. This year there was an application process to select team members; next year the students may actually field two teams (the Anti-Petrels want to get them interested in a student bike team).

Anti-Petrels cycle to 164 species

The Anti-Petrels pedaled a similar route to last year but scored a full 20 additional species—evidence of just how blisteringly hot the migration had been the previous night. I’m a member of the team, and the day certainly goes down in my mind as an endless stream of good luck, good weather, and good looks at great birds.

Our highlights included a Black Rail heard in the far distance at Jake’s Landing around 1:30 a.m. Team captain France Dewaghe, who has very sharp ears, picked it out from the background of Whip-poor-will and Marsh Wren calls, but it took a full 15 minutes for Charles Eldermire and me to hear it well enough to count it. Fortunately, the bird was unperturbable and kept calling the whole time. Every so often, I imagine, it turned its tiny bill (these birds are no bigger than tennis balls) toward us and that’s when we heard its unmistakeable kee-kee-kerrr.

I always tell myself never to doubt France’s ears—he’s like Radar O’Reilly on M*A*S*H*, calling out “Louisiana Waterthrush!” or “Prothonotary Warbler!” moments before the rest of us hear the song. But twice that morning we heard strange warbler songs loud and clear—eventually they turned out to belong to a Northern Waterthrush and a Canada Warbler, two species we had never recorded in previous years.

The waterthrush, and the cloud of Magnolia Warblers and Northern Parulas that surrounded it, was our first clue that we were on to an epic day of migration. King Rails called from many of the marshes we rode by; a very rare Black-necked Stilt landed in our main shorebird spot at 5:30 a.m., near a valuable Little Blue Heron and Stilt Sandpiper. Two unusual vireos, Blue-headed and Warbling, showed up in trees virtually next to each other, as well as our World Series nemesis bird, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, which warbled sweetly from a high branch. The birding was so good that we even managed to find Magnolia Warblers singing dead-on Chestnut-sided Warbler songs—unfortunate actually, since we never did find an actual Chestnut-sided for our list. We left Heislerville at just after 9 a.m. with 112 species on our list.

Our low point came at lunchtime, when we made a special side trip to boost our chances for Gull-billed Tern. We’d seen them there in the driving rain on Wednesday, but the only terns that appeared were slender, long-tailed Forster’s Terns hunting fish from the river channels. We ate Nutella and privately wondered if our luck had turned. One mile down the road, France rode over a broken bottle and we had our second flat of the day (the first had come at 2:30 a.m.).

We got back on track on our way out to the great saltmarshes of Avalon and Nummy Island. The Cattle Egret that eluded the Redheads kindly showed up for us, and so did Yellow-crowned Night-Herons, Whimbrels, American Oystercatchers, and a welcome Common Loon. Red Knots positively glowed in the afternoon light. Our scopes even picked up the glossy backs of horseshoe crabs mating in the shallow water—their eggs are the reason the knots stop here every spring. We even spent a couple of spare minutes watching a Peregrine Falcon flying steep U-shaped dives at another peregrine on the ground, possibly trying to steal a kill.

Our day ended with one more disappointment—no Parasitic Jaegers were to be found harrying terns in the tidal rips off Cape May Point—but this was buttressed by a good run of swallows and an American Crow calling on an island filled with Fish Crows. We finished the day amid the thick mosquitoes of Higbee Beach, scoring Purple Sandpipers alongside Ruddy Turnstones on the rocks and hearing a Barred Owl calling from the woods—the one regular bird species we had missed in the morning. As usual, France heard it first.

Everyone here at the Cornell Lab would like to thank all our sponsors, donors, and supporters for being with us during this Big Day season—from Carl Zeiss Sports Optics and their support of Team Sapsucker, to Bob’s Red Mill and the yummy granola that kept our pedals turning on Saturday, and the many of you who donated, followed us on Facebook, and cheered us on. Thank you.

And if you’re curious about what it’s like to ride bikes and go birding, here’s a short time-lapse of the last couple of miles out to Cape May Meadows and then to Higbee Beach for sunset…

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/bd12_1.5.jpg

  Despite the rain, Ovenbirds still sang loudly in our campground.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/bd12_1.2.jpg

  Marsh Wrens were nesting in the saltmarshes of northern Cape May.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/bd12_1.7.jpg

  A mess of shorebirds kept a safe distance from a Green Heron at Heislerville.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/bd12_1.6.jpg

  The rain led to heavy fog as Team Redhead did their best to scout the ocean.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/bd12_1.3.jpg

  An endangered Piping Plover, its black chest band just visible in the mist, nests inside a predator-safe enclosure in Cape May.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/bd12_1.4.jpg

  Anti-Petrels France Dewaghe and Hugh Powell scan the Cape May meadows for a Bonaparte's Gull.

  

• http://www.birds.cornell.edu/roundrobin/files/2012/05/bd12_1.1.jpg

  A Common Yellowthroat popped out of the reeds in Tuckahoe marsh.

  

Lots of bird watchers are obsessive about their hobby, but we still usually regard it as an optional pursuit: when it rains, we’re allowed to stay indoors. But with the World Series of Birding just three days away, our teams—the student Redheads and the bike-powered Anti-Petrels—didn’t really have that option today. Starting at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, we’ll be spending 24 hours counting as many bird species as we can find to raise money for conservation work. So we need to do our homework.

My Anti-Petrels teammates and I were camping at Belleplain State Forest, and I tracked the progress of the night by the volume of raindrops on my tent fly. They kept getting louder. By the light of morning it was clear the rain was here to stay. But even so, the resident forest birds were singing—an Ovenbird crept through the leaf litter in front of Charles’s tent, then launched into its incredibly loud song. Dogwood blossoms lay on the ground like white confetti, knocked to earth by the rain. Eastern Wood-Pewees wailed in the soggy distance. We brewed three cups of coffee and headed out to see what else was around.

We ran into the Redheads almost immediately. The Lab’s student team were spread along the road listening to Acadian Flycatchers at the traditional haunt of a Louisiana Waterthrush pair. Hope Batcheller, the captain, stood with our captain, France Dewaghe, trading notes on Kentucky Warblers and Summer Tanagers. Her ponytail was dripping. Eric Gulson raised his binoculars at a wall of leaves all twitching with raindrops. He had spied something. Ten minutes later, the waterthrush sang, and we all went on our way.

At a nearby wildlife refuge a Green Heron searched for minnows among thousands of Short-billed Dowitchers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, and Dunlin, a couple of hundred Semipalmated Plovers, and one Ruddy Turnstone. (Among this mixture, it’s imperative on Saturday that we find at least one White-rumped Sandpiper.) The heron’s orange legs flashed above the little shorebirds, which gave it plenty of room—just in case the bird acquired a taste for feathers, it seemed.

We drove out to the beach, but fog enveloped  Cape May and visibility was dropping by the hour. By the time we reached the famous Meadows, we could barely see the nesting Piping Plovers inside their predator-safe  enclosures. We scoped down the beach and saw the Redheads valiantly peering into the misty waves.  Purple Martins emerged out of the mist and sparring Least Terns vanished into it.

People often point out that the World Series of Birding isn’t well-named, since it’s not a series of competitions. But spend some time with a team during Scout Week and it’s apparent that this is both a scramble and an endurance event. A team’s performance on the contest day has a lot to do with how they spend the days leading up to it: how many route variations they’ve tried; how many waking hours they’ve spent scouting dawn locations, night spots, migrant traps, low-tide mudflats and high-tide beaches; and how they’ve balanced patience against luck—the willingness to wait for known birds to appear against the spontaneity to follow the unexpected when it appears in the corner of your eye.

Though we didn’t have a classically great birding day today, we did get some clues about how to refine our route and hopefully top our previous high total of 150 species (the Redheads have a career high of 187 species to shoot for in their category within Cape May County).

The bad weather is supposed to blow through tonight, and a new set of migrants may fly in along with the change—upping the scouting ante for Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow morning at dawn we’ll be in the low woods around the town of Heislerville, listening for the chips of warblers that a month ago were in Mexico. But tonight, after a brief stop in camp, we’re heading out to scout a promising new night spot. If we use it, we’ll be adding more distance to a bike route that already stands at 100 miles. But it could pay off with species such as Least Bittern, Swamp Sparrow, and King Rail that we’re not likely to get elsewhere.

Darkness is falling in camp, bringing to an end the constant shouting of Ovenbirds and starting off a new chorus of frogs. I check around the back of the ranger station to find an Eastern Phoebe tucked neatly onto a nest under the eaves. We found her here last year on a nest during Scout Week, and I wonder how many more of the same birds are around me doing the same things this year, just as we are.

(Thanks to Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods for sponsoring the Anti-Petrels; to Carl Zeiss Sports Optics for outfitting the Redheads (in part); and to the Woodbine Custard Ranch for providing wi-fi during an emergency. Photos are by France Dewaghe (Ovenbird) Hugh Powell (Green Heron) and Charles Eldermire (others).)