The National Audubon Society released a survey in June that our country’s most common bird species are declining at an alarming rate. The data compiled is based on the famous Christmas Bird Count which has taken place every winter for 107 years by us, the citizens. Twenty of our most common birds have declined on an average of 68% - some as high as 80% - since 1967.
Of the twenty common species the Northern Bobwhite has seen the greatest decline at 82% and finishing at number 20 is the Ruffed Grouse at a 54% decline. In between, beloved birds in decline include: Evening Grosbeak, Boreal Chickadee, Meadowlark, Field Sparrow, Grackle, Whip-poor-will, and the Northern Pintail duck.
Why is this happening? Audubon points towards urban sprawl, an increase of invasive species, intensive agriculture practices and habitat fragmentation. Veryln Klinkenborg of the New York Times wrote a great article on the matter a few weeks ago. She wrote, “The Audubon Society portrait of common bird species in decline is really a report on who humans are. Let me offer a proposition about Homo sapiens. We are the only species on earth capable of an ethical awareness of other species and, thus, the only species capable of happily ignoring that awareness. I don’t suppose that most Americans would actively kill a whippoorwill if they had the chance. Yet in the past 40 years its number has dropped by 1.6 million. We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect adaptation only from ourselves.”
The report certainly has offered a lot for analysis and maybe not just about birds. Read the full report here: http://www.audubon.org/
