Bird Conservation, Summer 2019

BIRDCONSERVATION The Magazine of American Bird Conservancy

SUMMER 2019

There’s birding… and then there’s

CONSERVATION BIRDING.

Thousands of bird species — up to 2,900 — await you in American Bird Conservancy’s reserve network.

These include many of the world’s rarest. And when you visit, the proceeds from your entry and accommodations go directly to sustaining bird habitat.

Why wait? Visit us at our newly redesigned website: conservationbirding.org

Go birding. Save species.

Photo credits, clockwise from top: Araripe Manakin by Ciro Albano; Jocotoco Antpitta by Mark Harper; Long-tailed Woodnymph by Stephen Jones; Blue-billed Curassow by Greg Gough; Lear’s Macaw by Agami Photo Agency, Shutterstock; Long-whiskered Owlet by Alan Van Norman; Seven-colored Tanager by Sergey Gorshkov; Red-fronted Macaw by Doug Janson

ABC is dedicated to conserving birds and their habitats throughout the Americas.

With an emphasis on achieving results and working in partnership, we take on the greatest problems facing birds today, innovating and building on rapid advancements in science to halt extinctions, protect habitats, eliminate

Summer 2019

threats, and build capacity for bird conservation.

abcbirds.org

A copy of the current financial statement and registration filed by the organization may be obtained by contacting: ABC, P.O. Box 249, The Plains, VA 20198. 540-253-5780, or by contacting the following state agencies: Florida: Division of Consumer Services, toll-free number within the state: 800-435-7352.

Maryland: For the cost of copies and postage: Office of the Secretary of State, Statehouse, Annapolis, MD 21401.

New Jersey: Attorney General, State of New Jersey: 201-504-6259.

New York: Office of the Attorney General, Department of Law, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.

Pennsylvania: Department of State, toll-free number within the state: 800-732-0999.

Virginia: State Division of Consumer Affairs, Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services, P.O. Box 1163, Richmond, VA 23209.

West Virginia: Secretary of State, State Capitol, Charleston, WV 25305.

Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by any state.

BIRDCONSERVATION 12 Battling to Save a Famed

Atoll’s Birds 20 Declining Insects,

Dependent Birds 26 Test Your Hummingbird

ID Skills 28 A Six-Million-Acre Boon

for Birds

Bird Conservation is the magazine of ABC and is published three times yearly for members.

DEPARTMENTS

Senior Editor: Howard Youth VP of Communications: Clare Nielsen

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Graphic Design: Gemma Radko Contributors: Chris Farmer, Steve Holmer, Daniel J. Lebbin, Conor Marshall, Jack Morrison, Merrie Morrison, Hannah Nevins, Michael J. Parr, George Wallace, David Wiedenfeld, Wendy Willis

For more information contact: American Bird Conservancy 4249 Loudoun Avenue, P.O. Box 249 The Plains, VA 20198 540-253-5780 • info@abcbirds.org

Common True Katydid by Melinda Fawver, Shutterstock

Bird’s Eye View On the Wire Birds in Brief

38 Final Glimpse Eastern Kingbird by Karel Bock, Shutterstock

Find us on social!

TOP: A Chestnut-breasted Coronet probes flowers, using yet-to-open blooms as a landing pad. Photo by Owen Deutsch COVER: A displaying Laysan Albatross pair on Midway Atoll.

Photo by Mark Sully, Shutterstock B I R D C O N S E R V A T I O N | S U M M E R 2019

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BIRD’S EYE VIEW

Fire Birds

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n November 8, 2018, the Camp Fire started in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Caused by a downed powerline, it rapidly spread to affect 153,000 acres, tragically killing at least 85 people, mostly in the town of Paradise, and destroying 18,000 homes and other buildings. It finally burned out after rains on November 25. It was the deadliest fire in California’s history and has become a defining event in the future of forest management in the West.

This March, the state of California announced a plan to speed up thinning on 90,000 high-risk acres for fire prevention, but such catastrophic fires are also leading to greater pressure to increase logging on federal lands across the state more broadly.

I visited several fire-affected areas in the Sierras this February, aiming to get a clearer understanding of how response to such fires will impact bird conservation. The issue of fire, forestry, and birds is complex, but ABC is not afraid to grapple with challenging topics, and working together with partners and listening to local communities are critical aspects of our work to get results for birds.

During the visit, David Younkman, ABC’s Vice President for the Western Region, and I met representatives of Cal Fire (the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, local biologists and forest

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management professionals, and homeowners in at-risk communities.

Although there is not yet complete consensus on what should be done to prevent such disasters in the future, one thing is for sure: This fire has elevated and forever changed the conversation about forest management in California — and the outcome of that conversation will fundamentally impact how birds fare in western and perhaps all American forests.

Conventional wisdom is that, due to fire suppression, western forests are overloaded with “fuel” and that until this is burned off, we will face an increasing number of atypically intense fires that have the potential for enormous damage. This is being compounded by climate change, which has caused the recent droughts and associated outbreaks of native pine bark beetles that infest drought-stricken trees, making them yet more vulnerable to fire.

The obvious conclusion is that fires will continue to worsen unless trees and other fuel are removed through mechanical means and prescribed burns. However, some biologists are now questioning historical patterns, and suggesting that intense fires have likely long been a feature of these forests. Another major question concerns “salvage logging,” or cutting partially burned timber for sale following a fire.

It would be incredibly difficult to find the time or resources to conduct forest clearance at a large enough

Many cavity-nesting birds such as White-headed and Black-backed Woodpeckers also depend on these burned trees, and Spotted Owls, too, can forage in recently burned areas.

scale to achieve fire prevention that protects communities — unless that clearance is conducted in their immediate vicinity. The environmental cost of such an endeavor would also be enormous.

For example, many birds rely on natural fires of varied intensities which create a diversity of habitat types, including areas with burned, standing trees and regenerating early successional vegetation.

While on the edge of Yosemite National Park, at a location impacted by the 2013 Rim Fire, we witnessed ongoing mechanical removal of burned trees in the vicinity of a Great Gray Owl territory. Many cavity-nesting birds such as White-headed and Blackbacked Woodpeckers also depend on these burned trees, and Spotted Owls, too, can forage in recently burned areas.

White-headed Woodpecker in the Sierra Nevadas by Michael J. Parr

In addition, salvage logging may not even help to prevent fire: The Camp Fire, for example, spread directly through a salvage-logged area.

What can be done then to manage forests to protect communities while also conserving habitat for firedependent birds? My takeaway from a heart-wrenching drive through the wreckage of Paradise is that concentrating on the removal of trees close to high-risk communities and creating defensible space around homes that are better fire-proofed, will surely be more effective than large-scale timbering and salvage logging on public lands throughout the Sierras. It will also be substantially better for birds that depend on this structurally diverse, fire-dependent ecosystem.

ABC plans to work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to recommend best management practices for birds on private lands managed to prevent fire in the Sierra foothills as a next step for our direct engagement. We will report on our progress in future issues of Bird Conservation.

Michael J. Parr, President

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ON the WIRE First Black-capped Petrel Capture at Sea Aims to Solve Mysteries, Save Species

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group brought together by ABC captured Blackcapped Petrels at sea for the first time. Working off the coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks in May, the team captured, banded, and attached satellite transmitters to ten of the Endangered birds. This ABC-led endeavor aims to reveal secrets about one of the Atlantic Ocean’s most elusive seabirds, hopefully tracking them back to their breeding grounds.

The team prioritized putting the tracking equipment on whitefaced birds because no one knows where individuals of this color morph breed. Of the ten tagged birds, one was intermediate in plumage, five were dark-faced, and four were white-faced — providing an excellent opportunity to learn if the different color morphs represent distinct breeding populations.

To date, Black-capped Petrel nests have been found in remote areas of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but the species is suspected to breed in Jamaica, Cuba, and Dominica in the Lesser Antilles.

ABC worked on this expedition with research partners from the South Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit - U.S. Geological Survey and Clemson

ABOVE: Capturing a Black-capped Petrel at sea off of Hatteras, May 8, 2019.

The bird was tagged and released unharmed; the tag will hopefully transmit information that will help conserve this species. LEFT: Close-up of a whitefaced morph Black-capped Petrel. Photos by Daniel J. Lebbin

University; Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust; and Seabirding, a pelagic bird tour operator based in Hatteras, North Carolina.

Conservationists hope not only to discover where these birds nest, but also to find ways to protect any newly found colonies from disturbance, destruction, and introduced predators, including cats and mongooses.

ABC is grateful for the major gift support for this project provided by Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Dick Newell, Apex Expeditions, Thomas Wilberding, and Dean Demarest, and to all of the individuals who contributed to our online campaign.

New Private Conservation Area Recognized in Northern Peru

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even years in the making, ABC, its Peruvian partner Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos (ECOAN), and the San Lucas de Pomacochas community have scored another win for conservation and watershed protection in northern Peru. The new 386-acre Arroyo Negro Private Conservation Area (PCA) protects many range-restricted bird

species, including the Vulnerable Rufous-browed Hemispingus and Russet-mantled Softtail, and the Endangered Lulu’s Tody-Flycatcher.

The Peruvian government incorporated the new PCA into the country’s national system of protected areas in May. This is the 14th communal reserve ABC and ECOAN have worked together to establish in Peru.

Lulu's Tody-Flycatcher by Michael J. Parr

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Kaempfer’s Woodpecker Project Takes Off

ABC

has joined with Brazilian partner Instituto Araguaia and the IUCN National Committee of the Netherlands in an innovative approach to conserving habitat for the Kaempfer’s Woodpecker, a threatened species inhabiting the Cerrado of central Brazil, the second most threatened biome in that country after the Atlantic Forest.

Instituto Araguaia will lease 470 acres of Cerrado from landowners adjacent to Cantão State Park.

During this ten-year lease, Instituto Araguaia will convert the land’s status to an RPPN (Reserva Particular do Patrimônio Natural, or Private Natural Heritage Reserve). After the lease ends, the property will revert

to the original owners, but the RPPN will remain, forever protecting this important habitat.

This project comes at a critically important time. In 2013 alone, more than 148,000 acres of Cerrado in this region of Brazil were converted to soybean farms. As agriculture has expanded, land prices have risen, making it difficult for conservation organizations to purchase land for protection. This project’s novel approach may serve as a new model for conservation in the Cerrado.

It is also extremely important to the area’s terrestrial mammals as a flood refuge for the adjacent 222,000-acre Cantão State Park, 80 percent of which floods each April.

The new private reserve will protect the Kaempfer’s Woodpecker and many other birds, including the Agami Heron and Harpy Eagle, as well as two newly discovered frog species.

Kaempfer’s Woodpecker by Ciro Albano

Florida Birds Face Cold-Blooded Killers

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heir presence already showcased on reality shows and news broadcasts, the impact of large introduced reptiles on the Sunshine State’s birds is very much a developing story. Originating from released pets, the three fastestspreading carnivores certainly eat birds, but do they favor them? So

far, at least 39 bird species, including federally Threatened Wood Storks, Roseate Spoonbills, and many White Ibises, have been identified in the digestive tracts of introduced Burmese Pythons, which now inhabit most of the Everglades ecosystem, including all of Everglades National Park.

In the city of Cape Coral, a robust population of Africa’s largest lizard, the Nile Monitor, threatens the largest population of the state-Threatened Florida subspecies of the Burrowing Owl. A newer player is the Black-andwhite Tegu, an

opossum-sized lizard from tropical to subtropical South America. It is quickly expanding its range within the state. Tegus eat bird eggs and a wide variety of small animals.

All three reptile species are wellentrenched in the state and are likely to remain. The python and monitor are now prohibited from sale in Florida, but the tegu still is widely sold. State officials and university and state researchers continue to study how these now-feral reptiles affect native bird populations, and are trying to improve capture-andcontrol methods, especially in areas set aside for imperiled species.

See: audubon.org/news/invasivereptiles-are-taking-over-florida-anddevouring-its-birds-along-way

Black-and-white Tegu by FMPortella, Shutterstock B I R D C O N S E R V A T I O N | S U M M E R 2019

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ON the WIRE Bird-Friendly Building Design: Coming to a City Near You!

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lass collisions kill up to 1 billion birds in the United States each year. Both common and rare species are at risk. Recently, there’s been some promising momentum toward addressing this danger, as some cities and states have formalized bird-friendly strategies.

A number of cities, for example, passed local ordinances to use birdfriendly glass and lighting practices that reduce the risk of bird collisions.

The bird-friendly building design LEED credit (SSpc 55), which ABC and other partner groups helped to draft and elevate among the architectural community, serves as a good starting point for these local ordinances.

San Francisco was the first major U.S. city to take such initiative, adopting its “Standards for Bird-Safe Buildings” in 2011. Oakland, California, followed suit starting in 2013, requiring that buildings adjacent to parks, bodies of water, and other green spaces incorporate similar elements for building design. Other California cities, including Sunnyvale (2014),

San Jose (2015), and most recently Alameda (2018) and Santa Cruz (2019), have incorporated bird-friendly elements in their local planning codes.

These aim to reduce bird collisions by cutting back on glass use and addressing glass reflections and see-through conditions that make glass appear to be habitat. In some cases, another goal is reducing light pollution. Other major initiatives are in the works in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Statewide bird-friendly building legislation efforts are gaining momentum in New York, and could be poised for passage in Maryland. Minnesota passed statewide legislation in 2013 that mirrors the LEED credit.

At the federal level, ABC has championed H.R. 919, the Federal Bird-Safe Buildings Act, which has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and continues to gain bipartisan support to enact bird-friendly building guidelines for federal buildings.

These conservation advances — and others like them — are the result of tireless work by birders, activists, architects, and local officials. This, in turn, spurred glass companies to produce more bird-friendly products, as demand has grown.

The bird-friendly advances mentioned above primarily apply to new and significantly renovated high-rise or commercial buildings, leaving individual residents to reduce bird collision risks at houses and lowrise apartments. Fortunately, there are easy, cost-effective solutions. ABC also encourages communities across the country to join us in advocating for collision solutions in their hometowns.

ABC’s Bird Collisions campaign is made possible in part through the generous support of the Leon Levy Foundation and David Walsh.

To learn more, visit abcbirds. org/program/glass-collisions/ learn-more/

New Statue of Liberty Visitor Center Welcomes Birds as Well

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he new, bird-friendly Statue of Liberty Museum, designed by New York City-based architecture firm FXCollaborative, opened this May. Most of the glass on the building has a fritted dot pattern, which is practically invisible to human visitors, yet is already proving effective at preventing bird collisions. (None have been reported since the glass was installed in the summer of 2018.)

The new museum’s design also incorporates a green roof and a variety of native plantings.

View from the interior of the new Statue of Liberty Museum, showing the fritted dot pattern on the glass that helps prevent bird collisions. Photo courtesy of FXCollaborative

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Bring Back Our Grassland Birds: Support ABC’s Northern Great Plains Program Your gift today is urgently needed to help reverse declines in grassland birds. The Northern Great Plains have changed dramatically since the 1800s, with the conversion of 51.3 million acres of grasslands to cropland agriculture, resulting in dramatic bird population losses in some of the last remaining blocks of mixed-grass prairie in the United States.

With one donation, you can help a variety of grassland birds, including the Long-billed Curlew, Baird’s Sparrow, Sprague’s Pipit, Chestnut-collared Longspur, Lark Bunting, and McCown’s Longspur.

Your gift supports ABC’s work to: • Plant native grasses and wildflowers to create the habitat birds need; • Work with ranchers and farmers to promote sustainable land use; • Conduct workshops and offer scholarships so that more landowners attend educational programs detailing grazing practices that are good for birds.

A private funder has recognized the importance of this work, and we have a grant that requires us to raise $230,000 in matching funds, with a deadline of December 31, 2019. Please don’t let this opportunity pass by! Birds of the Northern Great Plains need your help. Please give today.

Please use the enclosed envelope to make a donation, or give online at abcbirds.org/grasslands.

Long-billed Curlew by Robert Harwood

Townsend’s Shearwater chick on Socorro, GECI

BIRDS in BRIEF MOTUS Tower Installed in Nicaragua ABC and the Missouri Department of Conservation recently financed the installation of a MOTUS tower at the El Jaguar Reserve in Nicaragua — the first in that country and the sixth in Central America. ABC assisted logistically as well by bringing needed equipment to the reserve. MOTUS (the Latin word for “movement”) is a global network of towers managed

by Bird Studies Canada, which uses radio telemetry to track movements of birds, bats, and even large insects.

This success was the culmination of a program supported by ABC and partners that started in 2016. To encourage nesting, GECI biologists provided artificial nest burrows that simulate the birds’ natural burrows.

There are 40 such burrows currently on Socorro, where GECI and ABC are also working to remove introduced species and restore habitat.

At El Jaguar, the new MOTUS tower will capture signals from any appropriately radio-tagged bird passing or stopping nearby. The cumulative data gathered as tagged birds pass various MOTUS towers helps shed further light on migratory pathways, helping ABC and its partners design even more effective full-life-cycle conservation actions.

’Alalā by George Wallace

ABC partner Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas (GECI) reports that a Critically Endangered Townsend’s Shearwater has successfully nested in an artificial nest burrow on Socorro Island, off Mexico’s western coast. GECI scientists recorded a banded bird alongside a week-old chick.

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Antioquia Brushfinch Found in the Wild A rusty-crowned Colombian songbird known only from old museum specimens, the Antioquia Brushfinch eluded scientists — until it was found for the first time in the wild in January 2018. This discovery will be published later this year in the scientific journal Cotinga.

For more on the Antioquia Brushfinch and efforts to save it, see p. 38.

Wild ’Alalā Nest Attempts Raise Hope Several pairs of reintroduced ‘Alalā (Hawaiian Crow) attempted to nest in the wild on the island of Hawai‘i this spring — the first such attempt in almost 20 years. Although the birds did not raise young, the birds’ nesting and incubation behaviors

Antioquia Brushfinch by Sergio Chaparro

Townsend’s Shearwater Nesting Success in Mexico

The ‘Alalā has been extinct in the wild since 2002, and is the focus of a reintroduction program, started in 2016, that uses birds bred in conservation breeding centers, where approximately 115 birds now live.

Nineteen are currently living in the wild. Introduced predators and diseases drove the species to the brink of extinction.

After the initial find, Colombian researchers found additional birds in four patches of remnant habitat, all within the department of Antioquia.

Some of the parcels are already being converted to agriculture, however.

ABC and our partners are working to create a reserve for this rare bird and its habitat.

ABC hopes to help install additional towers in Central and South America, including in the Conservation Coast BirdScape of Guatemala.

Visit motus.org/about for more information on the MOTUS tracking system.

are considered a major milestone toward re-establishing the species in the wild.

Kirtland’s Warbler Gets Help on Winter Quarters

ABC has been able to hire an avian ecologist through the Bahamas National Trust. Bahamian scientist Bradley Watson will carry out conservation work targeting the bird’s winter range, part of a plan to keep the Kirtland’s Warbler population growing after its expected removal from the U.S. endangered species list.

Palila by Jack Jeffrey Photography

Each fall, the Kirtland’s Warbler migrates south and winters almost exclusively in the Bahamas.

conservation efforts for its habitat and help protect this macaw from illegal international trade.

ABC is supporting efforts to try to find other populations, and is supporting a workshop with experts to create a captive-breeding strategy for the species.

Eight Palila Released

Scarlet Macaws by Greg Homel, Natural Elements Productions

This summer, eight Critically Endangered Palila were released on the island of Hawai‘i, on Mauna Kea’s northern slope. The birds were hatched and raised at a San Diego Zoo Global facility, and are the first Palila to be reintroduced since 2009.

Conservationists hope these birds will found a second wild population, and plan to monitor them and release more in the future.

Scarlet Macaw Subspecies Gains Endangered Status

Conservationists consider this population, which occurs in small, isolated forests from southern Mexico to Costa Rica, to be imperiled. Twenty-five years later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has listed this subspecies as Endangered, which will boost

ABC helps fund the project and collaborates with San Diego Zoo Global, the State of Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources (Division of Forestry and Wildlife), the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Innovative Approach Cuts Crane-Powerline Collisions Researchers found they can cut crane-powerline collisions by 98 percent at an important migration stopover in Nebraska’s Central Platte Valley. These impressive results, published in The Condor in May, stem from an innovation that uses near-ultraviolet lights on support structures to illuminate powerlines during periods of low light.

This new system, dubbed the Avian Collision Avoidance System (ACAS), will hopefully be tested and deployed at other powerline sites, and at communication towers, another significant source of bird collisions.

Blue-eyed Ground-Dove Chick Hatches in the Wild This May, a staff member from ABC partner Sociedade para a Conservação das Aves do Brasil (SAVE Brasil) photographed a juvenile Blue-eyed Ground-Dove within SAVE Brasil’s Blue-eyed Ground-Dove Reserve — exciting proof that recent conservation measures for this Critically Endangered species are working.

Sandhill Cranes by PNQ Images, Shutterstock

David Wiedenfeld, ABC’s Senior Conservation Scientist, formally described the northern population of the Scarlet Macaw as a distinct subspecies, Ara macao cyanoptera, in 1994.

The reserve is part of the newly established 88,175-acre Botumirim State Park, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The Blue-eyed GroundDove only numbers approximately 20 individuals. Many ornithologists feared the species extinct until its rediscovery in 2015.

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MIDWAY: Between an Ark and a Hard Place

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Steeped in history and a bird paradise beyond compare, this far-flung atoll continues to face existential challenges that conservationists work hard to fix.

By Martha Brown

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he corner of Peters and Morrell Streets is my favorite place in the world’s largest albatross colony. There, at the edge of what was once the grassy Navy parade grounds, I can look out across a nearly solid carpet of tens of thousands of nesting albatrosses, backed by the aquamarine lagoon that stretches between Midway Atoll’s three islands. This scene, on Sand Island, is in constant motion, packed

with 3-foot-tall seabirds tidying their nests, swapping incubation duties, and squabbling with neighbors.

Over the colony, black-and-white Laysan Albatrosses and chocolatebrown Black-footed Albatrosses ride the wind, soaring and dipping in seemingly effortless flight.

I’ve visited this corner many times since I first arrived at what was then the Midway Naval Air Station in 1988. As I’ve returned for various projects over the years — most

The author and her husband are dwarfed by the sheer size of a Laysan and Blackfooted Albatross colony on Midway’s Sand Island. Photo by Craig Thomas

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Location of Midway Atoll

Art by Rainer Lesniewski, Shutterstock

recently to help lead the annual albatross nest count — I’ve witnessed Midway’s remarkable makeover from a military installation that once housed 10,000 troops to a vibrant wildlife refuge, national memorial, and national marine monument, where more than 1 million albatrosses arrive each fall after months of oceanic feeding. And I’ve come to admire the driving force behind this transformation — a small but dedicated cadre of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) biologists and refuge managers. With the help of monument partners, nonprofit groups, contractors, and volunteers, they’re reversing a backlog of human impacts in their efforts to make Midway a truly safe haven for wildlife.

Tiny Islands, Outsized History Best known for its role in World War II’s most pivotal naval battles, Midway Atoll lies more than 1,300 miles from Oahu, near the terminus of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The atoll’s three islands — Sand, Eastern, and tiny Spit — cover about 1,500 acres.

Native Hawaiians dubbed Midway Pihemanu, “loud din of birds,” but apparently never established a

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settlement on the sandy atoll. The United States had claimed the farflung islands as a potential source of prized, bird-produced fertilizer under the Guano Act in 1859, but apart from a handful of shipwrecked whalers who set up temporary shelters, it remained unoccupied by humans until the turn of the 20th century.

In 1900, after Japanese feather hunters were found slaughtering the islands’ birds, President Theodore Roosevelt put Midway under Navy Department control, both to protect the birds and other wildlife and to

establish a military presence at the strategic location, midway between the United States and Asia.

These two photos provide a “then and now” look at Sand Island, Midway. ABOVE: Gooneyville Lodge, 1956. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Navy.)

BELOW: Commercial Pacific Cable Company building, 2008. (Photo by Forest and Kim Starr.)

Then in 1903, the Commercial Pacific Cable Company arrived to set up operations that would boost the telegraph’s signal across the Pacific to the Philippines. Thus, Midway became a link in the first around-theworld communications system.

Pan American Airways also needed a stopover point for the first transPacific commercial flights. Starting in 1936, the airline’s Clipper “flying boats” landed on the atoll’s lagoon to refuel on their way to Asia.

White-liveried staff met the wellheeled passengers, who slept at the Gooneyville Lodge, complete with albatrosses nesting on the lawns.

It was a short-lived enterprise. By 1941, the buildup to World War II displaced civilian use of Midway and transformed the atoll into the

military base it would be for the next 50-plus years.

Military needs sometimes put wildlife in harm’s way, but military properties can also be fertile ground for research and conservation. In the case of Midway, biologists had a unique chance to study the albatross population. Part of the impetus for research was to solve the problem of military planes colliding with birds mid-flight, but much more came to light as well: Over the years, biologists banded more than 250,000 albatrosses at Midway, work that revealed many details of the birds’ life histories, including their long lifespans and year-to-year fidelity, both to their nest sites and their partners.

Far-Flung Haven

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idway has been a national wildlife refuge since 1996, when the Navy handed control of the atoll to the U.S. Department of the Interior. Although Midway and similar atolls scattered across the central Pacific are mere specks of land in the world’s largest ocean, they play an outsized role in tropical ecosystems. The millions of seabirds that return to nest there each year are top-level predators that maintain the stability of ocean ecosystems.

Although they spend most of their lives at sea, these species depend upon these sand-and-coral slivers for survival.

Development and invasive exotic species have compromised much of seabirds’ former nesting grounds in places such as the main Hawaiian Islands, making efforts to protect far-flung atolls even more crucial. To better envision the importance of Midway to seabirds, let’s take a quick armchair tour:

Chandler Robbins banding a Short-tailed Albatross on Midway, 1966. Photo by FWS

In 1956, as part of his work on the colony, FWS ornithologist — and later North American Breeding Bird Survey founder and field guide author — Chandler Robbins banded the albatross since dubbed Wisdom.

Today, Wisdom is at least 68 years old, the world’s oldest known-age wild bird. She still builds her nest

Terns screech their “wide awake” calls 24/7, and Redtailed Tropicbirds twitch long red tail feathers against the brilliant blue sky as they catch the midday breezes, “flying” backwards in their unique courting routine.

Deep nesting burrows riddle the sandy soil, harboring nocturnal Bonin Petrels and Wedge-tailed Shearwaters.

Add Gray-backed Terns, Brown and Masked Boobies, and Christmas Shearwaters to the mix, and in all, more than 3 million seabirds rely on Midway for nesting habitat. And there’s cautious optimism that more will join them: Over the past eight years, two pairs of Short-tailed Albatrosses — listed as Endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act — have successfully raised chicks, offering hope that this species, once numerous throughout the Pacific, will someday establish a colony on the atoll.

— Martha Brown

Although the albatrosses take center stage, Midway atoll’s three islands provide crucial habitat for many other seabirds. Black Noddies place their messy nests in Sand Island’s ironwood trees, while larger Brown Noddies nest on the ground. Great Frigatebirds swipe nest material from neighboring Red-footed Boobies. Pairs of White Terns perform graceful aerial pas de deux, black-and-white Sooty A Short-tailed Albatross surrounded by its Laysan brethren and next to a decoy designed to attract this recovering species. Photo

by Breck Tyler

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of burrowing Bonin Petrels were also easy pickings — from a population of half a million before the rats’ arrival, petrel numbers plummeted to fewer than 5,000 by the 1980s.

Wisdom the Laysan Albatross, shown in 2011 with one of her many offspring. At least 68 years old, she regularly returns to Midway to nest. Photo by John Klavitter, FWS

behind the cement-block bachelor officers’ quarters where she was first banded and where she has raised more than three dozen chicks — a remarkable contribution to her species.

By the 1980s, Midway’s strategic importance waned, as improved remote monitoring systems and long-range aircraft and submarines came into operation. In 1993, the Navy initiated plans to shutter its facilities. A few years later, control of the area was transferred to the U.S. Department of the Interior (see sidebar, p. 15).

Cleaning House Credit the Navy for a heroic cleanup effort. By the time Midway came under FWS management in 1996, more than $90 million had been spent to remove scores of unused buildings, miles of submarine net, and hundreds of above- and underground storage tanks. Crews also removed antennas and overhead wires that had killed thousands of birds.

Introduced species posed other challenges. Beginning when they arrived with the Navy in 1943, Black Rats preyed upon the atoll’s birds for

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decades. They quickly wiped out Laysan Rails and Laysan Finches, birds that had been shipped over in the late 1800s from Laysan, 385 miles to the southeast, after that island had been stripped of vegetation by introduced rabbits. (The rail is now extinct, though the finches survive at Laysan.) Eggs and young

The omnivorous rats also decimated the atoll’s plant life. Leafless remains of Beach Naupaka dotted the Eastern Island research plots where I worked in the 1980s, stark reminders of the rats’ impact. The native shrub provides critical breeding habitat for shade-dependent birds, and with the leaves stripped away, tropicbird and shearwater chicks died in the direct sun.

In 1995, FWS biologists teamed with U.S. Department of Agriculture staff in a successful effort to rid the island of rats. Bonin Petrel numbers rebounded with a vengeance.

Although the numbers are hard to pinpoint, as many as 1 million of the petrels now nest on the atoll, swarming over the breeding colony each evening after a day of feeding

on fish and squid. Naupaka also flourishes now, plus plants I never saw when rats were present, such as the native Tribulus or Puncture Vine, which sprouted from remnant seeds. Ridding the island of rats also made it safe to bring Laysan Ducks to Midway’s Sand and Eastern Islands from Laysan Island in 2004 and 2005. This complex and highly successful translocation effort created “insurance” populations of this Critically Endangered species.

Other nonnatives have proved more stubborn. Verbesina enceloides, called Verbesina or Golden Crownbeard, is a pretty plant with fuzzy green leaves and yellow daisy-like flowers.

In the 1950s, Verbesina’s windborne seeds escaped Sand Island’s home gardens and spread across the atoll. Dense stands of the crownbeard choked out native plants, smothered nesting sites, and Introduced Verbesina formed tall, dense stands that transformed once-open areas and choked out native plants. Photo by Forest and Kim Starr

Working at Midway can be like playing an ecological game of Whack-a-Mole: As soon as one problem appears to be under control, another pops up.

Seabird eggs and native plants such as the naupaka shown above were easy pickings for introduced rats, which have since been removed. Photos by Breck Tyler

created habitat for mosquitoes that transmit avian diseases. I came to dread counting nests in head-high Verbesina thickets, where you could quickly lose your way and where we’d occasionally find an albatross struggling to free its wings from the tangled, unforgiving weeds.

After nearly a decade of intensive control work by FWS staff, the war on Verbesina is nearly won. Supported by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, ABC, Defense Base Services, Inc., The Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, and others, the effort transformed weedchoked fields into wide-open vistas, where restoration teams are replacing Verbesina with bunch grasses and other native plants.

“It’s been extremely gratifying to witness the positive transformation of Midway’s terrestrial habitat from expansive fields of Verbesina to one approaching a native paradise,” says John Klavitter, National Invasive Species Coordinator for the National Wildlife Refuge System, and the Midway refuge’s former deputy manager.

New Trouble in Paradise Working at Midway can be like playing an ecological game of Whacka-Mole: As soon as one problem appears to be under control, another pops up.

While participating in the December 2015 nest count, I noticed several Laysan Albatrosses on adjacent nests, each with an identical bloody wound on the back of its neck. Over the next few days, we found more and more birds with similar injuries, some dying or already dead.

It took a motion-sensing camera trap to reveal the culprits: After dark, tiny gray House Mice were attacking the albatrosses, burrowing under their feathers and gnawing away at the birds’ flesh as parents remained steadfast, incubating their eggs. Not having evolved with mammalian predators, the birds had no strategy to defend themselves. The mice injured 480 birds that year, killing at least 52 and triggering more than twice the normal number of birds to abandon their eggs.

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Tainted Chips and Drooping Wings

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he first things you notice stepping off the plane on Midway: birds, thousands of them. Albatrosses blanket the ground and fill the sky, arcing on sabre-like wings spanning almost seven feet wide. The next thing you notice is that this wildlife spectacle is set amid moldering military buildings, airplane hangars, and street signs. Yet the birds seem unperturbed by these large human artifacts. Some even use them to advantage: White Terns nest on window ledges, Bonin Petrels find safe burrow locations beneath sturdy foundations, and some albatrosses seek shady spots for their nests alongside buildings.

I arrived on Midway in 2000 as the “albatross catcher” for my wife’s Ph.D. research on contaminant impacts on birds. Then, there were more than 100 buildings on Sand Island. In the course of our work, it became obvious that the albatross chicks at nests near buildings had a much higher incidence of a deadly condition called “droop wing,” which caused their wings to drag along

the ground and made it impossible for them to fledge.

A simple analysis of the birds’ blood — the same approach used to evaluate sources of lead poisoning in children — showed that lead paint peeling off the buildings was the culprit. Like toddlers who tend to put anything in their mouths, the chicks were picking up lead chips from around their nests and ingesting enough paint to poison themselves.

Upon finishing her Ph.D., my wife, Dr. Myra Finkelstein, worked as a Switzer Foundation post-doctoral fellow with ABC’s policy team and FWS to find a solution. After years of effort, and with help from Audubon California and the Center for Biological Diversity, Midway was declared a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, and in 2011 an expanded cleanup effort began. In 2018, the lead cleanup was completed. This year, the albatross chicks should all fledge lead free.

— Brad Keitt, ABC’s Ocean and Islands Program Director

Just like the rat eradication, the removal of mice will likely provide additional, unexpected benefits to other species, such as native plants and insects.

The discovery took everyone by surprise. Mice had arrived on Navy ships decades ago and never caused the albatrosses any harm. For some reason — perhaps that year’s El Niño-related drought or the absence of Verbesina seeds as a food source — the tiny rodents suddenly had become a threat.

For now, refuge biologists have been able to head off further damage by hand-baiting affected areas. They’ve also teamed up with experts from the nonprofit organization Island Conservation to plan for a more extensive effort to protect native species by eradicating mice from the atoll.

FWS biologist Beth Flint explains the reasoning behind this ambitious effort: “The potential harm to a substantial proportion of the world population of Laysan Albatrosses moved us to undertake the complex job of removing introduced mice at Midway. Ridding seabird colonies of mammals introduced by humans is the most direct and immediately rewarding conservation action we can take to protect oceanic islands.”

With an environmental assessment now complete, the project is scheduled to get underway in 2020.

And just like the rat eradication, the removal of mice will likely provide additional, unexpected benefits to other species, such as native plants and insects.

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A lead-poisoned juvenile Laysan Albatross with “droop wing.” Photo by Myra Finkelstein

Planning for Rising Seas Once mice are removed from Midway, there will no longer be any introduced mammals — the scourge of so many tropical islands worldwide — and the seabirds and other wildlife will have survived one more threat.

But a global challenge remains, one that presents particularly severe risks to islands. FWS biologists are turning their attention to climate changeassociated sea level rise, which is already etching away at the atoll’s shorelines. The combination of rising seas and more severe storms will inundate nest sites across the Hawaiian archipelago’s low-lying atolls, the chain of small islands that arc for more than 1,000 miles to the northwest beyond the main “high” islands of Hawai‘i. We’ve already seen evidence of dramatic storm damage: In October 2018, Hurricane Walaka completely erased East Island within the Northwestern Hawaiian islands’ French Frigate Shoals, eliminating critical nesting habitat for Green Turtles and 2,500 pairs of albatrosses, among other seabirds.

Fortunately, some parts of Midway are high enough to remain above sea level for the foreseeable future. But if sea levels continue to rise, habitat will be lost, both at Midway and on other low-lying islands.

In response, biologists are eyeing the higher main Hawaiian Islands, hoping to jump-start seabird colonies there. On Oahu, Pacific Rim Conservation has teamed with FWS and others to translocate seabird chicks from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands to fenced areas.

There, “attraction arrays” (decoys and sound systems that broadcast colony noises) hopefully will lure birds — both the fledged chicks, once they reach breeding age, and passing adults — to adopt these new, higher-elevation nesting sites.

On Moloka‘i, ABC is partnering with the Moloka‘i Land Trust and others to use attraction arrays to encourage albatrosses to colonize higher ground at a coastal site. A fence is being built there as well, to exclude introduced predators. ABC’s work on Moloka‘i is made possible thanks to the generous

Predator-proof fencing, shown here on Kaua’i, protects seabirds on some of the main Hawaiian Islands, where higher ground will help bolster their chances should rising seas claim lower breeding sites. Photo by Ann Bell, FWS

support of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Coastal and Science Applications Programs), The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the BAND Foundation, Sacharuna Foundation, and Lynn and Stuart White.

For now, Midway’s stewards are doing what they can to maximize the atoll’s resilience, while continuing to reduce threats posed by mice and other invasive exotic species. If humanity can curb its carbon emissions and avoid the most-dire sea level rise projections, then there is a chance that much of Midway’s wildlife will continue to thrive and — just as it did for me — continue to inspire us to never give up protecting nature.

Martha Brown is a writer, editor, and field biologist. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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Insect Freefall: 20

What Does It Mean for Birds?

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By Howard Youth

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any people quip that they’d prefer a world without “bugs,” but as the adage goes: Be careful what you wish for. Our planet cannot function normally without insects and other invertebrates. “The little things that run the world” is what biodiversity pioneer Edward O. Wilson calls them. Insects anchor natural systems and provide invaluable natural services, as pollinators, scavengers, predators, and protein-packed prey that sustains many birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, in virtually all terrestrial ecosystems.

Yet insect diversity and abundance are plummeting in many places.

This leaves conservationists scrambling to find out why…and wondering what insect declines mean for other wildlife.

“We are seeing declines in abundance, diversity, and biomass of insects,” says Scott Hoffman Black, Executive Director of The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, “and by extension we have to assume that this is, and will be, impacting birds.”

The clues in this mystery include large-scale disappearance of insects, dipping bird populations, and a lineup of potential culprits including pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change. What’s likely on the horizon is a choice: Do we ignore insect declines to our detriment, or change some of our most destructive dayto-day routines, which seem to be modifying our world into a more sterile place?

Vanishing Insects, Mounting Concern Although there are not many long-term studies on insects in North America, the studies done have revealed sharp declines in certain species, including Monarch butterflies and Rusty-patched Bumble Bees, and even entire groups. “In Ohio, a study found a 33-percent reduction in abundance of butterflies over 21 years,” says Black, “and a long-term 45-year-long study with transects across California is finding declines at all sites and of all different butterfly groups.”

A study out of Germany has raised even more eyebrows, standing out for its longevity, the many sites monitored, and the focus on sampling all flying insects.

This wide-ranging, long-term investigation, published in the online journal PLOS ONE in 2017, spans 27 years of collections — and shows a more-than-75percent decline in the flying insect biomass at 63 protected areas. The investigators used Malaise traps, tentlike contraptions that channel flying insects between fine mesh panels to a collection container. Collections made at these traps, basically masses of flying insects of many types, were weighed to gauge biomass for each reserve over different years.

butterflies, wild bees, and moths, are in parallel with a severe loss of total aerial insect biomass, suggesting that it is not only the vulnerable species, but the flying insect community as a whole, that has been decimated over the last few decades.”

By just looking at collection jars on the shelves, the investigators could see the winnowing of insect populations. Caspar A. Hallmann, an entomologist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and one of the study’s authors, says: “In the early 90’s, you would fill a jar of one liter in about a week, requiring a more rapid replacement of jars at shorter time intervals…or they would overflow. In recent years, collectors of the Krefeld Entomological Society have used quarter-liter jars, which would not fill even after two weeks of trapping. It is really apparent.”

Silence in the Forest Dropping insect populations impact many birds. Excepting seabirds, 96 percent of North American bird species feed insects to their young.

Caterpillars alone are an important food source for at least 310 North American bird species.

Strictly insectivorous species seem to be particularly hard hit. For example, the Eastern Whip-poor-will’s incessant namesake cries no longer permeate woodlands in many parts

The authors write: “Our results demonstrate that recently reported declines in several taxa such as

Our planet cannot function normally without insects and other invertebrates.

Rusty-patched Bumble Bee by Sandrinka, Shutterstock

LEFT: Great Crested Flycatcher by Joe McDonald, Shutterstock

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Rhinoceros Beetle by ilikestudio, Shutterstock

of its mapped range. After analyzing stable isotope signatures in Eastern Whip-poor-will museum specimens from Ontario, researchers wrote in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution in 2018: “For aerial insectivores, a significant change in dietary isotopes of whip-poor-wills over the past 130 years adds to the mounting evidence that population declines for many of these species may be related to changes in food supply.”

The researchers suggest that their findings could reflect the harmful effects of a decline in large night-flying moths, beetles, and other insects that left whip-poor-wills feeding at a lower trophic level, or stage in their ecosystem’s food chain. The drop in prey size, diversity, and abundance may stifle whip-poor-will reproduction. More study is required to know if whip-poor-wills’ and other aerial insectivores’ declines are linked to pesticides, habitat loss and degradation, light pollution, or other factors.

Direct consumption aside, insects are critically important to birds in other ways. More than 85 percent of flowering plants require animal pollination; in most cases this job is done by insects. “If you start to lose those pollinators,” says the Xerces Society’s Black, “this also impacts many plants, and by extension birds.

Many birds, for example, eat small fruits or seeds. A lot of these are from insect-pollinated plants.”

A Toxic Shadow Many scientists believe agricultural alchemy plays a big role in insect declines. Pesticides cast a broad yet

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invisible shadow over huge swaths of land, often well beyond areas they are meant to treat.

Pesticides and intensive farming loom large as culprits in the stark drop in France’s farmland avifauna, where populations of farm-nesting species dipped by, on average, a third over the past 15 years. Partridges, Meadow Pipits, and others suffered far steeper declines in that time.

In recent decades, 24 of 39 farmland bird species have declined in agricultural habitat encompassing 45 percent of the European Union’s land.

Even generalist species such as the Common Woodpigeon seem to fare better in cities than on farms, and bees as well. Farm pesticides’ effects on nontarget species are suspected to be a principle cause.

Today, the world’s most widely used agricultural pesticides are neonicotinoids, neurotoxins absorbed and stored in plant tissues so they repel insect pests. Neonics, as they

are also known, are now banned in the European Union because of their impact on honeybees. A number of U.S. states have also introduced legislation attempting to prohibit or limit their use.

Persistent and water-soluble, neonics are highly toxic to a broad range of insects and other invertebrates. And they reach well beyond farm fields, leaching into watersheds, rising up in dust, and soaking into soil adjacent to farms, toxifying insect food plants there.

Neonics’ impact on nontarget terrestrial and aquatic insects is formidable, and long-lasting as well.

Depending upon soil and other factors, neonics have half-lives — the time it takes to reduce an amount of the pesticide by half — of up to 1,000 days, or nearly three years.

Although these insecticides are considered less dangerous to many vertebrates than are other pesticides, an ABC study in 2013 determined

In the Netherlands, rapid declines in Barn Swallows and other insect-eating farmland birds were attributed not to direct effects of the chemicals on the birds, but likely “the result of a depletion of the birds’ food — insects.”

A Chickadee’s Landscaping Advice: Go Native

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study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018 indicates that Carolina Chickadees may be sounding the alarm that our expanding urban and suburban enclaves lack native plants that insects and spiders — and the birds that eat them — require.

Insects and spiders make up about 90 percent of the Carolina Chickadee’s diet during the nesting season, and about 40 percent at other times.

Researchers recently found that these nonmigratory songbirds struggled to raise their young in residential yards near and within Washington, D.C., that were packed with exotic landscaping because, due to the nonnative plants’ “evolutionary novelty,” they

attracted far fewer caterpillars and other insects than did native species. Biologists Desirée Narango, Douglas Tallamy, and Peter Marra wrote: “Our work demonstrates that even a common ‘urban-adapted’ bird species is food-limited when nonnative plants dominate landscapes….”

“If we think about it,” says Narango, “landscaping with nonnative plants is one part of this issue of insect declines.

We’re making our residential areas food deserts full of plants that herbivorous insects can’t eat, which means fewer insects…and less food for insectivorous birds.”

Working with homeowners as part of the citizen science program Smithsonian Neighborhood Nestwatch, Narango, Tallamy, and Marra found that areas with less than 70 percent native-plant biomass were a “dead end for insectivorous birds,” where chickadees had “lower reproductive success and unsustainable population growth…,” sometimes foregoing reproduction altogether.

— Howard Youth

Carolina Chickadee in Southern Live Oak by Anne Lindgren, Shutterstock

that a single neonic-coated seed can kill a bird the size of a Blue Jay. Proving a direct link between bird declines and pesticides’ impact on their insect food is difficult given other factors also at play, including habitat loss, climate change, and the direct physical effects of the chemicals on birds. But a study published in the journal Nature in 2014 was the first to “provide direct evidence that the widespread depletion of insect populations by neonicotinoids has knock-on effects on vertebrates.” In that study, in the Netherlands, rapid declines in Eurasian Skylarks, Barn Swallows, Western Yellow Wagtails, and other insect-eating farmland birds were attributed not to direct effects of the chemicals on the birds, but likely “the result of a depletion of the birds’ food — insects.”

Given their widespread use — for example, most corn-growing acreage

in the United States is treated with neonics — these pesticides require much more research, and controls or bans. A recent review of existing research, published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, reports: “Correlational studies have suggested a link between neonicotinoid usage in agricultural areas and population metrics for butterflies, bees, and insectivorous birds in three different countries.”

Other potent chemical threats persist. For more than 50 years, the organophosphate chlorpyrifos has been sprayed on apples and other fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other crops. Related to sarin gas, chlorpyrifos is among the most toxic pesticides to reach aquatic ecosystems. It is a threat not only to birds that ingest it, but also to their insect food base.

LEFT: Barn Swallow by Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH, Shutterstock

ABC and other groups are calling for a ban on the use of chlorpyrifos.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists agreed that there is no way to use the pesticide safely, and the agency was on course to ban it in spring 2017. But EPA reversed course, extending its use for five years. In July, EPA rejected a challenge by a coalition of environmental and public health advocacy groups that urged the agency to ban the pesticide. ABC and others continue to advocate for

Diana Fritillary by Sari O'Neal, Shutterstock

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legislation prohibiting chlorpyrifos’ use. Meanwhile, states are taking action: California, Hawai‘i, and New York have initiated bans, and a few other states may soon follow.

This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is Wild Land Most of the German protected areas covered in the hallmark 2017 PLOS ONE study are small holdings surrounded by farmland, leading the investigators to suspect physical and chemical factors at play. “Agricultural intensification, including use of pesticides, is as far as I am concerned one of the prime suspects responsible for the insect decline,” says Hallmann.

Around the world, much of the goliath human footprint on the land comes in the form of cropland agriculture, grazing land, as well as both carefully and haphazardly logged forest. On these working lands, decisions on where habitat is cleared, whether or not it’s managed with native plants, and where and how pesticides are applied will have a huge impact on insects and thus the future of birds.

A Guanacaste tree, great for shading coffee plants and favored by insect-eating birds.

Photo by Avancari, Shutterstock

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Recent investigations provide a window into how, with more knowledge and the will to coexist, people can both work the land and maintain a higher diversity of insects, birds, and other wildlife. A 2019 PLOS ONE study conducted in Finland, for example, reveals that of all farm types in Europe, organic livestock farming is the only one to significantly boost populations of insectivorous and migratory birds, including swallows. The livestock and their dung draw insects; rotational grazing improves habitat health and plant diversity; and the semi-wild state of chemical-free pastures most closely matches untouched grassland, which is a very rare commodity in Europe these days.

Land use involving at least a partial tree canopy can be very beneficial to insects and birds, if native species are used. A study published this year in the journal Biotropica examined native canopy trees on shade-coffee farms in Nicaragua and Colombia.

Researchers found that insectivorous birds favored certain species planted to provide shade for coffee plants, likely because they harbor the highest insect abundance and diversity. These preferred native trees include some in the legume family Fabaceae, such as Guanacaste and

Guamo, which also benefit farmers by fixing nitrogen in the soil. Armed with this study’s results, farmers can make simple choices that benefit their farms, insects, and birds.

Another recent study, published in the journal Wildlife Biology in January, focused on another native tree, the Andean Alder.

In Colombian alder plantations, researchers found more insectivorous birds than in regenerating natural forest of about the same age (35 to 40 years). Comparing insect-eating bird abundance and diversity in both habitats, the team found that fly-catching and foliage-gleaning birds abounded in the alders, where greater sunlight penetration resulted in lush undergrowth supporting an insect bounty. The Black-capped Tyrannulet, Plushcap, and 15 other bird species were found in the alders, but not in nearby secondary forest, although with its greater diversity of trees and tree sizes, that habitat drew tree-trunk foragers not attracted to the alders, including the Powerful Woodpecker and Black-banded Woodcreeper.

Studies point to the likelihood LEFT: The Powerful Woodpecker forages for grubs and other insects on mossy trunks in the montane forests of the Andes. Photo by Larry Thompson

In the end, the authors did not consider alder plantations replacements for natural forests, but rather complements to them. The differing habitats and their birds raise interesting questions about “green” land uses that offer significant benefits to insects and birds.

Rainforest in the Hot Seat

that climate is already altering tropical ecosystems, to the detriment of insects and insectivores, including birds.

Puerto Rican Tody by Falko Duesterhoeft, Shutterstock

Climate change is very likely detrimental to insects and insectivores, including birds. Reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, one study looked at the biomass of arthropods — invertebrates including insects, spiders, and centipedes — in Puerto Rico’s largest remaining rainforest, El Luquillo.

The researchers also surveyed populations of insect-eating Anolis lizards, frogs, and birds, comparing what they found with prior survey results from the 1970s. These comparisons were made with a troubling backdrop: Over the 30-plus years between surveys at El Luquillo, the average maximum temperature in the forest there rose 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

The study notes a drop in arthropod biomass of between four- and eightfold since the 1970s, with parallel declines in Anolis lizards, frogs, and birds. This includes a 90-percent drop in mist-net captures of the endemic Puerto Rican Tody — a tiny green, white, and red bird that

can snap up about 40 percent of its weight in insects in a day.

their sleeves to learn more and do more to conserve them.

More study is required in El Luquillo — which was subsequently hammered by Hurricane Maria in 2017 — and other parts of the tropics, but the study’s authors wrote: “Our analyses provide strong support for the hypothesis that climate warming has been a major factor driving reductions in arthropod abundances, and that these declines have in turn precipitated decreases in forest insectivores in a classic bottom-up cascade.” They added that the same scenario is likely playing out in other tropical forests experiencing significant increases in ambient temperature.

“The authors of the German study were very fortunate to have started data collection decades ago,” says the Xerces Society’s Black. “This study has got many other researchers thinking about implementing longterm monitoring.” But Black and others say that while further studies are important, so is immediate action to stem the loss of diversity and abundance of insects and other wildlife.

No Birds Without “Bugs” From farm fields to alder plantations to remaining rainforest, conservationists now ponder, with a sense of urgency, human activities’ unintended and intentional impacts on insects and birds.

Exactly what insect declines mean for birds, and for us, is an emerging picture, but the todies, skylarks, and whip-poor-wills seem to tell us something we may have taken for granted before: There can’t be birds without “bugs.”

Howard Youth is ABC’s Senior Writer/Editor.

Although many people are just now awakening to the ecological importance of insects, those who valued them all along are rolling up

Puerto Rican Emerald Anole by lrodphoto, Shutterstock B I R D C O N S E R V A T I O N | S U M M E R 2019

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Bird 1

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Hummingbird

WHO’S WHO

American sprites supremely adapted for probing blooms, hummingbirds enliven rainforests, deserts, mountains, and gardens from Canada to Chile.

Bird 3 Bird 2

Of about 350 hummingbird species, more than half find refuge at the 90-plus reserves that ABC supports across the Americas.

These smallest of birds can be hard to glimpse, let alone photograph. Yet through hard work and patience, photographer Owen Deutsch captured these intimate images, which appear in the recently published ABC book Bringing Back the Birds. This collection of Deutsch’s bird photography from throughout the Americas is accompanied by a foreward by author Jonathan Franzen, an original poem by Margaret Atwood, and essays by bird conservation luminaries.

Bird 5

Bringing Back the Birds is available from Braided River: braidedriver.org/ bringing-back-the-birds All proceeds benefit ABC.

Challenge: How many of these hummingbirds can you name? Each caption provides a brief clue.

(Answers, p.36 )

Bird 4

Bird 6

Bird 1: foothills and subtropics, northern Andes Bird 2: hilly, humid forest and edge, Central America to Bolivia Bird 3: forest borders, Venezuela to northern Peru Bird 4: forest and gardens, Jamaica only Bird 5: savanna, scrub, and gardens in Costa Rica and Panama Bird 6: dry scrub and gardens in Baja, Mexico Bird 7: a few spots in mountainous northern Peru

All photos this page by Owen Deutsch

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ABC and JVs: Collaborating

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on Six Million Acres

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igratory Bird Habitat Joint Ventures (JVs) are regional partnerships in North America that work to protect, restore, and enhance habitats. Their goal is to recover and maintain migratory bird populations. The JV program, which began in 1987, grew out of efforts to boost waterfowl populations. Since then, JVs have expanded to include bird species in nearly all habitats, both wetland and terrestrial — particularly those species of conservation concern.

JOINT VENTURES MAP KEY Atlantic Coast Appalachian Mountains Central Hardwoods Lower Mississippi Valley Oaks and Prairies Rio Grande JVs with ABC management board representation: East Gulf Coastal Plain, Gulf Coast, Northern Great Plains, Upper

Mississippi River/Great Lakes

JVs bring together federal, state, and local agencies, corporations, and landowners, as well as ABC and other nonprofit organizations.

ABC is closely involved in ten of the 22 JVs, and employs staff in six, supporting these partnerships in leadership, fundraising, coordination, best management practices, communications, policy and advocacy, and habitat conservation planning. ABC and JV partners helped improve conservation management on 6.4 million acres — an area larger than the state of Maryland — from 2007 to 2017.

“As partnerships uniquely focused on bird habitat, JVs ensure that conservation adds up at the right scale over large areas — yet they are regional, so they can be focused and most effective,” says EJ Williams, ABC’s Vice President of Migratory Birds and Habitats. Williams adds that by focusing on science, JVs target the most important species and set population goals, then figure which habitats are needed to meet those population objectives. Williams has worked in JVs for about 25 years, first on the Atlantic Coast JV for the state of Georgia, then for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), then for the nonprofit Longleaf Alliance, before joining ABC. Most Joint Venture offices are run through the FWS. But several JVs have primarily ABC staff, including JV coordinator positions, science and habitat delivery coordinators, and communication and GIS specialists.

ABC staff sit on ten JVs’ management boards, which provide overall leadership. “To some extent,” says Williams, “ABC stepped up when there were needs for staffing and where we could provide a good fit. All JV staff, wherever they are employed, work for the partnership.”

JVs get funding from the FWS, state wildlife agencies, partners including ABC, the North American Wetland Conservation Act, the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, through its Regional Conservation Partnership Program. For more on JVs, go to mbjv.org On the following pages, explore six JVs where ABC hosts staff and works with partners to ensure a bright future for a wide range of bird species.

(Note: Under each JV’s “Fast Facts” section, “acres restored and managed” refers to land impacted by ABC involvement between 2007 and 2017.)

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ATLANTIC COAST

Saving Declining Marsh Birds

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he Atlantic Coast is one of the most populous regions in the United States and hosts some of the most important wetlands, which are threatened by sea level rise and urbanization.

The primary focus of the Atlantic Coast JV is restoring and protecting coastal marshes and species.

The Black Rail is one of these. This tiny, secretive marsh bird has declined by more than 90 percent along the Atlantic Coast since the 1990s. The Atlantic Coast JV’s efforts to save the rail include two major mapping projects identifying ideal Black Rail habitat throughout the Southeast, and adaptive management and pilot projects aimed at quickly targeting and spearheading a rebound for this declining marsh phantom.

This JV includes partners from across the full extent of U.S. Atlantic marshes, from Maine to Florida, and also includes Puerto Rico.

FAST FACTS Focal species include: American Black Duck, Saltmarsh Sparrow, Black Rail ABOVE: Black Rail by Brian Small LEFT: Brackish marsh at Elliott Island, Maryland. Photo by Howard Youth

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a Acres restored and managed: 600,000

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS

Managing Bountiful Forests

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panning the mountains from central New York to northeastern Alabama, the Appalachian Mountains JV works across a range of habitats and elevations, from old fields and small forested wetlands to oakhickory forests and high-elevation spruce-fir stands, to help declining bird species.

Challenges to these landscapes include lack of diverse forest structure, the loss of oncepredominant tree species, deer over-browsing, invasive species, and energy development. Various strategies are employed, including active management, restoration, and protection of forests.

ABC is one of more than 55 partners working together to bring back and maintain native forests for the benefit of birds and other wildlife in the Appalachians.

FAST FACTS Focal species include: Cerulean and Golden-winged Warblers, Wood Thrush

a Acres restored and managed: 930,000

ABOVE: Golden-winged Warbler by Frode Jacobsen, Shutterstock RIGHT: Waterfall in Great Smoky Mountains by Betty Shelton, Shutterstock

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CENTRAL HARDWOODS

Midland Mosaic

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n this JV, 11 partner agencies and organizations work together to ensure the longterm survival of native bird populations, both west and east of the Mississippi River. From Indiana to Oklahoma, the Central Hardwoods JV spans eight states rich in varied habitats, including forests, open pine and oak woodlands with grass and shrubby understories, open grasslands, and wetlands.

More than 193,000 acres of habitat were improved in 2018 alone.

This habitat restoration included prescribed fire and tree-thinning in woodlands to promote the growth of shrubs, young trees, and forbs, and seeding nonnative grasslands with native species.

FAST FACTS Focal species include:

ABOVE: Red-headed Woodpecker by Ronnie Howard, Shutterstock LEFT: Sand glade by Missouri Department of Conservation

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Red-headed Woodpecker, Prairie Warbler, Henslow's Sparrow

a Acres restored and managed: 1.14 million

LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

Birds on the Bayou

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his JV includes dozens of partners, and is guided by a management board representing 17 of them. It protects, restores, and manages habitats for declining birds in the Lower Mississippi Valley and West Gulf Coastal Plain/Ouachitas regions.

All told, 60 percent of North America’s migratory birds breed or winter in, or migrate through, this region. It is, for example, the continent’s most important wintering area for Mallards and Wood Ducks.

Species requiring large habitat tracts, such as the Swallow-tailed Kite, have benefited from this JV’s efforts to work with partners on assessing, managing, and restoring core forest areas and wetlands throughout the region. After years of partnership, the Lower Mississippi River Delta has seen a net gain of 1 million acres of hardwood forest since 1992.

FAST FACTS Focal species include: Swallow-tailed Kite, American Kestrel, Prothonotary Warbler

a Acres restored and managed: 3.45 million

ABOVE: Prothonotary Warbler

by Jason Yoder RIGHT: Cypress swamp by FWS

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OAKS AND PRAIRIES

Getting a GRIP

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any declining grassland species call the Oaks and Prairies JV home. The partners of the Oaks and Prairies JV created and implement a Grassland Restoration Incentive Program (GRIP) to restore and maintain habitat for these species, providing incentive payments to private landowners who implement grassland bird habitat improvements to their land.

Since 2013, more than 75,000 grassland acres in central Texas and more than 5,000 in central Oklahoma have been restored, much of it through prescribed fire, prescribed grazing, brush management, and replanting native grasses and forbs.

Two of North America’s most localized songbirds, the Endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler and the Black-capped Vireo, nest within portions of the Oaks and Prairies JV, benefiting from the partners’ management and restoration work.

FAST FACTS Focal species include:

ABOVE: Loggerhead Shrike by Wild Art, Shutterstock LEFT: Black-capped Vireo on nest

by Jim Giocomo

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Northern Bobwhite, Loggerhead Shrike, Eastern Meadowlark, Painted Bunting

a Acres restored and managed: 120,000

RIO GRANDE

Wrangling Diverse Habitat

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orking in West and South Texas and northern Mexico, the Rio Grande JV brings together conservation partners to enhance habitat in one of the continent’s most biologically diverse areas. The Rio Grande JV has projects in the Chihuahuan Desert, Tamaulipan Brushlands, and the Gulf Coast Prairie Bird Conservation Regions, where priorities include enhancing and conserving grasslands and riparian woodlands.

The partnership emphasizes working with landowners and stewards to help sustainably manage these habitats through various practices, including carefully planned livestock grazing, controlling invasive species, and planting native grasses, wildflowers, and trees so that birds, pollinators, and other wildlife can thrive.

FAST FACTS Focal species include: Common Black-Hawk, Long-billed Curlew, Red-crowned Parrot, McCown's Longspur, Baird's Sparrow

a Acres restored and managed: 146,000

ABOVE: Red-crowned Parrot by Bowles Erickson, amazornia.us RIGHT: View of the Rio Grande River by digidreamgrafix, Shutterstock

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ASK ABC Do you have questions about wild birds and bird conservation?

Email us at: askabcbirds@abcbirds.org Dear ASK ABC, I have arthritis and use a scooter for mobility. Are there any resources for finding birding sites that are accessible? I have been so disappointed in many places that are exciting, and I do try to call ahead, but often I can’t get to where the birds are. Thank you for any help you can give me.

Linda, Cypress, California

Thanks for Asking ABC. Fortunately, there are now many all-access birding spots in the United States. Although, as you’ve found, they are not everywhere. When in doubt, it’s best, as you do, to contact destinations with specific questions. But there are many birders with accessibility challenges and solid, available resources that can set you on the right path to birding fulfillment.

Here are a few websites: Trail Link: A website by Rails-to-Trails Conservancy that includes accessibility by state, but no bird-specific information. traillink.com/activity/wheelchair-accessible-trails National Park Service: Most national park visitor centers and many top park sites are accessible. Check each national park’s website, and also see: nps.gov/aboutus/accessibility.htm Birdability: A blog about birding accessible areas: birdability.com

Many, though not all, top United States birding sites are wheelchair accessible. Photo by digitalreflections, Shutterstock

ANSWERS TO HUMMINGBIRD QUIZ 1

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from page 27

1. Violet-tailed Sylph; 2. Brown Violetear; 3. Rufous-crested Coquette; 4. Streamertail 5. Snowy-bellied Hummingbird; 6. Xantus’ Hummingbird; 7. Marvelous Spatuletail

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These top five birding sites are among the many accessible gems: Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park (Texas)

Everglades National Park (Florida)

Home to the Green Jay, Plain Chachalaca, Altamira Oriole, and other mostly Mexican and Central American species, this park has a two-story observation tower with a wheelchair-accessible ramp, giving visitors a bird’s-eye view of the tree canopy, and a peek at Mexico as well.

The third largest national park in the lower 48 states, the 1.5-million-acre Everglades National Park protects Roseate Spoonbills, Swallow-tailed Kites, Purple Gallinules, and many other species in a range of subtropical habitats.

Many of the birdiest spots and all five visitor centers are accessible.

San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge (California) One of the refuge’s two units is located adjacent to Imperial Beach and sports an accessible .4-mile path with sweeping views of mudflats and marsh visited by Longbilled Curlews, Red Knots, and other sandpipers, plus terns, pelicans, herons, and the rare “Belding’s” Savannah Sparrow.

Magee Marsh Wildlife Area (Ohio) During migration, Magee Marsh is one of the continent’s top birding destinations. From the trails and almostmile-long, wheelchair-accessible boardwalk, visitors often enjoy up-close views of resting warblers, tanagers, grosbeaks, orioles, and other migrants.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge (Virginia) Many facilities are accessible and in addition to many waders, sandpipers, plovers, terns, Northern Harriers, and Brown-headed Nuthatches, watch for the frosty gray Delmarva Fox Squirrel and the famous wild ponies.

TOP: The Redwood Grove Loop Trail in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, California, where birders can find species such as the Red-breasted Sapsucker, Varied Thrush, and Townsend's Warbler. Photo by Mark Hehir

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FINAL GLIMPSE

We Can't Lose the JustFound Antioquia Brushfinch

By Wendy Willis

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am blessed to earn a living investing mental energy to tackle complex bird conservation issues — while working with extraordinarily passionate conservationists in five Latin American countries (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Jamaica). My job brings me to far-flung locales to better understand threats faced by some of the world’s rarest birds. I’ve endured a treacherous horseback ride to a páramo ecosystem for flowerpiercers, surveyed macaws from Bolivian sandstone cliffs, and searched for rare antpittas in seasonally flooded Amazonian forests. Sometimes the settings are less dramatic, though no less important.

In December 2018, Daniel Lebbin, ABC’s Vice President of Threatened Species; Colombian conservationists Sergio Chaparro, Adolfo Correo, and Jhon Jairo Lopera; and I found ourselves trekking outside of a bucolic dairy town an hour from sprawling Medellín, Colombia.

Ours was a top-secret mission.

We were being escorted to a cattle pasture that contained a small patch of remnant low vegetation sheltering a bird species unseen by the scientific community in over 40 years. The “lost bird” we hoped to see was the Antioquia Brushfinch, a rusty-crowned, black, gray, and white songbird. Before publication of the rediscovery and with ABC support, Sergio and his team were conducting on-the-ground searches to find as many individual brushfinches as possible, to help ABC

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determine remaining strongholds and conservation priority actions for this species in the only region where it occurs.

As we stood on an empty gravel farm road, a brushfinch suddenly appeared, perching in a bush. Less than 30 seconds later, a second bird joined…likely its mate! Our group reverted to elementary school-style giddiness. I looked over at Dan. I will never forget the ear-to-ear grin of satisfaction on his glowing face; the euphoria was contagious. At that moment, I thought of a quote by ornithologist and seabird expert Robert Cushman Murphy: “I now belong to a higher cult of mortals, for I have seen the Albatross.”

If only a few known individuals of an imperiled species remain, we should never look away and give up hope.

Rodolfo explained to us that we were probably the eighth and ninth people to have laid eyes on the Antioquia Brushfinch since its rediscovery last year. Having just seen one of the most imperiled birds in the Americas, our jubilation was tempered by a nagging sense of urgency.

To date, Sergio’s research crew has documented 11 Antioquia Brushfinches, the only confirmed individuals in the entire world. They may not last. Since the day we visited, the habitat where Dan and I first laid eyes on the two magnificent brushfinches has been leveled for bean and corn production.

If only a few known individuals of an imperiled species remain, we should never look away and give

up hope. If our partner Fundación Jocotoco had done that, the Paleheaded Brushfinch would be extinct.

Instead, it’s rebounding in the only country where it’s found, Ecuador.

In not-too-distant Colombia, in an ocean of golf-course-green dairy production grass, we now urgently need to protect and connect remaining habitat parcels to ensure the Antioquia Brushfinch’s survival.

ABC and our partners are working to create the first reserve for this species.

Your support will help us protect this and other once-“lost” birds.

ABC is grateful to Mark Greenfield for support of our efforts to protect the Antioquia Brushfinch.

Wendy Willis is ABC’s Deputy Director of International Programs.

Antioquia Brushfinch painting by Iván Dario Bernal Rincón

THEIR FUTURE CAN BE YOUR LEGACY You can create a better future for birds, and your own legacy of bird conservation, when you make a gift to American Bird Conservancy through your will, trust, retirement plan, or insurance policy.

“I want to help ensure ours will be a future world filled with stunning birds, protected by sustaining ethics....ABC addresses the difficult issues facing birds today by offering solutions, taking stands, and collaborating with partners for a more bird-supported landscape. I believe in ABC’s commitment to bird conservation. For these reasons and more, I have named ABC in my estate plans.”

— M.A. Kruse, ABC supporter and Legacy Circle member

Laysan Albatross and chick by Cameron Rutt

If you would like more information on how to join ABC’s Legacy Circle with an estate gift, or if you have already included ABC in your estate plans, please contact Jack Morrison, ABC Director of Major Gifts and Planned Giving, at 540-253-5780 or at jmorrison@abcbirds.org.

P.O. Box 249 The Plains, VA 20198 abcbirds.org 540-253-5780 • 888-247-3624

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher with grasshopper by Brian Lasenby, Shutterstock