We are awash in Boreal birds. Right now the eastern U.S. is filled with White-throated Sparrows, Winter Wrens, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Dark-eyed Juncos, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, and tens of millions of American Robins. This cloudy mid-October morning I stepped out of my house in Maine to find waves of robins passing high overhead. Although American Robins are a widespread bird in North America, these flocks of migrating robins may well be coming from the Boreal since we estimate that over 100 million migrate south from there to the U.S every fall.
Already there are surprising numbers of Northern Shrikes appearing here in Maine along with Bohemian Waxwings, Purple Finches, Evening Grosbeaks, Pine Siskins, and Red-breaded Nuthatches—it is shaping up to be an interesting winter for Boreal birds that make periodic irruptions into the U.S. On Sunday morning I heard two Evening Grosbeaks over our house and this morning as I was putting some things in the mulch pile, high "clee" notes of a Pine Siskin rang out from the sky.
All of these birds are inspiring enough but I also had the good fortune this past week, as we kicked off the Bird Conservation: Share-the-Secrets book tour, to meet many inspiring people and organizations working for birds. The key theme for the tour is the answer to a paradox. Numbers of bird enthusiasts are at an all-time high (some estimates as high as 70-80 million) yet we hear about more and more birds at conservation risk. If so many people love birds why don't we see those values translated into more support for bird conservation?
I contend that this paradox is the result of two things:
1) People don't know the connections between the birds they love and the factors that impact those birds because of the complexities of our economies and supply chains.
2) People don't know about the positive success stories that show how to fix the problems that are causing bird declines.
I wrote Birder's Conservation Handbook to try to address these two challenges. The book gives people who love birds the information that they need to dissolve the paradox and make things better for birds.
Last Thursday I did a presentation for what I learned was the oldest ornithological and birding group in the U.S.—the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club. The high-spirited members of the DVOC joined me for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and then a fast-paced and fun evening in the Bird Room at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. This group sponsors all kinds of birding activities to have fun, learn, and encourage more people to get hooked on birds. Just as important, they have a newly constituted conservation committee that is now trying to be the catalyst for birder's in the Delaware Valley to get more involved in protecting the birds that they love to study.
After meetings at the Philadelphia Inquirer the next day, I made my way up to Greenwich, Connecticut where the following afternoon I spoke at the Audubon Center in Greenwich. Saturday was a classic fall New England day at the Center with intense blue skies, leaves turning orange and yellow, and hawkwatchers on station to count the Sharp-shinned Hawks, Merlins, and Bald Eagles (and other species!) gliding south, many from Canada's Boreal.
All day the Audubon Center was filled with families showing kids (more than once it was the kids showing the parents!) all about birds and nature. What an incredible place that makes such a huge difference for bird conservation. After my presentation I met two women who, inspired by the EcoGangsta's Boreal Beat video featured on the BSI website, had decided to dress as EcoGangsta's for the office Halloween party as a way to keep up the pressure at their workplace for increased recycling, energy efficiency, and use of Boreal-friendly paper products.
The inspiration just keeps coming!
If you haven't already, check out the Boreal Beat music video produced by some talented and committed Ontario 11th graders. Click here to see it.
And come say "hi" at one of my upcoming book tour events in Seattle, San Francisco, or Washington, DC, and on Wisconsin Public Radio. Click here to see dates, times, and locations.
