It is 9 pm on a mid-August Wednesday night. I sit on the porch of my house here in Maine. Stars speckle the dark sky above, a din of cricket sounds enveloping me.

It's not quiet but it is peaceful. It sooths my mind from the day's flurry—global warming, protected areas strategies, media plans, speaking engagements, tar sands, conference plans, pipelines, politics—and then "zweep," a sweet, short call rings out from above. "Zweep." It calls again.

It is a bird; a small three-inch warbler thrusting itself forward through the oblivion between stars and Earth.

My mind is suddenly calm and quiet, focused only on hearing the next sound. Focused only on where a small bird that has entered my sphere of existence, even if only for a second, has come from and where it will be by morning. Does it carry with it memories of dew-drenched spruces at dawn, echoing cries of loons across humanless lakes, caribou slowly lumbering along thousand-year-old hidden paths?

"Tseep"

"Tsup"

More pass overhead.

Warblers, sparrows, thrushes.

They are the reasons why those Boreal bird conservation heroes are so important.

Heroes like 15-year-old Malkolm Boothroyd who is biking from Yukon to Florida with his parents over the next year in order to raise awareness and funds for bird conservation (click here for more info: http://www.birdyear.com/)

Heroes like Scholastic publishers for printing its newest Harry Potter installment on forest-friendly paper (click here to thank Scholastic: /action.shtml)

Heroes like Herb Norwegian, Grand Chief of the Dehcho First Nation, for pushing for more protected areas in the Northwest Territories like the recently announced expansion of Nahanni National Park. (click here for more info: /nahanni.shtml)

The crickets trill and chirp around me but high above, Boreal birds flow south.

Thank you Boreal heroes.