Bird of Passage: November 2023
Hello and welcome to my shiny new Substack! (Still kind of can’t believe I’m doing this.) Going forward, I plan to open each month’s newsletter with a brief original column on birding, conservation, climate change, etc. Watch this space next month for some thoughts on what being a cancer survivor has taught me about living a good life in the face of climate dread.
For now, though, let me just say thank you for subscribing. The content you see below is what you can expect in each issue: a roundup of ornithology and bird conservation stories that caught my eye in the past month (and sometimes links to things I’ve written myself, although I don’t have anything to share on that front this month); a science and/or nature book recommendation; and a brief list of any upcoming events I have scheduled.
If you have thoughts or feedback, you can reach me directly just by replying to this email—and if you have any friends or birding buddies who might also be interested, I’d be in your debt if you’d forward this to them!
Words About Birds
First: You may have seen the news that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just officially declared ten bird species extinct, formally removing them from the endangered species list. The list includes one bird endemic to Guam and eight from Hawaii; Hawaiian birds in particular have been decimated by avian malaria, carried by mosquitoes that are creeping up to higher and higher altitudes as the climate warms. But also on the list is, intriguingly, is the Bachman’s Warbler, which bred in the southeastern U.S. that was last definitely sighted in the 1960s, one of our lesser-known vanished North American birds.
Are you familiar with redlining, the racist home lending practices that kept Black Americans from buying homes in certain neighborhoods for many years? Redlining’s legacy is still felt in cities today—even in their bird communities. A recent story in the LA Times delves into research showing that historically “redlined” neighborhoods, the only places where nonwhite people could buy homes, still have less bird diversity than historically white neighborhoods, which tend to have lower housing density and more trees. Because access to nature benefits our physical and mental health, this is more than just interesting bird science; it’s an environmental justice issue.
A fascinating addition to the scientific literature on birds and wildfire smoke was just published in the form of a new study that used radio telemetry to see how Acorn Woodpeckers’ behavior changes on smoky days. When wildfire smoke was heavy, the birds spent more time on their home territories and made fewer visits to their neighbors. As someone who lives in a part of the U.S. regularly impacted by wildfire smoke, I can relate! These are highly social birds that breed cooperatively, so conditions that put a damper on their ability to interact with each other could affect on their ability to reproduce successfully.
I wrote a story for Audubon earlier this year on how geomagnetic disturbance increases bird vagrancy, so I was delighted to see another study on space weather and bird migration published this month. This time, researchers used weather radar data to show that the overall volume of bird migration goes down during periods of geomagnetic disturbance, especially if it’s also cloudy. Birds use both the Earth’s magnetic compass and the position of the stars in the night sky to navigate, but when both are disrupted at once, they have to hunker down and wait until they can get their bearings again!
Finally, just for fun: This new review paper on the causes behind birds’ many eye colors caught, uh, my eye. Over at the BOU blog, the lead author explains that there are three questions to answer when considering birds’ eye colors: First, what are the pigments and structures that physically create these colors? Second, what are the genes that code for them? And finally, why did all these different colors evolve in the first place? “The vivid eye colors of some birds-of-paradise, bowerbirds, and cormorants seem to be under the influence of sexual selection,” writes researcher Eamon Corbett, “just like colorful feathers.”
Book Recommendation of the Month
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb. One of my favorite books of 2023 so far, this is a wide-ranging exploration of the subject of "road ecology," the surprising ways in which our road networks shape wildlife communities around the world. Evocative and entertaining!
Upcoming Events
November 7: Virtual book talk for Vancouver Audubon (not open to the public, sadly)
November 18: Keynote talk for the Central Valley Birding Symposium in Stockton, California; really looking forward to this one!
That’s all for now. See you next month!