Last night as we slept, countless millions of birds passed overhead in waves, guided by stars or magnetic fields or some mystery we have yet to unravel. Some were traveling long distances. Shorebirds like godwits and red knots and curlews fly nonstop for days on end, covering multiple thousands of miles without rest or food. Even tiny species of warblers and hummingbirds find the energy to stay airborne day and night, fueled by a few grams of fat and muscle and raw determination. They fly with incredible accuracy and can land within yards of where they nested the prior year.
My wife is a lover of wildlife and a dedicated bird feeder. Among her offerings is grape jelly, which she dobs on a small plate attached to our deck rail as soon as the first oriole arrives. If this year is typical, on a day in late April or early May we’ll hear the song and find the bird perched on the rail eight feet from our patio door. And here will be a bird which has just flown from as far away as South America that has not only found its way back to our yard but remembers with pinpoint accuracy where there was something to eat a year ago. Rested and fortified, it will fill our days with song and flashes of flaming orange as it feeds, pursues a mate, and rears its young. And then in August it will feel a restless wanderlust and disappear beyond the southern horizon as if nothing at all spectacular were happening.
About 40 percent of the world’s birds migrate. We might assume it’s because their nesting grounds become inhospitable in winter but that’s not always the case. There are seasonal movements of insignificant distance, a hundred miles or less, with no obvious difference between summer and winter digs. And the majority of birds don’t migrate at all but stay in a given area year round. It doesn't always make logical sense but who are we to question an animal that’s been around since the Jurassic era? Birds have had plenty of time to sort things out and find their place.
We’ve come to appreciate the role birds play in providing environmental services. Their contributions in seed dissemination, pollination, nutrient cycling, scavenging, and pest control are well documented. Beyond their ecological value, they give us a sense of environmental wellbeing wherever diverse and abundant populations are found. They sing, lift our spirits, color our days.
We’ve seen the number of orioles that liven our summer landscape drop by more than half over the past 25 years. Across the globe there are far fewer birds than fifty years ago, fewer still than fifty or a hundred years before then. Their decline has been driven by our propensity for clearing and draining and fouling land that had been prime habitat. Ridding ourselves of so many birds was never a stated objective but a predictable outcome, and it continues today in the name of growth or dominion or some misguided sense of what we consider expendable. We are slow to give up old methods and behaviors even when we know or suspect they have damaging consequences. Ecological systems show remarkable tolerance for abuse but they have limits and we’re exposing them.
Across the US and Canada more than three billion birds have been lost over the past 50 years, with populations plummeting in almost all habitats. More than 90 species not yet recognized by the Endangered Species Act have declined by half or more in the same period. If these trends continue, more extinctions are inevitable and every bird species will eventually be impacted. Losing birdlife is both a part of and a contribution to a larger environmental calamity.
This morning there is a literal symphony outside our window— a riot of birds. We live in a state known for agribusiness and manufacturing, a state that has drained over 85 percent of its wetlands, cleared the majority of its forests, led the nation in toxic air emissions and been recognized for having the most dirty waterways. Yet, the birds! If ever there was a testament to the resiliency in nature it is here, for the time being, on a bit of midwestern wildland at the dawning of a spring day.
Like the canary in the coal mine, bird varieties and their densities are a litmus test for environmental quality. In the night skies a migration has commenced, an age old event filled with determined and admirable and essential participants. They will carry on as long as we let them.
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