Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Save-the-Date: Audubon Assembly - October 17-18, 2014 - Hutchinson Island

Date: Oct. 17-18, 2014
Location: Hutchinson Island Marriott Beach Resort & Marina

Audubon staff and volunteers are hard at work preparing this year's programs and events. Please stay tuned in the coming months for additional information, including registration material, Assembly theme announcement, field trip details, prices, and guest speakers.

Don't miss what is sure to be the best Assembly yet, mark October 17-18 on your calendars right now!
See you in October!

Birds of the Indian River Lagoon Presentation

Patricia Tierney, Naturalist, Sams House at Pine Island Conservation Area

Pelican Island Audubon Society office manager and wildlife photographer Bob Montanaro will provide a photo presentation titled: "The Birds of the Indian River Lagoon" on Saturday, June 7th at 10am at the Environmentally Endangered Lands Program's historic education center, Sams House at Pine Island. Join us in the air-conditioned cabin as Bob takes us on a photo journey up and down the IRL, capturing the beauty of our diverse bird residents and migrants. This hour-long presentation is free to the public. Sams House at Pine Island is located north of SR 528 at 6195 North Tropical Trail, Merritt Island, FL 32953. Call 321-449-4720 with questions.

Photographic proof of a very unlikely event

Dee Fairbanks Simpson

A few weeks ago, someone asked here if there are hummingbirds nesting in Brevard County. I responded, telling her about the hummingbird nest that was directly above our booth at the Enchanted Forest Earth Day celebration a few years back.

Up until yesterday, that was the only hummingbird nest I'd ever seen. So, David and I were teaching beginning birding at the Women in the Outdoors festival yesterday, when David noticed a hummingbird... going in and out of a nest directly above our booth. What on earth are the chances of that happening not once, but TWICE in my life?? It is pretty unbelievable, so I posted a blog of both the EF nest as well as the WITO one:

http://www.deederange.net/2014/04/extremely-unlikely-events.html

2014 Legislative Session Report: Florida's water set to become big issue of 2015

Reprinted from the Audubon Advocate

The 2014 Florida Legislative Session has come and gone and will be scored as a major success for Audubon Advocates. Every time you raised your voice in opposition, bad bills died.
You signed a petition in opposition to hydraulic fracturing and the two bills relating to that came to a screeching halt. You let everyone know you were fed up with bills that weakened or destroyed environmental protection and bills ceased to move through committees.
From the beginning of session and all throughout, we heard that next year will be the year for water policy issues as the incoming leadership prefers to address those important topics at the 2015 Session. If this year was any kind of dress rehearsal, then no doubt we are ready. And fired up.
The 2014 Legislative Session brought out many new supporters as Senators and Representatives alike began to understand the need to address some of the state’s critical water quality problems. Senator Joe Negron (R-Palm City) led the way with the creation of the Senate Select Committee on the Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee Basin last summer which resulted in record funding for this area and many Everglades projects as well.
Also in the Senate, an impressive “Gang of Five” consisting of Senator David Simmons, Senator Charlie Dean, Senator Wilton Simpson, Senator Bill Montford and Senator Alan Hays put their best effort into launching a Springs bill, only to have it refused in the House. The good news here is that Senate President Elect Andy Gardiner has stated that he intends to see this through next year when he becomes President of the Senate. Here’s hoping Speaker Designate Steve Crisafulli is more receptive to the need for this bill next year as well.
The 2014 session was marked by a budget surplus and the ever present awareness of upcoming elections in the fall. While we had some disappointments such as the decreased funding for Florida Forever, all in all it was a good session for Florida's environment. Thank you for your continued support.

Next year will be the year of water policy.With your help, we will be ready.

Flyways for Flyweights: Small Birds Capitalize on Weather Patterns During Epic Migrations

Reprinted from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Blackpoll Warbler by Brian Sullivan.

In one of the greatest feats of endurance in the biological world, millions of tiny songbirds—many weighing less than an ounce—migrate thousands of miles to Central and South America each year. Now scientists are finding out how these featherweights do it: using elliptical routes that take advantage of prevailing wind patterns to save calories.

“Most of what we’ve known about migration routes comes from ducks and geese,” said Frank La Sorte, a Cornell Lab of Ornithology research associate and lead author of a new paper in Journal of Biogeography. “But terrestrial birds are much smaller and they aren’t reliant on the same kinds of habitats. There really isn’t a narrow migration path for them, and they aren’t necessarily in the same place in spring and fall.”

American Redstart, one of the songbird species identified in the study as part of an Eastern migratory flyway. Photo by Brian Sullivan.

Scientists for years could do little but assume songbirds followed the same well-defined “flyways” that ducks, geese, and shorebirds use to travel up and down the continent: one flyway along each coast, one up the Mississippi River valley, and one in the center of the continent. Those flyways were delineated by compiling leg-band recoveries and hunter records—techniques that don’t work for small songbirds that migrate at night.

The new work solved this problem with a fresh approach and crowdsourced data submitted to the Cornell Lab’s eBird project between 2004 and 2011. The researchers analyzed thousands of sightings to develop, for each of 93 species, an aggregate picture of where a species is during spring and fall migration. Although they weren't tracking individual birds, collectively the sightings gave them an indication of how the species were migrating. They then used computer models to sort species with similar movement patterns into groups. They also compared migration routes with seasonal patterns of prevailing winds at night.

The study revealed that most land birds fit into three main groups, a Western group consisting of 31 species, a Central group of 17 species, and 45 species in an Eastern group (examples include the Black-throated Gray Warbler, Clay-colored Sparrow, and American Redstart, respectively). The researchers kept the term “flyway” to retain the analogy to waterfowl movements, but they noted these flyways are much more spread out across the continent, and routes in the Central and Eastern groups overlap considerably.

The analysis also revealed that many more land birds than previously realized follow different routes in spring and fall—particularly in the East, where many species cross the Gulf of Mexico in a single overnight flight.

Unlike waterfowl, which migrate north and south along the same relatively narrow routes, rather like semi-trucks on an interstate, songbirds are more like passenger cars touring back roads. They are less tied to a single habitat than waterfowl, so they can fan out across the continent. Many species in the Eastern and Central groups take southbound routes far to the east of their northbound routes, resulting in a clockwise migration loop that puts some of them out over the Atlantic Ocean on their way to their wintering grounds.

Blackpoll Warblers migrate along different routes in spring and fall. The new study shows many other songbirds migrate in similar elliptical routes. Photo by Brian Sullivan.

By shifting routes, birds are taking advantage of stronger tailwinds in spring and less severe headwinds in fall, the study’s analysis of prevailing winds found. Tailwinds represent a huge advantage for birds heading back to their breeding grounds, La Sorte said, while finding weaker headwinds in fall allows southbound birds to make the best of a bad situation. The pattern has been noted in the past for a few species, such as the Blackpoll Warbler, but this study gives the first indication of how widespread it is among land birds.

The findings may help refine ideas about how and where to plan for conservation along migratory pathways.

“All these species migrate at night, at high altitudes, where we can’t see them,” La Sorte said. “But when the sun comes up in the morning they have to find somewhere to land. So any new knowledge about where they’re traveling is valuable to conservation planners.”

In addition to La Sorte, the paper’s authors include Daniel Fink, Wesley Hochachka, Andrew Farnsworth, Amanda Rodewald, Kenneth Rosenberg, Brian Sullivan, David Winkler, Chris Wood, and Steve Kelling, all of the Cornell Lab. The research was supported by grants from the Leon Levy Foundation, the Wolf Creek Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

State Budget Includes Record Amounts for Everglades

Tamiami Trail Bridge, Indian River Lagoon, and more get much needed attention from the Florida Legislature.

The 2014 Florida Legislature is poised to finalize the 2015 budget and the Everglades is getting record amounts, including a whopping $90 million three-year commitment to match federal funds for Tamiami Trail bridging. The budget also funds a range of important projects and programs for the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee and estuaries.
Other Everglades items include $40 million for the C-44 reservoir project to help reduce harmful discharges to the St. Lucie Estuary, $32 million for the state’s Everglades Water Quality Plan, and $18 million for the C-43 reservoir to help improve the health of the Caloosahatchee Estuary. The budget also funds a number of projects to store and clean water throughout the Northern Everglades and estuaries.
While not giving specific numbers, the budget states that funds may be increased or decreased to expedite the completion of the Kissimmee River Restoration, C-111 South Dade, and the Picayune Strand restoration projects. These are three top priority projects which will help restore the flow of water from the Northern Everglades south to rehydrate Florida Bay, and rehydrate wetlands.
Audubon acknowledges the Everglades Foundation for their leadership to increase Everglades funding. We will continue to advance the construction and operation of these projects through vigorous advocacy at the local, state, and federal levels.
This record Everglades budget is due in part to Senator Joe Negron (R-Palm City) who convened a Select Senate Committee that held public hearings and recommended many of the projects in the budget.

Please click here to more information on Greater Everglades appropriations.

Alert! Stop Carbon Pollution Now

Birds have long been bellwethers of nature gone astray. And they have been telling us for a while that climate change is here, and now. The signs are clear—migrating songbirds are arriving early, and species that normally don't hang around for winter are becoming more common. Climate change is upon us.

But there is good news. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finalizing a rule to curb carbon pollution from new power plants—a historic first step in the fight to slow down climate change. Audubon and our partners collected over three million comments when the draft rule was published. Now let's put it over the finish line with your support today.

Please send in your comments to support EPA's final rule to limit industrial carbon pollution from new power plants.

Many energy companies are now adopting new technologies that will reduce carbon emissions by as much as 50 percent by 2030. The companies are taking these steps voluntarily, without being required by government regulation. Moreover, efforts to curb carbon pollution have been underway in municipalities and statehouses across the country. But it's not enough without federal leadership. Now, for the first time ever, the EPA has moved to cut industrial carbon emissions from a major source like power plants—responsible for 30 percent of the carbon pollution in the U.S.

Less carbon pollution from power plants means less mercury and less toxic gas, which in turn mean less asthma and fewer early deaths from lung and heart disease. Reducing carbon pollution is our best chance of slowing climate change. This rule to curb pollution from new power plants is that first important step.

Let's send EPA a final show of support for this critical first step to reduce industrial carbon pollution and make the air cleaner for all. Please send in your comments today. Comments are due May 9, don't delay!

Sincerely,

David Yarnold
President & CEO, National Audubon Society

Join New “YardMap” Project to Create Bird Habitat

Reprinted from Cornell Lab of Ornithology News

The backyard is far more than a place to install a pool, hold a barbecue, or toss a Frisbee. The sum of all North American yards and neighborhood green spaces equals major habitat for birds and other wildlife. Creating larger, connected patches of bird-friendly habitat is one goal of the new YardMap citizen-science project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The project has undergone extensive testing by 10,000 users who created more than 6,700 maps. YardMap is ready for everyone and is now inviting new participants to join.

“People often think their yard is too small or too urban to impact wildlife, but that just isn’t true,” says YardMap project leader Rhiannon Crain. “For many plant and animal species a yard can mean the world. A butterfly can live its whole life from egg through caterpillar to butterfly in one person’s yard, so it matters quite a lot if the owner uses pesticides.”

After signing up for the free online project, participants zoom in on satellite images to construct maps of their yards, local parks, workplaces, local cemeteries, or any other green space they know well. They mark the maps to show areas of lawn, buildings, native plants, feeders, and other landscape features. Scientists and participants can see how the spaces connect to form larger landscapes and share information about improving habitats at home and across communities. By pairing habitat information with bird sightings, participants learn about the effects of different gardening practices at a much larger scale.

Changes don’t need to be dramatic. Putting in a few native plants, moving feeders closer to windows to reduce deadly collisions, or creating a brush pile birds can use to escape from predators can all have a significant impact for local birds.

“Right now we’re losing 21 million acres of habitat every 10 years to residential development,” says Crain. “But we also know there are millions of people out there concerned about the environment, ready to tread more lightly on the land. Even if you’re just starting your wildlife garden, we’d love to share the journey as you document your progress with YardMap.”

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Nature on the Net

Here are some interesting recent articles:

Get Fascinated by Feathers With New All About Bird Biology Site

From the Cornell Lab eNews

Feathers are amazing: they're light, aerodynamic, beautifully patterned, colorful, waterproof, and warm. To help curious minds of all ages learn about these impressive structures, we've just launched an in-depth, immersive website. It's the first stage of our new All About Bird Biology project, with more to come. Try out All About Feathers, including these great elements:

Self-paced interactive features with custom art and video
Free Powerpoint downloads of all the illustrations and animations, especially useful for teachers
Accompanying reference article that provides quick access to the science
A video library featuring 90+ videos that bring bird biology to life

Eve Samples: On the marshes of Lake Okeechobee, a remarkable comeback

By Eve Samples

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

From our vantage point on the coast, looking toward Lake Okeechobee feels like looking down the barrel of a gun.

We see the looming threat of more polluted freshwater releases into the St. Lucie River estuary. Drive 45 miles west, though, and the view shifts dramatically.

It's not threatening. It's beautiful.

On the northwest side of Lake O, shoreline marshes that were obliterated during the hurricane years of 2004 and 2005 have rebounded. In the most pristine parts of the 730-square-mile lake, the water is now clear enough to see bottom. And the birds are back - big time.

Roseate spoonbills. White pelicans. Glossy ibis. Snowy egrets. Black-necked stilts, with their supermodel-like proportions (they have the longest legs compared to their body size of any bird in the world).

A dozen other species took to the air, too, as we skidded across the marshes in Audubon scientist Paul Gray's airboat last week.

"The lake is in perfect shape," Gray told us.

The most striking indication of recovery are the 20 endangered snail kite nests recently mapped in the marshes. The raptor had virtually disappeared from the lake after the storm years. This year, it is rebounding. "I bring up people from the Everglades and they say, 'Wow, we never see this many birds,' " Gray said.

Cruising past thousands of birds in King's Bar shoal, it was hard to believe this was the same lake that wreaks such abuse on our estuary.

It's like there are two different Lake Okeechobees: one in the thriving marshes near the shore; another in the phosphorous- and nitrogen-dense center of the lake, where the bottom is thick and muddy. The latter is what's sent our way when the Army Corps of Engineers opens the flood gates from the lake into the St. Lucie Canal. But keeping those gates closed carries serious risks for the lake.

The reason the marshes of Lake O look so good this year has a lot to do with the fact that the Army Corps is keeping less water in the lake. Unlike in 2004 and 2005, when the lake surged to elevations in the 17- and 18-foot ranges, last year it barely reached 16 feet (and only briefly). The lower levels, combined with an experimental bottom-dredging project during the drought year of 2007, have allowed native plants and birds to flourish.

"All of this was open water. Not a single foot of vegetation," Gray said as he drove us across now-pristine marshes. It's not exactly what coastal advocates want to hear.

While last year was a boon for the marshes of Lake Okeechobee, it was devastating for the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries. From May through October, more than 136 billion gallons of lake water were dumped into the St. Lucie alone, bringing an estimated 72 tons of phosphorous, 656 tons of nitrogen and 15 million pounds of sediment.

On the coast, the pollution prompted cries for the Army Corps of Engineers to hold the lake higher now that it has repaired part of the Herbert Hoover Dike that encircles it. But Gray knows what danger waits if we return to the old practice of holding the lake too high.

As different as the on-the-ground conditions are, the ultimate solution is the same for Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries. It lies in sending more water south, reconnecting the lake with the Everglades. That would allow Lake Okeechobee to stay at lower levels, even in the rainiest years. It would spare the estuaries the gushing discharges from the Big Lake, too.

Nathaniel Reed, vice chairman of the Everglades Foundation, called the comeback of the lake marshes "one of the miracles of Mother Nature." If we fix the plumbing, we won't have to depend on a miracle to strike again.

Eve Samples is a columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. This column reflects her opinion. Contact her at 772-221-4217 or eve.samples@scripps.com

Scientists Acknowledge Crucial Role of Volunteers in Advancing Research

Reprinted from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Young people participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count citizen-science project, held over four days each February. Photo by Christine Bartholomew.

Amateur naturalists and hobbyists are getting their due today after more than a century of volunteering for bird counts and other studies. An article in the top journal Science recognizes these “citizen scientists” as crucial contributors whose work can stand on equal footing with professional science. Lead author Rick Bonney, director of program development and evaluation at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, notes that it’s uniquely human talents like passion, curiosity, and perception that make citizen scientists indispensable sources of data and insight.

Bonney says:

"For most of history science was something people did as amateurs or hobbyists, but in the twentieth century it became a very specialized profession. Today the doors have been thrown open again. Anyone can be the eyes and ears on the ground, collecting data that even the most sophisticated instruments can’t."

"It’s people in their backyards looking at flowers and looking at birds, but it’s way bigger than that, too. There are well over a million citizen scientists solving real-world problems: figuring out protein structures; transcribing the writing on ancient scrolls. People are studying genes to galaxies and everything in between."

"We’re seeing participation growing exponentially, and that’s largely because of the Internet. Online tools and especially smartphones are really clearing away the barriers to participation. Social media makes it easy to find new opportunities, including for communities who previously haven’t had the means to get involved."

"Citizen science appeals to people’s innate curiosity, and also to their desire to make the world a better place. It adds meaning and value to their hobbies, and gives them a way to contribute to social or environmental causes."

NOTE: The news appears as a policy paper in the journal Science by Bonney and coauthors Jennifer Shirk, Tina Phillips, and Andrea Wiggins of the Cornell Lab; Heidi Ballard of the University of California, Davis; Abraham Miller-Rushing of the National Park Service; and Julia Parrish of the University of Washington.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

April 12, 2014 Field Trip

We will be taking a road trip field trip to Green Cay & Wakodahatchee Wetlands in the Delray, Boyton Beach area of Palm Beach County on Saturday April 12th. We will meet at the Cracker Barrel on Wickham Rd just west of I-95 at Exit #191. We will meet at 6:00 am and I will allow a 15 minute grace period and we will pull out at 6:15 am sharp. It is about a 2 hr drive. I would suggest on bringing snacks, drinks, sunscreen and lunch. We will carpool to reduce the amount of vehicles going and it is customary to share the gas expense. If we don't have a large turnout we might be able to stop for lunch somewhere along the way.

Those of you that have not been to these 2 places it is easy walking on wooden boardwalks. There are

restrooms at both locations and Green Cay has a nature center and gift shop. We will go to Wakodahatchee

Wetlands first and then Green Cay. They are only about a 5-10 minute drive apart. In case folks show up

after our 6:15 am departure time below are the address for both locations. The weather looks very favorable. High 78 and 0% rain chances as of today.

Wakodahatchee Wetlands

13026 Jog Rd

Delray Beach, FL

561-434-5372

Green Cay Nature Center

12800 Hagen Ranch Road
Boynton Beach, FL
561 966-7000

Jim Eager

Space Coast Audubon Society

Publicity Chair

Join Space Coast Audubon Society for April 18th Meeting “Turtles and More”

WHO: Space Coast Audubon Society (SCAS)

WHERE: Rockledge Presbyterian Church, 921 Rockledge Dr, Rockledge, FL.

WHEN: April 18, 2014 at 7:30 pm

Jim Angy of Jim Angy Nature Photography will be our speaker and will be presenting Turtles and More

Jim Angy is an award winning nature photographer who has not only mastered the skill of wildlife photography, but who also has an encyclopedic knowledge of his subjects. Jim has been a resident of Brevard County for more than 40 years growing up in Satellite Beach and now lives with his family in Indialantic. For the past 30 years, Jim has been photographing Florida’s wildlife. His images have appeared in books, calendars, post cards, and magazines including The Nature of series of books by Cathie Katz, Florida’s Fabulous Birds, Florida’s Fabulous Reptiles, Florida Wildlife, Popular Photography and The Florida Naturalist. Jim enjoys sharing his knowledge of finding and photographing wild animals and has led numerous photographic classes and field trips and presented his wildlife slides for many organizations. His photographs have won local and national contests and he currently has three (3) images from Pelican Island NWR as part of the America’s Wild Places exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

Jim spends a lot of time with camera in-hand, observantly poking around in the Brevard County wilds looking for the perfect shot of who-knows-what. One of his favorite subjects is sea turtles. Egg laying season is the time sea turtles present a photo-op for land-based photographers. Jim has been a long-time supporter of all things environmental in Brevard County and is well-known in the county as a naturalist, and public speaker.

Visit the Space Coast Audubon Society website at www.spacecoastaudubon.org

Look forward to another great turnout.

Jim Eager/Space Coast Audubon Society Publicity Chair

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Join SCAS on March 21, 2014 for "Radar Birding 101"

By: Jim Eager, Space Coast Audubon Society Publicity Chair

WHO: Space Coast Audubon Society (SCAS)

WHERE: Rockledge Presbyterian Church,

921 Rockledge Dr, Rockledge, FL

WHEN: March 21, 2014 at 7:30 pm

Angel & Mariel Abreu will present Radar Birding 101

Have you ever wondered how many birds fly over Florida under the cover of night during migration? Thanks to advances in Doppler weather radars we are now able to investigate and answer this question. In this workshop we will teach you how to use radar to analyze bird migration. You will learn how to interpret radar images and how to put this technology to use when choosing where to bird during migration. We will also cover how weather plays a crucial role as to when and where birds will migrate. After this workshop you will be able to "see in the dark", adding a new tool to your birding toolkit that can take your birding to the next level.

We are known by many as the birding duo who always say “Nature is Awesome”. We love to wander around the outdoors looking for the next bird that wishes to cross the path of our Nikon binoculars. In 2013 we joined the Nikon Birding Prostaff team, and with help from Nikon Sport Optics we hope to spread the word that “Birding is Awesome”. We are best known in the Florida birding community for our work on radar ornithology. During spring and fall we share radar images of birds migrating and predict birding conditions across the state at www.badbirdz2.wordpress.com. As a result we have become amateur meteorologists, spending countless amounts of time looking at weather patterns and wind charts in search of answers to questions about where birds are headed and where the next “fallout” may occur.

We both fiddle in the world of nature photography with an emphasis on birds and their habitats and surrounding nature. On our quest to cover the entire state of Florida, we can be found at any one of the state’s campsites mulling over the campfire about where we should explore on our next adventure.

Visit the Space Coast Audubon Society website at www.spacecoastaudubon.org

Look forward to another great turnout.

Read About Fertilizer and the Indian River Lagoon

The links below were provided by another community group in Brevard County working on this issue.

Warming Temperatures Are Pushing Two Chickadee Species—and Their Hybrids—Northward

Reprinted from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

DNA sleuthing confirms chickadee “hybrid zone” marching northward as climate warms

The zone of overlap between two popular, closely related backyard birds is moving northward at a rate that matches warming winter temperatures, according to a study by researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Villanova University, and Cornell University. The research was published online in Current Biology on Thursday, March 6, 2014.

In a narrow strip that runs across the eastern U.S., Carolina Chickadees from the south meet and interbreed with Black-capped Chickadees from the north. The new study finds that this hybrid zone has moved northward at a rate of 0.7 mile per year over the last decade. That’s fast enough that the researchers had to add an extra study site partway through their project in order to keep up.

“A lot of the time climate change doesn’t really seem tangible,” said lead author Scott Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “But here are these common little backyard birds we all grew up with, and we’re seeing them moving northward on relatively short time scales.”

The two chickadee species meet and hybridize in a narrow zone that has shifted northward 7 miles in the last decade. Full-resolution image is available here.

In Pennsylvania, where the study was conducted, the hybrid zone is just 21 miles across on average. Hybrid chickadees have lower breeding success and survival than either of the pure species. This keeps the contact zone small and well defined, making it a convenient reference point for scientists aiming to track environmental changes.

“Hybridization is kind of a brick wall between these two species,” said Robert Curry, a professor of biology at Villanova University, who led the field component of the study. “Carolina Chickadees can’t blithely disperse north without running into black-caps and creating hybrids. That makes it possible to keep an eye on the hybrid zone and see exactly how the ranges are shifting.”

The researchers drew on field studies, genetic analyses, and crowdsourced bird sightings. First, detailed observations and banding data from sites arrayed across the hybrid zone provided a basic record of how quickly the zone moved. Next, genetic analyses revealed in unprecedented detail the degree to which hybrids shared the DNA of both parent species. And then crowdsourced data drawn from eBird, a citizen-science project run by the Cornell Lab, allowed the researchers to expand the scale of the study and match bird observations with winter temperatures.

The researchers analyzed blood samples from 167 chickadees—83 collected in 2000–2002 and 84 in 2010–2012. Using next-generation genetic sequencing, they looked at more than 1,400 fragments of the birds’ genomes to see how much was Black-capped Chickadee DNA and how much was Carolina.

The site that had been in the middle of the hybrid zone at the start of the study was almost pure Carolina Chickadees by the end. The next site to the north, which Curry and his students had originally picked as a stronghold of Black-capped Chickadees, had become dominated by hybrids.

Female Carolina Chickadees seem to be leading the charge, Curry said. Field observations show that females move on average about 0.6 mile between where they’re born and where they settle down. That’s about twice as far as males and almost exactly as fast as the hybrid zone is moving.

This 2-minute video explains the basics of chickadee hybridization and the research findings:

As a final step, the researchers overlaid temperature records on a map of the overlap zone, drawn from eBird sightings of the two chickadee species. They found a very close match: the zone of overlap occurred only in areas where the average winter low temperature was between 14 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit. They also used eBird records to estimate where the overlap zone had been a decade earlier, and found the same relationship with temperature existed then, too. The only difference was that those temperatures had shifted to the north by about seven miles since 2000.

Chickadees—there are seven species in North America—are fixtures in most of the backyards of the continent. These tiny, fluffy birds with bold black-and-white faces are favorite year-round visitors to bird feeders, somehow surviving cold winters despite weighing less than half an ounce.

To the untrained eye the Carolina Chickadee of the southeastern U.S. is almost identical to the more northern Black-capped Chickadee—although the Carolina has a shorter tail, less white on its shoulders, and a song of four notes instead of two notes. Genetic research indicates the two have been distinct species for at least 2.5 million years.

“The rapidity with which these changes are happening is a big deal,” Taylor said. “If we can see it happening with chickadees, which are pretty mobile, we should think more closely about what’s happening to other species. Small mammals, insects, and definitely plants are probably feeling these same pressures—they’re just not as able to move in response.”

In addition to Taylor and Curry, the authors include Thomas White of Cornell University, Valentina Ferretti of Villanova University, and Wesley Hochachka and Irby Lovette of the Cornell Lab.

Escalator to Extinction: Climate Change Pushing Tropical Birds Up the Mountain…and Off

Reprinted from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Many tropical mountain birds are shifting their ranges upslope to escape warming temperatures that disrupt their way of life, according to research by a husband-and-wife team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that retraced scientist Jared Diamond’s landmark New Guinea expedition in the 1960s. The study will be published on February 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But there’s only so much room on these mountains. Climate change predictions suggest that before the end of this century, global warming will push at least 4 of these species into localized extinctions, says Benjamin Freeman, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. student at Cornell University. Freeman conducted this research with his wife, Alexandra Class Freeman, a Ph.D. who works at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“Our research demonstrates that no matter where you are on earth, even a tropical wilderness island in the South Pacific, climate change is happening and having tangible impacts,” says Class Freeman. “In this case, the activities of industrialized nations causing climate change are impacting birds in remote New Guinea, deep in tropical mountain forests, causing them to move up the slopes to find their preferred habitat.”

The new study extends existing research by showing that tropical species are more sensitive to climate shifts than species from temperate regions. Many birds, such as the Northern Cardinal in the United States, have moved farther north over the past 50 years. Birds that live on mountains are also shifting their ranges, in their case moving up in elevation to escape warming temperatures below. The Freemans’ research showed that mountain birds in tropical climates are moving upslope even farther and faster than those in temperate climates—almost 400 feet (or as high as a 40-story skyscraper) over about the last 50 years.

“We always hear about polar bears being affected by large temperature changes in the Arctic, but many tropical birds are attuned to small microclimates, and so they are just as much affected by the smaller-scale change happening in tropical climates,” says Freeman. “And because a mountain is like a pyramid, there’s less area for habitat available as they move up the mountain. They’re being squeezed both by temperatures and for space.”

The research was conducted on two remote forested mountains in Papua New Guinea, one (Karkar Island) hosting an active volcano and the other (Mt. Karimui) a dormant one. The Freemans followed up on Diamond’s pioneering bird surveys of these mountains 50 years ago, which offered a baseline for measuring change. The annual mean temperature on these islands has risen about 0.7 degree Fahrenheit in the past five decades. The birds’ movement up the mountains closely matched the temperature increase. On Mt. Karimui, 87 bird species (or 70 percent of all species in the survey) responded by shifting their ranges up the mountain by an average of 370 feet. On Karkar Island, which is a smaller oceanic island with fewer birds and less diversity, a greater proportion of birds (17 species, or 77 percent of all species in the survey) moved upslope by an even greater amount—an average of 500 feet. The mountains in the research are about 8,000 feet tall.

Because these mountains are so remote, there has been minimal human development. Climate change is the only major environmental change that has occurred since Diamond’s historical transects.

Four bird species in the study—the White-winged Robin, Mountain Gerygone, Crested Satinbird, and Crested Berrypecker—have already shifted their ranges up near the summit of Mt. Karimui. A further 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit increase will likely result in the localized extinction of all four of these species, say the authors. Temperatures in New Guinea are predicted to increase by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century.

“The predicted change by the year 2100 will not only finish off four species on these mountains, but another 10 to 15 species will be put in very precarious positions,” says Freeman. “Furthermore, these upslope shifts are not only happening on the two New Guinean mountains we studied. They’re happening with Peruvian birds, Indonesian moths, Madagascar chameleons, and probably the majority of species in tropical mountains.”

While the species affected on Mt. Karimui and Karkar Island will persist on other islands with taller mountains in New Guinea in the short term, the broader trend is clear—continued temperature increases will cause extinctions of tropical birds on mountains.

This research presents strong evidence of the need for tropical mountain habitat conservation, say the authors, who point out that intact and connected contiguous forests up a mountainside provide the best conductivity for bird species moving upslope.

“As climate change continues and even increases, we know several bird species will be looking for habitat corridors and forested places for new homes at the upper elevations of tropical mountains. Agriculture and development present barriers to the movement of these birds. So we need to make sure the habitat is in place to allow birds to adapt,” says Freeman.

“The biggest problem, of course, is global climate change,” says Class Freeman. “We can’t build more mountains and more high-elevation tropical forests, so the best thing we can do to help these birds is tackle climate change.”

A pdf copy of this research paper, entitled “Rapid upslope shifts in New Guinean birds illustrate strong distributional responses of tropical montane species to global warming,” can be viewed and downloaded at www.eurekalert.org/pio/pnas.php. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Athena Fund of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Explorer’s Fund.

Columbia Birding

By Jim Eager

Anyone interested in birding in Columbia? The atmosphere has improved significantly and is now safe to bird. Ernest Leupin was born and raised in Cali, Columbia and has vast knowledge of the flora and fauna of the varied habitats. I am planning on having Ernest come to Space Coast Audubon general meeting, in the fall, and give his presentation. I saw it at the Everglades Birding Festival, last month, and it was awesome. Contact me at beachbirder@bellsouth.net if you are interested.

Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC)

By Jim Eager

For all that were able to participate in the GBBC it looks like so far Florida has the 3rd highest species count in the US with 307. Audubon is still collecting and tabulating data so the numbers are subject to change. Great job Florida birders.

State/Province	Number of Species	Number of Checklists
California	358	8,472
New York	165	7663
Pennsylvania	136	6945
Ontario	146	6329
Texas	350	5526
Florida	307	5376
Ohio	137	5214
Virginia	179	4883
North Carolina	194	4876
Michigan	127	4000