American Avocet ©2004 Al MacKeigan

Bird Study Group - Birding News

Free Guide to North American Hawks

Click here to link to Hawk Migration Association of North America to view free guides such as the new silhouette Guide to Hawks Seen in North America.

A new web-based bird identification tool called Dendroica was introduced by the Honourable Jim Prentice, Canadian Environment Minister on May 8, 2010.

The site includes photographs and sounds recordings of bird species from Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Click here to explore Dendroica

News Release: Collection of Warbler Songs from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

A compilation of 310 songs and calls for 57 species of warblers is now available from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library—the largest archive of wildlife sounds in the world.

News Release: International Cooperation is the Key to Protecting Migratory Birds

National leaders from Canada, Mexico, and the United States
release landmark tri-national conservation assessment for birds

Saving Our Shared Birds: Partners in Flight Tri-National Vision for Landbird Conservation is the first comprehensive conservation assessment of birds at the tri-national level.  Partners in Flight is a cooperative effort involving government agencies, non-profit conservation organizations, academic institutions, professional associations, industry, and private individuals. Check out the Partners In Flight website to view the assessment.

Key findings of Saving Our Shared Birds: Partners in Flight Tri-National Vision for Landbird Conservation:

• The most imperiled birds include 44 species with very limited distributions, mostly in Mexico, including the Thick-billed Parrot and Horned Guan.

• Also of high tri-national concern are 80 tropical residents with ranges in Mexico, such as the Red-breasted Chat and Resplendent Quetzal.

• Additionally, 24 species that breed in the United States and Canada continue to warrant immediate action to prevent further declines, including Cerulean Warbler, Black Swift, and Canada Warbler.

• Forty-two common bird species have steeply declined by 50% or more in the past 40 years, including Common Nighthawk, Eastern Meadowlark and Loggerhead Shrike.

Government officials, on behalf of international bird conservation leaders from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, released the report on May 11, 2010, at the XV Annual Trilateral Committee for Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation and Management meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The release of the report also brought attention to International Migratory Bird Day 2010, celebrating The Power of Partnerships.

Common Birds In Decline
(from the National Audubon Website)

What's happening to birds we know and love?

Audubon's unprecedented analysis of forty years of citizen-science bird population data from our own Christmas Bird Count plus the Breeding Bird Survey reveals the alarming decline of many of our most common and beloved birds.

Since 1967 the average population of the common birds in steepest decline has fallen by 68 percent; some individual species nose-dived as much as 80 percent. All 20 birds on the national Common Birds in Decline list lost at least half their populations in just four decades.

The findings point to serious problems with both local habitats and national environmental trends. Only citizen action can make a difference for the birds and the state of our future.

Which Species? Why?

The wide variety of birds affected is reason for concern. Populations of meadowlarks and other farmland birds are diving because of suburban sprawl, industrial development, and the intensification of farming over the past 50 years.

Greater Scaup and other tundra-breeding birds are succumbing to dramatic changes to their breeding habitat as the permafrost melts earlier and more temperate predators move north in a likely response to global warming. Boreal forest birds like the Boreal Chickadee face deforestation from increased insect outbreaks and fire, as well as excessive logging, drilling, and mining.

The one distinction these common species share is the potential to become uncommon unless we all take action to protect them and their habitat. Go to the National Audubon website to read the full report and learn what you can do to help.