“Bye Bye Birdie
I’m gonna miss you so
Bye Bye Birdie
Why’d ya have to go?
(Bye bye)

No more sunshine (no sunshine)
It’s followed you away (you away)
I’ll cry Birdie (Birdie)
Till you’re home to stay

I’ll miss the way you smile
As though it’s just for me
And each and every night
I’ll write you faithfully
(Bye Bye Birdie )

                ~ Lee Adams & Charles Strouse

I enjoy birds and seeing new ones, but I’m not one of those birdwatchers that keeps a list or scours the countryside seeking out rare species. I like watching birds because, for the most part, they come to you. I can sit at our kitchen table or on our patio and see lots of birds, many attracted by our feeder, but many attracted to the large trees in our yard and various plants that they like. When I was a kid, our dad took us fishing, and hunting ducks, dove and quail, but also taught us the value of most of the birds and animals we encountered in the country. His interest sparked similar feelings in us – we liked to eat the game we collected, but that was a side benefit of being out in nature.

That may be a luxury that is disappearing. The Washington Post’s Climate Lab columnist Harry Stevens discusses the status of birds as recently reported by Cornell Labs, “… the decline and fall of North America’s bird population — a staggering loss of 3 billion breeding adults, or nearly 30 percent of the population, in just a half century … During their summer breeding season in the Northeast, white-throated sparrows (15% loss) have grown scarcer over the past decade. Even abundant species like American crows (12% loss) and American goldfinches (12% loss) have grown rarer.”

Stevens summarizes the situation:

“Birds are a bellwether. The decline of North America’s bird population is a sign of broader ecological problems, such as habitat loss, pollution and climate change. Monitoring their populations helps us understand the health of our natural environment.”

“Birds help the environment. They pollinate wildflowers, disperse plants’ seeds and eat pesty insects like bark beetles and weevils, thereby providing balance to ecosystems”.

“Humans are their biggest threat. Nature is chaotic, so even without humans, some bird species would thrive while others would disappear. But all of birds’ biggest challenges — habitat loss, pesticides, glass windows, even domestic cats — are man-made. Climate change, which alters and sometimes shrinks birds’ ranges, is a threat multiplier.”

Brooke Bateman, the director of climate science at the National Audubon Society is quoted, “When you have people across the world going out and looking for birds and submitting their data online, this is where we really get the power to understand how birds are responding to landscape scale issues like climate change.”

“In the American Southwest, increasing drought and extreme heat have become more commonplace, putting new pressure on desert birds that already live in conditions precariously close to their physiological limits. As a result, birds like the greater roadrunner (27% loss) of “Looney Tunes” fame and the cactus wren (21% loss) Arizona’s state bird, have grown scarcer.”

In the Mojave Desert, “Declines were associated with climate change, particularly decreased precipitation,” the researchers wrote, and warned that “declines could accelerate with future climate change, as this region is predicted to become drier and hotter by the end of the century.”

Stevens also notes, “The spread of towns, cities, farms and ranches across the Southwest has also disrupted desert birds’ natural habitat. Human development has played an even larger role in the plight of birds that live and breed among the grasslands of America’s heartland. Between 1970 and 2019, grassland birds suffered population loss of 34 percent, the largest decline of any bird habitat studied.”

“More than half of the native grasslands in the United States have been converted to farmland, amounting to hundreds of millions of acres of habitat loss for birds like Bobolinks (20% loss), whose females nest in the tall grasses of prairies and meadows … As the grassland habitat has changed, new threats have been introduced, including pesticides like neonicotinoids, which recent studies have shown can be harmful to birds.”

“In the meantime, ornithologists recommend planting native plants, using fewer pesticides, and keeping your cats indoors. If you’re a birder yourself, you can contribute to eBird or other data collection efforts like the Christmas Bird Count.”

“Bye Bye Birdie
It’s awful hard to bear
Bye Bye Birdie
Guess I’ll always care
Guess I’ll always ca-a-a-a-are
Guess I’ll always carrrrrrrre”

~ Lee Adams & Charles Strouse

Additional Information:

Harry Stevens, Bird Populations are Declining, Some are in Your Neighborhood, 1/17/24, Climate Lab, The Washington Post