So much of our summer days are spent on the porch or out in the lawn chairs in the shade, watching clouds and listening to the voices and watching the acrobatics of birds.
Even my wife, who has shown no interest in ornithology until now, has acknowledged how fascinating and wonderful it is to be embedded in a sanctuary populated by two old duffers and hundreds of native songbirds.
All around us, they mate, build nests, fledge young, find food and announce their presence and (if we could suss out the subtleties) express all sorts of metadata in their songs. Location. Sex. Mood. Attitude.
We have learned to pay closer attention. Familiarity invites even greater curiosity and has brought the life of birds into our own life as a microcosmic diorama of the larger, precarious and teetering world of wild things not human.
But often these days, the pleasure of a brief visit to a pristine natural area or focus on its plant and animal life is sullied by the hard reality that the larger world is not as diverse and intact, even as the fragments of forest we visit on our favorite hiking trail a few miles from us on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We hear a few migrating warblers overhead at Smartview overlook, and it is bittersweet, because of what we know and the singing birds do not: That birds in general are disappearing from the Eastern forest, literally by the billions.
This sad fact is not a new one. Just the fact that is by now well known--that insect populations, upon which so many avian food webs are built, are in precipitous decline--says that birds, and all the roles they play in the eastern forests must be at some or much risk. But wait: there's more.
I will try to be brief and gentle with the news.
SOME RECENT FACTS ABOUT BIRD NUMBERS IN DECLINE
► The Decline of Eastern Songbirds
This source, like many, lists as causes of birdlife losses the significant habitat loss, especially in the South and Central American wintering grounds and in the northern breeding and nesting zones where temperate and boreal forests are fragmented. degraded or disappeared entirely, as are many wetlands, grasslands and even Arctic habitats.
Also, the brown-headed cowbird (nest predation) apparently is causing more damage to songbird populations as fragmentation increases the "forest edge" habitat, favoring cowbirds and working against black and white warblers or ovenbirds, etc. Similar fragmentation and degradation is also happening at an alarming rate in tropical forests where many songbirds over-winter.
Jays and crows are also nest predators, and they "have benefited greatly from other human-induced changes in the landscape, such as increased suburbanization. High losses of songbird eggs in suburban areas are doubtless due to the abundance there not just of nest-robbing birds, but of dogs, cats, rats, raccoons, and gray squirrels as well.
FYI: These are birds whose continued existence depends on the survival of intact tropical forests:
► Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone | Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
"The first-ever comprehensive assessment of net population changes in the U.S. and Canada reveals across-the-board declines that scientists call “staggering.” All told, the North American bird population is down by 2.9 billion breeding adults, with devastating losses among birds in every biome. Forests alone have lost 1 billion birds. Grassland bird populations collectively have declined by 53%, or another 720 million birds."
► Vanishing: More Than 1 in 4 Birds Has Disappeared in the Last 50 Years
"The scale of loss portrayed in the Science study is unlike anything recorded in modern natural history" and "are a strong signal that our human-altered landscapes are losing their ability to support birdlife,” he said. “And that is an indicator of a coming collapse of the overall environment."
"More than 90% of the total loss of birdlife in the U.S. and Canada (more than 2.5 billion birds) comes from just 12 avian families, including sparrows, blackbirds, and finches."
CANARIES in the CAGE
Later in the morning after sun-up, after spending the wee hours catching up on avian population literature, I headed outdoors to escape such inconvenient truths.
Under the birch tree nearest the house, I unfolded the lawn chair. Low tufts of gray-white cumulus moved silently south, against a muted-blue early morning sky. I settled in. I listened. Eight bird species called while the hourglass recorded the passing of a single minute.
You can listen via the link and hear exactly what I heard. [Turn speakers up.]
Sound Recording (Merlin Bird app from Cornell) May 30, 2022
I played back this one minute 8-part chorus of bird song from one tiny patch of Earth on one Earth morning. I listened, as if hearing these common and familiar birds for the first time, though they have been part of my southern audiosphere since the '50s.
It is almost certain that several of these familiar bird species will not be seen or heard by my grandchildren's children. The species will have vanished from the landscape and the soundscape forever.
In that moment, sadness, loss and regret washed over me, in the way that a moving piece of music can evoke deep, ineffible emotions. I confess that, alone there in the audience of the tragic opera of disappearing birdsongs, I might have shed a tear.
Quote by Documentary film maker, Tom Mustill from The Strange and Secret Ways That Animals Perceive the World