Category Archives: Resources

Black Birders Week: A Step Towards a More Inclusive Birding and Science Community

May 31 to June 5, 2020 marked the first ever Black Birders Week, a five-day virtual event to raise awareness and highlight the need for action surrounding the racism and discrimination Black individuals face in nature spaces. Unlike their white counterparts, black individuals face additional challenges that can prevent full enjoyment of the outdoors; challenges that are rooted in systemic and historical racism that manifests today in unconscious and conscious biases against black individuals. These challenges often result in low representations or exclusion of people of color in nature and outdoor activities. Black Birders Week sparked a national discussion and the organizers, a group called the BlackAFinSTEM collective, hope that the result of this increased awareness and understanding of the black perspective will lead to a normalization of people of color in birding, nature, and science. 

The idea for the five-day-long virtual event was conceived in response to the alarming racist incident recorded in Central Park between Christian Cooper, an avid Black birdwatcher and member of New York City Audubon board of directors, and a white woman who was weaponizing race as a scare tactic against Cooper.  Seeing the national response, organizers saw this as an opportunity to acknowledge that the experience of Christian Cooper was not uncommon for Black people in nature, and although racism manifests itself in various ways, there are things everyone can do to support a more diverse and welcoming outdoor community for all. 

Each day of the event had a different online experience. Below are posts from Twitter and Facebook that highlights the week’s activities and participants experience.  

Day 1: #BlackInNature celebrated Black nature enthusiasts around the world debunking the stereotype that black people do not enjoy nature. 

Day 2: The #PostaBird challenge asked people to share their favorite bird photos and facts. 

Day 3: #AskABlackBirder featured a two-hour Q&A with Black Birders   

Day 4: The #BirdingWhileBlack livestream discussions offered a space for Black birders, including Dr. J. Drew Lanham, Jason and Jeffrey Ward, Corina Newsome, and Kassandra Ford, to share their love for birds and their experiences—both positive and negative—being and working in natural spaces. (view Session 1 and Session 2).  

Day 5: #BlackWomenWhoBird increased visibility and representation. 

Key takeaway from Black Birders Week

Birding and Nature are for Everyone, Everywhere 

Birding and being in nature are typically thought to be rejuvenating, fun, relaxing, and peaceful, but people of color cannot always fully enjoy these feelings because of an underlying sense of “otherness” or not belonging. In some cases, they experience racism both blatant and subtle. The livestream sessions with Black birders were particularly eye-opening because each and every person on the stream could recount a time where they: 

  • Felt unsafe going to a certain area (or even an entire state) to bird because they feared someone would report a “suspicious” black person or their safety would be otherwise threatened because of the color of their skin. 
  • Felt out of place in a group of other birdwatchers because they were the only person of color and the others in the group seemed amazed by them being there. 
  • Experienced outright racism from police or other individuals. 
  • Made sure to be obvious that they were birdwatching by raising their binoculars or wearing nerdy bird-themed clothes to reduce suspicion. 

It is unacceptable that this is a reality for so many bird and nature enthusiasts. Birds and nature are for everyone to enjoy and study regardless of the color of their skin.  

You Can Make A Difference

Learn more about the discrimination and racism people of color face when they are in natural spaces, at science conferences, and in their lives. 

What We Like to Watch, Read, and Listen to About Nature

As our science staff have been spending more time at home, they’ve been reminded of all of their favorite nature-themed videos, podcasts, radio shows, tv shows, movies, and books, and have found new ones to enjoy as well. Check these out when you find yourself needing something to do.

Podcasts and Radio Shows

  • Ologies: Each week science correspondent and humorist Alie Ward sits down with a professional “-ologist” to ask smart people stupid questions. Episodes range across a wide variety of topics from ornithology (birds), mycology (fungi), and chiropterology (bats), to topics you may have never known existed like ferroequinology (trains) and vexillology (flags)!
  • Wild Ones Live: Mass Audubon’s Director of Conservation Science, Jeff Collins, heard this late one night driving home from the airport, and says, “it’s the strangest, most hopeful audio experience about wildlife conservation.” Author Jon Mooallem, performs excerpts from his book “Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America” with musical accompaniment.
  • The Natural Experiment: An episode from 99% Invisible about how the COVID shutdown is opening opportunities for scientific research (ex: listening to humpback whales without the sounds of boats competing)
  • Living on Earth: Living on Earth with Steve Curwood is the weekly environmental news and information program distributed by PRX. The show is located at the School for the Environment at UMass Boston.
  • Ray Brown’s Talkin’ Birds: Talkin’ Birds is a live and interactive radio show about wild birds and the beauty of nature. Their mission is to encourage appreciation of our natural world and to promote the preservation and protection of our environment.
  • Mardi Dickinson’s Bird Calls Radio: a podcast with interviews of well-known birders on a wide range of birding topics and subjects.
  • Weekly Bird Report for the Cape and Islands: Mass Audubon’s Mark Faherty gives the weekly bird report for the Cape and Islands covering bird migration, unusual nest sites, and other interesting bird facts.
  • VCE’s Outdoor Radio: Our friends at Vermont Center for Ecostudies provide entertaining audio rambles through the forests, fields, and wetlands of our neighbor to the north. 
Jeff Collins, Director of Conservation Science, enjoys one of his favorite podcasts while keeping an eye out for birds.

Videos, TV Shows, and Movies

  • Round Planet:  If you like BBC’s Planet Earth and want to bust a gut laughing like the hyenas and kookaburras, check out this BBC show. Award-winning writers combine factually accurate comedy and incredible natural history footage to tell amazing stores of wildlife around the world.
  • Trees with Don Leopold– Always wanted to learn more about trees and how to identify them? Check out these short videos with Dendrologist Don Leopold as he introduces you to trees found in the northeast.
  • Learn How to Draw A Chickadee from David Sibley
  • True Facts About The Owl: Learn some fun facts about owls.
  • Stuff* Birders Say and Stuff* Nonbirders Say to Birders: birders and friends of birders alike will find these videos hilariously true. (*this is a replacement for another word starting with “S”)
  • Nature Moments: Nat Wheelwright, a Maine Audubon board member, has created a series of videos about the natural world.
  • Night On Earth: A docuseries that uses night-vision camera technology to show nocturnal wildlife around the globe (available on Netflix).
  • Dancing with Birds: A documentary that follows birds of paradise as they try to attract mates in elaborate ways (available on Netflix).
  • Our Planet: Experience our planet’s natural beauty and examine how climate change impacts all living creatures in this ambitious documentary of spectacular scope (available on Netflix).

Books

There are, of course, many books that we could recommend, but for now we’ve focused on a few that are available as eBooks since libraries and many bookshops are closed.

  • Birder murder mysteries by Steve Burrows: Director of Bird Conservation, Jon Atwood, has been enjoying these fun books lately as a way to relax!
  • Lab Girl by Hope Jahren: In this memoir, professor and geobiologist Dr. Hope Jahren beautifully weaves stories from her childhood and research to explore life as a woman in science, passion and curiosity, and the incredible secret lives of plants.
  • Wild by Cheryl Strayed: After her mother dies, 26-year-old Cheryl Strayed sets out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail with almost no experience. Based on true events from her journal, Strayed writes a story that puts you right alongside her on those 2,500 miles.
  • The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner: Two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years studying the finches of the Galapagos Islands and proving just how strong Darwin’s theory of evolution is.
  • Birding without Borders by Noah Strycker: Traveling to 41 countries in 2015 with a backpack and binoculars, Noah Strycker became the first person to see more than half the world’s 10,000 species of birds in one year.
  • A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman: Diane Ackerman’s lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth.
  • Golden Wings & Hairy Toes: Encounters with New England’s Most Imperiled Wildlife by Todd McLeish: A series of well-written and informative essays about creatures including, North Atlantic Right Whale, Bicknell’s Thrush, Indiana Bat, Golden-winged Warbler, Canada Lynx, Roseate Tern, and the Ringed Boghaunter dragonfly. 

Enjoying Nature From the Comfort of your Phone

While many of us are stuck at home, opportunities to explore nature are more limited.  However, there are many ways to engage with nature from your phone or computer, from sharpening your ID skills to submitting observations to a citizen science project. Below are five apps that will keep naturalists and non-naturalists engaged and excited.  

iNaturalist 

This app is like social media for nature sightings. The platform is designed to connect people to a community of wildlife and plant enthusiasts. Create a (free) account and upload photo (or audio) observations of living things. iNaturalist will give you its best guess based on your location and identifications of similar-looking species. Other users can comment on your observations and suggest an ID, which helps the program better identify future observations. Plus, iNaturalist observations can be scientifically useful: iNaturalist’s database has been used to redraw species range maps, and even describe new species.

Seek 

If you want to use iNaturalist’s identify tool without the rest of the app’s features, consider downloading Seek instead. This app has been described as “Shazam for nature” for its ability to ID a living thing by just pointing your camera.  

eBird  

This app is for bird-lovers and life-listers. Create “checklists” of any birds you see in a fixed location or on a walk. eBird tracks your distance and time and shows you a list of possible species based on your location. A half-moon orange circle notes uncommon species for the area and a red circle notes rare species.  

As with iNaturalist, eBird sightings become part of a database of millions of observations, helping scientists monitor large-scale patterns in bird populations.

Merlin Bird ID 

If you’re new to birding, consider downloading Merlin from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Browse a digital field guide of photos, bird sounds, and maps or answer five questions based on a bird you saw to have the app give you its best guess. 

Zooniverse 

Think of this app as digital volunteering. Instead of going out and monitoring nests, you can digitize historical nesting info (see below) that researchers at Cornell Lab of Ornithology will use for their database. Of course, this is only one of any citizen science projects on Zooniverse and topics range from nature to history and everything in between. The app will even track your progress, allowing you to see how much you’ve accomplished. 

Let us know if you decide to use any of these, have used them before, or have other recommendations for nature-based websites and apps you love! 

Bald Eagle via USFWS

Rat Poison Is Killing Birds Of Prey, And People Are Finally Paying Attention

Note: this post contains an image of a dead Bald Eagle that some readers may find graphic.

Most rat poisons kill more than rats—they also pose a fatal threat to birds of prey. This topic recently made the news after a Bald Eagle on Cape Cod died of what appears to be rodenticide poisoning. The tragic story was picked up by several newspapers, and went locally viral on facebook.

This issue should not only get attention when a culturally iconic species like a Bald Eagle dies. Nearly every raptor species is vulnerable to rodenticide poisoning, from Eastern Screech-Owls to Red-tailed Hawks.

In fact, rodenticide poisoning is shockingly widespread. In one study, 86% of all raptors at a Massachusetts wildlife hospital tested positive for exposure to rat poison.

Second-generation rodenticides: the worst of a bad bunch

The EPA recently banned a class of rat poisons called second-generation anticoagulants from the consumer market, but licensed exterminators are still allowed to deploy them. The ban came about because of the 10,000 children annually admitted to emergency rooms for rat poison exposure. The ban certainly helps limit accidental ingestion by humans, but unfortunately doesn’t do much to prevent birds from eating poisoned rodents.

Second-generation anticoagulants don’t kill rodents immediately. While these rodenticides can kill rats with a single dose (which is why many consumers prefer them), poisoned rats can still live for a few days and continue eating poisoned bait. This delay means that rats can ingest enough poison to kill a much larger animal by the time they finally succumb. While any rodenticide can kill a raptor, second-generation anticoagulants are the most dangerous.

The aforementioned Bald Eagle on Cape Cod likely fell victim to this class of rodenticide. While vets at the Cape Wildlife Center are still waiting for test results to come back, the eagle was bleeding heavily, and its blood failed to form scabs or clots—a nearly sure sign of anticoagulant poisoning.

This Bald Eagle was admitted to Cape Wildlife Center, but sadly didn’t make it. Photo courtesy of Cape Wildlife Center.

Rats are a human-made problem

Native to Eurasia, brown rats have colonized much of the globe and become the most common urban rodent worldwide. These rats were among the first human-assisted invasive species, living aboard ships and rapidly spreading to other continents as early as the 15th century, much to the detriment of countless sensitive ecosystems. Rats and other rodents especially wreak havoc on species found only on small islands, and have driven several seabird species to extinction.

Rat populations are on the rise, and towns are struggling to keep up (the town of Belmont even had to close a city park over a recent rat infestation). Rodent control is sometimes critical to the health of a city or an ecosystem—so what are some poison-free ways to prevent or control rodent problems?

(Don’t) pick your poison

  • Prevention is the best cure for rodent problems. Rodent infestations only occur when there’s an easy source of food. Make sure your trash cans are scavenger-proof, cover vegetable gardens with net or wire, attach tree guards to the trunks of fruit trees.
  • Limit access to shelter and hiding places that appeal to rodents. Seal up holes in your attic, basement, crawl spaces, and shed, and remove tree limbs within three feet of your roof.
  • Consider alternatives to poison. The Tufts Wildlife Clinic points out, “People often believe poisons are more humane than snap traps, but an animal bleeding to death is neither quick nor especially humane.”
  • If a rodent problem has gotten out of hand and you choose to use an exterminator, try to pick one that practices “integrated pest management”— a multi-pronged approach that avoids chemical control methods.
  • Finally, call your town or city hall and ask how the local government addresses rodent control. Suggest eliminating rat poison if it hasn’t been done already!

Finding Your First Whip-poor-will

 

Photo by David Larson

A drab bird with a startling call, the Whip-poor-will’s perfect camouflage belies its incredible voice. This nocturnal hunter can broadcast its loud, rhythmic whistle as many as 10,000 times over the course of one night. Wherever Whip-poor-wills live, their sound is as much a part of a summer evening as the familiar chirp of crickets and the whirr of cicadas.

Where’d All The Whip-poor-wills Go?

“Whip-poor-will” is practically a household name. But far more people have heard of them than have actually heard their call. This is no accident—the species has been in trouble since the turn of the 20th century.

Whip-poor-wills’ decline has largely followed the decline of large moths, their favorite food. Recently, a landmark study showed that Whip-poor-wills and other insect-eating birds have been feeding on less and less nutritious prey, as their choices are diminished by pesticide use and habitat destruction.

The Key to Whip-poor-will Habitat

Whip-poor-wills have two main habitat requirements. Firstly, their preference for the largest insects means they require healthy ecosystems that can support Luna moths, Catocala moths, and big grasshoppers. Whip-poor-wills will avoid areas with urban or suburban development, or where pesticide spraying reduces the numbers of large insects. This does not mean that they are averse to open areas—Whip-poor-wills are often found in small agricultural fields, as long as there is little or no chemical disturbance.

Secondly, Whip-poor-wills avoid forests with thick understories and midstory vegetation. While they prefer habitats with some tree cover, they need an open midstory to snatch insects on the wing, and they need bare ground to perch. They are often found in open woodland like pine barrens, as well as small open areas near denser wooded ecosystems—but rarely, if ever, in large tracts of dense thickets.

Sites to Search for Whip-poor-wills

Most places in Massachusetts no longer fit the above criteria with the exceptions of the southeastern and central-west part of the state.

In Plymouth County, try driving the roads of Myles Standish State Forest just after dark.

On Cape Cod, the pine barrens of Wellfleet and Truro often have high densities of Whip-poor-wills; roads through pine barrens between route 6 and the Atlantic beaches are reliable, and even residential roads adjacent to pine barrens can be productive. Crane Wildlife Management Area on the upper cape is also great.

Closer to Boston, you’ll occasionally have luck in the Blue Hills Reservation and on ranger-led programs at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island (which closes at dusk).

Most places around Quabbin Reservoir and the wilder areas of the Connecticut River Valley are excellent for Whip-poor-wills, but few human observers look there at night. If you see a Whip-poor-will out there, report it on eBird, or let us know in the comments!

 

Predicting Spring Migration: Part 3

(This is the final installment in a series on birding by radar. Read the first and second post first so this one makes sense!)

On May 20, 2017, Bay-breasted Warblers seemed to drip from every tree at Mass Audubon’s Marblehead Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. Birders tallied dozens of this normally scarce migrant practically on arrival, alongside equally impressive numbers of Canada Warblers, Blackburnian Warblers, and other migrants. The air filled with high-pitched warbler songs so much that it was difficult to distinguish one from the next. Plum Island was equally loaded, with some observers tallying 123 species for the day. Was this a fallout, or just an excellent day for migration?

Fallout is one of the most exciting spectacles a birder can hope to experience in migration. Serious birders mistakenly use this term all the time to mean “a lot of migrants in one area,” but fallout refers to a very specific phenomenon: birds that cut short their migratory journey due to severe weather or exhaustion.

Birds will fall out along the coast if they are blown far off course over the ocean; they return to land hungry and tired, and large numbers feed at ground-level in coastal vegetation.  Fast-moving fronts of severe weather can also cause fallouts when they interrupt bands of migrating birds, and stationary fronts can stall migrants that land when they encounter it and build up along its edge.

On May 20th, 2017, birders who read the radar saw that northeastern Massachusetts experienced a borderline fallout; a storm had blown birds against the coast and over the ocean, but the weather cleared early enough that many grounded birds continued migrating afterwards. Regardless, the superb birding that day was undeniably predictable.

Reading the Radar on May 20, 2017

The radar for this night showed moderate migration, with a front of severe weather pushing birds south and east. The dense (green and red) precipitation is pictured up against a group of birds, represented by the blue line between the edge of the storm and the mass of birds in the center of the frame.

As the front moved east (see below), the density of migrants increased just to its south. The birds at the edge of the storm, pictured in blue above, appear to have been pushed into the main mass of birds, where they show up as a streak of green (higher-density) in the image below.

The velocity map below paints a slightly different picture. The black areas between the storm and the birds show that the storm is grounding birds. But the birds just away from the edge—that red spur in New Hampshire, for example—are not getting pushed south by it.

The red color (that is, increased relative velocity reading) of that patch of birds shows that they are either 1) continuing to fly east but increasing their speed or 2) flying north instead of east, as if to go around the storm, and maintaining their speed.  In either case, the fact that these birds are being detected further away from the station than the rest of the cluster indicates that they increased their flying altitude (recall that the further away birds are from the station, the higher they need to be to show up on the radar). It’s anybody’s guess why they would be doing this; the storm exists at a higher altitude than the birds, so flying up into it seems counterintuitive.

What Was Missing

Since the front passed fairly early in the evening, many migrants had a chance to pick themselves up and move along after the storm passed. It is not a reach to imagine that the birds that built up along the edge of the storm took off again after the storm passed, and moved northeast again, landing in similar areas along the Maine coast.

What Looked Promising

Storm or no storm, a forecast of west winds turning northwest at dawn is always a good sign for coastal sites. West winds blow inland migrants against the coast, where many prefer to land instead of flying over the water. Other birds overshoot the coast in strong winds, and when winds turn northwest at dawn, these ambitious flyers drop back in at coastal sites like Plum Island and Marblehead Neck.

The Results

A small but significant stream of birds poured off the ocean and onto the coast in the morning. Some experts say that this was strictly because they were pushed east by the storm, but some hold that these birds would have overshot the coast with the west wind anyway.  In either case, velocity readings from early (4:30-5:30) the next morning show many birds over the ocean colored in yellows, olives, and some blue: birds that are not moving directly away from or directly towards the radar station. In some areas, this means they were moving towards the coast.

Arrows on this map indicating bird direction were determined by drawing a line from the radar station (circled) out to a point with birds, and then drawing an arrow slightly over 90 degrees to this line for birds moving slightly away from the station (yellow).

Likewise, the arrow would be at exactly 90 degrees to the line for birds moving neither towards nor away from the station, slightly under 90 degrees to the line for birds moving slightly towards the station (light blues and greys) and in the direction (or close to it) of the line for birds moving strongly towards or away from the station (colored red or deep blue). If you didn’t follow this, don’t worry: the key is that birds over the water at dawn often means coastal fallout.

To sum it up, there were three elements of that evening’s radar that practically screamed “Go birding on the coast tomorrow”:

  1. Radar showing many birds moving more east than north, and some shooting over the coast at high speed
  2. A strong storm that could force migrants against the coast even more vigorously than the winds could, and might even ground many of them.
  3. Most importantly, birds coming in off the ocean early in the morning (4:30-5:30).

Lo and behold, it was an incredible day on the coast the following morning, even though arguments over how much the early-evening storm had to do with it remain unresolved.

This is just one example of how reading the radar can lead to better birding.  Try it for yourself this spring and see if you strike spring migrant gold!

Predicting Spring Migration: Part 2

Last week, we posted an article on predicting bird movements with radar.  Here’s what we went over:

—How birds show up on Doppler radar as solid, expanding circles of radar interference around radar stations, and why this happens

—How to tell these signals apart from precipitation or normal weather patterns

—How larger circles don’t necessarily mean more birds

This week, winds over Massachusetts are shifting. Steady southwest winds may bring a major influx of migrants as early as Tuesday night. So, here’s the rest of what you’ll need to know about watching birds on Doppler radar!

A Need For (Wind) Speed

it’s possible to see airborne objects’ speed relative to the ground using Doppler radar. Birds fly at about 10-15 knots, and know where they want to go. So, they’ll either be moving 10-15 knots faster than the wind if they’re flying in the same direction as the wind, or they’ll be moving in a different direction entirely. Other airborne objects, like insects or dust particles, will always move with the wind.

Here’s how to see the velocity for radar-detected objects online:

Go to the national website for radar data.

  1. In the top left, click on “0.5° Velocity”. (Selecting “reflectivity” will show you the density of the signal, but not the speed.  Velocity, on the other hand, won’t show you how thick the air is with birds—it will only show their speed).
  2. In the top right, go to the drop-down menu for “end time” to select the end time for the series of radar images you want to view. It’s in Universal Time, which is 4-5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Selecting “0500” is best if you want to look at last night’s migration, and selecting “most recent” is best if it’s the early nighttime and you want to see what birds are currently passing overhead.
  3. Go to the drop-down menu for “loop duration” and select 5 hours (or however long you want the series of radar images to be).
  4. Click on the letters “BOS” over Eastern Massachusetts to view radar images!

Image modified from the National Center for Atmospheric Research

In radar images, velocity is always measured relative to the radar station.  So, parts of a cluster of birds with “negative” velocity are moving towards the radar station, and parts of a cluster with positive velocity are moving away from it. The red areas in the image show movement away from the radar station (the dark dot drawn in the center of the image), from southwest to northeast. Blue areas show movement towards the radar station—also from southwest to northeast. Birds in the yellow, gray, and green areas are slower-moving relative to the station: as they pass by it, they are neither moving towards it nor away from it.

The wind was about 20kts (knots) from the southwest when this image was taken.  Since this radar signal shows objects moving NE around 35kts, it’s clear they aren’t just drifting with the wind.  These are bona fide birds!

To check wind speed and direction in your area (to compare to clusters of airborne objects on radar maps), try using Wind Map. Just click to zoom, and hover your cursor over Massachusetts to see the wind speed.

Where Will Airborne Migrants Land?

Velocity data can also tell us where birds are going to end up.  Birds usually migrate for between 5-7.5 hours a night, so multiplying their airspeed by around 6 gives us a very rough approximation of how far they’ll travel in one night. On most nights, this works out to be around 150-200 miles. This means that you can often get a general sense of how good the birding will be in Eastern MA based on early-evening images from Southern CT and New York.

For example, when there’s a big early-evening movement of birds over OKX (the radar station for Southern Connecticut and Long Island) and the radar velocity data show birds moving to the east or northeast, chances are that birding will be good in Eastern MA the following morning. If migrants are moving steadily due north, however, that can be a good sign to head further inland the next day.  Of course, it’s always best to check early-morning radar images as well—on some nights with north winds, migrants will pour in from the Atlantic Ocean right before dawn, making for great coastal birding.

In our next post, we’ll discuss radar images from the night before the best day of spring migration in 2017. It should serve as a case study in how watching the weather and radar can lead to encounters with incredible concentrations of migratory songbirds. Stay tuned!

Predicting Spring Migration: Part 1

If you ask birders what their favorite holiday is, a few will always smile and reply, “spring migration.” Protracted over several weeks, spring migration can indeed feel like a holiday, or at least an annual ritual: time off from work (to go birding), reconnecting with community (other birders), and seasonal gifts that nature drops off in our yards (in the form of colorful warblers).

For beginning birders, mornings in spring can feel as unpredictable as waking up on Christmas as a child to see what Santa brought. Migratory birds appear (or don’t) as if by magic, and the species differ from day to day. There’s no telling what a morning in May can bring. But birds are creatures of habit; with a few tricks, it’s easy to take the guesswork out of birding during spring migration.

Warblers Follow The Wind

West and Southwest winds bring us the greatest numbers of migrants, which would ordinarily move straight North from their Mid-Atlantic stopovers. In Westerly winds, warblers sometimes build up against the coast as they try to avoid being blown out over the water. When the wind is from the South, the Berkshires and Pioneer Valley hold more migrants.

Read the Radar

Doppler radar, mostly used by forecasters use to track weather patterns, also readily picks up signals from migrating birds. Radar works by emitting radio waves that are reflected back to the transmitting antenna by any objects in the way. It’s sensitive enough to detect droplets of water in the air, so it was no shock when ornithologists in the 1950s realized radar could pick up birds as well. Now, advanced birders as well as scientists rely on radar to understand birds’ mass movements at night.

A Brief Radar Primer

There are many ways of accessing radar data online, but the most beginner-friendly is Paul Hurtado’s bird radar website.  Just click on the date you want to see radar maps for and you’re good to go!

The most important part of reading the radar is distinguishing birds from weather patterns.  Rain or hail shows up as denser interference (represented on this map by green and yellow colors) in irregular, ragged shapes. Birds, on the other hand, appear on the map as distinct circles, and show up as lower-density (pictured on this map as blue and light blue). Hard to believe as it may be, most of what the radar is picking up in the image below are birds.

Visualization by Paul Hurtado; modified from www.pauljhurtado.com.

Why do these birds show up as clusters or circles around radar stations? Radar antennae point their beams up at an angle, creating a funnel-shaped zone of detection. Groups of migrating birds fly relatively low compared to rainclouds and so only pass through a circle-shaped cross-section of radar beams. Think of a cone-shaped searchlight- the lower down in the beam you go, the smaller its area is.

So, larger circles don’t mean more birds—they just mean birds flying higher up, where the radar beam is broader. (You can see in the image below that some of the blue circles have started to overlap). But more birds filling the sky will mean that more of the radar beam is reflected, creating a higher-density signal. Dense areas of migrating birds are represented by lighter blues and greens (see Texas and Maine on this map).

Stay Tuned For More

This is just the tip of the iceberg! There’s much more to learn. In a few days, we’ll follow up with a post on how radar can show birds’ speed and direction, and where they land after a long night migrating.  Subscribe to our blog to get part 2 in your inbox!

Where Do Woodcocks Go In The Snow?

When winter weather drags on into late March, our earliest spring migrants still show up on schedule!  Birders often hear the sharp, reedy “peent!” of American Woodcocks in mild weather amid other spring sounds, like the clamor of wood frogs and spring peepers. Hearing them calling from fields covered in several feet of snow can seem incongruous. So how does lingering snow affect these enigmatic birds’ ability to find food?

Beak Superpowers

Woodcocks find insects by probing underground with their beaks. The tips of their beaks pack a bundle of highly sensitive nerves, which they use to pick up on vibrations from insects moving in the soil.

The tip of their beak can also flex open while the rest of it stays closed, allowing woodcocks to delicately pick up food without having to pry their whole bill open underground. The ability to open just the end of the beak is called distal rhyncokinesis  (rine-co-kin-EE-sis), or simply rhycokinesis  when discussing beak flexibility more generally. It’s a trait shared by many members of the sandpiper family, woodcocks included.


This photo only partially shows how flexible the tip of a woodcock bill is– underground,  they can close the lower two thirds and move just the outer third. (Photo: Will Freedberg) 

 

With such particular feeding habits, spring snowstorms might seem to spell trouble for these ground-dwelling insect-eaters. In particular, 2018 has seen a spate of nor’easters barreling through New England, dumping foot after foot upon snow.

Snowed-in Woodcocks Seek Open Ground

Woodcocks can often feed successfully through a shallow layer of snow, but only if the ground is not frozen through. If the ground has already thawed, a covering of snow will in fact keep the ground from freezing fully again, if temperatures return below freezing.

But March 2018 has seen snowpack deeper than a woodcock’s bill is long, even when the ground hasn’t been frozen solid. In years like this, woodcocks feed near any natural features that keep snow off the ground—along the banks of streams and flowing water, or under coniferous trees that partially shelter the ground from snow.

Birders in the know will look for them in these areas, and are careful not to scare or flush these easily-stressed birds. Their flight displays have continued along the edges of fields so far regardless of snow cover, and should keep going into April.

For more tips on how to find woodcocks, check out our list of sites and programs!

Hot Off the Press! State of the Birds 2017

Black-capped Chickadee may face an uncertain future in Massachusetts. ©Bill Thompson, USFWS

It is with great pleasure that we announce that our third edition of State of the Birds is now available. State of the Birds: Massachusetts Birds and Our Changing Climate focuses on what the future may hold for the breeding birds of Massachusetts as the climate continues to change.

Our last two State of the Birds reports, released in 2011 and 2013, compared the past to the present and identified changes in Massachusetts bird populations. The 2017 edition builds on that work by using science to predict the future.

Climate Matters For Birds and People

Most birds have limited distributions and, to some extent, climate controls the range of those distributions. To glimpse the future, we used a statistical analysis called climate envelope modelling.

Put simply, climate envelope modelling uses real bird and climate (various measures of temperature and precipitation) data to define the preferred climate of a bird species—their “climate envelope”—as it is today. Then the models substitute predicted values of the climate variables into the equation to project a bird’s climate envelope in 2050.

Using the results of our analysis, we assigned each of the 143 species analyzed a “Climate Vulnerability” score. There were some expected results and some surprising results. The overarching message was that birds are already feeling the effects of climate change and even some of our most common birds will probably experience further changes by 2050.

It’s In Our Power to Change the Future

While climate change can feel like an overwhelming problem, it is a problem that we can solve. Much like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, we are being shown a possible future for our birds, and, just like Scrooge, we can take action today to change that future.

Visit the website, download the report, and share it with your friends and family. If we work together we can protect birds, wildlife, and ourselves.

Check out the article in the Boston Globe about the State of the Birds report.

Please consider supporting our bird conservation work by making a donation today. Thank you!