In this post, we are going to look at the intersection of identification of birds and advanced computing. In particular, I will concentrate on machine learning, a type of computation considered a part of the field of artificial intelligence.

Wouldn’t it be great if an app or computer program could identify a bird from its vocalizations or from a photo? The future is here thanks to machine learning.

The app with lots of buzz is Merlin, an app developed by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.  It is available free for Android and Apple IOS platforms.

Machine learning is used to create Merlin. The application is given a training set of bird vocalizations and photos whose identity is known. The program then seeks to teach itself how to identify each of those vocalizations or images. Once trained, the program is then given unknown vocalizations or images and provides an identification. The programmer can check whether those identifications are correct. If not, the program is informed of the wrong decision and will revise its learning. So, the application should get better and better over time.

When you first open the app, you choose a part of the world where you do your birding. You also will be prompted to download a Photo ID file.

For identification of images in Merlin, you either take a photo of a bird in the field or use a photo from your library. Merlin will ask where the photo was taken. Push Identify and Merlin will provide its best reckoning of your species along with other secondary choices.

Merlin first appeared in 2014. Initial versions could identify 400 common North American species birds from images. Now, using the vast photo library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the app is well trained. Over 8,000 species can be identified now, 80% of the world’s bird species.

How good is Merlin at identifying birds from photographs? I have found it is remarkably accurate if you have a decent photograph. Some users report a 90% or higher rate of correct identifications.

To me, Merlin’s ability to identify sounds is more useful and is nothing short of astounding. All you must do is press the Sound ID button on the app and a recording begins. Obviously getting close to the singing or calling bird is ideal but smartphone microphones are impressive these days.

Merlin will then identify the sound of your mystery bird as well as any other birds that are vocalizing. It’s cool to put your phone out in your backyard to discover all the birds that are vocalizing. Merlin gets over 90% of the sound identifications right.

You can imagine how this technology can be used to census birds. My friend Randy Downer used Merlin while conducting a Breeding Bird Survey in June. The survey involves three-minute stops at 50 different sites. At each stop, Randy compared his sound identifications with Merlin, finding a high level of concordance.

A similar result was found by a Breeding Bird Survey volunteer in North Carolina. At one stop, the observer was listening intently to a tanager, trying to decide if it was a summer tanager or a scarlet tanager. He missed some rough-winged swallows, flying overhead but Merlin didn’t.

At another stop, Merlin had six more species than the observer. A major flaw? No, that stop had a Northern Mockingbird singing and its repertoire of mimicked species fooled Merlin. I think this result is really a testament to how good mockingbirds are at mimicry.

With the use of any identification software, a skeptical perspective is warranted. Particularly for species that Merlin identifies that are rare or beyond the usual range, take a hard look and see if other species are more likely. If you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.

Although Merlin is widely appreciated, a minority oppose its use in conducting censuses or just identifying birds because of possible errors and because Merlin could be a barrier to developing our own skills in auditory and visual identification.

On the positive side, Merlin provides a bird identification for people whose sight is diminishing. The Sound ID feature of Merlin is a way for birds to be enjoyed even if an observer has difficulty in seeing the birds.

The broad topic of this post came to me from two readings. A recent article in Science reported that a net loss of three billion of the roughly ten billion birds in North America have disappeared since 1970. Virtually all types of birds have suffered these declines. Then there was the news that the Monarch butterfly has been placed on the Endangered Species list.

Of course, the question that immediately comes to mind is why? Why questions are basic to science. The scientific method is one of the most powerful ways humans have of knowing. But that methodology differs from arguments and inquiries in other walks of life.

Let’s start with a major-league baseball player who is negotiating a new contract. His agent selectively goes through the player’s accomplishments, emphasizing the strengths and downplaying weaknesses. Meanwhile, the general manager of the team accentuates the player’s shortcomings and sells his accomplishments short. The participants from both sides are trying to prove their particular viewpoint.

The selective use of information to build an argument is found in many situations. Politicians on either side of the aisle cherry-pick data in support of a position or bill. Family squabbles or arguments among friends are other examples.

However, the method of science is fundamentally different. A scientist makes observations, such as declining numbers of birds, then develops a hypothesis (essentially an informed hunch) that might explain the pattern. Then the scientist collects data to try to disprove the hypothesis.

If the information collected does not disprove the hypothesis, that explanation is provisionally treated as true. Additional observations and experiments from different angles are done to try to knock down that hypothesis.

Only have multiple efforts to disprove a hypothesis is that explanation given credence. Even then, scientists realize that the jury is still out, and future experiments may well disprove the hypothesis.

So, scientists must be skeptics. The mode of scientific inquiry is to disprove hypotheses. Scientists accept a hypothesis as provisionally true not because the scientist proved it but because he failed to disprove it. If you hear a scientist claimed he proved a hypothesis, he fails to understand the scientific method.

The scientific method avoids the problem of a phenomenon called confirmation bias. A scientist may have a clever hypothesis to explain some pattern in our world. But subconsciously, the scientist may downplay information that disproves the hypothesis and accentuate information that supports. By trying to disprove the hypothesis, this bias is eliminated. We can feel confident about a hypothesis that has withstood multiple efforts to disprove it.

Now, back to the declines of birds and Monarch butterflies. Following the banning of DDT, chemists and agronomists sought to develop insecticides for the protection of crops without affecting other insects and other animals. In 1999, a new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids were introduced.

Neonicotinoids (or neonics) are neuro-active insecticides, chemically similar to nicotine. The neonic named imidacloprid is now the most widely used insecticide in the world.

Neonics work well against sucking insects, some chewing insects and soil insects. In other words, agricultural pests. Initial work showed neonics have low toxicity in mammals.

Unfortunately, neonics affect other insects. Controlled experiments implicate neonics in the collapse of honeybee colonies and other pollinators. Bumblebee abundance is down by 90% in the last 20 years. Such insects are critical for most plants and virtually all crop plants. There is a certain irony here: neonics protect crops from herbivores but kill the pollinators that allow the crop plants to produce.

The European Union has been more proactive in responding to pollinator declines caused by neonics. The three most common neonics were banned in Europe in 2018. Several U.S. states have followed that lead.

An EPA statement published in August 2021 stated that 80% of the 1445 Endangered Species in the U.S. are being negatively affected by neonics. This list includes plants, insects, birds, amphibians, and freshwater invertebrates. These results are based on hundreds of scientific studies. What are we waiting for?

For an excellent review of neonic impacts on birds, see the recent article by Scott Weidensaul, one of our most gifted nature writers, in the Living Bird: https://bit.ly/3QtJbeA  

As a word lover, I am fascinated by the scientific names of organisms, especially birds. The Swedish naturalist, Karl Linnaeus, began the tradition of giving each species a binomial name, a genus and a species. Generally, these names are based on Greek or Latin roots.

A taxonomist who finds an undescribed species prepares a description of the species, explaining how it differs from other species. The taxonomist has the pleasure of assigning the species name and, if the species is sufficiently distinctive, the genus name. The only rule in choosing a scientific name is that a taxonomist cannot name a new species after herself.  

Sometimes the name may be frivolous. I know of a marine worm from Florida that was described by a visiting Brazilian taxonomist as Zygonemertes cocacola after the soft drink she enjoyed during her visit.

Sometimes, a genus or species name is a eponym, named after another scientist or friend. So, the scientific name of Wilson’s Plover is Charadrius wilsonia, honoring the early American ornithologist, Alexander Wilson and Sabine’s Gull is Xema sabini, honoring the British ornithologist, Joseph Sabine.

However, I appreciate genus and species names that are based on some aspect of a bird’s behavior or appearance. Consider the Northern Shoveler, a duck with a spectacularly large bill. Its scientific name is Spatula clypeata. The genus name comes from the Greek for spoon and the species name is Latin for shield-bearing. Together, those terms encapsulate the oversized bill of this bird.

How about the Blue Jay, Cyanocitta cristata? The genus name means dark blue in Greek and the species name means crested in Latin. That’s perfect: a dark-blue crested bird.

My enthusiasm for puzzling out the meanings of genera and species led me to take a year of Latin as an undergraduate. But there are easier ways to decipher scientific names.  James Jobling wrote a book called the Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. You can download this informative book for free from the Internet Archive (https://tinyurl.com/2sh5fsc7).

One of my favorite genus names in the bird world is Troglodytes, a genus that includes the House Wren and the Winter Wren. The genus name comes from the Greek for cave-dweller. Most wrens either nest in cavities or create domed nests with a roof and a lateral entrance.

A domed nest would seem to have many advantages. Domed nests are warmer, offer protection from the sun and rain, and provide better protection from predators.

Generally, species with domed nests have higher clutch sizes than related species with open nests. For instance, the Prothonotary Warbler, one of the few cavity-nesting warblers, lays one or two more eggs on average than other warblers with their open nests. The risk of losing a clutch to the elements or predators is less in a domed nest, leading to an advantage of increasing the clutch size.

However, open nests are far more prevalent in songbirds. How can we explain this pattern?

To explore this problem, an international team of ornithologists, led by Dr. Iliana Medina, from the University of Melbourne in Australia, collected data on the nest design, building time and the geographic range of 3,175 species of songbirds.  

The authors correlated their various measurements to search for suggestive relationships. Species with open nests generally had larger ranges and lower extinction rates. A lower extinction rate is not surprising since species with larger ranges tend to have higher population sizes and spread the extinction risk over a broader area.

Birds with open nests were also more likely to live in urban areas. Since most birds with domed nests build their nests on or near the ground, few opportunities for safe nesting exist in an urban environment.

The authors found that domed nests take longer to build and hence are more costly.  As far as defense is occurred, domed nests do provide a barrier to predators, but escape from an open nest can be quicker.

This study nicely demonstrates the power of comparative biology.

We’re at the height of the nesting season for most of Maine’s breeding birds. Most of our perching birds (songbirds and flycatchers) are on their breeding territories now. The tremendous energetic cost of migration is now replaced with the energy costs associated with reproduction: nest-building, incubation of eggs and feeding of nestlings.

Bird movements haven’t stopped. To be sure, territorial birds will stay put until young are fledged. But other birds are always on the move. The best local examples are red crossbills and white-winged crossbills.

These birds rely on the cones of coniferous trees for food for themselves and for their young. Their crossed bills and powerful tongues are prefect for forcing apart adjacent scales of a cone and extracting the nutritious seed at the base of each scale.

We know that cone production is highly variable from year to year. In most years, a modest crop of cones is produced. In some years, few cones at all are produced but in other years, called mast years, a superabundance of cones are produced.

Biologists believe the reason for this high variability is a response by the trees to seed predation by insects. By producing few seeds in most years, insect populations are kept low. A mast year can them overwhelm the insects. The insect populations will increase but they can’t reproduce quickly enough to eat all the seeds.  Some conifer seeds will give rise to a new generation. Then, a following year of low seed production spells curtains for many insects.

The crossbills wander broadly until a large cone crop is found and nesting behavior starts. White-winged crossbills have been found nesting in every month of the year. I love to tell my story of seeing white-winged crossbills feeding nestlings in January in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont when the temperature was -35 degrees!

Behaviorists call this wandering behavior irruptive migration. Unlike standard migrations where end points are fixed and the timing is predictable, irruptions maintain the element of surprise. You never know when and where an irruptive species might appear.

Not all members of territorial species claim a territory. A portion of a population is nomadic on a small scale. Mostly males, these birds wander around trying to displace a territorial male (good luck with that), find an unmated female or seek to take the place of a territorial male that might have died. These unwilling bachelors are called satellite males or floater males.

A rather gruesome experiment performed in Maine in 1936 provides valuable insight into satellite males.  The experiment was performed in a 40-acre tract of forest. In early June, the number of singing males was mapped. A total of 124 territorial males of many species were found.

Then, , the researchers went out with shotguns and shot as many males as they could. They reduced the population of singing males to 21% of the original number by June 21 and kept the singing birds at that level until July 11.

At the end of the study, the biologists had killed 528 birds, 3.5 times the original number of territorial males. Clearly, floater males were rapidly coming in to take the place of males that had been killed. There seems to be no lack of satellite males.

I always relate this particular study with trepidation because of the killing involved. This experiment is offensive in our 21^st century ornithological sensibilities.

I think the chances of such a study being approved today are slim. Federal biologists enforce the protection of our native birds provided the Migratory Bird Treaty.  To kill birds for scientific purposes, a federal Collecting Permit is required from the Bird Banding Laboratory, an agency in the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Services. A state Collecting Permit is also required. The application requires the applicant to describe the purpose of the study and justification of the collection.  

We see an almost synchronous arrival of a guild of songbirds collectively called the leaf-gleaning insectivores.  These birds include our vireos, warblers and tanagers.  All of them make a living by preying on caterpillars and other herbivores that attack the leaves of deciduous trees.  The leaf-gleaning herbivores are the friends of the trees, gobbling up the leaf-eating insects. A cascade of events occurs in spring allowing the warblers and vireos to return: leaf-out, followed by emergence of caterpillars, followed by the arrival of the leaf-gleaning birds.  In central and southern Maine, the first ten days of May capture the arrival of many of these birds.

Among these arrivals are Red-eyed Vireos.  I daresay that Red-eyed Vireos vie for the title of most common woodland bird in eastern North America.  A bird of treetops, Red-eyed Vireos are much more often heard than seen. 

Hearing a Red-eyed Vireo is a snap because they sing vigorously all through the day.  Their song is a series of two- and three-note phrases. An effective mnemonic for learning the song is “here-I-am, where-are-you, over-here, in-the-tree.”

The song is rather monotonous and dry. Despite the seeming monotony of their song, Red-eyed Vireos show remarkable diversity in their two- and three-note phrases.  A typical Red-eyed sings around 45 phrases.  Those phrases are strung together to make a distinctive song type.  Each song type consists of the same one to five phrases.  A typical male sings about 30 song types.

A less common vireo breeding in Maine, the Philadelphia Vireo, needs to be considered in this column.  Red-eyed and Philadelphia vireos share an intriguing overlap in their songs.

The Philadelphia Vireo closely resembles the Red-eyed Vireo but has a less distinct line above the eye and has a yellow wash on the underparts.  The Philadelphia Vireo is also smaller, averaging 12 grams in weight to the 17-gram weight of a typical Red-eyed Vireo. 

Most nesting male songbirds defend their territories against other males of its species, but not against males of other species. However, Red-eyed Vireos and Philadelphia Vireos defend their territories against their own species and against the other species. 

The song of the Philadelphia Vireo is very similar to the song of the Red-eyed Vireo song.  Even highly experienced birders pass off singing Philadelphia Vireos as the more common Red-eyed Vireo.  The reason for the similarity will soon be apparent.

In northern New England forests, insect prey may become quite hard to find during the breeding season.  Because both vireos eat the same insects, there is an advantage for a territorial vireo to keep a member of its own species and members of the other vireo species away from its food sources.

In most cases, the vireos avoid direct confrontations over the boundaries of a territory.  Instead, a territorial bird proclaims his ownership of a territory by singing from perches throughout his territory.  Similarly adjacent territory owners sing throughout their territory.  The neighboring birds recognize unseen but real boundaries, avoiding physical interactions.

The problem the Philadelphia Vireo has is how to maintain exclusive ownership of a territory, defending against a larger and stronger Red-eyed Vireo that may be trying to expand his territory.  Philadelphia Vireos have solved the problem by becoming a social mimic.  These birds mimic the song of the Red-eyed Vireo.  

Play-back experiments have shown that Red-eyed Vireos cannot tell the difference between a Red-eyed Vireo song and a Philadelphia song.  No wonder birders have trouble telling the two species apart by song!  On the other hand, Philadelphia Vireos can distinguish between a Philadelphia Vireo song and a Red-eyed Vireo song. Philadelphia Vireos mimic the song of the Red-eyed Vireo to level the playing field; it’s a case of deception over brawn.

This post is the second of two recounting a four-day birding trip my wife and I took to Puerto Rico in May.

I am taking the opportunity to discuss some of the general features of island birds. In the last post, we saw that island species diversity is generally lower in mainland source populations. We also saw that exotic species have an easier time establishing themselves on islands, particularly in disturbed areas.

Today’s column will focus on organisms that are restricted to one or a few islands. These species are called endemics by biogeographers.

It’s easy to see how endemic species can arise. A few individuals of a mainland species make it to an island and, over time, diverge from the mainland species. Sometimes these endemic species are found only on the island where they arose. In other cases, endemic species may disperse to nearby islands.

As an example, the Greater Antillean Grackle is found on the four islands of the Greater Antilles but nowhere else. Similarly, the Lesser Antillean

Bullfinch is found on most of the Lesser Antilles.

Island endemics are restricted to a single island. Puerto Rico has 17 endemic species and those were the main targets of our trip.

Most of the Puerto Rican endemic birds are widespread and common. We had a little time to bird in the afternoon of our arrival on May 9. At Bosque Estatal de Cambalache, our first endemic was a Puerto Rican Lizard-cuckoo, with a lizard in its beak! We found Puerto Rican Bullfinch and Puerto Rican Spindalis (a tanager relative).

Moving to a suburban area in Barcelonata, we hit the jackpot. We saw Puerto Rican Flycatcher, Green Nango (a hummingbird),  Puerto Rican Oriole, Adelaide’s Warbler and Puerto Rican Woodpecker.

After a hearty dinner, we stopped at a small tract of forest in Manati where our guide Julio had staked out a Puerto Rican Owl. It responded quickly to a recording, and we got great looks via a headlamp.

It was a great start to our trip. A total of three hours of birding yielded nine of the 17 island endemics.

We started birding early the next day at Bosque Estatal de Rio Abajo. The area quickly yielded three more endemics: Puerto Rican Vireo, Puerto Rico Emerald (a hummingbird) and Puerto Rican Tody. Todies are charming birds. Green above with a red throat and a long, thin bill, these feisty birds are not a whole lot bigger than a hummingbird and fly with the same speed and abandon.

But the primary reason for visiting this site was to find the Puerto Rican Parrot. Only about 100 of these birds exist in the wild with another 450 held in a captive-breeding program. A flock of eight parrots landed near us and I was able to get some nice photos. None of the photographed birds had bands, indicating they had been born in the wild. Good news!

With 13 endemics in the bag, we headed to the southwestern part of the island. A stop at a mountain site produced two target endemics. Elfin Woods Warbler looks like a particularly dark Black-and-white Warbler. The Puerto Rican birds were not recognized as a separate species until 1972.

We also saw my most desired species, the Puerto Rico Tanager. Although it has dull plumage and a weak song, I find it fascinating because of how much it has diverged from its mainland ancestor. DNA evidence supports classifying this bird in its own family, a family of one species.

We got our final two endemic species in the town of Lajas. Yellow-shouldered Blackbird is an Endangered Species with only about 1000 individuals existing. Brood parasitism by Shiny cowbirds is a major threat. We saw about 50 blackbirds in a mangrove thicket.

After dark, we visited the same mangroves and found a Puerto Rican Nightjar to complete a clean sweep of all the Puerto Rican endemics.

You can see a trip report with a list of all the species (some with photos) we saw at: https://ebird.org/tripreport/57209

My wife and I recently returned from a wonderful birding trip to Puerto Rico. In two posts, I will report on some of the highlights of our trip. I will also explore more general aspects of birds found on islands.

Our priority was to find the 17 species of birds only found in Puerto Rico. We timed our trip to occur after the many species of wintering songbirds had departed for North America, so avoided having to sort through tons of overwintering songbirds for Puerto Rican specialties.

We hired Julio Salgado to be our guide. A friendly person, Julio has a vast knowledge of the birds of Puerto Rico. His hearing is acute, and he has the best eyes of anyone I have ever birded with. Julio can be reached at: https://www.puertoricobirdingtrips.com/

Islands have played a major role in the growth of many scientific fields. The Galapagos Islands provided the inspiration for Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Other islands have been the focus of major studies that have advanced ecology, behavior, biogeography, geology, and paleontology. Biologists and geologists are fascinated by islands.

Puerto Rico is a relatively small island, measuring about 110 miles in the east-west direction and 40 miles in the north-south direction. It is barely larger than Rhode Island.

The number of species on an island is determined by the proximity of the nearest continent and the size of the island. The species diversity of Monhegan Island is high relative to Maine because it is so close to the mainland. Remote islands like Hawaii have much lower diversity.

Puerto Rico has 376 bird species of which 196 are vagrants, birds which appear out of range and are not seen regularly.  Delaware has 420 species with 96 vagrant species. Rhode Island has 431 species with 109 vagrant species.

So, Puerto Rico has much lower diversity than Delaware or Rhode Island with 180 regularly occurring birds compared to the 324 in Delaware or 324 in Rhode Island, states of roughly equal size to Puerto Rico.

If we look at Florida, the closest state to Puerto Rico, we find that Florida has 373 regularly occurring species.

The pattern of reduced diversity was evident to us by what we didn’t see. There are no crows or jays on the island. We did not see a single gull on our trip. Only three species of warblers nest in Puerto Rico.

A second feature of islands is that species introduced either intentionally or inadvertently by humans frequently become established.  Particularly in disturbed habitats, introduced species can carve out a niche and thrive.

The first bird we saw in Puerto Rico was a Monk Parakeet in its massive nest built on an urban light pole. These birds are native to southern South America but are established in Puerto Rico.

We birded a disturbed grassland area near Manatí on the northwest portion of the island. We found many Pin-tailed Whydahs. These are birds of the African savannah. During the breeding season, males grow long tail feathers. They fly over the grassland attempting to attract females by the lengths of their tail feathers.

In the same area, we found Red Bishops, Orange-billed Saxbills, Scaly-breasted Munias and Bronzed Manikins in the tall grasses. All are African birds, brought to Puerto Rico as cage birds. On a power line, we found an African Collared Dove.

Arriving at a park at Vega Baja, a flock of White-winged Parakeets flew overhead. They are native to the Amazonian forests of South America.

We saw a small flock of bright yellow Saffron Finches perched on a chain-link fence surrounding a factory. These birds are native to northern South America.

While birding in a suburban area in Barceloneta, I caught a glimpse of a large orange and black bird. It looked like a Baltimore Oriole on steroids! We got good looks at this Venezuelan Troupial. It is in the oriole and blackbird family but, as the name implies, is a bird of northern South America.

Birdcast

Spring migration is going full bore right now. Most of our warblers, vireos, thrushes, tanagers, and lots of other perching birds are near their migratory peak.

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has a fantastic new tool to monitor bird migration. The tool is called BirdCast and takes advantage of radar scans to determine the density of nocturnal migrants anywhere in the continental United States.

You can reach BirdCast at https://birdcast.info/

Scroll down a bit to the Migration Dashboard box, enter the state or county of interest and click Search.

As I write this post on May 1, I see from the Migration Dashboard that 548,600 birds have crossed Maine tonight so far. Over 3.4 million birds are now in flight over Maine. This night looks like one of the three heaviest spring migration nights so far.

Some of those three million birds will land in Maine before dawn. May 2 should be a spectacular morning for birding.  So, you can see the value of this BirdCast tool for letting you know when a hot morning of birding awaits or perhaps when you might want to catch a few more winks because few migrants are passing through.

The Migration Dashboard provides other interesting data like flight direction and speed, altitude, and a cumulative plot of all the birds that have crossed Maine (or any other state) this spring.

Maine Breeding Bird Atlas

Where does the time go? It seems that the Maine Breeding Bird Atlas project has just gotten started. Actually, it kicked off in 2018 and we are now in our fifth and final year of this project to document the distribution of Maine breeding birds at a fine scale.

Despite the challenges of COVID during the 2020 and 2021 seasons, we have made great progress in completing many of the Priority Blocks, particularly in the southern half of the state. The Priority Blocks, each about nine square miles in area, are distributed throughout the state to ensure the state is sampled thoroughly.

However, 294 Priority Blocks are not yet completed. Twenty hours of observations are required to complete a block. Many of these blocks have received some sampling. I hope you will consider adopting one or more of these blocks. You can see a map of the incomplete Priority Blocks at: https://tinyurl.com/2p94sbdb  Click on a block to see how many hours are required to complete the block.

Some species run the risk of being under sampled because of their secretive nature, dense habitats, or nocturnal activity. Two initiatives address these species and volunteers are needed.

The Maine Nightjar Monitoring Project is designed to sample Whip-poor-wills and Common Nighthawks, two species that are declining in Maine. Volunteers travel along a prescribed route at dusk and on moon-lit nights listening for these species (as well as owls and any other vocalizing birds).  Routes that need to be filled are in Biddeford, Burlington, Exeter, Island Falls, Greene, Greenwood, Lakeville, Medford, North Berwick, St. Albans, and Sumner.

You can learn more about the program at mainenightjar.com  To sign up, contact Logan Parker at [email protected]

Marsh Bird Surveys target nine species of marshland birds. These species are Pied-billed Grebe, American Bittern, Least Bittern, Green Heron, Virginia Rail, Sora, American Coot, Common Gallinule, and Sedge Wren. All of these birds are more easily identified by sound rather than sight in their dense habitats.

Observers play recordings of each species and listen for responses. Each marsh is sampled three times: once in the last half of May, once in the first half of June and once in the second half of June.

Two hundred marshes were randomly chosen throughout Maine. To see which marshes need to be adopted, visit: https://tinyurl.com/3j8apd44  Some marshes can be sampled from the edges; others require a canoe or kayak.

At that website, you can learn more about the details of the sampling protocol. To sign up, email Glen Mittelhauser at [email protected] and put Water Bird Survey in the subject line.

The Steller’s Sea-Eagle that visited us here in Maine for over two months until March 4, 2022 reappeared on the north shore of Nova Scotia in April and then moved on to Newfoundland. Using eBird records, I’ll take a look at the sightings of this magnificent bird in Maine while it graced us with its presence.

Steller’s Sea-Eagle is not a common bird to start with. The current population is estimated to lie between 4,600-5,100 individuals with 1,830-1,900 breeding pairs. They are found in the Far East, nesting on the shores of the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. They winter in Korea, Japan and southeastern Russia (Ussuriland).

There are 79 eBird records for Steller’s Sea-Eagle in Alaska. But the one we hosted in Maine was a real oddity. It has been wandering in eastern North America for well over a year. There is even a single sighting in Texas that may have been the same bird.

After visiting Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia earlier in 2021, the eagle put in an appearance in inland Massachusetts in mid-December. It disappeared just before Christmas. Birders throughout the Northeast were keen to know where it would appear next.

On December 30, the Steller’s Sea-Eagle was spotted at Five Islands in Georgetown by Linda Tharp, a local resident. The chase was on. Hordes of birders descended on Five Islands the following day and most got to see the bird. Nearly as many birders visited the area on New Year’s Day.

Curious to know how many people saw the Steller’s Sea-Eagle (a life bird for most everyone, I’m sure), I requested the eBird data for Maine. The histogram below shows the number of eBird records  of the sea-eagle through the end of February. There are records of the eagle for 19 dates. Some of those dates had only a few sightings so their bar is not high enough to distinguish on the graph.

There are 1,198 eBird records of the Steller’s Sea-Eagle in Maine. However, we have to tweak this total a bit. Some people got to see the eagle twice to as many as five times (Figure 3). Correcting for multiple observations, I found that 1,024 birders got to see the Steller’s Sea-Eagle in Maine based on eBird records.

This total is conservative for several reasons. There are a significant number of serious birders who do not use eBird. When I went on January 1 to see the bird, I noticed lots of families there with young kids. Certainly, most of those kids do not have eBird accounts. Finally, there were people who were there because it was a happening, not because of an abiding interest in birds. They surely did not have eBird accounts

So, we can be sure that well over 1,024 people got to see the Steller’s Sea-Eagle in Maine. If we add the number of eBirders in other states or provinces who saw the same bird, we get 1,263 birders. That includes 12 in New Brunswick, 45 in Nova Scotia (not counting the April, 2022 sightings, which I do not have), 52 in Quebec, 129 in Massachusetts and one in Texas.

Finally, let’s look at the total of all the eBird records for the six North American regions where our peregrinating sea-eagle has been seen. That total is 1,545 records. The sum of all the Steller’s Sea-Eagle records in eBird is 4,445. That means that one bird accounts for 34.7% of all the eBird records. Country-wise, Japan has the most Steller’s Sea-Eagle records with 2,074 eBird entries. The U.S. is in second-place, mainly due to a single bird! Russia has only 374 eBird records but I am sure that is because Russian ornithologists and birders haven’t embraced eBird like birders in many other countries.

It would have been fun to determine how many of the birders who saw the Georgetown bird came from out of state. Understandably, eBird anonymizes the records sent to researchers for the sake of confidentiality, so it is not possible to know where a birder is from based only on the unique observer code that eBird assigns.

With Earth Day occurring just recently, it is a good time to reflect on ways we can take better care of our planet and all the living organisms that inhabit it. Governments and conservation organizations can institute major effects to ameliorate climate change and reduce pollution. In many parts of the world, solar and wind power are cheaper than the power available from petroleum and oil. Large tracts of land are being conserved thanks to conservation organizations and governmental offices as well.

Individual efforts matter as well. Our combined efforts can make a difference. A collection of drops can make an ocean.

I want to focus today on an individual activity that poses a moral dilemma for me and, I’m sure, many others. Stated bluntly, birding has a carbon problem. We drive and fly to see the feathered creatures we love. The fuel we consume adds to the greenhouse gas load and to air pollution. Ironically, by traveling to see birds, we are degrading natural habitats.

I’ll begin by pointing out two traits of humans that are relevant. First, many humans are collectors. For some, it might be obtaining recordings of all the compositions of Bach and for others commemorative state quarters. Many birders collect sightings of life birds. We thrill at seeing a bird we have never seen before. And with nearly 11,000 species of birds in existence, lots of collecting of checklist tick marks is possible.

Secondly, most people are competitive. Sometimes our competitive fire is obvious as when playing sports. At other times, the external manifestation of our desire to win is less obvious. Sometimes, we are simply competing with ourselves, trying to better our own performance of some measurable activity.

I think that our penchant for collecting, and our competitiveness have exacerbated the carbon problem of birding.  In 1967, the American Birding Association was formed to promote the sport of competitive birding. Lists of various sorts, like North American life lists or Texas life lists or Kansas year lists, were published so birders could see how they stack up with other birders. Lots of birders keep multiple types of lists.

Although several computer applications for keeping track of bird lists appeared, most bird listers use eBird to keep track of their sightings. Although the intent of eBird is primarily to provide as a repository of bird sightings, the software will generate lists of various sorts. If you want to see how your bird list for Maine in 2014 stacked up against other birders, a quick query will show you the top 100 birders for that list.

My own carbon footprint is enlarged due to birding. I have visited Ecuador twice, Costa Rica twice and a dozen Caribbean islands. I have birded in most of the Lower 48 states. My major goal has been to see birds I have never seen.

Within the state, I have become a more selective birder as far as rarities are concerned. When the Great Black Hawk and the Redwing (the Eurasian thrush not the common blackbird) appeared in Portland I went to see them. Similarly, I jumped at the chance to go see the Steller’s Sea-Eagle in Georgetown on January. I had never seen any of these species.

I lived for five years in western Washington, so I passed on going to see rarities like the Rock Wren in Ogunquit, the Surfbird and Ash-throated Flycatcher in Biddeford and the Swainson’s Hawk in Millinocket because these species were common in Washington state.

I am also a big proponent of carbon offsets. By donating funds to a project like tree planting, one can compensate for the carbon your car trip or plane flight puts into the atmosphere. Here is my favorite carbon calculator: https://rb.gy/dzbfw7

Birding’s carbon problem is a moral problem so coming to grips with it is a personal task. Reducing travel and purchasing carbon offsets are the responses I use.

Of course, birding is just a microcosm of our world. We can reduce our consumption of gasoline in other aspects of our lives. But birding is such a big part of my life, it serves as my lodestar to make me think about how my individual contribution to improving the health of our earth can be increased in all aspects of my life.