Why counting birds matters

As a high school student interesting in birds, I was thrilled to be asked to join a team of adults surveying birds at an Illinois Nature Preserve called Nelson Lake Marsh. The site had been purchased from private owners that ran a peat mining operation most of the year. In fall the rim of the marsh was lined with hunting blinds festooned with cattail stalks to make them less visible to migrating waterfowl. Even after the main marsh property was purchased for protection by the county, the south side of the lake remained in private hands. In fall the sounds of shotguns still resounded from dawn through the early hours.

Before the marsh was public property, my brother and I would sneak out to birdwatch. A long gravel drive led from the U-shaped corrugated building at the entrance to a small shed where flat-bottomed duck boats leaned against the wooden structure. Inside, the heads of recently shot waterfowl were tacked to the walls. These served hunters as a progress report on what species were coming through during migration. There is typically a clear order in which species arrive and depart in spring and fall migration. With ducks, it begins with "dabbler" species such as blue-winged and green-winged teal, gadwall and shovelers that come through in September and October. These are surface feeders. When colder weather and grey skies arrive in November, diving ducks such as ring-necked and scaup, canvasback and redhead and mergansers come through.

I do recall birding the lake one December 5 when the temperatures soared to seventy-five degrees and more than twenty species of ducks sat on the lake. I crouched near the edge and listened to their voices carrying over the water, a rare opportunity indeed. Then a cold front blew in, temps dropped by sixty degrees overnight and the lake froze over. That next morning, all the ducks were gone.

Ancient voices

During those late fall migration events, the occasional call of sandhill cranes would ring out. Their ancient voices were uncommon in those days, and especially thrilling. A lone couple of sandhills secretly bred at Nelson Lake Marsh every year. Only a few pairs bred across the entire breadth of Kane County. In spring they'd show up in early March, but most of the flocks passed overhead to points further north in Wisconsin.

There were crane surveys specifically set up to track breeding populations here in Illinois. Sometimes even helicopters were put to use to view the nests from overhead. Cranes were simply a rare commodity.

So were many other wetland and grassland species. Even the common egrets and great blue herons that we see today in great numbers were rare sightings in the early days of counting birds at Nelson Lake March and many other Midwest locations.

Canada geese

The most radical explosion of all species was Canada geese. From a few pairs brought to take up residency at the cooling ponds of nearby Fermilab, there are tens of thousands of geese breeding in the Chicago area.

Documenting these changes in bird populations is the work of citizen scientists with both amateur and professional credentials. In the early days, it was all done by hand. Rather than the Internet, birders at Nelson Lake Marsh stopped to record their sightings on sheets of paper stored inside a wooden box near the entrance. That box still stands but is never used.

These days a birding site run by Cornell University (ebird.org) gathers survey information from across the continent. Using this data gathered from thousands of birders, it is possible to create highly accurate and specific maps of how bird populations are responding to factors such as habitat alterations and climate change. This past summer I again monitored the restored prairie and grasslands on the west side of Nelson Lake in Dick Young Forest Preserve. In past years, there were considerable numbers of savannah and grasshopper sparrow. This year, I found none. After I shared that information with the BCN leader Judy Pollock, she returned an incredibly detailed map of the past and present savannah sparrow range. The species is drifting northward in its breeding range. Is it possible that climate change is driving these birds to seek cooler climatic conditions? What we have currently is evidence of change. The relationship between these facts and the causes have yet to be determined by science.

Science matters

That's the point. Counting birds matters because science matters. It matters in agriculture as well as ornithology. It matters because birds are in some respects pollinators along with insects. These natural dynamics matter because they define how the human race understands the circumstances we're creating for ourselves and other living things in this world.

These are just some of the reasons why counting birds matters. As human beings, we thrive on a natural aesthetic as well as scientific profundity. In a world when such things are so easily waved aside by abstract principles such as economics, politics, or plain greed, it is the defense of the natural world that matters more than anything else.

Environment and climate change

Frankly, we're already seeing what happens when people refuse to acknowledge either the scientific or aesthetic insights that nature provides us about the world in which we live. With wildfires burning forests and fields from California up to Oregon, with powerful new levels of windstorms tearing down silos in Iowa, and coastal hurricanes lining up like football lineman to bash the coastlines, people are learning that the indicators of change are critical to understanding what's really going on in this world.

It's an ugly sin in many respects that some brands of religion embrace wishful thinking and willful ignorance to defend the idea that human beings have eternal dominion over the earth. This literalistic take on human circumstances directly defies the science upon which our grasp of environmental and evolutionary dynamics takes place. Some 38% of Americans think this way.* Their political leanings are a proven threat to public policy when it comes to environmental protection, conservation, and regulation of industries and impacts that most threaten our world.**

Benefits of science

Those of us that have been counting birds for decades know the benefits of environmental protection and how a reduction in chemical pesticides and herbicides led to the recovery of species such as the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, and osprey.*** We know that human beings directly wiped out species such as the Passenger Pigeon. We know that the environmental movement that started with organizations such as the National Audubon Society****, Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy have saved dozens of species of wildlife from extinction.

Along the way, these organizations have actually been preserving a planet that human beings also need to survive. That's why counting birds matters.

It's personally been a funny dynamic all these years. During high school, I took a ton of grief for the interest I had in birds. Thanks to mentors such as a biology teacher named Bob Horlock, who took us young birders on field trips to remote prairies and urban rescue areas such as Lake Calumet, I wasn't alone. These days some of those friends who used to make fun of my birding now send cell phone pics of species they find in their back yard. Others text me bird calls recording in the murk of dawn. "What is this?" they ask.

At one point while serving as President of a local Audubon chapter, my home phone number became the contact point for the "bird guy" in our region. My late wife used to hand me the phone when those frequent calls came in wanting help in identifying a bird someone had just seen. When we moved out of that community, some poor soul was assigned our former phone number. That resident tracked me down through directory assistance and asked, in an exasperated tone, "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm sorry," was the reply. "I'm just the bird guy."

He got rid of the number soon after that. Then the world moved on and the Internet changed how the world of birding worked. The article you're reading now is evidence of that, and how information has been democratized along the way. But it's what we do with that information that matters most in the end.

So I'll keep on counting birds. Because it really does matter.

1. * Gallup poll: In U.S., Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low.
2. ** New York Times: The Trump Administration is Reversing 100 Environmental Rules. Here's the Full list.
3. *** USFW, History of Bald Eagle Decline, Protection, and Recovery.
4. **** National Audubon Society, Audubon Advocacy