State of the Birds

The LA Times published an article on changes in bird populations, Some birds defy overall plunge in bird numbers, and a friend asked me for my thoughts on it, especially compared to early research and studies showing that in North America we’ve lost over 3 billion birds since 1970. I have thoughts. My first reaction was Life is complicated.Something lost in the initial “3 billion birds lost” report was that number was heavily weighted to a relatively few very common species.That said, focusing on THAT ignores that we are seeing population losses in many species, because of climate change and our impact on the environment and bird habitat, and that trend is pretty clearly increasing.But as conditions change, some species find it to their benefit and others are badly impacted by it, so the changes are not across the board. Ravens have been doing really well because they’ve been adapting to more urban environments. Crows were massively impacted by West Nile, but have since recovered. The…