Tiny birds tie a big world together

I get a lot of random emails. It’s a hazard of the job. News staff are on all the mailing lists, whether it’s a jam club on the East Coast, or an event notice for a random community activity in Washington state.

I regularly update my junk mail filters but my deleted items for any given week will number in the hundreds.

But sometimes something catches my eye.

This time it was from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which shared a New York Times article about fall bird migration.

The Times said that since 1970, nearly 3 billion birds have vanished from the skies over North America.

It offered an in depth look at different sections of the country, with the second being Missouri.

Scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology developed “shared stewardship” maps in collaboration with Partners in Flight, an international bird conservation network. Each map displays the key wintering grounds for the migratory species that have a significant summer presence in a particular U.S. state or region, the Times article stated.

Missouri is home to breeding habitats for many grassland birds that find their way to South America for the winter.

According to the article, 49 bird species that breed in Missouri typically migrate for the winter. Migration takes them to coasts along the Gulf of Mexico, large portions of Mexico and central sections of South America, maps show.

The bobolink travels as far as Argentina, one of the longest migrations for a songbird, while the cerulean warbler relies on forests in the Andes, according to the Times.

Others go to Cuba and different Central American forests.

Human develop is threatening these migration patterns, as forest and grassland is lost to agriculture and other human activities, the writer shared.

“We can’t ignore the threats that these birds are facing when they’re beyond our borders,” Sarah Kendrick, a migratory bird biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a former state ornithologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, was quoted as saying.

Colorado, California and the New York metro area were also highlighted in the piece.

“The Cornell lab is making the shared stewardship maps available to state agencies in hopes of helping them determine where they might want to invest in research and conservation. But the scientists also hope that the maps will help the public understand that our migratory birds are shared — as is the responsibility for protecting them,” the article states.

Simple steps to help include treating windows to prevent birds from colliding with buildings and planting native greenery.

To learn more, visit https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/.

... And this is why I’ll get more emails.

Donna Farley is editor at the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at dfarley@darnews.com.