You may have missed this in your perusal of the Sunday New York Times. I know I did, thanks to a very good diary Ian Reifowitz posted this morning about immigration based on an article I would have read had I been reading the section correctly. I went back today and found another article that's saying "diary me" very loudly. This article, "What Do the Birders Know?" ties the hobby and art of birdwatching to the very real issue of climate change.
This is an American White Pelican in a picture posted by the Kossack blueeyedace2 yesterday. He took it somewhere in Wisconsin.
According to the Audubon Society, the species is not in trouble, having rebounded from the deleterious effects pesticide had on its eggs until the 1960s, and the last Christmas Bird count showed that the greatest increases in sightings of the birds came from Minnesota, North Dakota and Wyoming. Sounds like the range of the species is moving north, no? Well, that's what Brian Kimberling is telling us in the
Times.
After explaining that there are 5.8 million birdwatchers in the United States (we know several of them who write for Daily Kos in the Dawn Chorus and The Daily Bucket serieses), and after explaining how sightings are reported to various birder groups (not as glamorous as giving something to a museum), Kimberling reports the following:
And what are today’s birds telling us? The Audubon Society estimates that nearly 60 percent of 305 bird species found in North America in winter are shifting northward and to higher elevations in response to climate change. For comparison, imagine the inhabitants of 30 states — using state residence as a proxy for species of American human — becoming disgruntled with forest fires and drought and severe weather events, and seeking out suitable new habitat.
Don't believe in climate change? THE BIRDS ARE TELLING YOU IT'S HAPPENING.
Of course, we also get a review of what birds told other people at other times in our history. "Augur" and "avian" have common roots, because an augur was an ancient Roman Priest (like Cicero) who studied birds to determine the will of the gods. The article notes that
Hawks and eagles do not appear by accident, When, where and whether they appear is, absolutely, a portent.
We also use birds to warn us if an environment is safe; think of all those canaries in all those coal mines who were there to detect gas leaks. If the bird stopped singing and died, you knew you had to get out quickly. As Kimberling writes,
We can't escape trying to see the future through birds.
And we can't. Nature KNOWS a crisis is here. Who don't more people? Have we really become that oblivious to the world around us?
7:21 PM: Thank you, Birds and Birdwatching, DK Greenroots and Backyard Science! And thank you all for your responses. I'm learning a lot from the comments.