(828) 526-0173 | [email protected] | Copyright 2025 – All Rights Reserved.
Canaries in the Mine
Written By: William McReynolds - Highlands Plateau Audubon Society | Issue: Winter 2025
The Christmas Bird Count provides a detailed snapshot of the Plateau’s avian population, including surprising new arrivals.
American Kestel
December brings Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count or CBC, a population sampling of all the birds in North America, Canada, Latin America, some of the Caribbean, virtually all of the Northern Hemisphere. Feeding what is perhaps the largest citizen science database in the world, each year since 1900, Audubon members — typically 60,000 individuals in 2,400 counting groups – sight and count upwards of 70 million birds. These large-scale, longitudinal data help us know the state of health and location of our Western Hemispheric birds.
Our own Highlands Plateau Audubon Society or HPAS participates in these CBCs every year, usually 5 or more counting groups totaling 25 or more counters.
Last December, HPAS reports, “the teams counted a total of 1,292 birds and 54 species. One new species for our count was a Palm Warbler seen at the Rich Gap land fill area. Other notable species not seen very often were a Bald Eagle, American Kestel, Pine Warbler, Red Crossbill and a Rusty Blackbird.”
Our avifauna are among the most carefully monitored species in the world. There is irrefutable evidence that bird populations are in steep decline: we have lost 3 billion birds since 1970. The chief culprit is loss of habitat and that due to climate change that is shuffling our ecological decks.
Three years ago, the National Audubon Society released “The Audubon Report” focusing on 588 North American bird species and the likely impact of rising temperatures.
A shocking 126 North American bird species are projected to lose 50 percent of their existing ranges to climate change by 2050; another 188 bird species could lose half their current range by 2080. Like the proverbial canary in the mine, bird data from the CBC are being used to foretell our collective future. That future is projected to have many fewer birds and fewer species of birds than in recent decades.
“Who are we,” you might ask, “that we have appeared on this watery orb in this remote solar system within this singular galaxy which is itself but a tiny part of the vast Cosmos? Whence cometh the answer? Perhaps from the birds which embody the Spirit and Beauty of the Living World. Do we not imagine feathered wings on our Angels? Perhaps these are our Angels, these delicate winged creatures who hold the secrets of the balance between life and inanimate being. Perhaps these are our messengers. Are we watching? Are we listening?”
