Plight of the Common Bird

By Arthur Melville Pearson

Audubon recently announced that an entire suite of wild birds are, in fact, still common. But it’s the declines over the past 40 years—as high as 82 percent—that are troubling. How some Chicago Wilderness preserves are reversing the trend.

“There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” — Hamlet

Bobolink at home, courtesy of habitat restoration.

Photo: Eric Secker

Writing 400 years ago, Shakespeare found the fall of a single sparrow enough to presage the death of one of the greatest tragic characters of all time. But what portents might the Bard have discerned in the loss of 12 million field sparrows? And 13 million lark sparrows? And 20 million grasshopper sparrows? According to National Audubon’s current State of the Birds Report, populations of these and other common species have declined by an average of 70 percent over the past forty years. Among just the top 20 species in steepest decline, there is a combined total of 286 million fewer individual birds than there were in 1967.

Audubon based its report on data from the Christmas Bird Count and the Breeding Bird Survey, the two longest running, uninterrupted bird censuses in the world. Adhering to strict protocols, volunteer “citizen scientists” collect masses of data that even the best-funded researchers can’t match. For the purpose of the report, common bird species are those with a population of more than 500,000 individuals worldwide and a range of at least 385,000 square miles. The eastern meadowlark, for instance, can be found year-round in at least 31 states, including Illinois, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. Forty years ago, it numbered 24 million. Today, it numbers 7 million, a decline of 72 percent.

In response to the Audubon report, the editors of the New York Times may have lacked the poetry of Shakespeare, yet their unvarnished prose plainly captured what the numbers mean. “This is not extinction, but it is how things look before extinction happens.” In the early 19th century, the passenger pigeon numbered in the billions, with flocks so large and dense that they darkened the skies for hours or days at a time. Even as some observers noted a significant decrease in their population by 1850, few imagined it possible that on a September day in 1914, the last passenger pigeon in the world would die in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

While the passenger pigeon and the heath hen (1932) were largely hunted to extinction, the Carolina parakeet (1918), Bachman’s warbler (1961), and dusky seaside sparrow (1990) disappeared forever primarily because of habitat loss. Whether or not you believe an ivory-billed woodpecker still haunts a foggy bayou in Arkansas, habitat loss has been the cause of its demise. The Audubon report underscores the fact that it is habitat loss that continues to drive many birds down the same slippery slope. At select sites in our region, however, a number of those precipitously declining species are headed, providentially, in the opposite direction.

Springbrook Prairie

Standing in the middle of Naperville’s Springbrook Prairie, his binoculars glued to his eyes and his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair impervious to a humid July wind, Joe Suchecki doesn’t look like a dragon slayer. Yet, along with a corps of like-minded individuals and organizations, he helped persuade the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County not to build a 200-acre dragon-shaped lake, in favor of reestablishing habitat for grassland birds.

Springbrook Prairie.

Photo: Eric Secker

Like most birders, Suchecki can rattle off the reasons why grassland birds are declining faster than any other group of birds in both Chicago Wilderness and the nation: namely, loss of habitat. Since grassland birds require large, open spaces, the proposed dragon lake site—1,800 acres of former farmland—seemed rather the perfect opportunity to reestablish a particular kind of habitat that had all but disappeared in sprawling DuPage County. Suchecki had more than a suspicion such an effort could work—he had already documented a number of grassland birds that had established a toehold on the property.

Fully on board with the recovery of grassland bird habitat, the Forest Preserve District has removed farm-era hedgerows (using excavated tree stumps to anchor the reestablished meandering shoreline of a formerly channelized creek) and initiated the gradual conversion of old farm fields to native prairie habitat. Suchecki complements the district’s large-scale efforts by organizing periodic volunteer workdays to clear brush and keep invasive species at bay. Just as important, though, is his regular bird monitoring. Since 1994, he has recorded 217 different species onsite, with all of the typical grassland birds present and nesting, save the upland sandpiper. On managed areas, grasshopper sparrows have not fared as well as hoped, but populations of field sparrows have increased by 300 percent, sedge wrens by 650 percent, and federally endangered Henslow’s sparrows by a whopping 1,600 percent.

Joe Suchecki.

Photo: Joe Suchecki

Equally informative is where Suchecki doesn’t find birds. Initial habitat recovery efforts at Springbrook Prairie included the planting of species such as big bluestem, which can grow to ten feet. Suchecki’s monitoring revealed that birds avoided areas where tall plant species dominated, which led the district to switch to shorter native grasses, such as little bluestem, side oats gramma, and prairie dropseed.

Suchecki’s data also underscores the importance of actively managing habitat. In unmanaged areas, the eastern meadowlark has declined by 89 percent, which roughly parallels the 87-percent decline in this species statewide. In managed areas, this yellow-breasted, black-bibbed songster, whose full-throated fa-la-ti-re-do is one of the most recognizable leitmotifs of a healthy grassland, has increased by a heartening 45 percent.

Rollins Savanna.

Photo: Leigh Wachter

Rollins Savanna

Like Springbrook Prairie, the 1,225-acre Rollins Savanna is former farmland. It’s even “newer” habitat. And it, too, has become a magnet for many birds. Standing not 20 feet from the parking lot, I watched dozens of assorted sparrows dip and skim like little winged dolphins along the tips of a vast grassland sea. Training my binoculars on a curious-looking bird standing on one long, yellow leg atop a fence that enclosed a native plant nursery, I was thrilled to discover it was a state-endangered upland sandpiper.

In 2001, when the Lake County Forest Preserves began converting the agricultural fields to a start-up mix of native and Eurasian grassland species, bird monitor Donnie Dann recorded only six bobolinks, or, as Thoreau called them, “flashing, tinkling meteors.” Or, as described by bird migration expert Scott Weidensaul, “blackbirds in evening dress.” The Audubon report revealed that this dramatically-feathered species has declined by 97 percent statewide. In 2004, Dann recorded 69 bobolinks at Rollins Savanna. That’s nearly a 12-fold increase in just three years, a rate similar to many other grassland species that now regularly inhabit the site.

Dann, a past president of the Bird Conservation Network, is no stranger to remarkable bird recovery efforts. Along with Brad Semel of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, he located and protected northeastern Illinois’ only known nesting site of the common tern—number seven on Audubon’s list of fastest declining species. When he heard about the Rollins Savanna project, he immediately signed on as a volunteer bird monitor. The data collected by Dann and others is much more than documentation; it helps guide the Forest Preserves’ management strategy. For instance, when monitors confirmed the presence of rare species, the district adjusted its grassland mowing schedule (a technique to stymie invasive brush encroachment) to avoid disturbing potential nest sites.

Meadowlark—now singing at more local venues.

Photo: Tom Rook/AKM Images, Inc.

Over time, monitoring is likely to provide critical feedback about the district’s other restoration efforts at Rollins, including the namesake oak savanna and a nascent shrubland community, each of which harbors its own unique assemblage of birds. Monitoring already confirms that the wetland restoration efforts have been as impressive as those to recover the grasslands. Since the district disabled 13 miles of drain tiles, allowing about 200 acres of formerly drained areas to rehydrate naturally, monitors have confirmed the nesting of several notable wetland bird species, including the state-threatened least bittern and its cousin the American bittern—number 15 on Audubon’s list of common species in decline.

Poplar Creek

Judy Mellin has been monitoring birds at Poplar Creek Forest Preserve near Hoffman Estates since 1990. Walking the same route at least once a week, 12 months a year, faithfully recording every bird she’s seen in hand-written field notebooks, she has been a living witness to the relationship between habitat recovery and bird populations.

In 1984, half a dozen municipalities proposed siting a landfill within the boundaries of the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve. That sparked people not only to oppose the landfill, but to roll up their sleeves and adopt the site as their own. As part of The Nature Conservancy’s Volunteer Stewardship Network, and in cooperation with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, they have successfully transformed a 125-acre farm field to native prairie. They have also stewarded the nine-acre Shoe Factory Road Prairie Nature Preserve, in the northwest corner of Poplar Creek, and cleared buckthorn and other invasive species from the surrounding oak savanna and woodland.

Soon after stewardship efforts began, Mellin recorded 108 bird species, with 32 confirmed nesting on site. In 1997, the total number of species had grown to 177, with 51 confirmed nesting. Today, Mellin’s bird list stands at 207 species, with the number of confirmed nestings expected to increase but not yet available. Save for the upland sandpiper, the full complement of grassland birds is present in relative abundance. The red-headed woodpecker, which the Audubon report revealed has declined by 71 percent throughout Illinois, is a habitual resident in the restored oak savanna. Mellin’s data also reveals that Poplar Creek has provided habitat for the evening grosbeak and the northern pintail—number two and number three, respectively, on Audubon’s list—during migration season.

Like many bird monitors, Mellin regularly participates in other stewardship activities. She’s learned to collect native plant seeds and often does so on her monitoring routes. She helps clean and sort them, and she regularly joins the other site stewards for a post-workday lunch at a local pub. Sweaty and soiled after a morning of cutting and herbiciding gray dogwood—a native species, but one that is aggressively invasive—the small group, from 30-somethings to retirees, reminded me of a bunch of kids for all their energy and enthusiasm.

Munching their sandwiches and sipping their beer or Italian lemonade, they all but sang of biodiversity and the instant gratification of cutting buckthorn, of healing the land and happening upon nude sunbathers, of the sometimes backbreaking work and the joy in roasting hotdogs on burning piles of brush, of taking a European vacation together and taking pride in work that will last for generations. “It’s just a miracle that we get this opportunity to learn, to grow, to make a difference,” Mellin summed up as everyone drained their glasses. “And once you bond with the land and birds and people like this, your whole outlook on life changes.”

A Special Providence

The Audubon report also revealed that populations of some bird species have, in fact, experienced “large and significant” increases over the past 40 years. Largely due to the banning of DDT, the number of bald eagles has rebounded dramatically, which resulted in the bird’s recent removal from the federal endangered species list. Traveling more than an hour by car to each of the preserves I visited, it was easy to see why populations of house finches have boomed. Like other regular denizens of backyard feeders, they have adapted to the suburban habitat that continues to sprawl across our region. So, too, have Canada geese exploded in numbers due to an exponential increase in golf courses, corporate campuses, and subdivision retention areas, with manicured lawns and water features known in certain circles as “goose poop ponds.”

The recovery of the bald eagle proves that we can save birds from extinction. Simultaneously, the sharp rise in certain urban-adapted species demonstrates that in creating habitat for ourselves we increase habitat for a very limited range of birds, even causing some, such as geese, to become a nuisance.

However, data from a growing number of preserves proves that we also are capable of recovering habitat that supports a full and balanced array of our native birds. Further success stories abound, including collaborations between Audubon–Chicago Region and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, whose restoration work at Orland Grassland in Orland Park and Bartel Grassland in Matteson has resulted in grassland bird population increases of between 96 and 400 percent. At their Spring Creek Forest Preserve project in Barrington, the clearing of brush from a 100-acre tract led to six new grassland species being recorded for the first time in memory. Initial federal restoration efforts at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie likewise have resulted in the return of common grassland birds long absent from the 19,500-acre site. In the return of so many birds to such places, there is, indeed, a special providence; one that ultimately bodes well for both our birds and us.

To become a bird monitor or help restore habitat, call the Bird Conservation Network at (847) 965-1150.