Audubon's Backyard Bird Count

Epaulettes Help A-Lot!

A Red-winged Blackbird in full epaulette-forward mode. Credit: Kern Audubon.

Last week, I stood with my feet planted down on the Earth and my face lifted up to the sky, scanning the tree branches while looking for birds. I was in one of the best places on Earth, one of the back fields at my mama’s Tennessee farm. I was on the job in Audubon’s Backyard Bird Count, one of the largest community science efforts in the world.  It felt good to be here, pausing on these acres in the chill and familiar fresh air of home. The breeze can be something else up at the farm with one wide open field right next to another. As I stood in the faded yellow wheat stubble of last year’s crop, a few gusts ripped by, and I zipped my jacket up higher and smiled to myself.  

Why do I feel so good? Is it the birding?  

I decided it was three things: what was in the slow cooker up at the house, visiting here this weekend to celebrate family birthdays, and the fact that Merlin, my birding app, was giving me some welcome news: the loud yet musical conk-la-ree I was hearing nearby was a Red-winged Blackbird, the very bird I’d been hoping to find and count during the 2023 Backyard Bird Count.

Birdie, birdie, where are you?  

Here’s some pop, and I’m not talkin’ soda.

If Red-winged Blackbirds didn’t invent the whole idea of a “pop” of color that designers are always talking about, they should have.  The males of the species are one of the most colorful birds anywhere, with glossy black feathers forming a background so perfectly dark that you can almost hear the pop of the scarlet red and yellow epaulettes. Epaulettes on a bird, you ask? Yes. It is the official term experts use to describe the birds’ showy shoulder patches.  

There he is! 

I finally spotted the bird, who I soon began to think of as Sergeant RWB, on a lofty branch. As I watched him, (magnified 10 times through my monocular), he quickened his calls to caution me that I was in his territory. His fiery, soldier-like epaulettes seemed perfect for the impression he was trying to make. He’d yell down at me over and over making his branch recoil a little each time.

Conk-la-Ree, he cried. With each warning, the Sergeant made himself bigger by hunching his shoulders forward in a way that let his scarlet shoulder patches flare as if in anger. Then, he’d go down like a deflated balloon. Over and over, it went like this:

CONK-la-REE!!! A puffed up and threatening Sarge, about to lose his you-know-what.

Quiet.

CONK-la-REEEE!

Quiet

ConnnnK-LA-Ree!!

“You don’t scare me, you little birdie, you,” I said quietly, as I watched his show. “What are you, a pound-n-a half?”

I noticed that with every squawk, The Sergeant would look around for a response. What a cutie, I thought. I took a few pictures, trying to catch him flashing his colors, but my resulting images were just a disappointing speck in a tree.

“Hey, I counted you, Sergeant RWB. Audubon knows about you now,” I told him as I began to make my way through the field, heading back to everybody at the house. Walking in the stubble of last year’s dried-out wheat crop is like walking on a giant dog hairbrush. It is more of a challenge than you would think. You go to step down like usual, but the 4-inch stick-like stubble turns your feet into rag doll feet, flinging your steps off to one side, then the other. By the time I had staggered home to where the kitchen was fragrant and the air was warm, I still had fond memories of Sarge, but was so happy to be out of nature. Sarge would probably say the feeling was mutual.

“Hey, I counted you, Sergeant RWB. Audubon knows about you now.”

As for the whole weekend of the Backyard Bird Count, I counted birds on seven occasions and reported 18 distinct species to Audubon. Most of the birds were of the common backyard variety, such as your House Finches, Cardinals, Red-bellied Woodpeckers and White-throated Sparrows. My younger sister is a committed friend to birds. She keeps her feeders full of food and varies her ways to accommodate the winged ones, sometimes offering them a platform feeder with a sunflower seed topping, sometimes stringing up nubby rectangles of suet, and always hanging out a few tube feeders for those who prefer to perch. The birds reward her with songs and visits from morning to night. 

Real-time data from Audubon’s 2023 count shows that 7,328 species reported from some 285,000 checklists were submitted by volunteers from around the globe. Scientists really need that data now, more than ever. Audubon reports that more than two-thirds of North American birds are at increasing risk of extinction from global temperature rise. This portion of Audubon’s website is well-done and won’t take long to read. I like the images of the bird species at risk and am relieved to see the Red-winged Blackbird is safe. 

For now.

Atlanta Artist Kathy Costley Broyles captured the gentler side of the Red-winged Blackbird in this original watercolor created for The Everyday Scientist.

 

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The WWF works to sustain the natural world for the benefit of people and nature. Logo credit: World Wildlife Fund.

I often write about the rates of extinction for the animal species that I am spotlighting in my weekly newsletter. Doing this has caused me to more deeply consider extinction rates on a historic scale. I excerpted the following two points on this subject from the World Wildlife Fund’s home page which uses everyday language based on science:

1. "The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.* ^{*Experts actually call this natural extinction rate the background extinction rate. This simply means the rate of species extinctions that would occur if we humans were not around.}

2. “Unlike the mass extinction events of geological history, the current extinction challenge is one for which a single species - ours - appears to be almost wholly responsible. This is often referred to as the 6th extinction crisis, after the 5 known extinction waves in geological history. " (Of course, no humans were around for the first five extinctions.)

This image comes from a recent 60 Minutes episode about the sixth mass extinction. Here is the link for the 13-minute program. Earth is currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction, according to scientists.

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Coming Soon:

A community science project created by the Chicago Botanic Garden, but available for us all, is called Budburst. I’ll start trying out this plant conservation effort right away and write up my findings for next week’s newsletter.

Please give me your comments, which I always love, especially from you, Doug. And Karen, Mackenzie and Steve! Kathy and Ilsa too!

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A link you may want:

• The Merlin Bird ID app created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is amazing, especially the part that identifies species by sound. The microphone technology has been improved, and you can record a whole backyard of overlapping birdsong, and, just like the name implies, magic happens while Merlin teases apart the sounds and identifies the birds.

\(The Everyday Scientist.\)