Tag: ornithology

A Rare Visit From a Northern Neighbor

  • The Great Gray Owl is a rare sighting south of the U.S.-Canadian border. (Photo by Matt Victoria, Camillus, NY. www.fickity.net)

The Great Gray Owl usually lives deep in the northern forests of Canada. But due to scarce food, thousands of the big owls have drifted south. They’ve drifted into southern Ontario and Quebec, even crossing the border into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Last month, a Great Gray was spotted in New York, the first one documented there in almost a decade. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein was there when it
happened:

Transcript

The Great Gray Owl usually lives deep in the northern forests of Canada. But due to scarce food,
thousands of the big owls have drifted south. They’ve drifted into southern Ontario and Quebec,
even crossing the border into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Last month, a Great Gray
was spotted in New York, the first one documented there in almost a decade. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein was there when it happened:


Ornithologist Gerry Smith had invited me to see some of the best raptor habitat in northern New
York. We took off in his cluttered Saturn wagon.


“Here we go!…” (sound of engine turning on)


Gerry wears a beat up canvas hat, green sweatshirt, and always has one hand on his binoculars.
He started birdwatching when he was 13 as a sort of therapy.


“My father passed away when I was 15, but he was terminally ill, and I needed an escape, you
know, obviously as a 13 year-old kid I didn’t know that, but I got hooked, and the rest, as they
say, is history.”


More than 40 years later, he’s never had a job not related to birds. And he’s in his element
cruising the back roads of Upstate New York.


These farm fields are near the St. Lawrence River. They’re ideal for hawks and owls. They’re
grassy with occasional tree stands. And they don’t get as much snow as other parts of the state.
So birds can snag the mice and voles they live on all winter long.


In no time, Gerry’s spotting raptors. There’s a hawk perched in a twisted elm…


“Yep, it’s a Red-tailed Hawk and I think it’s got prey because it’s bending down like it’s eating.”


A rough-legged hawk soars above us, black and white plumage glowing in the sun.


“The bird was just lofting along.”


A Short-eared Owl glides past a farmhouse.


“Look how that is flying. It’s flying like a big fruit bat. Cutting left across the hay bales, coming
toward the house, above the house now, and drifting left.”


Smith’s also seen a snowy owl this year. But still no sign of the Great Gray owl.


The Great Gray usually lives in the far northern forests of Canada. But this year it has flown
south to the upper Great Lakes region by the thousands. Conservation biologist Jim Duncan is a
Great Gray Owl expert with the province of Manitoba. He says the phenomenon happens
cyclically, when the Great Gray’s main food source – the meadow vole – becomes scarce.


“It’s a regular migration. It’s like a robin migrating in response to food availability, except in the
case of the Great Gray Owl, it’s a longer period of time. It’s three to five years.”


Gerry Smith’s still waiting for the Great Gray in New York. It’s been spotted just across the St.
Lawrence River in Canada.


“There’s a single Great Gray Owl on Amherst Island, but not one, as far as we know, has made it
into northern New York despite the fact that a whole lot of us have been looking.”


Now, I know you’re going to call that easy foreshadowing. But believe it or not, just an hour
later, Gerry pulls the car over, grabs his binoculars, and peers at something big perched on a tree.


“We have the first Great Gray Owl that’s made it across the border. I’ll be a son of a gun. That is
so…Now I’m very enthusiastic. Hey, I’m gonna set up my scope.”


While Gerry unpacks the telescope, a raven flies to a branch just above the owl and tries to scare
it away. Birders call it “mobbing.”


“Now don’t you mob that owl, you fiend. I think that’s what he’s thinking of doing. Watch this.”


The owl holds its ground, and Gerry gets it in the telescope’s sights.


“That is so cool. It’s not facing us, it’s back is to us, but take a look, that shape is very
distinctive.”


It’s slate gray with some brown and white, round head, stocky body, as big or bigger than the
raven.


“This has been…oh, the owl just hooted. It’s a very low guttural hoot, something like a horned
owl, only deeper.”


Just then, the owl’s finally had enough. It takes flight and drifts slow and low to a stand of trees,
likely its roost. Gerry jots down the GPS coordinates and we get back in the car.


“Well, sir, we’ll finish the route and head back, but we have had undoubtedly the high point of
the day. That’s the high point of my winter.”


This Great Gray Owl migration is the biggest on record. Biologist Jim Duncan says it’s a chance
for all eager birders to help science.


“People have a real opportunity to contribute to our knowledge of the species, be they farmers,
housewives, commuters. They don’t have to be scientists.”


You do have to be respectful, though, if you want to report Great Gray sightings to wildlife
officials. Stay off private land, don’t make noise, and keep your distance. And enjoy a rare
opportunity to see a Great Gray visitor from the North.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

Birders’ Passion Helps Scientists

  • The costs of hiring biologists to do a bird count across the U.S. would be astronomical. (photo by Deo Koe)

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:

Transcript

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through
frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds
as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors
while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:


(sound of footsteps)


Georgina Doe: “There’s five robins right there and there’s three common mergansers,
males…”


Georgina Doe scans the shoreline with her binoculars. Within seconds,
she spots a tiny glimpse of a bird and names it.


She knows them by the way they dive in the air, and the way they thrust
their chests out.


Doe has been scanning the treetops of Carleton Place, Ontario for
more than 30 years. She says she loves the chase and the element of surprise.
And over the years, birding has also been her escape.


She remembers watching a robin build its nest when her grandson
was seriously ill.


“So I used to count the birds every morning before I went off to
the hospital. And then after that, you come back to reality. Somehow a
little bird can just make you feel better.”


Birds have been a part of all of our lives. We might not know their names.
But we can remember holding a baby chick. Or hearing a cardinal on a crisp cold day. But now, many bird species are dwindling. And scientists are
counting on birders like Georgina Doe to help them find out why.


Doe is one of many birders in North America who collects
information for scientists. Jeff Wells works with that information
at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.


“There’s no way that we could ever pay the tens of thousands of
trained biologists that would be necessary to gather this kind of
information. It’s only possible when we can engage volunteers like
we do in citizen science projects.”


Cornell runs at least a dozen programs that rely on information
from average birders.


There’s the Christmas Bird Count. About 50 thousand people participate.
Another 50 thousand track species during the Great Backyard Bird
Count in February.


The volunteers reported that wood thrushes are disappearing in
many areas. And they’re tracking the effect of the West Nile Virus
on bird populations.


“If a little bird dies, usually it just disappears quickly
and no one ever sees it. So we don’t really know the impact.
And so looking at the differences in the numbers and distribution
might give us some sense of when the disease was rampant in the summer,
whether it killed off enough birds to make a noticeable
difference in our count.”


(sound of quiet footsteps)


Robert Cermak: “You can see it’s about 10 inches high. It’s all fluffed
up right now…”


Birder Robert Cermak tiptoes closer to a barred owl sitting in the
crook of a tree. We’re in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and a city of about a million
people. When it comes to bird counts, this is Cermak’s territory.


“It’s not often that you see a barred owl, any owl, during
the day. They’re usually more secretive. This one is not too
afraid to be out so it’s probably more accustomed to having people
around it, since this is the center of the city.”


Like Georgina Doe, Cermak has been birding for years. But even with
veterans, there’s always concern about their accuracy. Cermak
discovered this firsthand when he reported seeing a rare
harlequin duck last year.


“I sent it in and a few hours later, someone from Cornell –
very politely because it’s a delicate subject to question
someone’s sighting of a rare bird – but they very delicately
indicated that a harlequin duck is extremely unusual in Ontario and
could I please provide a few extra details.”


Cermak sent them a published account of the sighting. He also
gave them the number of a local expert.


Jeff Wells says researchers check their facts carefully. They look
for reports that don’t match others in the surrounding area. Sometimes
an investigation turns up a trained ornithologist… and sometimes not.
But overall, Wells says the information has formed the basis for
hundreds of published studies.


That’s something that makes birders like Robert Cermak and
Georgina Doe feel proud.


“It’s nice because you’re contributing. You’re doing a
lot of hours, it uses a lot of gas, you go around a lot of blocks
but we just think it’s important.”


(sound of Georgina Doe walking)


Georgina Doe says she doesn’t really think of herself as a
scientist. But she’s out there every day, with her ear to the wind. And that’s
what the scientists are counting on.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Migrating Whooping Cranes Get Lost

Eight whooping cranes trying to migrate to their summer home in Wisconsin are now stuck in Michigan. The birds are part of a flock of 36 that have all been hatched in captivity. They’re taught to migrate to Florida in the fall following an ultra-light aircraft. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

Eight whooping cranes trying to migrate to their summer home in
Wisconsin are now stuck in Michigan. The birds are part of a flock of 36
that have all been hatched in captivity. They’re taught to migrate to
Florida in the fall following an ultra-light aircraft. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:


The lost whooping cranes are the newest members of the flock. They
were returning from Florida for the first time. Wildlife officials say the
birds were scared by people in North Carolina who came too close. The
cranes took off, flew at night and got off course.


Now they’re on the wrong side of Lake Michigan and won’t fly over it.


Joan Garland, with the International Crane Foundation, says the cranes
could summer in Michigan and hopefully return to Wisconsin during their
spring migration next year.


“We had a bird for instance, last year, from the 2002 flock that ended up
all summer in Northern Illinois and so we were watching her to see if she was
going to go back to northern Illinois or Wisconsin… it turned out this year,
she did come back to Wisconsin.”


Garland believes the twenty other cranes in the flock made it back to
Wisconsin. There are less than 500 hundred whooping cranes in North America.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Birders’ Passion Helps Scientists

  • Backyard birders across North America are helping scientists track the fate of our feathered friends. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:

Transcript

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through
frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds
as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors
while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:


(sound of footsteps)


Georgina Doe: “There’s five robins right there and there’s three common mergansers,
males…”


Georgina Doe scans the shoreline with her binoculars. Within seconds,
she spots a tiny glimpse of a bird and names it.


She knows them by the way they dive in the air, and the way they thrust
their chests out.


Doe has been scanning the treetops of Carleton Place, Ontario for
more than 30 years. She says she loves the chase and the element of surprise.
And over the years, birding has also been her escape.


She remembers watching a robin build its nest when her grandson
was seriously ill.


“So I used to count the birds every morning before I went off to
the hospital. And then after that, you come back to reality. Somehow a
little bird can just make you feel better.”


Birds have been a part of all of our lives. We might not know their names.
But we can remember holding a baby chick. Or hearing a cardinal on a crisp cold day.


But now, many bird species are dwindling. And scientists are
counting on birders like Georgina Doe to help them find out why.


Doe is one of many birders in North America who collects
information for scientists. Jeff Wells works with that information
at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.


“There’s no way that we could ever pay the tens of thousands of
trained biologists that would be necessary to gather this kind of
information. It’s only possible when we can engage volunteers like
we do in citizen science projects.”


Cornell runs at least a dozen programs that rely on information
from average birders.


There’s the Christmas Bird Count. About 50 thousand people participate.
Another 50 thousand track species during the Great Backyard Bird
Count in February.


The volunteers reported that wood thrushes are disappearing in
many areas. And they’re tracking the effect of the West Nile Virus
on bird populations.


“If a little bird dies, usually it just disappears quickly
and no one ever sees it. So we don’t really know the impact.
And so looking at the differences in the numbers and distribution
might give us some sense of when the disease was rampant in the summer,
whether it killed off enough birds to make a noticeable
difference in our count.”


(sound of quiet footsteps)


Robert Cermak: “You can see it’s about 10 inches high. It’s all fluffed
up right now so it’s
hard to get a sense of
its mass…”


Birder Robert Cermak tiptoes closer to a barred owl sitting in the
crook of a tree.


We’re in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and a city of about a million
people. When it comes to bird counts, this is Cermak’s territory.


“It’s not often that you actually see a barred owl, any owl, during
the day. They’re usually more secretive. This one is not too
afraid to be out so it’s probably become more accustomed to having people
around it, since this is the center of the city.”


Like Georgina Doe, Cermak has been birding for years. But even with
veterans, there’s always concern about their accuracy. Cermak
discovered this firsthand when he reported seeing a rare
harlequin duck last year.


“I sent it in and a few hours later, someone from Cornell –
very politely because it’s a delicate subject to question
someone’s sighting of a rare bird – but they very delicately
indicated that a harlequin duck is extremely unusual in Ontario and
could I please provide a few extra details.”


Cermak sent them a published account of the sighting. He also
gave them the number of a local expert.


Jeff Wells says researchers check their facts carefully. They look
for reports that don’t match others in the surrounding area. Sometimes
an investigation turns up a trained ornithologist… and sometimes not.
But overall, Wells says the information has formed the basis for
hundreds of published studies.


That’s something that makes birders like Robert Cermak and
Georgina Doe feel proud.


“It’s nice because you’re contributing. You’re doing a
lot of hours, it uses a lot of gas, you go around a lot of blocks doing this
kind of count
but we just think it’s important.”


(sound of Georgina Doe walking)


Georgina Doe says she doesn’t really think of herself as a
scientist.


But she’s out there every day, with her ear to the wind. And that’s
what the scientists are counting on.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Unraveling Mystery of Birds’ Night Calls

  • Ornithologist Bill Evans has been tracking down avian night flight calls for 17 years.

Many North American birds are in serious decline. But scientists aren’t sure what’s wrong because birds are hard to count. The problem is partly that birds often migrate long distances between wintering sites and summer breeding grounds. Usually, they fly unobserved at night, and in many cases scientists don’t know what route they take. However, a new technique promises to solve this problem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has our story:

Transcript

Many North American birds are in serious decline. But scientists aren’t sure what’s wrong because birds are hard to count. The problem is partly that birds often migrate long distances between wintering sites and summer breeding grounds. Usually, they fly unobserved at night, and in many cases scientists don’t know what route they take. However, a new technique promises to solve this problem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has our story:

(Sound on dock, with Evan’s whispering out bird names fades up under intro.
Continues under Grossman track, then heard in clear.)

It’s a warm spring evening on the south Texas coast. Ornithologist Bill Evans sits on a dock, listening for birds.

“Grey-cheek thrush.”

Grossman: “That high one?”

“Yeah. (makes sound). Moor hen calling behind us on the ground. Oh sorry, that’s a black-necked stilt.”

Evans has been listening to and studying these night calls since he had an epiphany at a Minnesota campground in 1985. Then a recent college dropout and avid birder, Evans was adrift, unsure what to do with his life.

“I was getting back to a campsite about two in the morning and heard an incredible flight.”

Hundreds of birds were passing overhead in nocturnal migration, including what appeared to be about 100 black-billed cuckoos.

“If you go out and look for black-billed cuckoos during the day you may see two or three. And I’m thinking, ‘wow if I had a tape recorder and could somehow document this on audiotape, I might have a pretty powerful conservation document.'”

Bill Evans got a recorder and soon was making tapes of flight calls. But his recordings were of limited use because no one knew which birds made which sounds. The melodious tunes birds perform during the day are well known. But, according to Cornell Professor Charles Walcott, the calls they make during night flights are another matter.

“If you out on an evening and listen to these birds migrating overhead you’ll hear all these twitters, most of which don’t sound anything like what a normal bird sounds like at all.”

Walcott is the former director of the Cornell Ornithology Laboratory. He says night calls may help birds keep from colliding with each other. For decades, researchers hearing these calls were frustrated knowing there were birds in flight, but unable to determine which ones.

“And to be able to recognize individual species by their calls was a dream that many people have had. And Bill is the first one that’s been able to do it on any substantial scale.”

Evans spent the next 17 years prowling migration routes to match birds with their calls. Often his only chance came in the wee morning hours, when sometimes night migrants make a single night call before settling down to eat and rest. Gradually he cracked the code.

“The herons. Amazing squawks. Black-crowned-night heron is a sort of (makes sound). Green heron is a (makes sound). Barn owl. It’s a [makes sound]. Except it’s about ten times louder than that. The dickcissel is actually a sparrow and it’s got sort of a buzzy note (makes sound).

(Sound of truck door closing and truck starting up)

The small, colorful dickcissel is why Bill Evans is here, just north of Brownsville, Texas. He’s set up a network of 15 computerized monitoring stations that listen for dickcissels in flight. It’s the first large-scale effort to track birds using night calls. The network is stretched out along a line he believes these birds cross on their way between Venezuela and the U.S. plains.

Each station has a roof-mounted microphone, connected to a computer. Most of them are at high schools – their large, flat roofs and spacious grounds reduce traffic noise – and they’re generally in a science class. And while Evans does stay up late to listen for pleasure, it’s these computers that are actually doing the work. Each day he collects the past night’s results, in a marathon drive, station by station.

(Sound of high school PA System making announcement cross fades with truck under previous track. Also mixed in sound of crowded high school corridor with students changing classes. Cross-fades with sound of classroom.)

Evans: “Come on over guys. My name is Bill, this is Dan.”

Peter: “Bill and Dan?”

Evans: “What’s your name?”

Tate: “Tate.”

Peter: “Peter.”

Bill: “Nice to meet you guys.”

Some curious students pay Evans a visit at La Ferria High School.

(Evans fades up underneath Grossman. Then heard in clear.)

Evans (to students): “…So anyway the sound comes down this audio cable into this computer. We’re just checking the data from last night…”

(Computer keyboard sounds in actuality fades under track.)

The computer has a program that distinguishes the call of the dickcissel from other birdcalls and extraneous noise. The machine records the call, and saves a picture – or spectrogram – of it. Evans trouble shoots his stations and collects data daily. First he winnows out false positives, sounds that tricked the computer, by inspecting the spectrograms.

Evans (to students): “I’m going to set up one folder to put in the dickcissels’ calls and the other I’m going to put in the noise, the false detections. So now I’ve just classified the detections from last night. We had 28 here that we classified as dickcissels…”

After checking the computer and collecting its data the researcher says he has to run. Each of the 15 stations in his network needs a checkup because this weekend might be the climax of the dickcissel migration, bringing a huge flight of birds.

Evans (to students): “…And this weekend we think there are thousands of them just in Northeast Mexico. They’re going to take off. ‘Cause last year in one night, we had over 3,000 detected at McAllen High School…”

In the end, the big flock didn’t appear until the following week. Though the arrival was delayed for several days compared to the previous year, Evans now has proof that by monitoring night calls he can predict the timing and migration route of an individual bird species.

(Sound of truck door closing and truck starting up.)

Walcott: “It’s really an extraordinary accomplishment.”

Cornell professor Charles Walcott says the migration information Evans is discovering can’t be collected any other way. It’s all the more extraordinary because Bill Evans, who once worked for Walcott, has neither a college nor any other degree.

Walcott: “With Bill’s scheme you can now say, well, this was an evening when we had a huge migration of warblers and they were of the following species. And this is very useful and very interesting information. And it gives you a sense of where the migratory paths for each species of birds might be.”

It’s detailed information like this that conservation specialists need to design plans to protect the most threatened species. In the future Evans hopes several large-scale computer networks of the sort he’s testing in Texas will monitor many species throughout the United States. He hopes the listening posts could help solve the mystery of why so many North American species are in decline. This spring, in an important first step, Evans and collaborator Michael O’Brien released a compact disc with night flight calls of most eastern land birds. Now anyone can learn the secrets Bill Evans has unlocked.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Daniel Grossman.

Related Links

Hope for Kirtland’s Warbler

Next month, Kirtland’s Warblers will begin their yearly winter trek. They’ll be flying more than eleven hundred miles from their only known nesting ground in Michigan to their wintering grounds in the Caribbean Islands. The bird was one of the first species to be listed as endangered in 1973. But thanks to several decades worth of forest and wildlife management, the bird’s numbers are increasing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:

Whoopers Prepare for Historic Flight

Ten whooping crane chicks that may go on a historic flight through part of the Midwest this fall are about to start flying lessons. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Ten whooping crane chicks that may go on a historic flight through part of the Midwest this fall are about to start flying lessons. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports.


Public and private sector wildlife experts are trying to set up the first migrating flock of whooping cranes in the Eastern U.S. the plan is to have the birds learn their migration route this October by following ultra-light aircraft from Wisconsin to Florida. Ten two-month old whooping crane chicks have just finished the first step of the experiment at a federal wildlife center in Maryland. Joan Guilfoyle of the u-s fish and wildlife service says the chicks went through ground school.


“Right from coming out of the egg they were exposed to sounds of ultra light engines, being able to see people in costumes disguised as adult whoopers, so they would begin to associate their care and protection with those two things.”


Now the crane chicks have been brought by private plane to
Wisconsin, where ultra light pilots wearing crane costumes will give the birds flying lessons. Many of the same people worked on a test migration with smaller but more plentiful sandhill cranes last year. Guilfoyle says there are some behavioral differences between sandhills and whoopers.


“One of them is sandhills tend to migrate in groups more than whoopers…so we will learn the right number to group…may be all ten of them together or they may end up in two groups.”


A century ago, it’s believed about one thousand whooping cranes roamed parts of North America. Today, the species is endangered. The only remaining migrating flock of whoopers numbers about one hundred and seventy five. That flock spends its summers in Canada, before heading to Texas for the winter. If the human-assisted migration in Wisconsin is successful this fall, scientists hope to continue the reintroduction. And they say they could have as many as 25 breeding pairs of whooping cranes living in the Wisconsin to Florida flock within the next ten years.” For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.

Station Tracks Migratory Bird Health

As the weather gets warmer, migratory birds head north from
their winter homes and fly through the Midwest to nesting sites in the
Great Lakes Region. Along their journey, rivers like the Illinois
provide
habitat, food, and shelter for the birds. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports on one small research station on the
Illinois River that tracks these birds to learn more about the
environment
we live in:

Bald Eagle to Be De-Listed?

America’s bald eagle population has grown dramatically in the
past few years. States around the Great Lakes region will be counting
their bald eagle populations to determine if they should be removed from
the federal endangered species list. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Marisa Helms reports:

Transcript

America’s bald eagle population has grown dramatically in the past few years.
States around the Great Lakes Region will be counting their bald eagle
populations to determine if they should be removed from the federal endangered
species list. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Marisa Helms
reports:


This spring, states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota will survey
bald eagles to see if the numbers are high enough to warrant de-listing.
All three states have seen a strong comeback of the raptor. Pam Perry is
with Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources. She says she expects to find
more than 700 nesting pairs in Minnesota.


“The population increase is due to the fact that we’ve gotten DDT out
of the system so that is no longer affecting their reproduction. And there used
to be a problem with people shooting eagles and we see that very seldom
anymore.”


States will finish their surveys by July and submit their recommendation
to the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service. If the bird goes off the list, the bald eagle
will still be protected by the Bald Eagle Protection Act and the Federal Migratory
Bird Act.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Marisa Helms.

Migrating Birds Hurt by Communication Towers

Every year, more than 5 thousand new communications towers
are erected throughout the United States. They’re needed for cell
phones,
television and radio stations and 911 networks. But at this time of
year,
these towers become deadly obstacles. It’s estimated millions of
migrating birds are killed each year when they collide with towers in
their
flight path. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports,
there’s a growing consensus that something needs to be done: