Tag: birds

Growing a Garden on Your Garage

  • David Lanfear recently ‘installed’ one on his own garage roof, so his neighbors could see the benefits (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

When most people put a new roof on
their home they usually use standard asphalt
or tile roofing. But other people are going
for something more natural. They’re planting
grass and flowers on their houses. Joyce
Kryszak talked with one builder in
Western New York who planted a green roof on
his garage to show his neighbors how it works:

Transcript

When most people put a new roof on
their home they usually use standard asphalt
or tile roofing. But other people are going
for something more natural. They’re planting
grass and flowers on their houses. Joyce
Kryszak talked with one builder in
Western New York who planted a green roof on
his garage to show his neighbors how it works:

About 90% of all residential roofs are made out of manufactured
asphalt.

But builder David Lanfear knows that nothing tops mother nature.
He makes roofs out of gardens.

Lanfear recently ‘installed’ one on his own garage roof, so his
neighbors could see the benefits. There are beautiful flowering
plants visible over the edge of the flat roof. Lanfear says they’ve got
the whole birds and bees thing going on.

“We’ve noticed a big increase in insects, butterflies, birds all
sorts of new birds that I haven’t ever seen. They’re up there
eating something. Bugs? But its kind of nice to sit on the deck
and watch this nature in the city thing,” said Lanfear.

But the living roof isn’t a novelty. Lanfear says the roofs are more
eco-friendly. He says a living roof provides a whole cascade of
environmental benefits.

“Especially in a downtown when you get a hard rainfall the water
washes off all at once. There’s nothing to absorb it. If you had
a roof like this it absorbs the water and let’s it off slowly. So, it
not only slows the runoff, it cools the water and it starts to filter
the water. It filters some of the atmospheric crud out.
Otherwise, you get super heated water rushing off into the storm
sewer, and then out into the river or the lake and effecting the
environment there,” said Lanfear.

Once his neighbors understood the concept, they stopped thinking
Lanfear was crazy. A few even offered to give him a hand planting
his roof.

First the roof was reinforced with used lumber. Next are the
waterproof barriers – a rubber membrane, a root barrier made out of
old billboards and some old carpeting. Finally, recycled, crushed
concrete is shoveled on to be used as soil for the plants to grow in.

It’s all sustainable. And the native plants require very little water or
maintenance.

Neighbor Deborah Bach loves to garden. So, she was happy to
pitch in. Bach says the concrete soil needs to be doctored to enrich
it. But they have a reuse idea for that too.

“My son works at Starbucks and they give out free grounds for
gardens. So, we’re going to try doing that to try to balance this
out. You know, using recycled materials and things that have
already been used,” said Bach.

Another neighbor stopped by to help. Alex Sowyrda is a high school
technology teacher who’s interested in the science of green roofs.
He plans to share what he learns with his students.

“I try to bring it into my curriculum at school and, hopefully, the
kids graduating high school now take this knowledge with them
and are able to make responsible choices in the way they build
and the way they design in the future,” said Sowyrda.

The living roof builder David Lanfear says it’s a concept that can grow
on anyone. Even people who grew up with more traditional roofs. He
says to start small – with a garage roof – or maybe even smaller.

“We all have little expanses of roof in front of windows. And in
the summer you might notice that when the window is open the
hot air blows in, a lot of that heat comes from that little bit of
roof. If we could just put sections one square yard of living roof
outside of our windows on the porch roof, that would make a
drastic difference in cooling our house – simple,” said Lanfear.

And pretty cheap. Lanfear says the cost of materials is about the
same as an asphalt roof. But he says there’s savings in the long run
because the green roof can last three times as long.

And he says it’s a whole lot nicer to look at.

For The Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

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A Dow Jones Index for Animals

  • Scientists have created a species index that tracks populations much like the Dow Jones (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:

The new system is nicknamed the Dow Jones Index of Biodiversity.


It’s put together by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the
London Zoo.


Jonathan Baillie is with the zoo. He says the system helps keep track of which
species are doing well and which ones are close to extinction.


“So if you thought of a group of species like a company you can track what’s
happening to birds through time, what’s happening to mammals through time
what’s happening to amphibians through time – and we’re seeing amphibians
are crashing quite quickly, birds are going down but not as rapidly.”


Of course species can’t be tracked exactly like financial markets. The species
index gets updated every few years instead of every day.


Soon they’re hoping to track things like beetles, mushrooms, and lichens on the
index.


For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Planting More Trees on Coffee Farms

  • Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. (Source: MarkSweep at Wikimedia Commons)

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

Transcript

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

A few decades ago, coffee growers in Latin America were given incentives to clear the
shade trees on their plantations. More sun equals more coffee beans. They also found
more sun meant more weeds. So they had to spray expensive herbicides.

Now a new study published in BioScience shows cutting down those shade trees has
also left the coffee plants more exposed to damage from bad weather. Ivette Perfecto
at the University of Michigan is one of the authors.

“The vulnerability of the farms are much higher if they eliminate the shade. The shade
trees provide like a buffer against extremes.”

Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. The added
benefit is the trees provide habitat for wildlife, including those migrating birds that spend
their summers here and travel south to that region.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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One Man, a Marsh, and Birds

  • Ken Brunswick at the Limberlost marsh (Photo by Sam Hendren)

Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:

Transcript

Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:

When Ken Brunswick was a kid, he wanted
to study birds. Brunswick grew up near the
western Ohio town of St. Henry in the 1950s. He
says it didn’t take long to read all the books
about birds in the local library.

“I knew exactly where all the bird books were
because at that time that’s what I had my heart
set on, being an ornithologist,” Brunswick says.

One of the books that inspired Brunswick
was written by Gene Stratton-Porter. She was a
popular novelist in the early 1900s. Stratton-
Porter was best known for her fictional accounts
set in and around an Indiana swamp called the
Limberlost. She was also an amateur naturalist
and wrote several books about birds.

“I was in the eighth grade in that little two-room
schoolhouse reading ‘What I Have Done With
Birds’ by Gene Stratton-Porter, and the teacher
walked up to see what book I was reading, and
looked at it and the teacher said, ‘You know that
place isn’t very far from here.’ And I didn’t know
what she was talking about.”

The Limberlost actually was only a few miles
west across the state line. Stratton-Porter
moved to the area in 1888. But to the locals, the
trees were valuable lumber and the swamp was
a waste of land. Stratton-Porter wrote that
commerce attacked the Limberlost and began,
she said, its usual process of devastation. By
1910, two decades of destruction were
complete.

“This Loblolly Marsh was what I consider the
heart of the Limberlost area and this marsh was
actually the last thing that was drained in this
area so the farmers could start farming it,” says
Brunswick.

Brunswick became a farmer himself. He
started a dairy only a mile from the old Loblolly
Marsh. Through the years he learned more about
the swamp and the birds that lived there.

Later he formed the Limberlost
Remembered project. The group’s mission: to
bring Loblolly Marsh back to life. And they’ve
made a lot of headway.

Brunswick, who’s 63, is retried from farming.
He’s now an ecologist for the Indiana
Department of Natural Resources. He oversees
the Limberlost restoration.
We take a look at the changes aboard his ATV.

He’s maneuvering along a path near the edge of
the marsh. It’s thick with prairie cord grass,
switch grass and blue stem. Some of the grasses
have been planted here; other plant seeds have
lain dormant for decades and are now reclaiming
the ground on their own.

Out in the marsh the water is a gentle sea of
green and wildflowers abound around the edges.
But Brunswick’s love of the birds has not gone
away. And he’s thrilled to see them returning to
their marsh home.

“This is the area where we see American Bittern
once in a while. There’s been Virginia Rail, we
hear Sora Rail in here also. Sora is just a real
little bird that has just the dandiest sound when
it makes its call,” Brunswick says.

These birds and others like them are in
trouble. Most of the wetlands and prairies where
birds once thrived have disappeared.

Brunswick’s dream of becoming an
ornithologist never happened. But his work to
save the Limberlost has been his way of doing
something for the birds he loves.

“Actually when I think about this work I’m doing
it takes me back to that dream I had when I was
a kid in that two room schoolhouse. That dream
of being an ornithologist was taken away and
here, about 30 years later, seeing this land
flooding, I’m seeing birds that, some of them, I
never saw before.”

And the work of an old farmer has restored
the wetlands and natural areas that farmers
before him destroyed.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sam
Hendren.

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Botulism and the Beach

  • The beach looks beautiful... until you stumble on dead birds and fish killed by Type E botulism. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

A deadly toxin is spreading across
the Great Lakes, killing fish and birds.
Rebecca Williams reports scientists are
trying to put the puzzle together as quickly
as they can:

Transcript

A deadly toxin is spreading across
the Great Lakes, killing fish and birds.
Rebecca Williams reports scientists are
trying to put the puzzle together as quickly
as they can:

(sound of waves lapping the beach)

It’s one of those perfect beach days. Not too hot, not too crowded. Everything’s
just right.

Unless you don’t like rotting fish and dead birds full of maggots.

Hunter Brower is hanging out at this Lake Michigan beach. He says he’s seen a
lot of dead gulls here in recent years.

“It’s disgusting. We’re out here to enjoy our time and it’s just not right.”

The birds and fish are being killed by Type E botulism. Basically, it’s food
poisoning. For about a decade now, botulism has been killing huge numbers of
birds in the Great Lakes.

We’re talking about more than 75,000 birds – and scientists think that’s probably
a very conservative estimate. That’s because birds could be dying and not
reaching the shore. And it’s very hard to know how many fish are getting killed.
They’re harder to diagnose.

“It’s really one of nature’s most potent toxins.”

Mark Breederland is with Michigan SeaGrant. He says some studies show the
toxin can paralyze fish.

“They can actually lose their orientation and be bobbing up and down vertically
and that would be easy pickin’s if you’re a loon.”

Loons and other birds eat those poisoned fish, or, even grosser, they’ll eat the
maggots in dead birds on the beach, and get sick. The toxin can make birds lose
control of their neck muscles. Their heads fall in the water and they drown.

Beaches full of dead fish and birds aren’t great for tourism. But scientists are
more worried about what this means for endangered species – from the giant lake
sturgeon to the tiny piping plover.

Mark Breederland says they’re also worried about the thousands of migratory
birds that get killed on their way south in the fall.

“They’re just driving down their migratory highway, pulling over for a rest stop to
get something to eat, and that’s their last and final resting spot.”

So scientists are trying to pin down what’s going on.

There’s one main hypothesis. It involves some nasty little critters: invasive zebra
mussels and their cousins, the quaggas. They got into the lakes in the ballast
water of foreign ships.

Both mussels suck in lake water and filter it. They’ve made the lakes a lot clearer
than they used to be.

The clearer water means more sunlight can reach the lake bottom, and that
kick-starts algae growth. When the algae die, it sucks oxygen out of the water.
And, all of that is perfect for a bacterium that produces the botulism toxin to go forth
and multiply.

Okay, now, remember those pesky mussels? Scientists suspect they can take in
the toxin but they’re not affected by it. But fish that eat the mussels get sick.

One fish in particular loves to eat mussels. It’s the invasive round goby. And
there are lots and lots of gobies in the Lakes. That could mean lots of poisoned
snacks for bigger fish and birds.

Researchers have a bad feeling about all this, and they’re trying to confirm their
hunches.

(sound of boat engine starting up)

Brenda Moraska LaFrancois is headed out on Lake Michigan to investigate. She’s
part of a team that’s collecting samples from the lake bottom.

She says this is a tough mystery to unravel.

“These are really complicated systems and unfortunately they’re continuing to
change.”

As soon as scientists think they have a handle on what’s going on, some new
invader gets in and messes everything up again. So it’s really hard to know what
could be done to stop the outbreaks.

The experts say, if you go to the beach, it’s safe to swim. But you shouldn’t eat any
fish or waterfowl that seem sick.

Your local wildlife managers might tell you: don’t touch it, but get something to
bury the dead animal down in the sand, so other birds won’t feed on it and spread the
toxin.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Turbines and Bats: A Deadly Combo

  • Many bats are being killed by wind turbines (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The wind turbine industry has made
changes to reduce the number of birds killed
by the spinning blades. But scientists are
finding that more bats are being killed.
Rebecca Williams reports one research team
thinks it now knows why:

Transcript

The wind turbine industry has made
changes to reduce the number of birds killed
by the spinning blades. But scientists are
finding that more bats are being killed.
Rebecca Williams reports one research team
thinks it now knows why:

It’s been a mystery why bats are getting killed by wind turbines. They’re
usually great at avoiding collisions because they sense moving objects
even better than still ones.

A team from the University of Calgary looked at dead bats near
turbines. They found that 90% of the bats had internal bleeding.

Erin Baerwald is the lead author of the study. She says there’s a sudden
drop in pressure near the tips of the turbine blades. And when bats fly
close enough, the pressure drop makes their lungs over-expand and
burst. She thinks the bats are attracted to the turbines.

“Maybe they see these tall turbines as trees.”

That’s because most of the bats that are getting killed are tree roosting
bats.

Baerwald says researchers are looking at ways to change turbines to
avoid killing bats.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Trees as Odor-Eaters

  • Researchers at the University of Delaware have found that planting trees around poultry farms has many benefits (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

As suburbs are built closer to
farms, there are sometimes complaints
about the odors. Researchers are now
working to smooth things out between
farmers and their new neighbors. Jessi
Ziegler has the story on one
of the simple solutions they found:

Transcript

As suburbs are built closer to
farms, there are sometimes complaints
about the odors. Researchers are now
working to smooth things out between
farmers and their new neighbors. Jessi
Ziegler has the story on one
of the simple solutions they found:

If you’ve ever driven by a chicken farm, you know the
smell can get pretty bad.

So, imagine living by one, and smelling it every single day.

Well, researchers may have come up with a solution –
trees.

Planting a few rows of trees around a farm can do all sorts
of good.

They capture dust and ammonia. And they block noise
and odor.

Also, they make the farm look a lot prettier. Which,
researcher George Malone says, can make a big difference.

“There’s been other studies to indicate that attractive
farms, statistically, have less odor than unattractive farms.
Perception is reality of what we deal with.”

And the perception is, the better you think a farm looks,
the better you think it smells.

For The Environment Report, this is Jessi Ziegler.

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Woody the Woodpecker: Save My Home!

  • Chet Meyers surveys the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve for Red-headed Woodpeckers. He's heading up a study to identify the bird's preferred habitat, and to encourage landowners to let dead and dying trees stand, as woodpecker homes. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:

Transcript

Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:

You can’t miss Red-headed Woodpeckers. They have long beaks,
bright red heads and snowy white breasts. And if you go to the right
place, you can find a lot of them.

“Somebody told me that there was Red-headed Woodpeckers up
here, so I walked five minutes, and there was a Red-headed
Woodpecker, and it flew into a hole in a tree, and I says, ‘wow, this is
easy.’”

Lance Nelson first visited the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science
Reserve about a year ago.

“And then I came up this year and found 8 nests. But the young
make a lot of chattering, so you can usually tell where the nest is.”

Today they’re not hammering on trees – the sound most of us
associate with woodpeckers – but they’re doing plenty of chattering.

This reserve in southern Minnesota looks a lot like how much of the
Midwest used to look.

There are clumps of big oak trees here, separated by open areas of
native grasses, shrubs and wildflowers. The biologists call it an oak
savannah.

And there are Red-headed Woodpeckers everywhere – about fifty of
them on this 500-acre patch of ground.

“There’s a red-headed, and he’s got a baby with him. God, they’re
beautiful. They are so beautiful.”

That’s Chet Meyers. After a career as a college professor, he’s now
in charge of an effort to make more places where Red-headed
Woodpeckers can build their nests and raise their young.

If they can figure out exactly what the woodpeckers like so much
about this place, maybe they can come close to reproducing the
same conditions other places.

Chet Meyers is marking every tree where the woodpeckers have
nested.

“See these two trees to the left, go to the right-most one, it forks, and
there’s a broken-off snag up there, looks like a ‘Y’. That’s where the
babies were sticking their head out a couple weeks ago. It was really
cute.”

Once the trees are marked, the group will catalog exact descriptions
of each tree. They’re hoping to come up with a profile of the perfect
home for Red-headed Woodpeckers.

“And we’re going to measure the diameter of the tree, how high the
nest cavity is, the species of the tree, is it alive or is it dead, so we
can get some data on what seems to be the preferred habitat.”

Once they’re pretty sure they know what the woodpeckers like, they’ll
reach out to land owners. They’ll to try to get them to leave dead and
dying trees standing.

That could work on old abandoned farms, where there are trees and
open spaces. Or in cemeteries. Or around golf courses.

“If our theory – see, this is all theory – if our theory is correct, the golf
course replicates an oak savannah and there should be birds there.
So, that’s what we’re hoping.”

And Meyers says helping woodpeckers means helping other wildlife
too.

“The woodpecker is called a primary nester, it digs the cavity. But
flying squirrels, mice, snakes, bluebirds, tree swallows – there are lots
of other animals that are secondary nesters. They can’t drill the hole.
But they live there. So what we’re trying to do is preserve the habitat
so the woodpeckers drill the hole and when they leave, something
else will come in and live in it.”

The researchers think if you have dead or dying tree, that could be a
home for a Red-headed Woodpecker. But usually homeowners are
worried the tree could fall and damage something, Meyers says you
can cut off the top and some of the bigger branches and leave the
rest of the tree standing. They think the red-headed woodpecker will
be just as happy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Songbirds’ Numbers Flying South

  • A Nashville Warbler - one of the birds that Matt Etterson heard during this bird count in Canada (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

Transcript

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

The jumping off point for this trip is a tiny airport with a grass runway in
northern Minnesota, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

We fly for 15 minutes, over trees and swamps as far as the eye can see. Down
below we get a glimpse of a moose. And, later, a pair of rare trumpeter swans
in their nest.

The helicopter sets down in what’s known as a floating bog. Its runners are
sitting in six inches of water.

We jump out in knee-high boots and rain jackets, and douse with DEET to try
to keep the mosquitoes away.

I’m following Heidi Seeland, a graduate student who seems to know her way
around a bog.

We’re in knee-deep water. Then it’s thigh-deep Pretty soon it’s waist-deep. I try
to step on a clump of sphagnum moss. But it sinks. It holds onto my boot, and
I’m sitting in water.

Heidi helps me up, and we catch up with the others.

They fan out on different points of the compass. I follow Matt Etterson. He’s an
ornithologist, a bird expert. We slog through the bog for nearly half an hour.
Etterson is aiming for a piece of higher ground, where the trees are a little
taller, better for nesting.

Suddenly he stops. He’s found the spot he was looking for. He sets his watch
for 10 minutes and pulls out a notebook.

Etterson cocks his head this way and that, jotting the names of the birds he can
hear, and the time he hears them. He doesn’t pay any attention to the mosquito
biting the back of his neck. He just listens and takes notes.

“We had a couple of hermit thrush — that’s the singing to the north of us. A
veery called a couple of times to the west of us. A Nashville warbler, and a
couple of western palm warblers, and that was about it. It was pretty quiet
otherwise,” Etterson said.

We trudge through the muck for another 20 or 30 minutes and he repeats the
process.

It’s two hours later, and the three researchers meet at the helicopter landing spot
and compare notes. They’re excited about Etterson’s veery and Nashville
warbler. The others heard a Connecticut warbler and a Lincoln’s sparrow.

They would have been really happy if they’d heard a golden-winged warbler.
It’s one of the most threatened of bird species. The number of golden-winged
warblers has declined by some 80% during the last 50 years.

Today’s trip is an experiment to see how well it works to count birds in remote
places, using a helicopter.

It’ll take five years to finish the bird count here. Then, in 10 or 20 years, they’ll
do it all over again, to see how the birds are faring.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Nature’s Little Architects

  • The nest of a Swainsons warbler. (Photo by Judith McMillan)

Some of the world’s most intricate
architecture is not always constructed by
humans. Sometimes the most skilled architectural
wonders are designed by nature. Gretchen Cuda reports on an exhibit that celebrates
birds’ nests:

Transcript

Some of the world’s most intricate
architecture is not always constructed by
humans. Sometimes the most skilled architectural
wonders are designed by nature. Gretchen Cuda reports on an exhibit that celebrates
birds’ nests:

Judith McMillan didn’t find her inspiration in tree branches. She found it in the
basement of the museum where she works. She was rummaging through drawers
there when she came across a hundred-year-old collection of bird nests.

“This Museum must have 10 cabinets full of bird’s nests.”

She was fascinated and immediately knew she had a new subject for her art.

McMillan is a photographer who has been volunteering at the Cleveland Museum of
Natural history for 20 years. In her latest exhibit, titled “Nesting”, she captures some
of natures most inspiring, and often overlooked architecture – the nests of birds.

(sound of exhibit crowd)

“I was looking for nests that were different from each other so that you could see that
these birds were little architects. And there were so many different kinds of materials
used – and then the eggs could be so different. Some with little tiny speckles, some
with different colors some with little calligraphic streaks around them, so it was that
variety that I wanted to capture.”

All the photographs are in black and white – because she really wanted people to
concentrate on the architecture without being seduced by the color. She’s fascinated
by the way different birds chose very specific materials to work with – everything
from marsh reeds, grape vine, or little knotty twigs – like this one.

“This is a vermillion flycatcher – it’s almost like it’s made of pick up sticks in the way
their pushed together.”

And to emphasize the diversity of structures birds can create she shows me an
Orioles nest that’s five inches deep and formerly hung like a basket from a tree.

“I actually had to shine a flashlight down in it when I was taking the photograph in
order to get the eggs to show up.”

Most of the nests and eggs were collected around the turn of the 20th century by
amateur naturalists who never thought twice about disturbing the natural wildlife.

But the practice eventually fell out of fashion as people became more
environmentally conscious and large nest and egg collections were often turned over
to museums – explains Andy Jones the museum’s ornithologist.

“People whose grandfathers were dealing with eggs as a hobby, well their
grandfathers are passing away and so they contact their local university or natural
history museum, and say, ‘hey do you want these?’”

Those specimens were originally collected just because they were pretty. These
days, they’re still beautiful, but they also serve a scientific purpose. Scientists can
look at things such as the thickness of the shells, or the type and number of birds
found in a specific location and tell a lot about the birds. They can see where birds
used to live and how far their territories reached. They can even tell if a bird that’s
extinct now once lived in an area.

Judith McMillan hopes her photographs will not only show how beautiful the birds’
handiwork was, but will also inspire people to do something about saving the birds
that are still here.

“I didn’t understand until I started using a camera myself how you can isolate
something and make people look at it differently–And I hope through my
photographs I’m getting people to take a fresh look at things. It’s hard to have an
appreciation of nature unless you really look at it and start to really care about it.”

Recent surveys have found that many songbirds are disappearing. If people don’t
start caring, those photographs and drawers full of nests might become the only
reminders of many more species that go extinct.

(song of a Cardinal)

For The Environment Report, I’m Gretchen Cuda.

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