Birders in the state have a new website to flock to: the updated Connecticut Bird Atlas. The website documents which birds are living in Connecticut and where, including wintering birds. Organizers say the website will help conservationists figure out which lands to protect so birds can continue to breed.
The atlas is a culmination of four years of data collected by almost 1,000 volunteer birders who staked out birding locations across Connecticut. Although bird locations have been mapped across the state, detailed accounts of each individual species are still in the process of being written up, according to the site.
“It is by far the largest inventory of wildlife that we've ever done in the state,” said Min Huang, who worked on the project and heads the migratory bird program at Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Volunteers were asked to spend at least 20 hours surveying breeding behavior in designated blocks. Over the course of four years, birders noted nests with birds in them, birds carrying nesting material or food, birds removing fecal sacks from nests, and male birds singing in the same area (an indication that a bird is looking for a mate).
Harder to find birds like owls and marsh birds were surveyed by hired technicians.
“Atlas-ing is not for everyone who likes to go birding,” said Chris Elphick, who also worked on the project and is a professor in the ecology and evolutionary biology department at the University of Connecticut.
“There's people out birding all the time, but they tend to congregate in the places that are well known for being good for birds. One of the goals of an atlas is to spread people out and get people to go to those places where people don't normally go,” Elphick said.
The atlas is an update to a previous survey conducted in the 1980s.
“One of the biggest things that we needed to determine was, how have things changed over the past, you know, 40 years,” Huang said.
The answer?
“Unfortunately, a lot of things are not doing well,” he said.
Most birds species are declining in Connecticut
According to the atlas, 64% of Connecticut’s breeding species are on the decline.
“That’s a pretty scary number,” Huang said, calling the results “dire.”
The decline includes birds that need specific habitats to survive like the wood thrush, which needs large tracts of undeveloped forest, away from roads and buildings.
According to Huang, wood thrushes have declined markedly since the first atlas because of forest fragmentation, a process of breaking up larger forests into smaller patches to allow for development.
“There's a beautiful piece of forest that we see from our eyes as ‘Oh, that's great.’ But for the wood thrush they don't do well there and they won't use it,” Huang said.
What’s more troubling, Huang said, is that the atlas also shows declines in common species like pigeons, house sparrows and starlings - birds that are usually able to live in a variety of habitats.
“When you have species that can survive in a whole bunch of different areas and they're all declining, that really has to raise that red flag,” he said.
While birds face many threats - including human disturbance, worsening air and water quality, and a decline in the variety of insects they eat - it’s not clear why common species are declining.
“I’m a little loathed to speculate,” Elphick said, noting concerns about pollutants and microplastics.
“They're all very plausible explanations. But I don’t know that we’ve …really kind of figured it out.”
Warming weather and a ban on pesticides causes some CT birds to thrive
On the other hand, some birds are thriving in Connecticut. According to Huang, 29% of bird species are increasing in the state.
Some of that is due to climate change and warming weather. Black vultures, a species that typically breeds in the South, are now nesting in Connecticut.
Bald eagles and other raptors are also increasing due to a ban on DDT, a pesticide that protected crops and livestock from insects, but made raptor egg shells too thin to survive.
“They were getting crushed or not allowing for enough protection as they were incubating,” Huang said.
“Once we got that out of the environment, they started laying viable eggs,” he said, noting that there are now over 100 breeding pairs of bald eagles and more than 950 pairs of ospreys in Connecticut.
“Nature has a way of being resilient,” Huang said. If you pave the way and “suppress the major factors that are resulting in decline, nature comes back pretty hard.”
But “that’s our problem,” Huang said, “paving the way for her.”
Áine Pennello is a Report for America corps member, covering the environment and climate change for Connecticut Public
