Innholdsfortegnelse for March-April 2016 i Audubon Magazine

IN 2016 YOU’D BE HARD PRESSED TO FIND A COMPANY THAT doesn’t support sustainability, including environmental stewardship and conservation. CEOs and their marketers have gotten the message that going green is good for business. So how do we know which companies are actually invested and which are just paying lip service? Here’s a tip—look for companies that have moved sustainability initiatives out of their marketing departments and into their day-to-day operations. Look at companies like General Mills, which has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2025. Or Microsoft, which created an internal system for taxing carbon and now charges its business units for their carbon usage (the money is used to fund sustainability efforts). Or Toyota, which is reducing emissions across its manufacturing processes while…

THREE A.M. IS HORRIBLE. ALMOST NOTHING happens at that hour that you won’t regret later. And yet, at three on a Wednesday morning in June, here I am folding myself into the back of an ancient Toyota Land Cruiser. What, you ask, could possibly inspire me to embark on a bleary pre-dawn odyssey up the flanks of the eastern Andes? To do so voluntarily, even eagerly? The opportunity to see something I could see nowhere else in the world, that’s what— the newest bird known to science, first described in March 2015: the Perijá Tapaculo. The Perijá Tapaculo’s namesake is the Serranía del Perijá—the northernmost extent of the eastern Andes. Colombia and Venezuela share a long stretch of border across these mountains, and these peaks and valleys have been a…

TRUDGING ALONG A CHANnel in Northern California’s Sonoma Creek Marsh one day in January, Courtney Gutman stopped suddenly and dropped to her knees in the mud. “Amazing!” shouted Gutman, the restoration project manager for Richardson Bay Audubon. “Look how quickly it grew back!” The source of her amazement was a one-inch-tall, magentastemmed heath sprout poking out of a patch of soil. A single sprout in a sea of mud might not seem like cause for celebration. But the appearance of a native plant in the formerly barren Sonoma Creek Marsh signaled a wetland slowly returning to health, thanks to a project led by Audubon California, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Marin-Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control District. The project was to create 400 acres of muchneeded habitat for…

“I love you!” says Nicky. “I love you!”“I love you!” says Lisbon. NICKY CLAYTON HAS SHOULDER-LENGTH BLONDE HAIR and a posture that reflects her background in dancing. She is a scientist. She is very smart. Lisbon is a bird, a Eurasian Jay. He’s pretty smart, too. Like most Eurasian Jays, especially the males, Lisbon is also a good mimic. So it’s not clear whether he really loves Nicky, although he certainly likes it when she gives him a worm. If he loves anyone, it’s probably Rome, his longtime mate. Lisbon and Rome, both eight years old, have been together since they were just two. They share a wired enclosure out here at the edge of Madingley, a peaceful, manicured English village a few miles west of Cambridge. Clayton, 53, moved…

A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, IN THIS MAGAZINE, I ANNOUNCED a grand plan to see as many birds as I could in 2015. The playing field: Planet Earth. The goal: 5,000 species. On January 1, 2015, I set out to see the world, one bird at a time. My mission, besides raw adventure, was to bear witness to the diversity—human and avian—that inhabits our planet. I would tap into the worldwide network of birders, hear their stories, and see their species. Such an undertaking has become possible thanks to the Internet, which has transformed how people interact with nature and one another. What was once seen as a pursuit for first-world retirees has become popular across all kinds of borders—birding has exploded in countries like Brazil, Malaysia, and…

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON RHAPSODIZED about the Purple Gallinule “flirting its tail while gaily moving over the broad leaves of the water-lily,” its “graceful movements, and rich hues of its glossy plumage!” Upon seeing his painting, Olimpia Zagnoli was similarly blown away by the bird’s splendor. Zagnoli, 33, is known for a style that mingles soft shapes and vibrant hues. A fan of punk rock, city architecture, and the late American artist and social activist Keith Haring, she lives in Milan, where fashion and style play a strong part in her bold illustrations. When she is working on a subject she first sketches it on paper to play with ideas and how she wants to frame them, then brings them to life on a digital tablet. “I try to always add…

THIS PAST FALL MEMBERS of Michigan’s Petoskey Regional Audubon Society joined the Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch to conduct their first-ever survey of the waterbirds migrating through the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile-wide strip of water that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. “Really, the ducks and shorebirds are what we’re concerned about the most,” says PRAS president Darrell Lawson. “Because of Line 5, we decided we should start studying the waterfowl migration.” Until four years ago few people in Michigan knew that a pair of oil pipelines, part of a system called Line 5, runs across the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, carrying more than 500,000 barrels of light crude and natural gas liquids each day. But in 2012 the National Wildlife Federation released a report that raised questions…

IN HIS NEW DOCUMENTARY, “POACHED,” DIRECTOR TIMOTHY Wheeler dives into the strange world of illegal egg collecting, exploring what compels someone to risk imprisonment to snatch up bird eggs. To mark the fi lm’s release—it’s available on iTunes and is screening in select cities across the United States—we’ve put together a list of high-profile bird heists from around the world. Nest Crasher SOME PEOPLE COVET JEWELS. Some covet cars. But Matthew Gonshaw wants just one thing: eggs. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Londoner kept a private journal of bird breeding timetables and used climbing gear and camouflage to cherry-pick the nests of rare European species, such as Pied Avocets and Ospreys. In 2002 he became the third person ever incarcerated in the United Kingdom for stealing eggs,…

THE CROWS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD KNOW YOUR block better than you do. They know the garbage truck routes. They know which kids drop animal crackers and which ones throw rocks. They know the pet dogs, and they might even play with the friendly ones. If you feed them, they probably not only recognize you but your car as well, and they might just leave you trinkets in return. These birds live their lives intertwined with ours, carefully observing us even as most of us barely take note of them. That’s how they survive, and they’re good at it: In recent decades the American Crow has taken over our suburbs, and even moved into the hearts of our big cities. As we’ve reshaped the landscape, we’ve created an ideal environment for…