Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2017 i Audubon Magazine

ON THE NORTHERN FRINGE OF Belize City, narrow, congested streets simmer into a two-lane highway. Thirty-three miles and one left turn later, the road slips into the secluded community of Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, home to 1,387 people and 317 bird species. Roseate Spoonbills and White Ibises scour tannin-tinted waters for food, while Great Black Hawks, Wood Storks, and Jabirus glide overhead. “We don't want to feel like we're pleading for permission for everything.” But this past spring, it was smoke, not birds, that filled the skies above Crooked Tree. Around 3 a.m. on May 13, a fire destroyed the sanctuary’s visitors’ center, along with thousands of dollars in equipment. Fortunately, no humans or birds were killed—and while investigators are pointing to arson, no suspects have been arrested. The blaze…

1,933 Miles of U.S.-Mexico border, including canyons and other geological obstacles 654 Miles of existing barriers, mostly built after the Secure Fence Act of 2006 700 Miles of wall Trump wants to add (at minimum) with his national-security plan 111 Species that are threatened or endangered and could be hurt by the wall 18 Species from that list that are avian, like the Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo 400+ Species of birds in Santa Ana, the second-highest count of any U.S. refuge $12b Cost to build the wall, according to the highest White House estimate $21.6b Cost to build the wall, according to the Department of Homeland Security $463m Profits from birding and ecotourism in the Rio Grande Valley each year…

Building for the Future Green infrastructure— using natural structures to protect coastal communities and nesting sites—is much hardier and more effective than concrete at helping us adapt to megastorms and sea-level rise. Audubon works on all three coasts to support green infrastructure projects. Aramburu Island Shoreline Protection, California Since 2011 Audubon California has been rebuilding the mudflats and cobbled eastern shoreline of this island in Richardson Bay, just north of San Francisco. Restored areas will reduce erosion, create wetland and terrestrial habitat that will benefit birds including Black Oystercatchers, and will help protect the entire island against sea-level rise. Erosion Control and Restoration on Chester Island, Texas Chester Island, in Matagorda Bay, is one of the largest bird sanctuaries on the Texas coast, providing habitat for thousands of birds. It…

Find the expanded scopes guide at audubon.org/scopes. SOMETIMES BINOCULARS JUST DON’T CUT IT. THEY’RE SPLENDID WHEN BIRDS ARE NEARBY, BUT when you’re after shorebirds on a distant mudflat or hawks circling high overhead, a spotting scope, with its far greater magnification, is eminently superior. As with bins, there’s a dizzying array of scopes. So we recruited 35 testers, ranging from bird guides to beginners, to rate two dozen models in mulitple settings, including the Great Salt Lake and the roof of our New York City headquarters. Our top picks for each category are waterproof and fogproof, come in straight and angled versions, and produce bright, crisp images, allowing you to focus on the fine details of distant quarry. GOOD VALUE Celestron Regal M2 Price: $700 The takeaway: One reviewer summed…

For more Bald Eagle tips and hotspots, go to audubon.org/photography. FIFTY YEARS AGO, IF YOU WANTED TO SEE OUR NATIONAL SYMBOL in the flesh (or feather), you’d have been searching for a long time: By the 1960s, just 487 breeding pairs of Bald Eagles remained in the Lower 48. Since then the species has made a major comeback, and today that number exceeds 10,000. The qualities that make the Bald Eagle such a potent symbol—its fierce strength and grand wingspan—also make it a perfect photography subject. What About Goldens? Golden Eagles are irresistible subjects, but pursuing them requires special caution. Goldens are more sensitive to human disturbance near the nest than Bald Eagles, and it’s best not to attempt to photograph them there at all, unless you’re working with a…

ASK HELEN JAMES ABOUT HER favorite birds, and she’ll give you a strange list of contenders: the ibis that noses through the island leaf litter, pretending it’s a kiwi; the duck with such bad eyesight it simply feels its way around; and the long-legged owl that makes its kills in broad daylight. These were real birds that once lived on the Hawaiian Islands where James, a paleontologist, hunts for fossilized avian remains from the Quaternary Period. After excavating the bones, she takes them back to her lab at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., where she compares them against 60,000 modern specimens. By matching the anatomies, she can narrow down the extinct species’ diet, appearance, and sensory features. “You build up to a point where you…

Every summer, Mandt’s Black Guillemots gather at Cooper Island to breed. A single pair—they mate for life—may produce about two dozen chicks during their 20-year lifetimes. But since 1990, the guillemots’ numbers have been dropping; fewer of those chicks are surviving to adulthood. Because George Divoky has collected 43 years of data at Cooper Island, it’s possible to see why. COOPER ISLAND Divoky began tracking Mandt’s Black Guillemots here in the 1970s, and he watched their numbers grow for two decades. Today the island hosts half as many pairs as in 1990. 1 Because the Arctic is warming, sea ice is farther away during the summer breeding season. Cooper Island was once ideally situated for Mandt’s Black Guillemots, which hunt along the sea-ice edge. But since 2003, offshore waters have…

For more eccentric itineraries, go to audubon.org/travel. AH, THE SWEET SMELL OF ANOTHER LIFE BIRD. OR IS IT JUST THE STENCH OF ROTTING STACKS of garbage, fermenting pools of sewage, and combusting jet engines? Landfills, waste treatment plants, and airports may not be the most obvious birding destinations, but you’d be remiss to skip these sites just because they aren’t easy on the senses; they can be rewarding hotspots, especially in winter, when they draw hordes of gulls and waterfowl, as well as rarities. So, pack your hazmat suit, check the visitation rules, and stop in on your next vacation. Grail Bird Slaty-backed Gull This stray from Siberia might occur anywhere in North America, but identifying it is a challenge. Some far-flung records—in sites from Maine to Texas—have been documented…

STEPHEN KRONINGER HAD EVERY INTENTION of including four pileated woodpeckers in his cutpaper collage. But as he snipped shapes from Vogue magazine using 30-year-old Hoffritz scissors (never sharpened), he enlarged the birds to emphasize their postures and found that a trio was a better fit for his 14-inch-by-14-inch canvas. “The thing about collage is that it’s improvisational— you make it up as you go along,” says Kroninger, who’s based in New York City. At least one premeditated piece made the final cut: the “worm” in the top bird’s beak. “When I saw the grub [in John James Audubon’s plate], I thought, ‘That’s a strand of pearls,’” recalls Kroninger. He turned to the glossies he has filed away for use in future projects. In a folder labeled “Wealth” he found a…

Year of the Bird isn’t a passive exercise— you have a critical role to play. AT AUDUBON, EVERY YEAR IS THE year of the bird. So when I got a call early 2017 from my good friend and former San Jose Mercury News colleague Susan Goldberg, now the charismatic editor-in-chief of National Geographic magazine and editorial director for National Geographic Partners, about a possible alliance between Audubon and Nat Geo, I was thrilled. What if, she asked, we made 2018 the Year of the Bird? And what if we could bring together dozens of organizations and use all of our combined storytelling expertise to elevate birds and the important place they have in our ecosystems? What if, indeed. 2018 marks the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, one of…