Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2019 i Audubon Magazine

Adélie Penguins gather at the sea-ice edge, waiting for a brave individual to jump—or be pushed—into the water, where leopard seals may be on patrol. If the pioneer survives, the rest will follow, plunging into the frigid Ross Sea to hunt for krill and silverfish. Even as Adélie populations shrink on the Antarctic Peninsula, the Ross Sea population continues to grow. Its 870,000 pairs now make up one-third of Adélies globally, potentially representing the species’ best hope of survival as rising temperatures reshape the continent’s icescape and weather patterns. Climate models project that the region’s ice will persist longer than anywhere else in Antarctica. “Adélies are sea-ice obligate and so as the sea ice goes, so does the species,” says penguin scientist David Ainley. The penguins take full advantage of…

Elvis is 13; he is blind in one eye. Liberty, who is six years older, was found sprawled on a beach in Alaska. She, too, is partially blind. Sandy was shot. Ivana is an amputee. Bingo, a.k.a. Big Girl, was hit by a car in Cody, Wyoming. Green Hornet was electrocuted in Arizona. Ivie is the prime suspect in the deaths of two other residents, so she is in solitary confinement. Runner is strapped to a table, being treated with antibiotics for a purulent lesion on his foot. One of the staff is dabbing on a paste supplied by a medicine man. The tribal eagle aviary in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, houses 18 eagles in all, both Bald and Golden. Most of them occupy a long, narrow flightway with slatted…

THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE use vision to bird, but tapping other senses offers a richer perspective. Take it from Uruguayan birder Juan Pablo Culasso. Blind since birth, he’s able to identify more than 1,000 different avian species by listening to their songs alone. In fact, Culasso is so good that in 2014, he won National Geographic’s “Super Brains,” a televised talent competition. Today, Culasso spends most of his time traveling the world as a motivational speaker, but he records birds at every stop. To get the most out of each trip, Culasso suggests studying the habits and sounds of local species ahead of time using free online databases. That information will help guide what to listen for. Start with boisterous groups like orioles and work up to more cryptic families…

NOT ALL HUMMINGBIRDS ARE hardy enough to winter in California or brazen enough to hover less than a finger’s length from a camera lens. This Anna’s Hummingbird was both, pausing in the right spot for a whimsical image. Yet good timing had nothing to do with it. With two decades of photographing hummingbirds under his belt, Roy Dunn, a retired engineer, challenged himself to use a wideangle macro lens for an extreme close-up. Setting up between flowers and a feeder, he retreated into his home and watched as the more curious birds investigated their reflection in the lens. Each time he hit the trigger, however, it was too late. He then switched to a camera trap so bird movement could activate the shutter. After two weeks, about 3,000 failed and…

IN ADMIRING JOHN JAMES AUDUBON’S TRIO OF AMERICAN KESTRELS, paper-cutting artist Maude White saw drama. “It’s very visceral, and so I definitely wanted my bird to have some element of motion, too,” she says. Instead of diving or pecking, however, her creature hovers, a behavior common to kestrels on the hunt. Pausing above its vista, the falcon evokes grace and possibility, says White, who is based in New York’s Hudson Valley To create this piece, White first sketched a faint design on lightweight, semi-translucent paper. The lines guided her incisions, applied with a No. 11 American Line blade. In striving for visual balance, she stylized the wings and tail with an array of tiny slits while silhouetting the torso. A final cut liberated the bird from the page. “It’s quite…

IN A LAB FILLED WITH SENSORS, circuits, and cables, Alejandro Rico-Guevara has devised what may be the world’s strangest hummingbird feeder. Responding to timed lights and beeps, the hungry guests stick their beaks into a flower-shaped contraption and hover for a beat so a machine has time to gauge their oxygen intake. After, a tiny computer-controlled gate opens to a sugary reward. At least that’s the idea. Getting the setup right has taken months of tinkering, says the University of California, Berkeley evolutionary biologist. “The birds are hardwired to be fast,” Rico-Guevara explains. “We are trying to reverse all these years of evolution with training.” Growing up in Colombia, Rico-Guevara never paid much attention to how gadgets worked; he was always more fascinated by the natural world. But these days,…

KAYAKING UP TO THE RECEDING shore of Crab Bank, a once thriving seabird sanctuary in Charleston Harbor, Nolan Schillerstrom spotted a lone Brown Pelican perched on the sand. “I felt like it was telling us, ‘We still want to use this place, but we can’t,’” Schillerstrom, Audubon South Carolina’s coastal program coordinator, says. His was among a rainbow of kayaks and paddleboards visiting Crab Bank this past September. Together, they formed a flotilla of about 200 activists (and some dogs) who circled the sandbar to call attention to a vital rookery that was eroding away. Over recent years intense storms and heavy ship traffic had whittled down the site’s 23 acres to just 1. Thousands of low-flying Black Skimmers, balletic Sandwich Terns, foraging American Oystercatchers, and other birds had once…

IN 45 YEARS OF FLYING SEAPLANES over Louisiana’s coastal marshes, Lyle Panepinto has never tired of the view from the cockpit of his DHC-2 Beaver—even as that view has changed dramatically. “I love it here,” he says, barefoot in shorts and a windbreaker, one January morning after landing along the coast of the Chandeleur Islands, a 50-mile-long chain of barrier isles arching along eastern Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. These uninhabited swaths of sand and seagrass meadows are some of the most pristine and remote landscapes along the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of thousands of birds nest, rest, or feed on the Chandeleurs, and fat redfish and speckled seatrout swim in the shallows. What’s more, they provide an important buffer to protect New Orleans and other areas on the mainland…

ANYONE CAN BE A BIRDER GIVEN THE RIGHT TOOLS AND access. But for someone living with disabilities, the path to the outdoors is often full of impediments. Limited transportation, incompatible gear, and poor accommodation by clubs and nonprofits all put nature out of reach. That’s where no-barriers birding comes in. Nationwide, people are innovating to make feathered life accessible for everyone. The lesson we can all glean from their efforts: There’s no one way to appreciate birds. Pathfinder When Virginia Rose scouts for good birding spots around Texas, she makes sure to check the parking lot. The Travis Audubon board member leads trips for people with mobility issues through her Birdability initiative and uses a wheelchair herself. Any destination she picks has to meet certain qualifications: Are the curb cuts…

even the best blind won’t help you nab certain shots—but that doesn’t mean you have to give up. There are ways to put distance between you and your camera, turning unwitting birds into photogenic subjects. It takes some clever planning and extreme patience, but the results will speak for themselves: elusive species, unusual angles, and close-ups that would otherwise be impossible to capture. Anything can happen, so be ready to experiment. For more remote photography tips, go to audubon.org/photography. The sweet spot* for camera-trap placement depends on bird size * Distance at which there’s a 50/50 chance of shutter activating…

You can now easily find the local plants you need to support the birds you love. audubon.org/native-plants HONEYSUCKLES The long, tubular flowers of native honeysuckle vines are magnets for hummingbirds. Plant them near a fence or trellis to ensure a sturdy vertical growing space. MILKWEEDS Milkweed blooms are attractive to both butterflies and hummingbirds. Drought tolerant, these hardy plants prefer to grow in full sun and well-drained, sandy soils. SAGES The colorful flowers of these perennial shrubs attract hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. Blooming in spring and summer, these plants thrive in full sun and dry soils. PENSTEMONS Penstemons bear flowers in a variety of colors and are attractive to hummingbirds and other pollinators. The tiny seeds of these perennials are eaten by ground-feeding birds.…

AT A TIME WHEN IT’S CLEAR we’re going to face conservation challenges for decades to come, who is responsible for training the next generation of conservation leaders? At Audubon, we’ve welcomed that awesome opportunity and the responsibility that goes with it. Throughout the year, Audubon has between 25 and 30 fellows and apprentices and more than 60 seasonal interns working with our nearly 600 full-time employees. As I speak with these talented young people we’ve hired in areas like science, policy, and communications, one of the things I hear over and over is this: “I didn’t even know this could be a career for me.” That disconnect is real and troubling. Right now, the conservation community is so insular and non-diverse that lots of the young people who could be…

WHEN A BARN OWL HUNTS IN the dead of night, it displays impressive mental and physical discipline. Superb hearing and vision—the species can see up to 100 times better than humans in low light—mean the raptor notices every leaf rustle and shadow crossing its path. But not all of these sensory details signal a tasty rodent within talon’s reach. As its brain homes in on what’s important, a Barn Owl exhibits something countless humans struggle with: intense focus. For Shreesh Mysore, a Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist who once specialized in artificial intelligence research, the Barn Owl makes a perfect model for investigating how all kinds of animals filter out distractions and target their attention. “If we’re able to get answers to how Barn Owls might solve this problem,” Mysore says,…

MADISON AUDUBON’S GOOSE Pond Sanctuary is a birder’s paradise. But when visitors roam its tall grasses in late summer, many are searching for winged wildlife with six legs—not two. Monarch butterflies thrive in the milkweed-rich Wisconsin prairie. They arrive in spring to start to breed, and by August’s end a new generation gets ready for a more than 1,500-mile trip south to wintering grounds in Mexico. Just before the monarchs depart, however, sanctuary volunteers sweep them up with nets and affix tiny identification stickers to their wings to help track whether they survive the marathon journey. Tagging monarchs is a delicate task, but the data it generates are sorely needed. In the past two decades, the Eastern population that overwinters in Mexico has declined by more than 80 percent, while…

Nearly a decade after the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Gulf’s ecosystems remain fragile. They also face the growing threat of sea-level rise. Audubon’s report highlights 30 projects that would best put to use $1.7 billion of settlement money to restore habitat for birds and people—including these five, which illustrate the scope of the work to be done. 1 Matagorda Bay Audubon scientists are designing islands off Texas that would create nesting areas for Least Terns, Brown Pelicans, and other priority species. 2 Chandeleur Islands These barrier islands (see inset) were hit hard by the BP spill in 2010. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will restore 140 acres of bird habitat. 3 Mississippi Coast Audubon will track Black Skimmers and identify important breeding, stopover, and wintering sites, gaining key baseline…

ON SHORE, THE LANDING sounds straightforward enough. When we reach Green Rock on this blustery late-September morning, Jonathan Felis will nose the Zodiac up to the island, bump it lightly, and the person poised at the bow will jump onto terra firma. “It’s all about the timing,” he tells us. Bump. And jump. After cutting four miles north through waves pounding the Northern California coast, we see the island’s formidable cliffs. Suddenly the bump-and-jump notion seems downright daunting. The inflatable boat heaves, plummeting six feet below the landing spot—a slippery, barnacle-covered surface supposedly ideal to launch oneself onto from this puny, lurching vessel. Emma Kelsey doesn’t look fazed; on an upswell she leaps with the powerful grace of a gymnast and sticks the dismount. I jump next, clumsily grasp some…

THE INACCESSIBLE ISLAND Rail, the planet’s smallest flightless bird, resides only on the aptly named Inaccessible Island—a five-square-mile extinct volcano in the South Atlantic Ocean, five days by ship from the nearest airstrip. One-fifth of the planet’s bird species occur only on islands, but most are far easier to encounter than that rare rail. If your aim is to spot endemics found nowhere else in the world, your best bet is a tropical archipelago like Indonesia, while spectacles of large numbers of nesting birds are often found on islands closer to the poles. Whatever your yen, innumerable island adventures abound. For more mustvisit islands, go to audubon.org/travel. Most of the world’s flightless birds live exclusively on islands…

Deciding where to place your equipment can be the trickiest part of using a camera trap—or, for that matter, any remotely operated gear. As photographer and ecologist Jen Guyton (pictured above) knows, a little preparation can get you to the perfect spot. Find a resource hub Choose a site where birds congregate. Carcasses (for vultures or other scavenging birds) and water bodies (for wading birds) are usually productive choices. A backyard bird feeder or bath is an ideal place to practice and capture nice close-ups. Observe behavior Think like a bird. Does an owl perch on the same branch each evening? Does that kingfisher have a favorite hunting spot? If you learn enough to predict where birds will be at different times of day, you can place your camera accordingly.…