Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2019 i Audubon Magazine

Every autumn the largest congregation of Bald Eagles on the planet flocks to the northern Alaskan panhandle to feast on spawning salmon in the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. As many as 4,000 of the imposing raptors hunch in frosty trees, dropping grandly onto gravel bars where they screech and squabble over fish carcasses alongside gorging grizzlies. The 48,000-acre preserve, which Audubon Alaska helped establish, has protected this sweeping valley since 1982. But the health of water flowing into this eagles’ Eden is at risk. A mining company has set its sights on a massive copper- and zinc-rich sulfide deposit upriver and could break ground in 2020—an outcome many fear would irreparably alter this salmon-rich watershed, and the eagles, bears, and people that depend on it. Salmon are the crux of…

Standoff Nate Chappell captured this image of a tense encounter between two African Penguins and a Blacksmith Lapwing and entered it in the 2019 Audubon Photography Awards. You can discover what’s happening in this shot and 11 others that feature fascinating bird behaviors by visiting audubon.org/APAgallery. To learn how to submit your own photos to the 2020 awards, which opens to entries on January 13, go to audubonphotoawards.org. RE: Special Climate Issue Audubon, Fall 2019 I belong to other environmental organizations besides Audubon, but none of them has covered the climate crisis in such a relatable and personable manner. I read this issue from cover to cover and loved every single article. Truly essential knowledge presented in a way to inspire you to be part of the solution, not just scaring…

ISLAND SCRUB-JAY Scientific name: Aphelocoma insularis Range: Restricted to Santa Cruz Island. Perhaps formerly occurred on Santa Rosa Island. Habitat: Primarily in scruboak-dominated chaparral and in oak woodland. Status: Recent estimates suggest only about 2,000 individuals. Threats/Outlook: The species’ limited range makes it vulnerable to threats such as fire and disease. Climate change could be an issue, since the birds raise fewer young in drought years. Restoring habitat on Santa Cruz, and possibly introducing the species to Santa Rosa, could boost its resilience. THE BIRD FLARES BLUE AS GAS FLAME. It seems to dive, not fly: Two flaps, a tuck tilting to full fall, all grace and faith and then the sure catch of its wings rocketing it up, before another plunge lands it swaying on a branch. It’s an Island…

Anyone who birds a favorite park over and over knows intuitively why they keep going back: It just feels good. Being in nature—pausing in it, sitting with it, discovering its wonders—brings a sense of calm and renewal. Now science is backing up our intuition with data and revealing the benefits run much, much deeper. Of hundreds of published studies, none alone is definitive, but together they offer a growing sense of what’s lost as people spend more time than ever indoors. In England, for example, research revealed that urban green spaces reduced residents’ sense of isolation and loneliness. Living a short walk from a park in Los Angeles seemed to offer the same mental-health boost as a two-point decrease in unemployment. In Spain, schoolchildren raised in greener neighborhoods had more…

Three photographers do their best work where the sun doesn’t (often) shine—and you can, too. Gloomy Gray On the Oregon coast in winter, it’s often raining or about to rain, says conservation photographer Jaymi Heimbuch. That doesn’t deter her. She suits up with wet-weather gear (for her and her camera) and checks tide charts; an open beach at low tide means she has maneuvering space to avoid trees or cliffs that further block her already limited light. Braving the rain also offers opportunities to photograph birds preening or hunkered down. “Understand their behaviors on a rainy day are going to be a little bit different than on a bright, sunny day, and then figure out how to take advantage,” she says. Heimbuch may also capture their bodies glistening with dew…

DECADES AGO THE CAT ISLAND chain in Lake Michigan’s Green Bay was a bird haven. The archipelago sheltered waterfowl-rich wetlands from waves and provided habitat for an array of migratory shorebirds and the greatest diversity of colonial nesting species of any Great Lakes islands. Then, in the 1970s, severe storms coincided with extremely high lake levels, battering the islands into oblivion and driving many birds to abandon the site. This year the lake rose again, to near-record highs. And yet, birds flourished, thanks to a project that’s rebuilding the islands. Gulls, terns, and other colonial nesters were back. So were more than 30 shorebird species, including the threatened rufa Red Knot and the endangered Piping Plover. Drawn to the newly built high ground, plovers returned in 2016 to nest in…

At barely 5:30 in the morning Tiedun Island is already buzzing with action. The rocky islet off the coast of Zhejiang Province is steeped in mist, but the rain that has smothered eastern China for days has finally stopped. More downpour is imminent, providing only a brief window for a covert operation that’s been stalled for days. “We should do it now,” says Don Lyons. “There’s no time to lose.” Crowding around a computer screen in a cramped hut, Lyons, director of conservation science for Audubon’s Seabird Restoration Program, and his Chinese colleagues are trying to pick out their target via a live stream. They swivel the mouse to scan the nearby bustling seabird colony and then zoom in on a single bird incubating an egg. The black-and-white speckled oval…

ONE DAY DEBI SHEARWATER, WHO was then named Debi Millichap, walked onto the porch of her parents’ house in Chester, Pennsylvania. There she found her 12-year-old brother Scott Millichap sitting with a baby House Sparrow that had fallen out of its nest. Debi wasn’t interested. She was 18 with a husband deployed in Vietnam. Who could care? Scott put the bird in a shoebox and put the shoebox in the cellar. Later that night Debi, who was sleeping over, like you do when you’re 18 and your husband is at war, went into the basement, heard the bird in the box scratching and yelling, “Meep!” and brought the box upstairs. She gave the bird a shot of whiskey with an eye dropper—her mom’s idea. (Yes.) The bird “got totally drunk,”…

CALVING GLACIERS, WHALES, SEALS, AND EXTRAORDINARY BIRDS, including nine types of penguins, beckon intrepid travelers to the Great White Desert—5.5 million square miles of ice at the bottom of the world. This time of year, the austral summer, offers a rare glimpse of penguins and their newly hatched chicks. With the season’s long days and short nights, birders in pursuit of such polar spectacles as South Polar Skuas, Giant Petrels, Wandering Albatrosses, and shearwaters can scope the sea and sky nearly 24/7. There are two basic approaches to this remote region. Both offer a once-in-a-lifetime experience. From South America A cruise south from Tierra del Fuego, across the rough waters of the Drake Passage, will bring you to the West Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands. This route features spectacular icebergs…

ALTHOUGH THERE HAS NEVER BEEN an indigenous human population on Antarctica, there is now a bustling international community. In summer, some 4,000 researchers, studying everything from albatrosses to zooplankton, bunk at more than 60 scientific stations. They’re joined by over 52,000 tourists jockeying to glimpse nesting penguins and other wildlife—a situation that’s led to an alliance of sorts. Ships ferrying tourists provide researchers free transportation in exchange for onboard lectures. Some tourists even contribute to research. “Many passengers have amazing photo equipment,” says Stony Brook University ecologist Heather Lynch. “We can look at their photos to census penguin colonies or identify banded birds.” However, there’s a danger of visitors “loving a place to death,” says Oregon State University biological oceanographer Kim Bernard, which is why tourism is carefully managed by…

MAY I ASK SOMETHING OF YOU as we head into a new year? Would you make a resolution to be the very best advocate for birds you can possibly be? It’s an election year, and Audubon, and its partner organization the Audubon Action Fund, will be working hard across our amazing network of chapters, state offices, and nature centers to keep climate and clean-energy legislation at the forefront of people’s agendas. We’re going to urge lawmakers to prioritize other environmental issues, too, including supporting a strong Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Endangered Species Act. These need more champions in Congress, and lawmakers need to know that Audubon’s 1.7 million members will be watching how they vote. You’ll remember from our fall magazine issue that we showed how climate change will…

A MONTH AFTER HURRICANE dorian ravaged the bahamas, David Knowles returned to Great Abaco Island with mixed emotions. The isle’s longtime park warden was anxious to learn how the birds and landscapes he manages had weathered 185-mph winds, but also dreaded seeing his destroyed home and neighborhood for the first time since the Category 5 disaster. Hurricanes are frequent threats in the Bahamas, but Dorian—the second strongest on record in the Atlantic Ocean—stood out, hitting Great Abaco on September 1 and then dumping up to four feet of rain on neighboring Grand Bahama Island in 40 hours. Sixty-one people in the Bahamas died according to the official toll a month later, with hundreds still missing and 14,000 people displaced, including Knowles and his family. “It was really heartbreaking,” he said…

BINOCULARS ARE AN ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR BIRDERS, but with so many models on the market, it can be daunting to find the perfect pair. So we asked a small army of dedicated birders and professional ornithologists to test a wide array of optics at various price points. In July dozens of attendees at the 2019 Audubon Convention descended upon a Milwaukee park to test out nearly 50 pairs of binoculars from 16 companies under a range of conditions over three days. Our volunteers rated the models on a 1-to-10 scale for a variety of factors, including clarity, brightness, color rendition, and eye relief. We reviewed 8x42 or similarly sized optics, which many birders prefer because they’re relatively light, bright, and have a wide field of view, making it easier to…

THE SUN HAD DIPPED BEHIND THE TREES as Daniel Dietrich positioned by a roadside in Alberta for this breathtaking shot. He watched as a Great Gray Owl, perched high in a pine, prepared to dive toward an unseen rodent in a grassy stretch near the forest edge. He aimed to capture the split second when he knew the bird would lift and expose its front during its plunge. “It typically has a little hitch in its descent,” he says. “It just comes up a bit and then sort of retriangulates.” He caught the owl passing through a beam of diminishing sun, and the majestic bird seems to glow against darkening trees in the image. In hours favored by most owls, photographers must rely on what Dietrich calls “opportunities” of light—the…