Bird-Friendly coffee piece on NPR

A bit of an aside on a topic that is important to me, and should be to all of us:

As I have mentioned here before, I am very involved in issues surrounding bird conservation and coffee growing. I was recently interviewed for a segment on Bird-Friendly coffee on Public Radio International's program "The World" which recently aired on over 300 NPR stations. You can read a transcript or hear the audio here. It runs about 5 minutes, and I'm on at the end.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you are buying inexpensive, grocery-store coffee you are contributing to the destruction of bird habitat and the decline of migratory songbirds.

You can learn more at my web site Coffee & Conservation, starting with my user guide.

Distinguished alumni

Many volunteer bird banders have passed through the ranks at RRBO, over a hundred last time I counted. They have been staff, faculty, and students from U of M-Dearborn and other colleges as well as community members, friends, and relatives. A number of couples have met while volunteering for RRBO (it even led one couple to marriage: I met my husband Darrin in 1995 when he volunteered for me!).

Here are just a few current and past RRBO banders that have careers in wildlife or environmental fields. I like to think that their experiences here have proved valuable in their current work. Only a few of them band birds as part of their jobs, but banding can help hone organizational skills and attention to detail, as well as teach patience, how to appreciate good shade-grown coffee, the finer points of political debate, and tolerance of mosquitoes and bird poop.

Bold indicates the volunteer was a U of M-Dearborn student (undergrad) during their RRBO tenure, italics indicates a U of M-Ann Arbor student (mostly graduate students).

Dea Armstong -- City Ornithologist, Ann Arbor Natural Areas Preservation Dept.

Mary Bohling -- Extension Educator, Michigan Sea Grant.

Tom Dietsch -- Assistant Researcher, Center for Tropical Research, University of California, Los Angeles. Tom is also a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

Kim Hall -- Climate Change Ecologist, The Nature Conservancy, Great Lakes Region (see a profile and interview here), Assistant Professor, Michigan State University.

Matt Kleitch -- Northern Lower Peninsula Project Director, The Nature Conservancy Michigan

Andrea Kreljevic -- Program Associate, Audubon International Alliances Program.

Greg Norwood -- Biological Technician, USFWS, Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge.

Sally Petrella -- Volunteer Monitoring Program Manager, Friends of the Rouge.

Beth Johnson -- Commissary Supervisor, Detroit Zoo (here's a great article on her!)

Julian Wood -- San Franciso Bay Program Manager, PRBO Conservation Science (formerly Point Reyes Bird Observatory), California.

Mark Dettling -- Terrestrial Ecologist, PRBO Conservation Science (formerly Point Reyes Bird Observatory), California.

Don Yee --Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Southern Mississippi

Mike Clipper -- Program Analyst, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Nancy Parachini -- Forest Legacy Program, U.S. Forest Service

If you're an RRBO banding alum that I have lost track of, feel free to drop me a line and catch up!

RRBO on WDET

On March 15, I was on Detroit Public Radio, talking about bird population numbers on the Craig Fahle Show. I thought it went pretty well, considering I had no idea what he wanted to talk about besides "bird numbers"! You can listen to the show here (it's an MP3 link); I'm on about 2/3 of the way through the show.

"Look what the cat dragged in"

Only about 1% of banded small songbirds are ever recovered away from the place they were banded (much of the value of focused banding studies is in initial captures and within-season recaptures). So when a bander receives notice that one of their banded birds has been found somewhere else, it's a pretty notable event. Especially remarkable is when a migrant bird is banded on its wintering grounds and recovered where it breeds (or vice versa).

Thus it was astounding to learn that a Bobolink banded in Bolivia by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies was recovered three years later in Vermont, just miles from the bander's home, 4300 miles away! This was the first time a Bobolink banded on its wintering grounds had been recovered on its breeding grounds (or vice versa).

Tempering that news was the fact that this bird, having managed to have survived at least three migratory journeys totaling 35,000 miles in flight, was delivered dead to a homeowner by a house cat.

Often, banders do not know the exact cause of death of a reported bird...usually the report is only coded "found dead." Sometimes the person who finds the bird is more specific. Out of the last 40 or so birds we have banded here at RRBO for which we have received reports, only around 30% were found alive. The majority of those found dead did not specify a reason. Of those that did, nearly 40% were coded "caught by or due to cat." They included these birds:

• A White-throated Sparrow banded on 26 October 1992 "caught by or due to cat" 5 May 1993 in Columbus, OH.
• A Song Sparrow banded on 3 April 1995 "caught by or due to cat" 17 Jun 1995 just south of North Bay, Ontario.
• An American Goldfinch banded on 10 May 2001 "caught by or due to cat" 12 May 2002 in Berea, KY.

(You can view a map and list of our out-of-state recoveries of banded birds here.)

The huge problem to birds and wildlife posed by outdoor cats is one that sparks a great deal of emotion. In fact, the blog post about the Bobolink pussy-footed around the issue to avoid the controversy. The bander pointed out that the fact that a cat brought home a dead bird is not concrete evidence that it killed the bird. However, it is generally believed that items brought home by cats are indeed prey killed by that cat, and numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies have used this behaviorial trait of cats to determine composition of prey items (see Barratt 1998, Churcher and Lawton 1987, and Woods et al. 2003 and the scores of references therein).

Don't get me wrong -- I love cats! I have two of my own, but they never go outdoors. Please, if you own a cat, keep it indoors. It is better for wildlife, and it is better for your cat.

For more information, you can see RRBO's keep cats indoors page, or visit the American Bird Conservancy's Cats Indoors! campaign web site.


Barratt, D. G. 1998. Predation by house cats, Felis catus (L.) in Canberra, Australia. I. Prey composition and preference, Wildl. Res. 24:263–277.

Churcher, P. B., and J.H. Lawton 1987. Predation by domestic cats in an English village, J. Zool. (London) 212:439–455.

Woods, M., R.A. McDonald, and S. Harris. 2003. Predation of wildlife by domestic cats Felis catus in Great Britain, Mammal Rev. 33:174–188.

National exposure in E/The Environmental Magazine

The November/December 2009 issue of E/The Environmental Magazine has an article about brownfield restoration called "Strange Sanctuary: Old Factories Offer New Hope for Wildlife." It focuses on the potential for wildlife habitat in industrial settings, highlighting the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge and work I have performed there as part of RRBO's partnership with the Refuge. The article also mentions the monitoring I've done on various Ford Motor Company properties, including the sighting of a Gyrfalcon in 2005. The Ford surveys are done as part of my regular inventories of birds throughout the city of Dearborn. Urban ecology is not, generally, very glamorous work. But as I was quoted saying in the article, "I have come to really love this juxtaposition of the hyper-urban with resilient nature.”

Spring bird walks

The Environmental Interpretive Center is having four Saturday morning bird walks. Registration is required. I've posted the details here.

RRBO in the Dearborn city calendar

That's right, I'm Ms. September.

A few months ago, the city of Dearborn had a contest. Residents were asked to submit short essays on why they loved Dearborn. The authors of winning entries would have their photo taken for the 2009 city calendar.

I wrote about my favorite thing about Dearborn: the great birds here on campus and the Rouge River Bird Observatory! Here is the page out of the new calendar. It features Dana Wloch, yours truly, Greg Norwood, Beth Johnson, and Mike Perrin out on the lakeside trail, and an inset of me holding a flycatcher accompanied by an excerpt from my essay. I'm a bit disheveled, which is typical for me on banding days.


You can see the entire two-page spread by downloading this PDF. This calendar goes out to every household in Dearborn -- great visibility for RRBO!

RRBO in the Metro Times

The Metro Times has come out with its annual Best of Detroit results. Readers are polled on their favorite things and places around metro Detroit, and the staff also gives its picks. The Metro Times picked the UM-Dearborn natural area as The Best Urban Getaway for 2008. The write-up notes:

"More than 250 bird species have been recorded by the Rouge River Bird Observatory, housed at the center. The observatory studies the role of this natural-amid-urban area as a stopover for migrating birds."

Many thanks to the Metro Times writers for the shout-out!