Editorial of March 3, 2025

Keep the Joyful Noise

It’s spring; we made it. The ice has gone, the snow almost, the rain has come, the daffodils are peeking through the dead brown leaves, and the birds have arrived. Early in the mornings we can venture outside and catch the joyful tunes of many of our old friends, singing to their hearts’ content: robins, a tufted titmouse, house finches, red-winged blackbirds and even a pair of fish crows who have brought their strangely unmelodic calls beyond their northern habitat, along with winter’s familiar cardinals, chickadees, blue jays, dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves, ravens, crows, and a variety of rapidly drumming woodpeckers, busy making houses for all their furred and feathered friends. Near the streams and the lake, the mergansers, mallards and Canada geese have sprung to life, claiming their mates and building their nests. The raptors are here, too, circling vigilantly and staring quietly from their high places. All these beloved birds cheer us immensely and offer us a glimpse into the warmer months ahead.

It’s all very lovely, and uplifting. But it’s not as lovely as it used to be. Since 1970, we have lost more than one in four birds on this continent. That means that over the past 50 years the wild bird populations of the continental U.S. and Canada have declined by nearly 30 percent—a loss of upwards of 2.9 billion breeding adult birds, mostly, but not wholly, migratory. Of all kinds. From all zones. Across all landscapes. Contrary to the well-documented tragic demise of the passenger pigeon over a century ago, which was a population loss among a single species and within a specific area (our own Northeast), what we are seeing today is massive universal bird losses, over multiple species, across the nation. Many of them are the birds we commonly see at our home feeders and in our back yards.

In fact, more than 90 percent of the losses are of birds from just 12 families, among them sparrows, blackbirds, warblers and finches. Dark-eyed juncos are down 170 million; white-throated sparrows are down by 93 million; one of our favorites, the red-winged blackbird, has declined by more than 92 million, down from the 260 million of 50 years ago. The Baltimore oriole, evening grosbeak and barn swallow are declining as well. Our forests have lost a billion birds; the grasslands have lost more than 700 million, the latter declining by more than 50 percent.

We can still help our birds today. We can improve their back-yard habitats by replacing invasive plant species with native plants; we can add some fruit trees and shrubs that the birds and their food—insects of many kinds—can eat; we can leave some piles of dead wood and brush for our feathered pals to hide in; we can stay away from pesticides—our birds rely on native insects to feed themselves and their young; and we can maintain clean and filled bird feeders and bird baths for them.

On the brighter side, a few species have made a recovery, mostly due to pesticide reductions (raptors), wetland conservation (waterfowl) and habitat management (woodpeckers). Trumpeter swans and wild turkeys have made comebacks as well. While these positive results do not outweigh our recent extreme avian population declines, they offer a ray of hope that conservation, intelligent planning, and cooperation initiatives—from everyone—could produce some inroads and answers. After all, 70 percent of the bird population is still out there, but it’s time for us all to pay attention.