Bird Counts Help Track Habitat, Populations

From The Fresno Bee, February 25, 2010, by Elinor Teague:

We were out of town recently and missed participating in the annual Audubon Great Backyard Bird Count this year.

For just 15 minutes on one of those days, Feb. 12-15, backyard birdwatchers are asked to identify and count the birds they see in their yards and submit the numbers online to www.birdsource.org.

This is an important means of tracking bird populations in urban, suburban and rural areas.

Project Feederwatch, another counting program, will continue until March 3.

You might be surprised to discover how many bird species live in your neighborhood and to learn where they live and what they eat.

Our neighborhood is in the urban center of Fresno but has large lots and many mature trees.

Most of the yards are well-maintained, but not all of them.

It is those undisturbed or less-manicured areas which provide shelter and food for a wide variety of birds.

In addition to the robins that nest in the front yard magnolia trees and the mockingbirds and jays that fight over the backyard territory, we have some other interesting visitors to our garden.

Last week, I counted six Northern (Red-shafted) flickers [see picture] poking holes in the back lawn with their long, sharp beaks.

Flickers migrate from the mountain foothills to warmer areas every fall and retreat to cooler climates in spring. Their diet consists mainly of ants and beetles and to a lesser extent, moths, flies and snails.

We certainly appreciate how they rid the lawn of grubs and other pest insects while aerating the soil quite nicely.

In mid-January, a Great Horned owl stood out as a silhouette against the dusk sky on the power line that crosses behind our yard. Great Horned owls eat mostly small mammals, including rats and moles. They also are the main predators of crow nestlings.

The pods and seeds from the liquidambar tree on the front lawn attract quite a few morning doves in fall and winter.

The doves' diet is mostly seeds, but they also eat wild grasses and weeds as well as snails.

Unfortunately, the doves are a favorite snack of the Cooper's hawks that nest on top of our neighbor's deodar cedar tree.

Cooper's hawks feed on medium-sized birds as well as mice, squirrels and bats. They, like many raptors, are now becoming more common to urban areas.

Our urban bird populations are threatened by destruction of habitat and by overuse of pesticides.

As you can see from the descriptions of the diets of different bird species, birds perform an invaluable service to maintaining the balance of nature. Their presence in our gardens allows us to depend less on chemical means of controlling pest insects and animals.