Maine Audubon is looking for volunteers to help our friends at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) in a community science effort called Mountain Birdwatch to help protect high elevation birds across the Northeast! There are four Maine sites left to be adopted and surveyed on one day of your choice in the month of June on Kibby Mountain, Caribou Pond, and two sites on Old Blue Mountain. Maine Audubon staff will be taking some sites, and we’re hoping we can find a few more people to help out.
Read on to learn more from VCE!
Dawn on the Mountain: How Volunteers are helping High-elevation Birds
At 4:25 am, the morning sun spills over the horizon and a chorus of birds erupts in the spruce-fir forest but they’re not the only ones stirring. Across the Northeast, Mountain Birdwatch community scientists have risen as well prepared for their annual adventure to help further conservation of montane bird species. In the dawn light, volunteers hike to their first listening point where they count 10 species of birds such as the iconic Bicknell’s Thrush, Blackpoll Warbler (pictured above), Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. These essential data enable scientists to track the populations of high-elevation forest birds that are rarely detected through traditional monitoring programs, like the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Since 2000, community scientists have visited mountain peaks across the Northeast to participate in the Vermont Center for Ecostudies’ Mountain Birdwatch, the only region-wide source of population information on high-elevation breeding birds in the Northeast. Since 2010 alone, hundreds of Mountain Birdwatchers have conducted 18,000+ counts at nearly 750 remote locations in the mountains of New York and New England.
Why It Matters
As temperatures rise, mountain birds throughout the world are facing challenging times. Climate change is driving the upslope and poleward shifts of high-elevation species as they seek to stay within their preferred environmental conditions. As these species move up into increasingly smaller areas, more and more individuals compete for fewer resources. Here in the Northeast, seven of the ten Mountain Birdwatch species have declined by an average of 42% since 2010. These declines are especially prominent in the Catskills—the southernmost extent of the spruce-fir zone in the Northeast—where populations have declined an average of 55% since 2010. Our region has a global responsibility for these species. The White Mountain National Forest, for example, may shelter one-third of the entire U.S. population of Bicknell’s Thrush—one of the most range-restricted bird species in North America.
Join the Adventure
You don’t need to be an expert—just enthusiastic about hiking and conservation. It’s as easy as 1-2-3:
Adopt a route (there are 130 options to choose from)
Learn to identify 10 bird species by sound and one loud, chattering mammal (Red Squirrel) with the training resources on our website.
Go for a hike. Pick any morning in June that works with your schedule to complete your survey. We’ll guide you through every step of the process.
Ready to hike for science? After camping overnight in the mountains, Mountain Birdwatchers rise early and count those 10 bird species and Red Squirrel at up to 6 sampling sites. If you’re a hiker but not (yet) a birder, don’t worry! Mountain Birdwatch is the perfect entry point into high-elevation birding for new birders. VCE provides resources to learn and practice identifications and lead scientist, Jason Hill, hosts an online Mountain Birdwatch Q&A session every Wednesday from 12-1 pm.
To learn more about the impact of this research on conservation and how to join, visit mountainbirdwatch.org or contact Jason Hill (jhill@vtecostudies.org).
