Birds in Alabama (Caleb Turrentine / The Bama Buzz)

As you may still be seeing plenty of birds on a daily basis, it could be hard to believe that bird populations across the country are rapidly declining.

A 2019 study said the United States and Canada had nearly 3 billion fewer birds than they had in 1970. That was a 29% decrease, a rate that is still accelerating in most places.

Just last week, a follow up study from the National Science Foundation was published in the journal Science. It looked further into not just the decline of the raw population, but the acceleration rate of that decline across the country including right here in Alabama.

“Using data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the authors found that about half of the 261 species analyzed showed significant declines from 1987 to 2021, and a quarter showed accelerating declines. Hotspots of accelerating abundance decline were located in regions with high-intensity agriculture (high cropland area, fertilizer use, or pesticide use).”
Bianca Lopez

So we spoke with Dr. Scot Duncan, the Executive Director of Alabama Audubon, to find out more about why the decline is happening, how it’s impacting Alabama + what can be done to reverse its course.

3 reasons why the bird population is shrinking

Scot Duncan pointed to three key reasons we are seeing a shortage of different bird species across the country.

The first, and possibly most obvious, is habitat loss and degradation. Forests continue to be cut down but it’s also impacts on other bird habitats like in prairies and along the coast.

“The number one cause here in Alabama and all the way on the other side of the planet… habitat loss is when you convert forest into farmland or farmland into a Wal-Mart or a suburb. That’s habitat loss. Degradation can happen from everything from land use practices to things that are more subtle like climate change or herbicide and pesticide use.”
Scot Duncan, Alabama Audubon

Another reason for the decline in population is building collisions.

Duncan said nearly 2,400 birds die per minutes in the country because of flying into windows, buildings and other man-made structures.

The third, and rather surprising, impact on the bird population is cats.

Whether its stray cats or household cats who like to get outdoors, their predatory nature is having a negative effect on birds across the country. Duncan said studies have shown cats kill more than 4500 cats per minute in the U.S. alone.

“It is insane. Cats are incredibly gifted predators… This is based on studies done in the last 10 years or so that did a really good job of quantifying the rate of cats killing birds.”
Scot Duncan

Steady decline in Alabama

While the most recent study shows an acceleration in population decline across the country, most of Alabama is considered to be in a steady decline with the exception of two areas—Mobile + Baldwin counties and the Tennessee Valley.

Duncan says that acceleration is due to unchecked development in those areas as farms and forests are often being converted to suburbs and businesses.

One example in Alabama is in the tall grass prairie region of the Black Belt. It has been the heartland of several grassland bird species across our state. According to that 2019 study, grassland birds are declining at a faster rate than any other bird species.

Duncan said climate change is impacting habitat loss as well but it’s hard to quantify exactly how big the impact is. For beach breeding birds, water levels have made a clear impact on the total population of species near the coast.

‘Birds can bounce back if we give them a chance’

The 2019 study certainly rang some alarm bells across the birding community and this year’s report just emphasized how much work still needs to be done.

“It really caught a lot of people off guard. We knew birds were declining, we knew some species were declining faster than others and we should be doing a lot of work to protect birds which has all the benefits of protecting people.”
Scot Duncan, Alabama Audubon

Duncan pointed to a few ways Alabama Audubon is working to stop the rapid decline in population, both in our state and across the country.

The organization’s Coastal Bird Stewardship Program is the “crown jewel” of the program. It has provided critical protection and monitoring for our state’s sensitive beach-nesting bird populations since 2017.

Another is “Project Safelight” which attempts to limit the number of building collisions.

Duncan said they will attempt to identify problem buildings and work with property owners to replace windows or fix any other issues that could be causing the collisions. Alabama Audubon will also provide decals for windows that help break up the mirror image birds see.

Other tips Duncan gave included keeping bird feeders 30 feet from windows or within 3 feet so they did not have time to accelerate enough from the feeder to cause an injury.

We know from experience that birds can bounce back.
Scot Duncan

Duncan said there is still plenty of work to do but there is a reason to believe in recovery.

He pointed to the DDT crisis (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) from the mid-20th century. But after work was done to ban the use of the chemical, several species began to thrive again.

Another example is the snowy plover, a beach breeder that would live just above the high tide line on the coast. It was close to extinction in Alabama before work from the Audubon Society helped reverse that trend.