Photo by Glynn Wilson

A wood thrush banded and released on the Ft. Morgan peninsula, with old Bob Sargent out of focus in the background...

by Glynn Wilson

CLAY, Ala., Oct. 27 - Amateur bird expert Bob Sargent is now back at home in Clay, Alabama, east of Birmingham, after spending a couple of weeks on the Gulf Coast tracking the migration of birds south for the winter.

His team banded 2930 birds, 73 different species, and he says he is "thrilled" with the count this year, which came in a bit higher than expected.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Bob Sargent delivers an impromptu lecture on the wood thrush's declining habitat...

In an average year, they would catch, band and release 1500 to 2500 birds and 70 to 75 species, although they have done as many as 4500 and as few as 600 during the spring migration count.

"We caught a lot of birds. Overall, it was really a good session," Sargent said in an interview. "The influx of birds was pretty much what we would have expected."

Although overall, the trend has been and probably will continue to be a general decline in many of the bird species, he says.

"The answer for that is fairly straightforward," he said. "It's either degradation of existing habitat they require to breed in, in the states and Canada, and to winter in in the tropics. Degradation or outright destruction of habitat."

It's a human population-based reason for most of the decline.

"It's the continued requirement humans place on the land. Birds are typically not a priority in that. They are low on the totem pole," he said. "Without pointing the finger at any country in particular, it's just that we have so many human beings on earth that these birds are just losing out in the long run."

The other side of that is, the public, due in part to the conservation movement, is becoming more involved in protecting habitat, he said.

"That's a wonderful occurrence. That's something we've been seeing for the past four or five years anyway. It even starts in the schools," he said. "I think there is a trend now for the public to be more aware that essentially, what we do to the birds we do to ourselves. I think we are realizing we've got to take better care of this earth."

This year's totals were higher than normal, but at the Gulf Coast location it is difficult to understand that increase, he said.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

A wood thrush about to be released...

"We can expect a lot more migrants to stop and rest at our site when the weather is stormy and wet. This apparently was the case at Fort Morgan," he said. "We suspect that there's been some sort of change in the migration pattern of birds."

They caught and banded 235 wood thrushes this year, for example, a high number, even though records for the decline of the species go back at least 40 years.

"On breeding grounds we see them less and less," Sargent said. "But on migration we continue to see them in record numbers each year."

That may seem like a conflicting statement. And it is, he admitted.

"But it appears that this species, for whatever reason, has changed its migratory pattern. It could just be a chance thing. The subtle change in migration routes could be a normal occurrence."

What they do is not an exact science, he concedes, and we have a lot still to learn about bird populations and their migratory patterns.

The wood thrush (catharus mustelinus) is one of the most melodious songbirds in the world. Its beautiful, fluted song echoes through eastern North America's woodlands, yet it is close to endangered status and conservation is critical to prevent its decline to extinction, according to experts.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

A female magnolia warbler (dendroica magnolia) being measured, weighed and banded...

In the words of Arthur Cleveland Bent, author of a series of authoritative life history studies of American birds, "The nature lover who has missed hearing the musical bell-like notes of the wood thrush, in the quiet woods of early morning or in the twilight, has missed a rare treat. The woods seem to have been transformed into a cathedral where peace and serenity abide. One's spirit seems truly to have been lifted by this experience."

The wood thrush is also useful to forest ecosystems, consuming vast amounts of insects. Unfortunately, its populations have declined in recent years from 40 to 80 percent, depending on the area, according to the Endangered Species Handbook.

Major causes include the destruction of both its nesting and wintering forests, combined with parasitism on its nests by the brown-headed cowbird, which lays its large eggs in the nests of other birds. While the wood thrush is related to the American robin, today it is rarely seen in suburban yards and breeds only in undisturbed forest tracts. The problem is its forest habitats have become fragmented into smaller and smaller blocks, causing the species to disappear from many areas.

Wood thrushes, like hundreds of other bird species that stop to rest and feed on the Ft. Morgan peninsula each year, migrate to Mexico and Central America each winter where they seek out old-growth rainforests from southern Mexico to Panama. During the past 40 years, their forests have been logged and converted into grazing land. Researchers tracking them to their wintering grounds have discovered they stay in the same area, even though it has been destroyed, and usually die within a short period from starvation or predation.

Sargent and his team are not professional ornithologists. They are referred to as "field ornithologists," and they are just one of many disciplines that study the decline of birds, from those who study insects to plants to the weather.

"But that's just fancy words," he said. "It doesn't matter whether you've got a degree or are non-professionals like we are. A great deal of what we do is speculation."

Photo by Glynn Wilson

A ruby-crowned kinglet (regulus calendula) caught in the net

The question is, what to do about the overall, general declines in species on the planet?

"Human beings have the option of sitting on our duffs and letting nature take its course, or we can get involved in some kind of protocol that we think can be beneficial in monitoring these birds to determine what kind of plans to make," he said. "As bird banders that's what we've done."

They caught, banded and released 74 house wrens this year, a particularly large number.

"The huge numbers of birds we caught this year are a product of range expansion and perhaps some weather events as well," he said. "It's so difficult to draw firm conclusions from a season's total. You really have to look at a bigger picture over a long period of time."

As food resources dwindle, birds shrink into their historical ranges, he said. It's just a product of birds pushing to the edge of what they can do as a species.

"Mother nature takes care of that," he said. "If she doesn't kill them off with bad weather, she deprives them of the food it takes for that species to survive."

Sargent says he doesn't think there are long-term, lingering effects from all the hurricanes of recent years, from Ivan to Dennis to Katrina.

"These horrible storms that are so destructive to our human friends along the coast are a normal part of the lives of wild creatures such as our neo-tropical migrant birds," he said. "This scenario is much different for resident bird populations, since they are usually severely affected by hurricanes and their populations are greatly reduced. They too will recover as long as we can keep their habitat pretty much intact."

One resident bird of the Alabama coastal area is the brown pelican, pelecanus occidentalis, which is endangered in many areas except the Atlantic coast. It is on the way back in coastal Alabama due to government mandated conservation efforts, mainly the banning of the pesticide DDT by the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s.

The brown pelican is being honored in the Eastern Shore township of Fairhope with art and during the Alabama Coastal Birdfest.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

A brown pelican along Mobile Bay in Fairhope...