of the pack. The birds that seem to be faring the best are Dabbling and Diving Ducks, with a 24 % increase in population; and the birds faring the worst are the Grassland Birds, with a 43 % population loss.
The State of the Birds report also determines which species are“ tipping point” species: species that have lost more than 50 % of their population in the last 50 years. They sort the tipping point species by urgency: with“ red alert,”“ orange alert,” and“ yellow alert” alarms for species which are experiencing dire declines with
steep recent trends, more gradual declines, and with more stable recent trends, respectively. Within the Eastern Forest biome, this reveals an interesting trend: birds that depend on mature forests are faring better than birds that rely on disturbed ecosystems.
The Prairie Warbler( Setophaga discolor) is one such disturbance-dependent bird. A Prairie Warbler’ s habitat is shrubby, grassy meadows and second-growth forest with plenty of tangled growth. They have a buzzy, ascending, sputtering song that rises rapidly
Eastern Towee by Davey Walters; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library
Opposite page: Song Sparrow; top and above left: the Prarie Warbler and the Eastern Whip-poor-will both have a“ yellow alert” status; above right: the Eastern Towee has experienced even more serious decline in the last 50 years. in pitch until it eclipses humans’ ability to hear it. Their handsome yellow-and-black plumage can be deceptively tricky to spot in the scrubby meadows and overgrown fields they breed in. The Prairie Warbler is a yellow-alert tipping point bird: less than 50 % of their 1970 population numbers remain, and the decline is ongoing.
The Eastern Whip-poorwill( Antrostomus vociferous) is another yellow-alert tipping point bird. These eerie nighttime songsters are much more easily heard than seen: their plaintive, haunting call is rarely heard in the greater DC area. Their gray-brown mottled plumage blends into the leaf litter of the forest floor. During low light— dawn, dusk, or a moonlit night— they hunt insects. Their nesting cycle is tied to the moon: they time their egg-laying so that the eggs will hatch around ten days before the full moon, so that the moonlight expands the parents’ hunting time and they can feed their babies all night long. The North American Breeding Bird Survey estimates a cumulative population decline of 61 % since 1966.
Two birds in even more dire decline are the Eastern Towhee( Pipilo erythrophthalmus) and the Chimney Swift( Chaetura pelagica). Both species are listed as“ orange alert,” meaning that they have experienced serious decline since 1970, and the decline is ongoing.
Eastern Towhees are in the sparrow family. The males are brightly patterns with black, white, and red along their sides, whereas the females have a more brown and rusty appearance. Their song is a tremulous“ drink your teeeeea!” These birds are usually
plenty I summer growing 2025 35