Three years into a five-year project to document the
distribution of breeding birds in Rhode Island, and volunteers are turning up
some rather unexpected results. Nearly a dozen species have been found to be
breeding in the state that were not recorded during an identical effort 31
years ago, and some of those discoveries are quite surprising.
survey. In addition, volunteers
documented the first occurrence of breeding Kentucky warbler, black vulture,
common eider, pied-billed grebe, yellow-crowned night heron, black rail and
chuck will’s widow.
Charles
Clarkson, coordinator of the Rhode Island Breeding Bird Atlas, said that bald
eagles, common ravens, black-throated blue warblers, and yellow-bellied
sapsuckers all breed in at least two locations in the state, although they were
not found in Rhode Island during the previous
Yellow-bellied sapsucker |
Clarkson
said the yellow-bellied sapsucker is especially noteworthy.
“That
really took me by surprise because I wasn’t expecting to ever find it breeding
here,” Clarkson said. “Their traditional breeding range doesn’t come anywhere
close to Rhode Island. The closest they usually come to breeding here is in
western Pennsylvania and New York.”
The Breeding
Bird Atlas divides the state into 165 blocks, each 10 square miles in size.
About 170 volunteers work to document all of the bird species that breed in
each block. The program is sponsored by the University of Rhode Island and the
Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
Yellow-bellied sapsuckers have so far been found breeding in
two blocks, bald eagles in six blocks, and common ravens in 20 blocks. A total
of 167 species have been recorded as possibly, probably or confirmed breeding
in Rhode Island, three more than were recorded during the first atlas. The most
widespread species are the American robin and gray catbird.
“When
all these volunteers get out in the woods looking for birds, they tend to find
things that aren’t usually noticed,” said Clarkson.
The
common raven, bald eagle and black vulture were not unexpected birds to be
added to the state’s list of breeding species, since they have been seen in
increasing numbers in the last decade. But the black rail, a small, secretive
chicken-like bird that breeds in marshes and wet meadows and vocalizes almost
exclusively at night, was another surprise.
“They’ve
been declining range-wide, so that gives us a glimmer of hope for the species,”
Clarkson said.
Among
the other notable findings was the growing number of pileated and red-bellied
woodpeckers breeding in the state. Pileated woodpeckers, the largest member of
the woodpecker family in the United States, were found in just two blocks
during the first atlas in the 1980s, but it has been recorded in 35 blocks so
far in the present project. The distribution of the red-bellied woodpecker
increased from 4 blocks to 88.
“We’ve
had a massive increase in distribution for those species, and the reason for
their growth is very different,” said Clarkson. “In the case of the pileated,
it’s a result of the natural succession of its wooded habitat – they like older
forest habitat. For the red-belly, it’s a slow persistent expansion of its
range northward, primarily due to climate change.”
Osprey
numbers have also increased dramatically from 14 blocks during the first atlas
to 50 blocks today. Clarkson said the increase in nesting osprey is due to the
banning of the pesticide DDT in the 1970s, which had caused widespread
reproductive failure in the birds in the 1950s and 60s.
On the
downside, several species documented 31 years ago as breeding in Rhode Island
have not been found during the first three years of the current atlas project.
These include northern bobwhite, magnolia warbler, green-winged teal, common
gallinule, upland sandpiper, yellow-breasted chat and long-eared owl.
“Most
of those are species that I’m not surprised we haven’t found yet,” Clarkson
said. “The majority of them were not found here in big numbers during the first
atlas. Some of them may still have breeding populations in the state but
they’re at low enough densities that we just haven’t found them yet. We still
may find them.”
The
species with the steepest decline is the purple finch, which was recorded in 76
blocks during the first atlas but in only 11 blocks during the current atlas.
“It
could be that there is an actual decline in the species brought on by habitat
loss or competitive exclusion with the related house finch,” explained
Clarkson. “We know they have been in decline in the eastern portion of their
range where they overlap with house finches. But it could also be
misidentification by our volunteers.”
The two species can be difficult to tell apart.
Volunteers
for the Rhode Island Breeding Bird Atlas will continue to collect data for two
more breeding seasons. They are also collecting information during other times
of the year about species that winter in the Ocean State or migrate through the
region.
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