Hello, tweets.

For those of you who attended the WOS meeting last night and heard my lecture on Newfoundland and Nova Scotia:

I mentioned that we were surprised that birds weren?t more common, and I did forget to add a little further background on that.

Many neotropical migrants (warblers, flycatchers, tanagers, vireos, thrushes, etc.) are in decline, and the declines are greater in the East than in the West. Those declines are in contrast with resident birds of the same habitats, most of which are not declining.

So there really is an overall decline of eastern migratory birds, so it shouldn?t have been so surprising that the density and diversity of breeding birds seemed rather low. The species are probably all there, just a lot less common than in the past. I think that visit to the Far East of North America really brought home to me that decline. We are very fortunate to live in the West!

Dennis
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Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net