Monarch on milkweed. Photo by Dan Jackson.

The littlest ones show us how to pay attention

MAY IS THE most exciting time of the year for anyone interested in birds. There is so much to see and not enough time to see it all. I have no idea how to paint the entire canvas, so I will pick three species of birds and bugs from the Midwest as a way of offering perspective. These are real stars with significance far beyond our back yards: the cerulean warbler, the bobolink, and the monarch butterfly. I will warn you in advance, there is a bit of a sad note to each.

I highlighted warblers in my April column. There are 33 species of warbler that can be seen at the Kickapoo Reserve, 13 of which have found during June surveys, which means they very likely breed on the Reserve. One of these is the cerulean warbler, a gem among the gems.

If you could get a good look at the male cerulean warbler you’d see light blue (cerulean) upper parts and white under-parts. The male has a narrow black necklace on his upper breast, with some black streaking on the flanks and two white wing bars. He is a real stonker.

The cerulean warbler is hard to see for a number of reasons. The best way to see the bird is to find a male singing as he sets up his breeding territory. The good news is the males will sing throughout the day. So why is this so hard?

Cerulean warblers inhabit deciduous forests with tall, mature trees. Though the males sing throughout the day, they generally sing high up in these mature trees. The song is a moderately reserved two to three slow, buzzy notes, giving way to a more rapid sequence ending on a higher pitch. The warblers feed from leaf bases and foliage in the canopy. The nests are located 30 to 60 feet off the ground and hidden among leaves and vines. Looking for cerulean warblers makes it very easy to understand the term “warbler neck”; it’s a real reaction to the experience of spending hours looking for the cerulean warbler.

There are other reasons cerulean warblers can be hard to find. The cerulean warbler is a migratory bird of high conservation concern, having experienced a steady population decline of 3 to 4 percent over the past 40 years because of habitat loss and fragmentation. The warbler winters in the forested mountains of the eastern Andes from Columbia to eastern Peru; I was impressed with the extent of contiguous forest when I was in that part of Colombia in December.

But finding that kind of stretch in its breeding habitat in North America is getting increasingly difficult. The warbler requires a minimum of 100 acres of contiguous mature forest

The monarch butterfly is also suffering from habitat loss. The monarch is perhaps the best recognized butterfly. It is not only a beautiful bug but it is one of the great mysteries of the natural world. Each female flies 1,000 miles or more on her way north from Mexico, depositing her eggs along the way only on milkweed leaves. She dies, but her eggs hatch and her offspring continue the migration.

It can take three to four generations for the monarchs to reach as far north as Canada. Then in the autumn, that final generation begins its return migration. Those butterflies live for eight months, overwintering in the mountains of central Mexico.

This insect is facing serious challenges for survival throughout its range. This year may be one of the worst on record for the beleaguered monarch butterfly. Massive hailstorms that dropped two inches of ice on the trees where the orange-and-black-winged butterflies spend the winter in Mexico, followed by 15 inches of rain, could mean that as many as 50 percent were killed this year.

“My fear is that the number was much higher than that,” says Chip Taylor, a professor of entomology and director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas-Lawrence. “And that’s from a population that was pretty small to begin with.” He believes it may take several years for the population to recover.

Monarch populations have fallen dramatically as a result of illegal logging in Mexico that has compromised and destroyed wintering habitat. Here in the Midwest, we have contributed to the monarch’s hardships in other ways. Increasingly, corn and soybeans in the Midwest are genetically engineered to be herbicide-resistant. That allows farmers to spray weed killer without hurting the crops, but it has meant almost no milkweed survives in the fields.

“They’ve literally eliminated 100 percent of the milkweed of what once was prime breeding habitat of the butterflies,” says Lincoln Brower, a zoologist and monarch specialist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia.

The third species of interest is a bird also well-known in these parts. The bobolink is stunning: Its black face, chest, belly, wings and tail contrast sharply with the white or pale grey of its shoulders, lower back, and rump, and the back of its head is straw-colored, like a hat. But beautiful as the bird is to look at, it’s the song that makes the bobolink a favorite for me: a rolling, bubbling, jangling series of notes given in flight. Our part of Wisconsin is very rich in grassland bird species—bobolink, meadowlark, dickcissel, bobwhite, and many others—so much so that we might take for them for granted and assume these birds are abundant everywhere.

The opposite is true. Habitat destruction, pollution and other problems have left nearly a third of the nation’s 800 bird species endangered, threatened or in serious decline, according to a study issued in March 2009.

Described as the most comprehensive survey of American bird life, the report, “The U.S. State of the Birds,” analyzed changes in the bird population over the last 40 years. “This report should be a call to action,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said at a news conference in Washington.

Citing surveys by government agencies, conservation organizations, and citizen volunteers, the report said that the population of grassland birds had declined by 40 percent and birds in arid lands by 30 percent. It estimated that 39 percent of bird species that depend on American coastal waters were in decline.

So in addition to appreciating these three species, what can we do? It’s all about habitat.

Do what you can to promote and contribute to preservation for contiguous blocks of forest.

Plant milkweed and mow around it in the summer.

And for the bobolink, postpone mowing of fields. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources suggests July 15 as a safe date for the young birds to be off the nest. Some landowners may not have the option of postponing mowing, but many of us have a choice of when to mow or even if we mow parts of our fields. It can be a small thing for a farmer, but have a large impact for preserving habitat and protecting these birds.

Birds and bugs are all around us, an everyday part of our lives. It is possible for us to take them for granted, but not so easy if we pay attention to the bigger picture. I personally consider this issue to be every bit as important as energy, water, and nature conservation, or any other issue related to being good caretakers of this planet. These birds are under pressure on both their nesting and wintering grounds. We can change that reality, and it’s our duty to do so.

Daniel Peak is a bird, butterfly and dragonfly enthusiast sometimes seen in and around the Viroqua area. He welcomes questions and can be contacted at d_peak@hotmail.com.