The Vanishing Chorus: A Reflection on North American Birds in Decline

The Vanishing Chorus: A Reflection on North American Birds in Decline

by Kenneth Hillan

Wilson’s Warbler, Roys Redwoods Preserve, Spring 2025 – Kenneth Hillan

In the bustling and growing town of Paisley, Scotland—the place of my birth—a young Alexander Wilson once wandered the woodlands, unaware that his journey would lead him across the ocean to North America. From his letters home, what he encountered in the New World was beyond anything he had known or imagined: skies teeming with birds, forests alive with song, rivers echoing with nature’s pulse. Two centuries later, I reflect on Wilson’s experience—and the troubling question: what remains of that magnificent abundance today?

On May 1, 2025, a landmark study, published in Science, revealed a sobering truth1. Of 495 North American breeding bird species, fully three-quarters have declined significantly in some part of their range over the past 15 years. The research, led by Alison Johnston and a team at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is based on an analysis of nearly 37 million eBird checklists submitted by observers between 2007-2021. The conclusions from the research, grounded in rigorous data analysis combined with national as well as local habitats, paint a portrait of a continent in quiet crisis. A summary of key findings and takeaways from their publication can be found in a one page summary here.

Curiously, the decline is not always where one might expect. Some species appear to thrive in fragmented habitats—perhaps a mall here, a restored marsh there—offering the illusion of recovery. But these modest gains, while welcome, are dwarfed by losses in the vast habitats where these birds are most common, as populations are declining most severely where they are abundant.

What sets this study apart is its use of fine-scale trend mapping—measuring bird population change in grids of approximately 10 square miles, rather than just looking across broad regions. This higher resolution has revealed a more nuanced picture: while most species are declining, many also show areas of local increase. For conservation groups like GGBA, this represents a powerful shift. It allows us not only to target urgent declines but also to identify and build upon local successes—guiding action where it can be most effective.

In the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Valley, the study data highlights significant declines in wetland and coastal breeding birds, mirrored by parallel losses in the wintering populations of local species that breed in the North American Arctic.

Here in California, birds that depend on wetlands for breeding have been among the hardest hit.…

My Journey and the Bay Birding Challenge

My Journey and the Bay Birding Challenge

Harmony Yu


I’m Harmony Yu, a 13-year-old girl who loves nature. I have a rabbit named Spot, I go to eighth grade, and I plan on participating in the Bay Birding Challenge this year.

Ever since I learned to read at age 4, I’ve always preferred nature books. It took me until second grade to read any fiction books at all, and even then, they were books with animals as the main characters, like Pax or the Warriors cats series.

Over the pandemic, I found that learning over Zoom was not effective at all. For an avid marine biology lover, going for more than two days without being able to see sharks in person was unbearable. I needed another way to learn about them and understand them better, so I decided to learn biology on Khan Academy. After all, if I were to become a biologist like I had hoped, I would need those skills, and I couldn’t wait to start as soon as possible. In my ample free time, I managed to finish high school biology within the school year. Hiking was a luxury back then, since everyone was quaking in their boots at the mention of COVID. Despite having Seek on my phone, there were only so many things I could identify around me, since I didn’t have a camera (yet!). Besides, I had already memorized most of the plants around the house and a few birds. Only my rabbits, Spot and Venus (RIP Venus, she died of pneumonia in June 2023), and feeding peanuts to the wildlife outside, gave me nonhuman animal interactionssomething interesting to interact with.

After taking an online course about creative writing, another weapon against boredom, I decided to try writing a book myself. My parents promised me to publish it if I could actually do it, not expecting anything beyond a frivolous ramble. Surprising everyone (including myself), my first book, Blizzard in a Rainforest, came out in the summer of 2021, advocating against illegal pet trafficking from the point of view of a Ssnow Lleopard that had gotten cubnapped, shipped off to a rainforest, and left to fend for herself in a completely foreign environment.

Emboldened by my success, I decided to write Bubble Up in a Kelp Forest the following year, which was about otters’ vital role in marine ecosystems. Having recently been reading up on otters, I figured I needed to write something.…

Defend These Federal Agencies, Defend Our Birds.

Defend These Federal Agencies, Defend Our Birds.

By Sam Zuckerman

The Trump administration is taking aim at federal agencies that do the vital work of protecting birds. The sanctuaries where bird populations thrive—national parks and forests, wildlife refuges, and other federally managed lands—are being starved of staff and resources. Federal programs that carry out scientific research and wildlife management are in budget cutters’ crosshairs. All this puts the nation’s oceans, rivers, wetlands, and forests at risk, potentially destroying habitat birds depend on. 

Over the past century, the federal government has become the dominant force in protecting wildlife. This post serves as a guide to what we can do to defend the federal agencies—and the people working in them—that work to keep bird populations healthy. 

Here are the principal agencies that perform this mission: 

.kb-image66637_38eb75-98 .kb-image-has-overlay:after{opacity:0.3;} Golden Eagle mid-flight in Altamont PassGolden Eagle mid-flight in Altamont Pass by Jerry Ting .kb-image66637_84720b-2d .kb-image-has-overlay:after{opacity:0.3;} Female Greater Sage-Grouse, winner of National Audubon’s 2022 Bird Photography Contest for the “Female Bird” category
  • The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages more bird habitat than any other federal agency and works to protect sensitive species, such as the Greater Sage Grouse, through its Division of Fish and Wildlife Conservation.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency EPA) enforces federal laws mandating clean air and water and has a long history of protecting wildlife, such as its 1972 ban of the pesticide DDT, which led to the recovery of Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon populations. 
  • The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), through its Ecosystems Mission Area program, conducts research in areas such as invasive species and the biological effects of climate change, and provides scientific support to federal wildlife agencies.
  • The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supervises wetlands restoration in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and is the lead agency in the National Seabird Program, protecting species from fishing industry bycatch hazard

THE THREAT

Immediately after taking office, the Trump administration issued a blizzard of orders freezing grants for some 2,600 federal programs and firing staff throughout the government.…

Profile of a Lifelong Birder – Betty Carson (1930 – 2025)

Profile of a Lifelong Birder – Betty Carson (1930 – 2025)

By Ann Carson

Many GGBA members got a glimpse into the life of my mother, long-time Bay Area birder Betty Carson, when they attended a book sale of her incredible collection after her passing in early March. With over 5,000 books in her library, on wide-ranging topics including African wildlife, Ancient Egyptian history, tropical ecology, California natural history and much more, her largest area of interest was birds, delighting and amazing the dozens of birders who came to browse. 

My mother became a naturalist at an early age – shell collecting as a young girl on Southern California’s beaches and observing and recording notes on the birds in her San Fernando Valley backyard as a teenager. She moved north for college and earned a Zoology degree from UC Berkeley in 1951, followed by a Master’s degree in Biology from Oregon State and a second Master’s in Library Science from UC Berkeley. During her graduate years at Cal, she met and married my dad, Pete Carson, and they built a modest mid-century modern house at the top of the Berkeley Hills next to the vast open space of Tilden Regional Park. Pete and Betty raised three kids, all of us inspired by their love of the natural world. Family time for us involved frequent day trips to Marin County and its wild beaches, as well as camping trips in the Sierras. 

Mom continued to develop her passion for birding and other aspects of natural history throughout her adult life. She was a unique individual, especially for her time. Never interested in fashion, fancy food or trinkets, she prioritized time in nature, travel and books. On weekends when we were little, for example, she sometimes treated herself to solo trips out to Alameda’s south shore, where she enjoyed witnessing the seasonal rhythms of the shorebird community while Dad watched the three of us for the morning. As we got older, she traveled further afield in search of birds and other wildlife, with regular trips to U.S. hotspots like Yosemite National Park, the Texas Gulf Coast, and Florida. She took dozens of international trips as well, logging nine trips to Africa and at least as many to South and Central America.  Each time she traveled, she conducted extensive research to prepare herself for the experience, gradually accumulating an impressive personal library of books that she revisited each time she went back to a particular area.…

Crowns of Gold and Black

Crowns of Gold and Black

by Rebecca Mills

They’ve gone.

White-crowned Sparrow / Dave Strauss

With my morning tea, I open the back door and search. No Golden-crowned Sparrows. A California Towhee shuffles among the crusty leaves below the platform feeder.  Several Dark-eyed Juncos tap at the ground or into the feeder openings for suet or peanuts, “wild bird mix” or thistle seed.  No Golden-crowneds. Dave and I kept track for years. Now Dave is gone, and my daughter and I keep up the ritual. We expect them to leave sometime in mid-April and return in mid-September. Over the last few weeks we watched them eating rapaciously, as photoreceptors deep inside their brains reacted and triggered hormonal changes. Their stripes of crown feathers molted and regrew a rich bright yellow, framed in black. Most of them disappeared on April 21st.  A few hung around the next day. None in sight two days later. Buen vuelo (have a good flight)! 

.kb-image66613_d19393-97 .kb-image-has-overlay:after{opacity:0.3;} Black-headed Grosbeak / Bob Lewis

They will fly north, some as far as Alaska, to breed and raise their chicks. Scientists know little about their migratory routes, breeding behavior, and nesting sites. We hope their stopover spots have survived the epic fires and floods of our times, that they find enough food and drink at their hostels, that their breeding is successful, their chicks robust and ready to fly back here in the shortening days of September. They comfort me in these times, coming and going, responding to an ancient call, braving the skies with no certainty they’ll find room and board in their traditional migratory habitats. 

Other color-splashed avian visitors are here now.  Brilliant orange, black, and white Black-headed Grosbeaks whose occasional sweet gentle call we love to hear.  Elegant grey Band-tailed Pigeons with their white collars and tail-bands and their iridescent violet necks, who grunt and coo.  Hairy woodpeckers with their red hats. And Bushtits, Juncos.

I’ve known juncos as long as I’ve known my sister—all my life. Proverbial “little brown birds”, they are everywhere.  Their black heads—black hoods, black crowns, —their cinnamon-brown backs and lush-white breasts edged in pale peach, their tails flashing white stripes when they fly, their familiar “chp chp” calls populate my every day. They’re up before I am. They’re at all our different feeders and on the ground. They crack the seeds with their small, fat, pinkish sparrow beaks, spitting out the husks— in our backyard, on the front porch, in the Mahonia and Douglas Fir next to my daughter’s window feeding tray. …