It’s spring in Evanston, which means that every night from April to June, millions of birds migrate overhead as they make their way north for the summer.
[natural sound: birdsong from around Northwestern’s campus]
It also means that your early mornings or walks between classes have probably gotten a bit noisier.
After waking up to choruses of birdsong and geese honking outside my window nearly every morning…
[natural sound: opening apartment window to geese honking]
…I had a simple question: What’s up with our local birds?
[natural sound fades under: Cole Roecker identifying a Caspian tern on our walk around the lakefill]
COLE ROECKER: This is the Caspian tern. And if you watch, it’s hunting, so he’ll get up. He’ll kind of hover, catch the wind a little, and he’s looking down into the water to see if there’s anything…
Cole Roecker is a second-year Ph.D student at Northwestern. He studies environmental history. We walked around the windy campus lakefill, which is a hotspot for birds because it has water and vegetation.
He explained the history of bird-related governmental policies in North America, which, according to Roecker, are…
ROECKER: Some of the most, sort of, forceful and earliest environmental protections that existed in the US.
In 1900, many bird species — like geese — were in danger of extinction, or already extinct, from being over-hunted or from habitat destruction. So, the US government introduced no-kill policies and tried to stabilize the populations.
ROECKER: Ah, the geeese. A lot of people see geese as a pest. And they’re very territorial, they’re very loud, they produce a lot of excrement. But geese are a success story, as far as conservation goes.
But some other species haven’t been so lucky.
ROECKER: Bird species are a kind of tough thing, because some people view certain species as a nuisance.
On Northwestern’s campus, you may hear complaints about the red-winged blackbirds, which like to dive-bomb people eating outside. We passed several on our walk.
ROECKER: …essentially all of them, I think it was something like 80% or so–
[natural sound: a red-winged blackbird call interrupts Roecker]
ROECKER: Here’s a male red-winged blackbird on his territory. He’s letting us know.
And in the past, those “nuisance” birds have actually been killed off by the government. All that to say, there’s a lot to the story of why we see the birds that we see. And it’s something we might take for granted as just natural. As happening in the background of our lives.
ROECKER: Getting people to see humans in that story, to not just see nature as something out there and humans as in here, or in the cities or whatever, but to see them together.
Jacob Smith is a professor in RTVF who came into the birding world as a “sound enthusiast” interested in the art of birdsong. When it comes to why people should care about birds, Smith echoed Roecker’s point:
JACOB SMITH: Caring about them for their own sake, but paying attention to that more-than-you, more-than-human aspect of the world, I think, is so good for your soul.
Every fall and spring quarter, during peak migration time, Smith helps lead a “bird-walk” that anyone willing to be an early-bird for the day can join in on. He brings an expert along to help identify bird species that pass through Evanston on their journey north.
SMITH: I know that students are getting a little burned out of being in a kind of always online, kind of a screened existence. We’re all kind of stuck in that trap, and this is a really great way to unplug and pay attention to your environment. That’s so good for you!
Plus, migration season only happens twice a year. Sure, it lasts a couple of months each fall and spring, but it’s easy to miss the birds who are on the longest journeys and don’t have time to stick around.
SMITH: All of a sudden, everything looks different, it sounds different. The plants are blooming and blossoming obviously, but also, there’s all these bird species that will only be here for this week.
Another place to see the visiting birds is at The Clark Street Beach Bird Sanctuary. It’s an unassuming area near the lakeshore, just south of Northwestern’s Segal Visitors Center.
The two-acre habitat is meant to look natural, to blend in with the nearby park and the rest of South Beach. But it’s not just a bird sanctuary by chance.
Volunteers carefully maintain the plants, which attract insects that the birds will eat. They set up wood piles that the sparrows like to hide under. They pull lots and lots of weeds.
Nancy Pinchar is one of those volunteers. I came along for her weekly shift of identifying bird species in the sanctuary.
PINCHAR: This stuff doesn’t just stay like it is. We have a lot of invasive pressures and different climate pressures that are changing things, so it takes a lot of effort to sustain.
The sanctuary is split up into six sections that are each unique micro-environments. One section has shrubs and leaves covering the ground. Another is called “the dessert” because it’s all sand and beach grass.
PINCHAR: So this is section three and then we come…
[natural sound fades under: Nancy and I walking through the different sections.]
Each day, a sanctuary volunteer monitors which birds are in which sections and how many. The lakeshore is along a migration path called the Mississippi Flyway, so the monitoring shows which birds are using the sanctuary along the way.
PINCHAR: So now we just had a red-winged blackbird land in that cottonwood, and over to the left is a brown-headed cowbird. Oh, sorry, nope! That’s a second, that’s a female red-winged blackbird.
Pinchar said bird identification is just like any other skill; it requires practice. New birders can use field guides or bird identification apps to learn. For everyone else, simply looking up more is a solid start by Roecker’s standards. He said that just noticing in the first place, is the first step to appreciating.
ROECKER: Yeah, it won’t change everybody’s life, I don’t have that kind of expectation. But maybe it just gets somebody, a young person, a student here, whoever— even if they just notice one bird while they’re out walking, that they hadn’t noticed before. That’s a win to me. That’s good.
[natural sound: common grackle chirping]
For WNUR News, I’m Georgia Kerrigan.
