News of two sources of interesting information appeared today.  An
article in The Condor reports results of surveys of nesting shorebirds
(hundreds of thousands of them) and their habitats in Alaska's Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge:
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1650%2F0010-5422(2007)109%5B1%3ASAADOT%5D2.0.CO%3B2
        Also the National Audubon Society has released a study of North
American bird population trends over the past 40 years, based on the two
largest studies--the Breeding Bird Survey and the Christmas Bird Counts.
Media outlets have various versions of a list of the top 20 common birds
apparently in serious decline over the past 40 years.
http://stateofthebirds.audubon.org/CBID/  will get you started. Here are
a bunch of short pages designed for the near-novice, lots of images,
invitations to join NA, etc. There is also a link to the Technical
Report, apparently a draft, which contains some valuable data and
descriptions of statistical methodologies (way beyond me), as well as
discussion of how data were weighted that's more accessible. I could not
get to a lot of tables referenced. I wish there had also been an
extended essay that omitted the most technical considerations but
summarized results for people who want to read more than hot-button
media-ready announcements. No doubt this presentation will be improved.
        On the currently very slow Web site, we hear a lot about the "Top 20
Common Birds in Decline" on a continental scale (
http://www.audubon.org/bird/stateofthebirds/CBID/browseSpecies.php ) The
version in my daily paper, likely from a press release, contained 21
Ohio species--apparently all those with local declines of 50% or
more--16 of which do not appear on the continental list of 20; it is not
accessible on the Web site. I couldn't find this list on Audubon Ohio's
site, but here is what appeared in the Columbus Dispatch today (the % is
that of decline, apparently locally in Ohio):
        Northern bobwhire  99%
        Grasshopper sparrow  99%
        Vesper sparrow  91%
        Henslow's sparrow  85%
        Green heron  82%
        Cerulean warbler  80%
        Red-headed woodpecker  78%
        Eastern meadowlark  75%
        Bobolink  70%
        Hairy woodpecker  68%
        Northern flicker  67%
        Bank swallow  64%
        Red-winged blackbird  64%
        Yellow-breasted chat  63%
        Savannah sparrow  62%
        Acadian flycatcher  61%
        Eastern wood-pewee 60%
        Field sparrow  59%
        American redstart  58%
        Prairie warbler  54%
        Great crested flycatcher 52%
        It would have been just as interesting to see the "Top 20 Birds in
Increase" as well; this, for example, might reflect on habitat loss as a
cause of declines. Anyway, the lists are interesting and provocative,
and invite digging more deeply.  It would be especially interesting to
hear reactions from 40-year veterans of the Ohio birding scene.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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