Date: 4/23/24 7:24 pm From: Drew Haffenden via groups.io <andrew...> Subject: Re: [ALbirds] Musings on Fallouts
Collin I echo your thoughts. While I like most other birders take advantage of a fallout, I believe - and have shared my thoughts previously - that hoping for one or celebrating one is misguided if one I concerned about our birds. Scores of thousands to hundreds of thousands of birds dying while crossing the gulf is not something to hope for. Sweet passage across and safe arrival is.
Cheers,
Drew Haffenden
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From: <ALbirds...> <ALbirds...> on behalf of Collin Stempien via groups.io <cstempien40...>
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 3:05:12 PM
To: <ALbirds...> <ALbirds...>
Subject: [ALbirds] Musings on Fallouts
Note: photo of dead bird included.
Few things get Northern Gulf Coast birders more excited than hearing predictions of a fallout. While these conditions provide an incredible spectacle for us birders, on a more somber note, these events can really take a toll on the birds. These migrants aren’t stopping to enjoy our white sandy beaches, but rather, because they are on the literal verge of death. Fallouts occur because conditions switched to an unfavorable direction, and in major events, force migrants to exhaust every last gram of stored energy, to the point many are unable to recover.
Conditions earlier this week appeared to be aligning for a classic fallout, but for those of us on the western side of our area, birding Saturday evening and Sunday morning was surprisingly slow. Very few migrants were present, even in the classic migrant traps. While this may have largely indicated that birds were vectored elsewhere, I did find it somewhat concerning, particularly the switch to very strong north winds overnight.
While surveying a nearshore island in Mississippi Monday morning (which I survey constantly throughout the year for work), I noticed something unusual. Low numbers of very tired migrants were still around, trying their best to recover in a poor quality habitat. Sights such as a Blackpoll Warbler foraging on the ground of a sandy dune, trying to build back its reserves, greeted me. Other species included Yellow, Prairie, Blue-winged, and Black-throated Green warblers, a Northern Waterthrush, a Yellow-throated Vireo, etc. all foraging along some lightly vegetated beach dunes. This island doesn’t even host a single tree, hardly the ideal stopover site for otherwise forest-y birds.
This morning, while conducting surveys on a Mississippi barrier island, I found some evidence of what I was afraid of. Migrants that were otherwise in beautiful condition and unharmed, were lying dead in the vegetation. A quick search turned up Gray Catbirds and Red-eyed Vireos with what we would refer to as fat scores and muscle scores of 0 in the banding world, meaning the bird had essentially used up every single remnant of energy reserve it had. These birds were lucky enough to make it to land, but were unable to recover, and are surely only a tiny portion compared to the birds who did not make it across the gulf to be found.
Sorry to dull the mood, but I think it is important to keep these things in mind. I too am more than guilty of being excited at the prospects of incoming birds. While events such as these are entirely out of our control, they serve as an important reminder to enjoy the sights but give birds space and respect. The last thing they need is to be pushed from tree to tree for photos, or to be lured in by a fake song coming from a speaker. Birds are simply trying to survive and move on; let’s allow them to carry on rebuilding those reserves so that future generations of bird nerds don’t just have to hear about “the old days” where birds were everywhere.
