Brooklyn Bird Watch: I Miss the Cardinals

Somewhat recently, I wrote a Brooklyn Bird Watch piece wherein I talked about some of the environmental challenges birds face, especially during the early spring migration period when millions and millions of birds all over the world take to the Flyways in search of food, water, cover, and relative safety so they can breed, build a nest, and raise their young in relative safety. 

A few months ago in April during the spring bird migration season in New York, the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Office of General Services reminded New Yorkers of the “Lights Out” initiative. 

People who are not considered “bird people” but who are nevertheless fascinated and in awe of our feathered friends may not know that many species of shorebirds and songbirds rely on constellations in the night sky for help navigating their way to, or from, their summer breeding grounds across the state of New York and around the country. Excessive outdoor lighting, especially in bad weather, can disorient migrating birds. This situation is known as “fatal light attraction,” and according to the National Zoological Park and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “fatal light attraction has led to collisions with windows, walls, floodlights, or the ground, and to the death of an estimated 365 to 988 million birds annually in the United States.”  That’s a lot of birds.

For example, many articles have been written in the past few years in different big cities around the country about how, as birds fly over cityscapes, reflecting skyscrapers cause birds to fatally crash into their own reflections, and how the concentration of city lights, as mentioned above, confuse birds migrating at night, disrupting the bird’s innate migratory plan.

Another environmental factor that impacts bird migration is habitat change. According to NASA, “by far the largest threat to birds is the loss of habitat. Deforestation, the draining of wetlands, planting of non-native trees, the loss of areas to urban developments and intensive agriculture are major threats to birds.”  

Interestingly for the Northern Cardinal, initially a southern bird that was not always abundant in New York and the north in general, there was a time when habitat changes were the very things that created the opportunities for the bird to flourish and expand further north. Cardinals were on the brink of extinction until the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed in 1918.  They were hunted for the brilliant red feathers for women’s hats. 

According to Bob Confer of New York Land Quest: “Over the course of the century, countless family farms disappeared. That former open space has been replaced with woodlands. Especially in the lower elevations of New York, many of these burgeoning woodlots spend decades as brush, chock full of undergrowth of small trees, shrubs, and grasses, all grown tightly together. That’s prime cardinal habitat.

“The beautification and manicuring of backyards in suburban and rural locations alike — with their hedges, bushes, and vines – has created millions of small pockets of cardinal habitat where, being in the presence of people, it has led to fewer encounters with predators.”

While recently reading about the importance of habitat for migrating birds all over the world I was reminded (of course on a scale not so grand) of something I experienced at the local level a couple of years ago related to how habitat change will impact a bird’s life. (Full disclosure, it probably impacted me more than the birds.) What I really mean to say is, as insignificant as it seems to be, a habitat change for a bird can also impact a person.

I used to see this beautiful bird appear with its mate in the late mornings. The pair would come looking for the sunflower seeds that were the primary ingredient in the mixture of bird seed I slung around the parameters of my courtyard to attract whatever birds I could for photographs. I had also built and placed a bird feeder on a nearby fence, but the pair of Cardinals preferred to stay on the ground near the cover of a fence, the shrubbery, and the tall bushes.

It wasn’t that I was against going out “birding” somewhere (I sometimes did that too), it was that I had recently retired, and I was really enjoying indulging in my own lifestyle changes. Leisurely making coffee, staying around the building, grabbing a fully charged digital camera, going downstairs to relax in the courtyard, listening to the birds wake up, and patiently waiting for them to arrive at the feeder.

I was recently looking through some old photographs I took several years ago. Photographs of some of our non-migratory birds that have apparently made the building’s large courtyard shrubbery and surrounding landscape of small-wooded areas their permanent home.  Northern Mockingbirds, Blue Jays, Sparrows, Mourning Doves, Northern Cardinals, Crows, Grackles, Brown Thrashers, Blackbirds, and Red-Bellied Woodpeckers to name those I became familiar with.  There were some very special visitors of course, but those mentioned above were what you might call our neighborhood birds. 

Although the change registered as just a passing thought each subsequent spring, deep down I was always hoping to see the cardinals return, but then, it was our fault, we had destroyed their habitat.

Even if one is not, as I am not, a serious professional bird person, one looks forward to seeing the birds around the property and close up in the courtyard each spring. Being fascinated with birds while also enjoying photographing them when I have time, I don’t take their presence for granted. 

Something as simple as removing a long line of tall bushes interspersed with some small 10-foot trees to make way for a 7-foot wooden fence along our property line with a neighbor has caused several beautiful Cardinal families to completely disappear. 

Some very early mornings now when I go out to drink my coffee and lean on the balcony railing, I can hear the melodious whistle of what sounds like several Cardinals hidden in the trees across the street, but, regretfully, I never see them on our property during the day anymore.

I miss seeing the beautiful red bird. When I would see the Northern Cardinal and his mate during those mornings, they arrived unseen through the small trees and thick bushes along the property line until they cautiously appeared on the ground under the white fence that ran along the edge of the courtyard. 

Sometimes now in the early spring mornings when it’s still dark outside, no traffic, and very still and quiet, while leaning on the balcony rail, thinking, and drinking my coffee, I will hear the melodious “sweet whistles” of a pair of Cardinals somewhere in the large trees of the neighbor’s front yard across the street about fifty yards away.  I’m thinking, maybe they will return and visit our property, or perhaps I should say, I hope they will return. I think of putting some sunflower seeds out somewhere near the building’s entrance door, thinking they might one morning see the food from across the street. As an official bird person recently told me, birds always eventually find birdseed.