FA LL 2016

The Hoot
Listeners
How researchers are
solving age-old mysteries
about California’s elusive
Great Gray Owls—without
ever having to see them

Plus:

EAGLES VS.
CHICKENS

TEACHING AN
IBIS TO MIGRATE

PALM OIL &

POACHERS IN
SUMATRA
g
FLIGHT PLAN
PHOTOGRAPH BY
ANDY ROUSE

Most migrating birds find their way

by instinct. Even among species
that travel in flocks, each individual
is born with an innate sense of its
migratory route and direction and
distance. For a few kinds of birds,
however, navigation is a matter
of tradition, not instinct. In these
species, the older birds remember
where to go, and younger birds
follow their parents to learn the
routes, stopover points, and des-
tinations. That’s the case with the
tens of thousands of Snow Geese
and Ross’s Geese that migrate from
breeding grounds on the Arctic
tundra to the Rio Grande Valley
of central New Mexico every fall.
Many of them settle for the winter
in the Bosque del Apache National
Wildlife Refuge, which has become
a magnet for the birders and pho-
tographers who also migrate to the
area annually. —Kenn Kaufman

ANDY ROUSE/NPL/MINDEN PICTURES

g
PELICAN CHASE
PHOTOGRAPH BY
YOSSI ESHBOL

Every fall, vast numbers of migrating

birds from Europe and Asia funnel
through Israel and adjacent areas
of the Middle East, headed to
wintering grounds in Africa. The
migrants range in size from tiny
songbirds to storks and eagles, but
among the largest are the Great
White Pelicans. These massive
birds, similar to American White
Pelicans, may have wingspans of
more than nine feet. When huge
groups pass through in migration,
they are impossible to ignore—
especially the 5,000 that stopped
by this fishpond in northern Israel
one October. Workers from the fish-
farming operation soon arrived to
chase away the birds. All the Great
White Pelicans tensed and turned
to look in the workers’ direction, just
before taking of. —K.K.
g
CAUGHT IN
THE CURRENT
PHOTOGRAPH BY
KENN KAUFMAN

During migration, most birds of

prey conserve energy when they
can. In open country, hawks find
a thermal—a column of rising air
above heated ground—and circle
up high, then peel of to glide
southward until they find the next
one. In this way, they cover miles
without flapping their wings.
Climatic conditions for such travel
are widespread from Canada to
northern Mexico. But in Veracruz,
halfway down Mexico’s east coast,
mountains extend almost to the
sea, squeezing the coastal plain to a
strip less than 20 miles wide. Every
fall, more than four million hawks
pour southward through this gap—
including Broad-winged Hawks,
Swainson’s Hawks, and Turkey
Vultures—in a phenomenon called
“the river of raptors.” —K.K.
CONTENTS FALL 2016, VOLUME 119, NUMBER 5

32
True Nature Hoot Recognition
The rarest owl in North America may not be very
social, but it has a strong record of going it alone—
one that dates back to the last Ice Age.
By Nancy Bazilchuk

18
Flock Together Flight School
An epic efort to restore the Northern Bald Ibis
starts with an essential round of cuddles.
Photography by Esther Horvath

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ESTHER HORVATH; MARKUS VARESVUO/NPL/MINDEN PICTURES; BRYAN MELTZ; PAUL HILTON
The Hoot
Listeners
How researchers are
solving age-old mysteries
about California’s elusive
Great Gray Owls—without
ever having to see them

Plus:

EAGLES VS.
CHICKENS

TEACHING AN
IBIS TO MIGRATE

PALM OIL &

POACHERS IN
SUMATRA

Cover: Great
Gray Owl (Strix
nebulosa).
Photograph by
Markus Varesvuo/
NPL/Minden
Pictures

24
Investigation Oil Barrens
The palm oil industry has devastated Indonesia's
38
Conundrum Let Them Eat Chicken
There's a fine line between a pasture-raised-poultry
tropical rainforests, local communities, and birdlife. farm and an all-you-can-eat bufet for Bald Eagles.
But the destruction has implications for us all. The Harrises crossed it, but they're not about to
By Jocelyn C. Zuckerman give up their sustainable ideals.
Photography by Paul Hilton By Susan Matthews/Photography by Bryan Meltz

6AUDUBON | FALL 2016


8 Inbox
11 Audubon View
Speaking to the power of the vote.
By David Yarnold
12 Field Notes
The oldest bird law in the country needs
a modern-day makeover; our writer tags
along with a Black Tern search party;
Australia’s Aborigines fight fire with fire;
the Rio Grande finds its pulse with the
help of local pueblos.
44 Field Guide
Birding How to assess birds of prey
FROM TOP: DIANE COOK AND LEN JENSHEL; MIKE FERNANDEZ/AUDUBON; ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CIARDIELLO
from a distance.
Travel A hawkwatch bucket list that
spans the Western hemisphere.
Photography Turn your love of rap-
tors into stunning images.
52 Illustrated Aviary
Watercolor and ink reveal a stripped-down,
vulnerable version of the California Condor.
By Joe Ciardiello
WHAT WE WERE THINKING
A Little Help
Nonprofit conservation organization meets nonprofit
journalism organization; great things ensue.
BY MARK JANNOT
IJocelyn
t’s fair to say, i think, that
when we first began to talk with
Zuckerman about investi-
gating the rampantly growing palm
oil industry it was by no means a
slam dunk that we would move
forward with the project. Yes, the
topic was unquestionably a worthy
one: The clearing of rainforests and
burning of deep tropical peatlands
in Indonesia transform one of the
world’s most important carbon
sinks into a massive carbon spewer,
while the building of palm plan-
tations gives poachers easy access
to Helmeted Hornbills and the
prized “golden ivory” casques on
the upper part of their bills. And I
could personally attest—as some-
one who had somehow remained
mostly ignorant of the palm oil
menace—that the story had real
potential to open readers’ eyes and
spur them to action. But it’s also a
costly story to produce. To report
it, Zuckerman would have to go
to Sumatra, where locals could
show her firsthand the industry’s
devastating effects.
We take great care here in our
cost-benefit considerations around
how we spend the money that you
generously provide through your
membership fees and donations.
And so it was our great good
fortune that Zuckerman was able
to connect us with the folks at
Food and Environment Reporting
Network (FERN), an independent,
nonprofit journalism organization
whose mission is to help bring just
“At the
same time
that news-
this sort of underreported, critically papers and
important story to light. Founded magazines
five years ago, FERN is among were cutting
a growing cadre of organizations back on the
(Propublica, Climate Central, environmental
InsideClimate News, among many beat, there was
others) that have sprung up to an insatiable
foster public-interest journalism appetite for
during a period of disinvestment these kinds of
by revenue-challenged mainstream stories among
outlets. “At the same time that readers.”
newspapers and magazines were
cutting back on the environmental
beat, there was an insatiable appe-
tite for these kinds of stories among
readers,” says Sam Fromartz, FERN
cofounder and editor-in-chief. “We
knew the demand was there; it’s just
that the model for supplying it was
broken.” Rather than rely on adver-
tising revenue to stay afloat, FERN
and other such nonprofits mostly
raise funds from foundations and,
increasingly, direct donations by
individuals who care deeply about
the subjects they cover.
In the case of Zuckerman’s
palm oil proposal, FERN agreed
to cover half of the writer's fee and
half the cost of her reporting trip
to Indonesia. “Oil Barrens” (p. 20),
Zuckerman’s powerful investiga-
tive report, is a tribute to FERN
and the new model of cooperative
journalism it's pioneering. a
FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 7
INBOX

outside of the windows. It dries

translucent and the sparkles help
with visibility to the birds on the
outside. Wavy lines are more effec-
tive than straight; make designs if
you are artistic. Put lines close to one
another (about 6 inches), the same as
stickers and decals recommend.
Benefits: It’s inexpensive, not
permanent, and easy to apply and
maintain. It’s also not a great visual
annoyance, considering the benefits.
mathieu federspiel

For more ideas on how to bird-proof

the glass around your home, go to
audubon.org/birdfriendlybackyard.

Magnum Opus
I know I’m supposed to be absorb-
ing lots of lore about conservation
and nature from your great articles,
and I promise, I took plenty of notes

Big Brother The bird bots [“Rise of the Avianoids”] are truly magnificent
FRONTIERS

feats of engineering. Once they’re made available to police to “stream infor-

mation about criminals’ movements,” however, they will inevitably—and very
soon—be used to spy on anyone the government considers suspicious:  LAND OF THE LOST BIRDS
Nobody knows
precisely how
many bird
species occur in
Equatorial Guinea.
To find out, a
crew of American
scientists is

activists, political protesters, environmentalists, and a long list of law-abiding

surveying the
most remote
reaches of the
underexplored
African nation,
documenting
the birdlife even
as rampant

citizens. It may take years or decades before courts rule that warrants are
development
threatens it.
BY ALISA OPAR
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
TRISTAN SPINSKI

required for this spying, as they finally did in the case in Vermont of a GPS g

secretly mounted on a suspect’s car that tracked him for weeks. This is not an
objection to the bird-bot research, just a reminder of the law of unintended
consequences.—Linda Sleffel, Columbus, OH
Please forgive me for raining on have heard the predictions that “We need to
the parade, but these bird-like the entire southern half of Florida look before
drones will create havoc in two will be underwater in the not-so- we leap into
ways. First, the camouflaged distant future from sea-level rise. this new tech-
drones will further erode our Therefore, it would seem prudent nology and
privacy. Second, they will endanger to concentrate efforts on initia- make sure
the actual predator birds by incen- tives that would have more lasting we include
tivizing criminals to shoot them benefits. As a life member of the actual safety
out of the sky, along with many National Audubon Society, I want measures.”
actual bird casualties, no doubt. We to save “everything,” but sadly it just
need to look before we leap into won’t be possible. So let’s not throw
this new technology and make sure away our resources on projects with
we include actual safety measures. no long-term chances of success.
holly hunter suzette williams
oklahoma city, ok port angeles, wa
Fleeting Legacy Crafty Solution
[RE: “A Victory for Florida’s [RE: “How to Test Bird-Safe
on Alisa Opar’s “Land of the Lost
Birds.” But there was something else
about it I couldn’t help but notice:
In addition to being informative, the
piece made for gripping dramatic
reading. If Opar were ever to turn
her hand to writing novels, she could
show up half the writers on the Man
Booker longlist this year!
steve donoghue
jamaica plain, ma
Memories Made
[RE: “Common Ground.”] My
father, now 92, took me to Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge when
I was 4 years old. It was the first
road trip I remember. Later when
I was 10, I caught my first fish in
the Steens Mountains. That area
of Oregon holds a special place in
TOP: MIKE FERNANDEZ/AUDUBON

Everglades.”] While I appreci-
ate the efforts being taken to help
the wildlife and the Everglades in
southern Florida, it seems like a
case of the left hand not knowing
what the right is doing. I’m quite
sure the people of Legacy Florida
Glass.”] When I first moved into my
home I was shocked at how many
bird strikes I had on the windows. I
immediately searched for solutions.
My favorite: household glue with
sparkles, available in craft depart-
ments. Just apply the glue to the
my heart. Let’s hope the people
continue working together so that
everybody can enjoy Malheur.
ralph jones
Send letters to audubonmagazine@
audubon.org.

8AUDUBON | FALL 2016

 Enhance your
nest egg today…

…and leave a conservation

legacy tomorrow
Save on taxes!
Supplement your retirement with fixed income for
as long as you live—at an attractive rate—and leave Act by
a conservation legacy with an Audubon gift annuity.
Annual payment rates go as high as 9%, depending on
December 31.
your age. Act by December 31 to save on income and
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See Your Benefits
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 Audubon
Board of Directors CEO & President Content Marketing
David B. Ford David Yarnold Mark Jannot Lynne Hoppe
Chair of the Board Vice President, Content Integrated Marketing
Executive Staf Director
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David Roux Mary Beth Henson Deputy Editor Marketing Manager
Vice-Chair Chief Financial Oicer Alisa Opar Avery Cullinan
Margaret Walker Anne Lieberman Articles Editor Integrated Marketing
Vice-Chair Chief Development Oicer Martha Harbison Coordinator
Joseph H. Ellis Susan Lunden Network Content Editor
Secretary Chief Operating Oicer Purbita Saha Communications
Susan Bell David O'Neill Assistant Editor Porter Mason
Assistant Secretary Chief Conservation Oicer Liz Bergstrom Director, Digital Strategy
Terry L. Root David Ringer Climate Content Manager Agatha Szczepaniak
Assistant Secretary Chief Network Oicer Jonathan Carey Senior Manager,
Jane Alexander Editorial Fellow Media Relations
Karim Al-Khafaji Vice Presidents Sabrina Imbler Elizabeth Sorrell
Peter A. Alpert Matthew Anderson Reporter Senior Manager,
Leigh Altadonna John Beavers Kenn Kaufman Social Media
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George Golumbeski Kevin Dufy Melissa Groo Nicolas Gonzalez
Jef Goodby Gail Gatton Jane Braxton Little Media Relations Associate
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William Heck Alison Holloran T. Edward Nickens Digital Communications
Joy Hester Stewart Hudson David Allen Sibley Associate
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Alexis Maybank Marshall Johnson Ted Williams
Hector E. Morales, Jr. Kim Keller Barry Yeoman
Ajay Shah Brett Kincaid Contributing Editors
Hugh Simmons Stephen W. Kress
Jack Stewart Marian Langan Art
Phil Swan Gary Langham Kevin Fisher
Stephen Tan Brigid McCormack Creative Director
Lili Taylor Douglas Mefert Sabine Meyer
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Andrew Roos Camilla Cerea
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Content Production Manager
Donal O'Brien Chair
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Digital Director
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Customer service: 844-428-3826 or customerservice@audubon.org. The observations and opinions expressed in Audubon magazine are those of the respective authors and
should not be interpreted as representing the oicial views of the National Audubon Society. Volume 118, Number 5, Fall 2016. Audubon, ISSN 0097-7136, the magazine of the
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10AUDUBON | FALL 2016

 AUDUBON VIEW

The Respect and Compassion Vote

In the midst of a historically uncivil election season, it’s time to remember what really matters.
BY DAVID YARNOLD, CEO/PRESIDENT

“Your children watch what you do.” That’s the powerful advice I got 11 million acres in Alaska’s National
recently from a faith leader who also happened to be an Audubon chapter Petroleum Reserve.
head. Fair enough. Here’s what I want our children to see when they watch All of these big wins have
Audubon in their communities and their lives: respect and compassion. something in common: They were
Those enduring Audubon values have worked for 110 years and they can achieved by committed staff and
help guide us in the run-up to November’s election. volunteers who know the solutions
Every four years, people say, “This is a pivotal election.” I’ll leave it to you to the world’s problems aren’t black
to decide whether this one is more consequential than most. I believe it is. and white. In the heat of an epi-
In an election season filled with nastiness and division it can feel like Birds create cally uncivil political season, simple
the world is a place of danger and chaos. But it isn’t true. Birds help us find the oppor- solutions are seductive. But there’s
common ground. We know that the first time a child sees a Black-capped tunity for no bird-proof wind turbine, and
Chickadee, a gateway into nature swings wide. And we know that, historically, Americans to there’s no way to stave off devel-
conservation doesn’t have a party; Audubon has always been a centrist organi- come together opment in every Latin American
zation that is local everywhere and active across incredible landscapes. to make real forest that migratory birds need.
FROM TOP: DIANE COOK AND LEN JENSHEL; CAMILLA CEREA/AUDUBON

Birds create the opportunity for Americans to come together to make and lasting These are hard problems—but
real and lasting change, leaving the world a better place than we found it. change. nobody thought it would be pos-
We choose to be fundamentally optimistic, yes, even while being vigilant and sible to ban DDT or to stop the
tenacious and, where needed, unmovable. Audubon’s vision has always been a slaughter of birds for their feathers
world in which people and wildlife thrive. Consider these recent examples: for hats. That only happened
• In the sagebrush country of the Western United States, where the Greater because of determination, good
Sage-Grouse is under dire threat, we worked with federal agencies, states, science, and a willingness to listen
private landowners, industry, and other environmental organizations to to one another.
create new management plans this year that help protect that species and Birds amaze us with their migra-
its 65-million-acre ecosystem—without throttling economic growth. tory heroics, they dazzle us with
• In Florida, Audubon worked to support the passage of Amendment 1, their beauty, and they’re remarkably
also known as the Land and Water Legacy Amendment. And our chap- adaptable. But they can’t vote. Only
ters and state office have fought hard to ensure that Florida’s elected you can do that for them. And I
officials follow the will of the people, generating up to $10 billion for intend to vote with Audubon values
conservation work during the next 20 years. in mind. Engagement. Respect.
• In Alaska, Audubon basically drew the maps for federal agencies, protecting Compassion. Please join me. A

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 11


FIELD NOTES
POLICY
Modern Threats
One of the country’s oldest bird regulations needs
to be updated, and now is the time to do it.
BY SUSAN COSIER
C onservation has come a long
way since the late 1800s when
the Snowy Egret was nearly hunted
to extinction. But the threats to
birds have evolved in tandem. Today
natural-gas flares singe Red-eyed
Vireos, oil pits drown roadrunners,
and wind turbines down pelicans.
All told, modern industries kill hun-
dreds of millions of birds per year.
To safeguard species for the future,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
recently set out to bolster one of its
oldest and most powerful tools: the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
First passed by Congress nearly
a century ago, the MBTA prohibits
people from capturing or harming
birds from more than a thousand
migratory species and from pos-
sessing or selling any of their parts.
Although it was amended several
times to implement bird-protection
treaties with other nations, the law
hasn’t been updated in 44 years. In
May 2015, the USFWS announced
plans to create a rule strengthening
protections under the act—but it
is now in danger of missing its best
window to do so.
“A whole range of industrial
activities are killing birds when we
have simple, inexpensive ways to
12AUDUBON | FALL 2016
address those threats,” says Mike
Daulton, head of the National
Audubon Society’s policy team.
“By modernizing the law we can
get those threats under control
and conserve countless birds.” The
agency has already outlined vol-
untary guidelines for utilities and
the wind industry, which include
bird-friendly steps such as limiting
the height of power lines and
putting hoods over turbine lights.
Audubon and other conservation
groups would like to see such pre-
cautions made mandatory, and the
forthcoming rule would afford the
USFWS that opportunity.
The agency has proposed devel-
oping a new permitting process for
industries that unintentionally kill
species protected under the MBTA,
allowing them to legally “take”
birds as long as they follow certain
measures to minimize deaths. If a
company expects that its operations
will kill a lot of birds, it might be
required to pay a mitigation fee.
Revenue from those fees and from
permit applications could help the
cash-strapped agency enforce the act
and process permits more efficiently.
“There has not been a major new
regulatory framework in the govern-
ment for environmental matters
in 30 years, so this is pretty vision-
ary,” says Bob Dreher, senior vice
president of conservation programs
at Defenders of Wildlife. Until he
moved to the nonprofit in June, Dre-
her worked intensively on the effort
as associate director of the USFWS.
“It’s a complicated suite of regulatory
approaches, all of them new, and
the agency has to figure out how to
make them work right,” he says.
Because the USFWS has yet
to publish a draft rule articulating
specific details, it’s not clear which
standards it will include. Whatever
the end result, it must benefit birds,
not industry, says Brian Rutledge,
director of Audubon’s Sagebrush
Ecosystem Initiative. “Any change
to the act should make killing birds
more difficult, not easier,” he says.
As it stands now, the USFWS
has to take to federal court compa-
nies that violate the MBTA, and
the outcome varies case to case and
judge to judge. This permit process
would bring much needed clarity
for both sides, says Andrew Ogden,
a lawyer who wrote a white paper
“A whole about incidental take published in
range of
industrial
activities are
William & Mary Environmental
Law and Policy Review. Cape Wind,
the offshore wind project proposed
killing birds in Nantucket Sound, plans to apply
when we for a permit under the MBTA, for
have simple, example. Though it could apply for a
inexpen- special-use permit that would allow
sive ways to the farm to kill birds—something
address those the agency has issued only twice be-
threats.” fore—the proposed incidental-take
permit would be a better fit for the
operation, says Dreher.
The Interior Department has
written a legal opinion on the scope
of its authority under the law, which
would help avoid future court
battles, but it has yet to publish
that either. A spokesperson said the
USFWS is now reviewing public
comments about a possible permit
rule, but declined to say more. Con-
servation groups, led by Audubon,
are pushing for the agency to forge
ahead and publish both before the
Obama administration and USFWS
officials involved leave office.
FATAL FLIGHT “We have a golden opportunity
Migrating birds, to make progress,” says Audubon’s
including Red- Daulton. “We’re running out of
eyed Vireos, are time in this administration.” When
drawn to natural- the administration changes, political
gas flares and priorities could shift, leaving mil-
killed by the heat. lions of birds unprotected.
ILLUSTRATION BY FELIX SOCKWELL
ILLUSTRATION BY HANNA BARCZYK FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 13
FIELD NOTES

g WEIGHT WATCHER
Dave Shealer serves as an
adviser to Audubon's Black
Tern project in the Great
Lakes. So far the team has
banded more than 100
birds, including chicks.

14AUDUBON | FALL 2016

SCIENCE
Banding Together
To help save Black Terns, researchers first have to solve
the mystery of their dramatic decline.
BY PETER MARKUS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE FERNANDEZ
W hen we approach mackie
Colony, one of six Black Tern
colonies in the St. Clair Flats Wild-
life Area, where the St. Clair River
meets Lake St. Clair 20-odd miles
from downtown Detroit, the June
blue sky comes alive with the cries
of a dozen terns circling overhead.
Caleb Putnam, Michigan Important
Bird Areas program coordinator for
Audubon Great Lakes, and Dave
Shealer, a biologist from Loras Col-
lege in Iowa, hit the water first.
I watch as Putnam and Shealer
wade through a mixed habitat of
cattail and bulrush marsh. Black Tern
nests are, as Shealer puts it, “cobbled
together” right on top of the water,
built on broken bulrush stalks that
have matted up to form makeshift
rafts. When the two return to the
boat, Shealer holds a pair of chicks
and Putnam cradles a clutch of
three eggs. Volunteers from Detroit
Audubon—Randy Kling and Erin
Rowan—band the birds and record
the data. They hope that, combined
with data from the past three field
seasons, it will point to the reason for
the terns’ mysterious decline.
Black Terns spend four months
breeding in scattered colonies across
the northern United States and Can-
ada. Then they fly south to Central
and South America. At some point,
the terns aren’t surviving. Since the
1960s, numbers have dropped by 70
percent. “The bird is going downhill
fast,” Putnam says. “The population
should be stable but it’s not.”
The Audubon team—together
with partners at the Michigan De-
partment of Natural Resources and
Detroit Zoo—has been trying to rule
out threats to the terns’ survival. “It’s
a process of elimination,” Putnam
says. “What are the attributes out of
whack here? It’s either that the adults
aren’t living out their lives or that
they’re not making enough babies.”
Nest failures, habitat loss, the
proliferation of invasive species such
as phragmites—a common reed—all
place pressure on the tern’s breeding
population. But so far at St. Clair
Flats, breeding success doesn’t appear
to be a problem; there are plenty of
chicks. Shealer’s own work in Wis-
consin indicates the adults may not g grassroots effort to a larger project
survive between breeding seasons. By TAKING TERNS covering other Great Lakes sites.
banding birds for recapture, Putnam From top: Caleb After banding the chicks,
and crew hope to glean whether Putnam returns Putnam and his team attempt to
that’s the case in Michigan, too. with Black Tern capture an adult tern. Rowan trips
Satellite transmitters capable of chicks for band- the remote trap as Putnam, gazing
tracking individuals as they migrate ing; Erin Rowan, a through binoculars, gives her the
south would help fill important gaps, Detroit Audubon signal. “Got it!” he exclaims, busting
but such devices currently aren’t volunteer, handles waist-deep through the lily-padded
light enough for Black Terns. So in an adult bird waters. The tern had been banded
the meantime, the team hopes to before releasing it a previous year—a good sign. This
scale its banding work from a small, back to the colony. one, at least, made it home.
FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 15
FIELD NOTES
REVIVAL
Rising from the Ashes
Controlled fires set by Aboriginal park rangers may
be the Gouldian Finch’s final hope.
BY SABRINA IMBLER
T iny, rare, and rich in color,
Gouldian Finches are called
“jewels of the outback” for good
reason. With fewer than 2,500
remaining in the wild, the once-
common Australian bird is a
stunning sight—for anyone so lucky
to find it. The Gouldians’ range is
largely bound to the Kimberley, a
spectacularly rugged region that
marks Australia’s final frontier.
Historically, Aboriginal tribes set
16AUDUBON | FALL 2016
ander Watson learned that Aborig- Burn Remedy
inal Kija park rangers had created Prescribed burns
a prescriptive burning plan for the set by the Kija help
Kimberley but lacked the resources preserve entire
to implement it. Watson realized ecosystems. These
the plan, which would protect local three species also
communities, could also give the reap benefits.
finches a fighting chance. He and
the rangers launched the Fire and Purple-crowned
Feathers program, funded by the Fairy-wren
Australian government and various The fairy-wren
conservation groups, which hires
indigenous-owned fire stations to
nests in river
grass, which
set prescribed burns early in the doesn’t burn
dry season around six Gouldian easily. In the dry
populations. They also monitor season, however,
finches with cameras in the birds’ wildfires wipe out
breeding area. Now in its third entire patches
year, the project has already seen of the songbird’s
tangible success. “This is one of the habitat. After a
rare cases where we saw a problem, controlled fire,
we did something about it, and the the grass grows
birds are coming back,” says project back far more
supervisor Kira Andrews. quickly.
The program is also a lifeline
for the Kija people, who struggle Partridge Pigeon
with poverty and unemploy- The crimson-
small, prescribed burns to prevent ment. It trains them for jobs in
late-season wildfires there. But when
colonists displaced the tribes in the
threatened-species management,
allowing the rangers to pass on
faced Partridge
Pigeon nests
on the ground.
early 20th century that practice died these skills to their communities. Late-season
out, and eventually infernos began As the finches recover, so too blazes can reduce
to decimate the entire landscape. will the Kija’s connection to their plant cover,
Many seed-dependent birds began land—and sky. making the birds
to starve—especially Gouldian and their young
Finches, which rely on a seed that g STRIKING FIND more susceptible
grows solely in areas untouched by Two male Gouldian Finches spotted on to predators, such
fire for at least three years. the Dampier Peninsula of Australia's as dingoes and
In 2013, British ecologist Alex- Kimberley region. feral cats.
Bilby
An endangered
desert marsupial,
the bilby is mostly
ears and snout.
It prefers open
country with a
patchy mixture of
bare soil and grass
clumps—a land-
scape best created
by mosaic burns.
PHOTO BY ALEXANDER WATSON/WWF-AUSTRALIA

AUDUBON IN ACTION
Southern Revival
A gift from New Mexico’s tribes may help ease dry
times in the Middle Rio Grande.
BY LAURA PASKUS
A t one time, the rio grande
was a river to be reckoned
with, careening through three
states and two countries, bring-
ing life to cottonwood forests,
fish, birds, and other wildlife.
Now, thanks to a web of human
diversions and drought intensified
by climate change, some stretches
PHOTO: DAILY OVERVIEW | SATELLITE IMAGES 2016, DIGITALGLOBE, INC.
of the once-mighty waterway have
drained to just a trickle. This year,
an unprecedented partnership
between Audubon New Mexico
and New Mexico’s Native Amer-
ican tribes will return to the river
and its denizens exactly what they
most need: water.
During the summer of 2015,
Audubon New Mexico reached
out to the Middle Rio Grande
Pueblos with a proposition: The
state office would secure fund-
ing for habitat restoration work
on their land if the tribes would
allocate it water allotted to them
from the San Juan–Chama River
diversion project, in order to
bolster the flow of the Middle Rio
Grande. Eager to help reestablish
a healthy river system, the pueblos
of Sandia and Isleta decided to
donate their water, while two
more, the Cochiti and Santa Ana,
agreed to the exchange.
Combined with surplus water
donated by The Club at Las Cam-
panas, a Santa Fe golf club, the
volume being stored for eventual
release has swelled to more than
260 million gallons—enough to
flow continuously over a 35-mile
stretch of river for nearly 24 days,
says Julie Weinstein, the execu-
tive director for Audubon New
Mexico. She predicts that by early
September, the water will have
reached some of the Middle Rio
Grande’s thirstiest habitats. That
includes riparian forests where the
endangered Southwestern Willow
Flycatcher nests, as well as four
Important Bird Areas, which in
the fall and winter sustain migrat-
ing waterfowl, including tens of
g thousands of Sandhill Cranes
FLOW CHART and Snow Geese.
Water released This partnership marks a his-
into the Rio toric rite of passage for freshwater
conservation in New Mexico. It’s
Grande will keep
the river flowing the first time a non-governmental
south of the Isleta organization is releasing water to
Diversion Dam. replenish the Middle Rio Grande.
Like many of the rivers in New
Mexico, the Rio Grande suffers
from the competing interests of
states, cities, and farmers—re-
lationships that will become
increasingly strained unless people
learn to work together more
By early imaginatively. “We have to do
September,
the water will
our part to preserve and protect
the river for future generations,”
have reached says Pueblo of Sandia Lieutenant
some of the Governor Stuart Paisano. “This is
Middle one small step in trying to do that,
Rio Grande's for the betterment of not just our
thirstiest community, but of everyone else
habitats. in this region.” A
FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 17
FLOCK TOGETHER

FLIGHT
SCHOOL
The Northern Bald Ibis
went extinct in Europe
more than three centuries
ago. During the past
decade a small but growing
number of ibises have been
reintroduced to Central
Europe, raised by human
“foster parents” who guide
the critically endangered
birds from chickhood
through their first migration
across the Alps.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
ESTHER HORVATH

g
ON CALL
Anne-Gabriela Schmalstieg (left)
and Corinna Esterer feed captive-
bred ibis chicks at the Schönbrunn
Zoo in Vienna, Austria. For six
months the two 20-somethings
dedicate their lives to the birds, liv-
ing onsite in campers and caring for
them from sunrise to sunset seven
days a week. The entire first month
the foster mothers must abstain
from cofee, alcohol, and cigarettes
because they have to spit in the
birds’ food to make it easier to
digest. The chicks eat as many as
15 times a day, dining on a mash of
rat, mouse, and chicken, as well as
fresh grasshoppers (above).

18 AUDUBON | FALL 2016

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 19
FLOCK TOGETHER

g
B U IL DING TRUST
When the ibises aren’t eating or
resting, the women spend as much
time as possible bonding with
them. Cuddle time is key to ensur-
ing such a strong connection that
the birds will eventually follow the
microlight aircraft carrying Schmal-
stieg and Esterer from Austria,
over the Alps, and to overwintering
grounds 800 miles away in Italy—a
route their parents would typically
teach them, and that they need
travel only once in one direction
to learn. This is the third year that
the women have worked on the
decade-old international reintro-
duction project, and with each
brood their voices are the only ones
the birds hear. From day one, they
call over and over: “Komm, komm,
Waldies, komm, komm” (“Come,
come, ibis, come, come”). When
the chicks are three months old,
their caretakers move them from
the zoo to an aviary in Seekirchen,
where they slowly become ac-
customed to a microlight aircraft
and learn to follow it during training
exercises, the women calling all
the while. Schmalstieg and Esterer
are “quite essential for the project,”
says project leader Johannes Fritz.
“Never before have we had groups
of birds with such a close bonding
to the human foster parents.”

20 AUDUBON | FALL 2016

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 21
FLOCK TOGETHER

g
L E TTING GO
By the end of August, the birds are
ready to migrate. Today 80 wild
ibises live in Central Europe, and
the European LIFE+ reintroduction
project is on track to meet its goal of
120 by 2019. The birds journey be-
tween the same breeding grounds
their ancestors did centuries ago
and a suitable overwintering site.
Unlike back then, humans now
watch them every flap of the way
thanks to GPS tags attached to each
bird. (To follow their annual trek,
download the Animal Tracker app.)
Here, Schmalstieg, identifiable in
her yellow T-shirt, and pilot Walter
Holzmüller guide some of the 2015
brood to Italy for the winter in one
of the two aircraft. “For us it is very
emotional,” Schmalstieg says. “The
birds follow the aircraft because we
are sitting in it.” During the roughly
20-day trip, a crew travels on the
ground, setting up stopover stations
and tracking weather conditions. As
Schmalstieg and Esterer have done
with all 63 ibises they’ve raised,
once they arrive in Tuscany, they
will spend less and less time with
the birds each day before leaving
altogether after a couple of weeks,
mimicking adult ibis behavior. In two
or three years, when the youngsters
reach breeding age, they’ll return
north, retracing the path their sur-
rogate parents taught them—and
that they will one day show their
own ofspring. a

22 AUDUBON | FALL 2016 PABLO PRZESANG

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 23
 [ Investigation ]

OIL
BARRENS

As palm oil finds its way into an

astonishing half of all grocery-store
products, Indonesian rainforests are
falling to make way for plantations,
releasing vast quantities of CO2
and giving poachers easy access to
endangered Helmeted Hornbills.
BY JOCELYN C. ZUCKERMAN
Photography by Paul Hilton

the one with the gun arrived with a cocky

flourish, sauntering through the doorway in a white muscle
tee and blue jeans torn at the knees. He settled in on the
plastic flooring, lit up a thick clove cigarette, and began ani-
matedly to talk about the 23 critically endangered birds he’d
shot from the Indonesian sky in the previous five months.
All cheekbones and shiny black hair, the handsome 37-year-
old passed around his 4.5-millimeter weapon so we visitors
could admire its sleek caramel stock and gleaming brass
barrel. He was happy to be photographed and videotaped
mimicking the high-pitched-honk-transitioning-to-mani-
acal-laughter of his feathered victims. “Koo! Koo! Koo! Koo!
Koo! Koo! Koo! Koo! Koo-koo-koo-koo-koo-kah-kah-kah-
kah-kah-kah-kah-kah-kah-kah kah!!!”
As recently as a year ago, neither this guy nor either of
his pals could have picked out a Helmeted Hornbill from g
a children’s picture book. Now the three go on about how SMOKE SIGNAL
the bird they call Rangkong travels in pairs and favors A palm oil mill in operation
the high branches of a particular fig tree across the river. at a plantation in northern
The birds come out in the morning, they say—around Sumatra. Global production
7 or 8—and again in late afternoon. When a male is of the oil has doubled in the
past decade and is set to do
Produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment so again by 2020. Above: A
Reporting Network, a nonprofit news organization. poacher poses with his rifle.

24 AUDUBON | FALL 2016

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 25
killed, his mate will appear “a bit lost,” flying around
in search of him and calling out to her friends.
I’d been led to this modest brick home in Aceh
province, on the northern tip of Sumatra, by a local en-
vironmental activist named Rudi Putra. A 39-year-old
with a faint goatee and a degree in conservation biol-
ogy, Putra developed an early love for his native island’s
iconic rhinoceros and now devotes his life to protecting
it and the region’s other wildlife. It’s a calling that often
involves run-ins with poachers like these. The men kill
the Helmeted Hornbill for its unique casque, a solid-
keratin enlargement on the upper part of the bill. Long
prized by the Chinese when sculpted into snuff bottles
and jewelry and ground into traditional medicines, the
item has taken on new status in recent years, thanks
in part to the growing difficulty of procuring elephant
tusk. Putra understands the economic desperation that
leads these men to shoot birds; rather than vilify them,
he aims to steer them toward alternatives.
But poachers’ guns are just the latest threat to the
archipelago that Putra calls home. Indonesia is ground
zero for palm oil, a substance that, unbeknownst to
most Americans, has quietly invaded our lives. Now
present in half of all products on U.S. grocery store
shelves—from crackers and ice creams to lotions and
lipsticks—the cheap, versatile commodity also is on a
precipitous rise in India, China, and beyond. Glob-
ally, production of palm oil has doubled during the
past decade, and is set to do so again by 2020.
Cultivation of the oil palm plant already has ex-
acted a devastating toll on the birds of Indonesia (and
of Malaysia, where most of the rest of the world’s
oil palm is grown). Here on Sumatra, more than 75
percent of the 102 lowland-forest-dependent bird
species are now considered globally threatened. And
BirdLife International reports that 27 of the island’s
26 AUDUBON | FALL 2016
Home to 382 bird,
105 mammal, and
95 reptile and
amphibian species,
the butterfly-
shaped Leuser is
a UNESCO World
Heritage site and
ranks among the
most biologically
diverse places on
Earth.
g Union for Conservation of Nature downgraded the
CLEAR CUT
Newly cleared land in the
Leuser Ecosystem attests
to the weak enforcement
of laws intended to
protect this vital habitat.
Indonesian populations
of Rhinoceros Hornbill
(opposite) have dropped
to fewer than 3,000.
Though its casque
is hollow, poachers
mistake it for the more
valuable (solid-casqued)
Helmeted Hornbill.
34 Important Bird Areas contain major tracts of just
the sort of lowland forest prized by the industry.
As the forests disappear, hornbills and other birds
find themselves squeezed into ever tinier patches of
suitable habitat. At the same time, new roads and oil-
palm plantations render the remaining forests that
much more accessible to poachers. Yokyok “Yoki”
Hadiprakarsa, a conservation biologist who directs
the Java-based Indonesia Hornbill Conservation So-
ciety, estimates that between 2012 and 2015, more
than 2,400 Helmeted Hornbills were killed in the
country. Having decimated populations in Kaliman-
tan (the Indonesian part of Borneo) and southern
Sumatra, the poachers have now shifted their efforts
north. This past June, authorities here confiscated 12
casques, two rifles, a digital scale, and disposable cell-
phones from a pair of Acehnese men who confessed
to selling at least 124 beaks to Chinese middlemen
in the previous six months. In only three years, from
2012 to 2015, the Switzerland-based International
Helmeted Hornbill two full classes—from “near
threatened” to “critically endangered.”
Thanks largely to the palm oil industry, Indone-
sians who for centuries have lived off of the land,
sourcing their food, building materials, firewood,
and water from the forests, now find themselves
having to pay for such necessities. “People fight on
a day-to-day basis to fulfill their daily needs,” ex-
plained Hadiprakarsa, “so they look for quick op-
portunities. For those living near the forest, hunting
for wildlife is the obvious option.”
But the destruction of Indonesia’s tropical rainfor-
ests has implications for us all. Not only do the archi-
pelago’s forests provide one of the planet’s most signifi-
cant carbon sinks, but the country is home to Earth’s
largest concentration of tropical peatlands—soils
formed over thousands of years through the accumula-
tion of organic matter. The peat deposits on Sumatra
alone, which stretch across 460,000 acres and can reach
depths of 25 feet, contain 11 times more carbon than
the biomass of the forests above them. When the palm
oil companies burn the peatlands as a precursor to dig-
ging canals and planting, massive quantities of carbon
dioxide escape into the atmosphere. Deforestation and
peat degradation account for a full 85 percent of Indo-
nesia’s CO² emissions; today the nation ranks fifth in
the world in greenhouse gas emissions.
A
violent 30-year separatist insurgency
long spared Aceh province the fate of the
rest of Sumatra, until the signing of a 2005
peace accord put an end to that. In partic-
ular, the palm oil industry has its sights set on the prov-
ince’s Leuser Ecosystem, a 6.5-million-acre expanse
of lowland and mountainous rainforest that spreads
across the bottom half of the province. Home to 382
bird, 105 mammal, and 95 reptile and amphibian
species, the butterfly-shaped Leuser is a UNESCO-
designated World Heritage site and ranks among the
most biologically diverse places on Earth; the poachers
live at its heart in a hamlet called Tamieng. The Leu-
ser, one-third of which comprises Gunung Leuser
National Park, is the last remaining area of sufficient
size and quality to support viable populations of Suma-
tran tigers, elephants, and rhinos, and of orangutans,
clouded leopards, and sun bears. In addition to its Hel-
meted, Rhinoceros, and other Hornbill populations, it
is alive with the calls of the Tan-breasted Partridge, the
Salvadori’s Pheasant, various laughingthrush, and the
critically endangered Rück’s Blue-flycatcher.
Considered a National Strategic Area for what
the government terms its “environmental-protection
function,” the Leuser is safeguarded under Indone-
sian law. Still, the past 15 years have seen roughly 15
percent of its area lost to palm oil plantations and
extractive industries such as timber and mining. (Ac-
tivists and NGOs in the region say that companies
secure permits through backroom deals with local
officials or simply clear the land illegally. A lack of
oversight on the national level means they mostly do
it with impunity.) In addition to diminishing overall
28 AUDUBON | FALL 2016
Putra and his col-
leagues routinely
face of against
locals and com-
pany officials, one
of whom sued him
unsuccessfully for
damaging property.
“All these people
are always getting
mad at me,” he said
with a shrug.
g and served us syrupy coffee, that he and the others
BITTER HARVEST
A worker gathers oil-palm
fruit in Sumatra, where the
spread of such plantations
has helped cause more
than 75 percent of the
102 lowland-forest–
dependent bird species
to be considered globally
threatened.
hornbill habitat, the incursions impact the particular
requirements of the birds. Known as the “farmers of
the forest” for the critical role they play in dispersing
seeds, hornbills need dense habitat and a steady sup-
ply of fruit. Their unique nesting habits depend on
the sort of old-growth trees that tend to fall first to
developers. A female ready to lay her eggs retreats to
a natural cavity inside a wide trunk. She and her part-
ner seal the entrance with a paste of fruit, mud, and
feces, leaving a small slit through which he will feed
her (and eventually her chick) for up to five months.
Killing a male hornbill, then, as poachers are wont
to do given the gender’s larger size, often means the
demise of female and chick as well.
Putra’s beloved rhinos—along with northern Su-
matra’s tigers and elephants—also are falling prey
to the palm oil industry. Deprived of native habitat,
the once-sheltered animals have begun encroach-
ing on local communities. Farmers and plantation
workers, annoyed by the beasts’ habit of knocking
down homes and trampling crops, respond by set-
ting out poisons and traps. Sumatran rhinos, once
widespread across Southeast Asia, now number an
unimaginable 100 individuals. So embattled are the
region’s orangutans that rescuers armed with tran-
quilizer guns and nets have taken to patrolling in
the hopes of spotting primates marooned amid the
growing sea of palm. The disoriented animals get
trucked off to forests capacious enough to accom-
modate them, while the orphaned and wounded
among them are relocated to a now overcrowded re-
habilitation center outside the nearby city of Medan.
Hornbill poaching is a recent development. It was
just at the end of 2014, explained the oldest of the
three poachers, the one who invited us into his home
began noticing strangers in their midst, men from
Jambi province, south of this remote village, and Chi-
nese fellows who’d swoop in for a day or two before
disappearing again. Eventually it became clear that
the outsiders had come in search of Helmeted Horn-
bills, one of 10 hornbill species that make this island
their home. (Among about 60 hornbill species world-
wide, roughly half are native to South Asia, includ-
ing 13 that call Indonesia home. The other hornbills,
none of which is seriously threatened, are endemic to
Sub-Saharan Africa.) At $6,000 a kilogram, the birds’
casques, commonly referred to as “golden ivory,” “red
ivory,” or “golden jade,” sell for five times as much as
elephant ivory. Hong Kong shops display intricately
carved trinkets made from the body part with price
tags in the tens of thousands of dollars. Who could
blame the guys for wanting a little piece of the action?
P
utra traces his own awakening to the
importance of a preserved Leuser Eco-
system back to 2001. While he was
working as a researcher there, a violent
flood so ravaged his and other downstream commu-
nities that he determined to fight deforestation at
any cost. When support for his government-funded
job dried up, Putra took to arranging meetings with
community members, cops, local officials, and civil
society groups in an effort to thwart the palm oil in-
dustry, which by 2000 had supplanted logging as the
number one threat to the Leuser. Putra began lead-
ing teams of volunteers into the forest to confront
poachers and dismantle their snares. He eventually
founded the Leuser Conservation Forum, which,
with the help of such donors as the Leonardo Di-
Caprio Foundation, today employs more than 70
rangers to keep watch over the region, protecting it
from poachers and illegal palm plantations alike. In
2014, Putra received the Goldman Environmental
Prize, a $175,000 honor given annually to a handful
of grassroots activists working across the globe.
Slim bordering on concave, with an ascetic fash-
ion sense that runs to rubber flip-flops and worn
T-shirts, the soft-spoken father of two is an odd mix
of high-functioning executive, self-contained prophet,
and guileless child. Wielding a flat Samsung in one
hand and a skinny Nokia in the other, he juggles calls
from multiple continents but dissolves into giggles
when recalling his initial face-to-face encounter with
a rhinoceros. (“The first time we met with a rhino, our
team just run! And the rhino run the other way!”) At a
meeting in an open-air bungalow set high up on stilts,
Putra sat cross-legged before 26 employees dressed in
“Wildlife Protection Team” T-shirts and spoke with
a quiet authority about the group’s often dangerous
work. “Remember that the people who go into the
forest to poach are our friends and family,” he coun-
seled the group, who ranged in age from 25 to 70. “We
shouldn’t hate them. We should be gentle with them
and explain why they shouldn’t poach.”
By 2009, Putra, who still accompanies his rang-
ers on 15-day patrols each month, had begun taking
g chainsaws to northern Sumatra’s illegal palm plant-
PALM PIRATE ings. (Provincial officials issue preliminary “scoping”
Rudi Putra, who permits under which companies are expected to secure
accompanies his rangers the consent of local communities and prepare environ-
on 15-day monthly mental assessments as steps toward eventual permis-
patrols, has dismantled sion for development. Many forge ahead with clearing
26 illegal plantations— and planting without following through on either.) We
roughly 7,500 acres of spent one cloudy afternoon traipsing over hills and
oil palm. weaving among gigantic palm fronds to reach a stand
of trees in a 2,600-acre plot on the eastern fringe of
the Leuser. Trailed by a handful of curious kids and
accompanied by 11 local guys toting banana, durian,
and other seedlings—they sow native crops on the sites
of downed oil palms—we looked out across a terraced
landscape of muddy green, the only variation in hue the
pale moons of already felled trunks. One of the guys
revved the chainsaw motor and then drove its five-foot
blade relentlessly through the base of a fat trunk. The
behemoth crashed to the ground with a thud. Though
As the forests dis- we encountered no resistance on that particular day,
appear, hornbills Putra, who at this point has dismantled 26 illegal plan-
and other birds tations—some 7,500 acres of oil palm—said that con-
find themselves frontations are a part of the job. The support of local
squeezed into ever cops helps, but Putra and his colleagues routinely face
tinier patches of off against locals and company officials, one of whom
suitable habitat. sued him for damaging property. (The plantation in
At the same time, question was deemed illegal and its owner ultimately
new roads and forced off the land.) “All these people are always get-
plantations render ting mad at me,” he said with a shrug.
the remaining Back outside the plantation boundaries, I stopped
forests that much to chat with a local named Ngatimen. In the late
more accessible to 1990s, he told me, he and fellow villagers planted oil
poachers. palm in a previously logged section of forest. (Small-
FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 29
holders, who sell to local mills for eventual absorption
into the larger supply chain, account for some 40 per-
cent of Indonesia’s palm oil output.) “We didn’t do a
cost-benefit analysis,” he said. “We thought we’d sell
the fruit easily.” When in 2012 global palm oil prices
tumbled, the villagers found themselves struggling to
feed their kids. They’ve since destroyed the palm trees
and replaced them with lemon, orange, and hardwood.
But the community, whose residents are among the 4.5
million Sumatrans dependent on the Leuser for water
and food, continues to suffer the ill impacts of the in-
dustry. Flash floods have become more frequent thanks
to erosion, and incursions by unwanted wildlife have
become commonplace. While the palm oil companies
do bring a moderate number of jobs when they enter
a community, the work tends to be low-paying, with
little opportunity for advancement. (Palm oil workers
in Kalimantan have confessed to poaching the anteat-
er-like—and endangered—pangolin at night in order
to supplement their meager day-job wages.) Before the
palm oil companies moved in, Ngatimen said, “there
used to be all sorts of birds. Now you have to travel very
far into the mountains to hear anything.”
P
utra was determined that i spend some
time in a part of the Leuser known as
Ketambe (“the most beautiful place in the
world,” he’d said by email), where a 30-year-
old research station plays host to scientists studying the
area’s rich biodiversity. While much of the surround-
ing region was logged four decades ago, the remote
heart of Ketambe remains blessedly untouched. After
a 40-minute flight south from the provincial capital of
Banda Aceh (site of the devastating 2004 tsunami),
waves of green Leuser rippling out to the horizon, we
touched down in a valley cradling a scattering of vil-
lages. Wending around twisty roads, we passed mats
of brown candlenuts drying in the sun and clutches of
little girls marching off to school in long-sleeved shirts
and matching headscarves—evidence of the strong
Muslim tradition alive here on the tip of the island.
A dugout canoe spirited us across a rushing river,
depositing us in the sand, and we made our way into
the near-dark of the forest. Stepping over fallen logs
and leaves in various stages of decay, we navigated
through a thicket of trunks with diameters ranging
from an eighth of an inch to six feet. A century-old
strangling fig, its individual roots intermingling into
an eventual whole, reached heroically for the sun. At
one point we spotted an orangutan—a 15-year-old fe-
male named Kelly, we were told—chilling some 70 feet
above us. After staring us down for a good 10 minutes,
she reached out a fuzzy orange arm, the skinny trunk
supporting her bending cartoon-like under her weight,
and swung to grasp an adjacent branch. Buzz of cicada,
trickle of water over stones. Trill. Chirp. Squawk. The
place was a riot of life, black marble centipedes here,
saffron butterflies there. (And leeches all over us.)
A huge, gray pheasant with a long tail and little
blue head—a Great Argus—clambered through the
underbrush, followed later by a tiny, gray-stomached
Horsfield’s Babbler. From far above came the loud
whistle of the Asian Fairy-Bluebird and the rapid tu-
trruk, ku-trruk of the diminutive Black-eared Barbet.
30 AUDUBON | FALL 2016
g A Cream-vented Bulbul flaunted its fabulous green-
TRAPPED
A young orphaned
orangutan clings to its
cage at a wildlife trader’s
property in the Leuser.
A poacher can collect
$250 for an orangutan
of this size.
At $6,000 a kilo-
gram, the birds’
casques, commonly
referred to as
“golden ivory,” “red
ivory,” or “golden
jade,” sell for five
times as much as
elephant ivory.
yellow wings. But it was a rhythmic, helicopter-like
whooshing that stopped us in our tracks. Raising our
eyes to the canopy, we caught a pair of Wreathed
Hornbills flap in and out of sight. At another point,
two Wrinkled Hornbills put on a show, one feeding
figs to the other, the duo flying off in quick succession.
With black bodies and frilled white skirts, they evoked
cocktail waitresses in the sky. The elusive Helmeted
Hornbill failed to materialize—not surprisingly, given
its diminished numbers—as did its casqued cousin,
the Rhinoceros. Though the latter’s “ivory” is hollow,
the bird also has fallen victim to the poachers, many of
whom mistake it for their Helmeted prey; Indonesian
populations of Rhinoceros Hornbill are estimated to
have dropped to fewer than 3,000.
B
ack on the outskirts of the leuser,
Putra and I set out one morning to investi-
gate some smoke he’d noticed the day be-
fore, which he suspected was rising from
within the national park. After an hour of switching
back over tawny dirt roads and, as seems inevitable,
getting lost amid the maze that is an oil palm planta-
tion (the smoke rose from its far side), Putra punched
some numbers into his Nokia and a man named Pran-
yoga soon materialized on a red motorbike. “He is the
best of my spies,” Putra said. “I call him ‘the man with-
out afraid.’ ” Pranyoga, who grew up nearby in a forest
that’s since been supplanted by palm, has worked with
Putra for 16 years, serving as a liaison to the commu-
nity and keeping a watchful eye on the comings and
goings, often illegal, of the industry. Though he has
had repeated threats to his life, he says he’s determined
to ensure that his own kids get the chance to appreci-
ate the elephants, sun bears, orangutans, hornbills, and
magpies he remembers from his own childhood.
Our driver followed Pranyoga’s bike up, down,
and around endless curves until we eventually reached
a ridge and found ourselves looking out over a vista
painted entirely in black. Trudging through the still-
smoldering ash, Putra estimated that the blaze had
been set a week earlier—some 150 acres of second-
ary lowland forest torched. The culprits, he imag-
ined, were land-starved locals looking to cultivate
rubber and cacao—maybe even some oil palm—
as an income source. We picked our way around
charred stumps and over the mottled beige and cin-
namon corpse of a Burmese python. Crunching over
brittle twigs and roasted ferns, we noted the weird
dissonance of the pleasant, Indian sandalwood–
scented air. “The government says it doesn’t have the
budget,” Putra said. “But we can prevent this if they
cared about it.” (Despite numerous requests, Siti Nur-
baya, Indonesia’s Minister for the Environment and
Forests, declined to comment for this story.)
Eventually the dry tree leaves rasped and the air
began to fill with smoke. “Jocelyn, look!” Putra called,
pointing to a mass of orange growing in the distance.
The wild, hungry flames ripped steadily toward us,
cracking and popping as ashes began floating down
like ebony snowflakes. With smoke filling our lungs
and stinging our eyes, we hurried back to the car and,
streaked with black, raced away from the heat. On the
way out, we passed yet more industrial plantings, right
inside the national park. “I hope this fire will reach the
palms,” Putra remarked to no one in particular.
Before the palm oil
companies moved
in, Ngatimen said,
“there used to be
all sorts of birds.
Now you have to
travel very far into
the mountains to
hear anything.”
however, Environmental Minister Nurbaya declared
a commitment to enforce the national moratorium in
the Leuser and said the government would review any
existing permits related to the reserve.
“There’s no guarantee on the outcome,” said
Gemma Tillack, agribusiness campaign director for
the San Francisco–based Rainforest Action Net-
work, which works to preserve the Leuser, “since
there’s no transparency around how the moratorium
will be conducted.” Her organization intends to
fight for a revised plan as well as for the establish-
ment of a management authority tasked exclusively
with protecting the Leuser. Putra, for his part, is de-
termined not only to get the plan canceled and all
illegal permits revoked, but also to get 250,000 acres
of the reserve replanted with native flora.
Meanwhile, the Acehnese locals will continue to
get by doing whatever it takes. The three poachers I
met in Tamiang, all of them “ex-combatants”—veter-
ans of the independence movement and, like most of
their former comrades-in-arms, unschooled and ill-
prepared for formal employment—are likely planning

A
s the world now knows, fires in their next three-week foray into the forest in search of
Sumatra are no rare occurrence. In 2015, the prized Helmeted Hornbill. They don’t particularly
blazes traced to palm oil plantations on understand the Chinese buyers’ obsession with the
the island and in neighboring Borneo de- birds—they’ve heard they use the casques for jew-
stroyed more than six million acres of forest, blanketing elry or as toys for their kids—but they know there’s a
a swath of Southeast Asia from Jakarta to Bangkok in ready market. “The moment you come down from the
haze for weeks and sickening hundreds of thousands mountain,” our host explained, “immediately someone
across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The World will come and take the casques to Medan.” The sale of
Bank put economic losses from the fires at $16 billion. a single beak, he added, will mint enough to feed three
(Not quantified were the nine orangutans that burned families for a month. “Whatever reason they might
to death and the more than 100 others found trapped want them,” chimed in the gun owner, “we will sell
or wandering near villages.) The unique composition them. If there was an easier job, especially if it wasn’t
of the soil renders the fires nearly impossible to extin- illegal, of course we would choose that.”
guish—they can smolder and emit carbon for decades. In fact, he had shelled out extra money to have
Scientists have said that in order to limit warming to his rifle customized to shoot 5.5-millimeter pellets.
2°C, the world can emit no more than 600 billion tons The standard 4.5 ones, he said, tend not to kill the
of greenhouse gases between now and 2050. Indone- hornbills on impact, and he and his buddies can’t
sia’s peatland carbon alone, if released as CO² in the at- stand to watch the birds suffer. a
mosphere, equals one-third of that remaining budget.
If nothing else, the impossible-to-deny confla- The former deputy editor of Gourmet and executive
grations have shamed the Indonesian government. editor of Modern Farmer, Jocelyn C. Zuckerman is
In April, a few days before nations from around the working on a book about palm oil.
world convened to sign the Paris Climate Agree-
ment, President Joko Widodo announced a coun-
trywide moratorium on new palm oil permits. In Search of world’s best-known sweets tos), and the KraftHeinz
Indonesia “mustn’t allow our tropical rainforest to Virtuous Palm- and chips brands—and Company. Similarly,
disappear because of monoculture plantations like Oil Products their commitments to using Greenpeace (greenpeace.
oil palm,” he’d stated some months earlier. With conflict-free palm oil. (In ad- org/usa) publishes a Palm
better seeds and increased productivity, he said, the Though it’s nearly impos- dition to driving deforesta- Scorecard, tracking food and
country ought to be able to maintain its palm oil sible to avoid palm oil in tion, the industry has been personal-care brands on
industry without continued widespread clearing. your daily life, you can help implicated in widespread progress in improving their
Putra is hopeful that public pressure may also help ensure the products you land-grabbing and labor supply chains. Leaders in
save the imperiled Leuser. In April, the activist accom- buy don’t contribute to abuses.) Earning high marks the latter category include
panied Leonardo DiCaprio on a visit to the region, climate change and hasten in the 2015 report were Unilever, while Colgate-
and the actor responded by exhorting his then 15.8 the demise of the Helmeted Mars, Smucker’s, Gen- Palmolive lags. Both groups
million Twitter followers to sign a petition demanding Hornbill. The Rainforest eral Mills, Kellogg’s, Nestlé, also spearhead social-action
that President Widodo cancel a proposed “spatial plan” Action Network (ran.org) Dunkin’ Brands, Hershey’s, campaigns aimed at holding
that would fail to protect the Leuser from development tracks the industry closely, and Krispy Kreme. Laggards businesses and govern-
by the palm oil and other industries. Government of- and publishes annual included Campbell’s, Tyson ments accountable; follow
ficials accused DiCaprio of running a “black campaign” progress reports on “the Foods, ramen makers Nissin them on Facebook and Twit-
aimed at discrediting the palm oil industry and threat- Snack Food 20”—compa- Foods and Toyo Suisan ter to join the latest petitions
ened to run him out of the country. Two weeks later, nies that control some of the Kaisha, PepsiCo (Dori- and campaigns. —J.C.Z.

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 31

 T R U E N AT U R E

Hoot
Recognition
The rare, elusive
Great Gray Owls
that make their
home in California’s
Sierra Nevada
have fascinated
researchers for the
past century. Now
scientists are using
high-tech methods
to eavesdrop on
every hoot and tally
each bird, finally
revealing long-
hidden secrets.
By Nancy Bazilchuk

PHOTOGRAPH BY MELISSA GROO


C
alifornia naturalist joseph grinnell
brought down the second owl with a sin-
gle shot. The first had not been so easy.
It was the evening of June 18, 1915,
and Grinnell had been working with a team of field
assistants in Yosemite National Park to trap, shoot,
catch, and catalog every creature they could find
for the University of California Museum of Verte-
brate Zoology. One of the men, Charles Holliger,
had spotted the owls that morning near Ostrander
Rocks, a knobby ridge of granite protruding out
of the thick forest. But the owls—species yet un-
known—proved uncooperative.
As Grinnell and Holliger worked their way
through a “fine forest of fir,” the anxious call of a
Ruby-crowned Kinglet cut the evening air. Following
the sound, the men flushed a large owl, which landed
atop a Jeffrey pine. Grinnell snuck up on the bird
and fired—a hit, but no kill. “A Great Gray Owl,” he
wrote in his field journal, underscoring the words in
surprise. Its “deep reverberating who’s” drew a second
owl. This time, Grinnell’s shot was sure.
What would become Specimen MVZ:Bird:
25535 was tied up alive and brought back to camp
to be photographed as one of Yosemite’s first two
Great Gray Owl records. Grinnell surmised the
owls were a mated pair; the owl shot second, Speci-
men MVZ:Bird:25534, was a male. Grinnell noted
34 AUDUBON | FALL 2016
that the female had a large bare area on her belly and
At first, Medley’s
thighs, an “indubitable indication of breeding.”
software tagged
The owls were just two of a total of 4,354 crea-
everything that re- tures that Grinnell and his team amassed during
motely sounded like their ambitious multi-year survey of the park. Yet
an owl: Coyotes yip- he recognized the significance of this particular find.
ping. The rumble of “The discovery of the Great Gray Owl in the
a high-elevation jet. Yosemite section was one of the notable events in
Bears crunching on our field experience,” he wrote in Animal Life in
the microphones. The the Yosemite, the 1924 book describing the survey.
constant beeping “And what was most surprising was the fact that
of a Red-breasted the bird was apparently quite at home and nesting.
No previous record of the breeding of this northern
Nuthatch, like a truck
species of owl south of Canada is known to us.”
stuck in reverse.
Grinnell’s ease in finding the owls would prove
to be sheer luck. The California owls were so infre-
quently spotted in subsequent decades that biolo-
FROM TOP: THE BANCROFT LIBRARY/UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA; C.D. HOLLIGER PHOTO, MUSEUM OF VERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
gists even reported on stuffed specimens, like one
described in 1943 that “was darkened by smoke”
from a stint on a family’s fireplace mantle. Grin-
nell’s The Distribution of the Birds of California,
published posthumously in 1944, offered a terse
summary of the owl’s situation: “Numbers small,
justifying the term ‘rare.’ ”
Seven decades later, biologists are still trying to
glean information about the elusive bird. As a spe-
cies, they are breathtakingly large, North America’s
biggest owl by length, nearly three feet long with
a five-foot wingspan. Their populations span the
top of the globe, across Europe, Asia, Canada, and
g Alaska, into the northwestern United States. But
THEN the California population has long held particular
Joseph Grinnell (above), fascination, and scientists have turned to high-tech
the first director of the tools to expose its secrets once and for all.
University of California
Museum of Vertebrate
W
ith his tousled dirty blonde hair,
Zoology, prepares a and a wardrobe that skews heavily
field specimen. Grinnell toward Carhartt jeans, Joe Medley,
collected this female owl, 33, has that mildly rumpled look of
MVZ:Bird:25535, during someone who has spent thousands of hours sitting
a 1915 survey of Yosemite in the woods, listening for rare birds.
National Park. One early evening this past spring, Medley,
then a graduate student at the University of Cali-
fornia, Davis, homed in on a charred ponderosa
pine spattered with what looked like white paint.
It sat at the edge of a mid-elevation wet meadow
in the 900,000-acre Stanislaus National Forest on
the western side of Yosemite National Park. He
knew the whitewash, combined with a few scat-
tered oval pellets the size of cigar stubs, was strong
evidence that a Great Gray Owl had perched there,
listening for prey out in the meadow. Thus he got
to work, hooking up two black teacup-size funnels
to one of the pine’s broken branches. Each funnel
held a sensitive microphone wired to a recorder in a
waterproof case, capable of logging the sounds of
the meadow for a week or more.
It’s a setup Medley has perfected since begin-
ning his master’s degree in 2009. While working
on his thesis, he fine-tuned existing computer soft-
ware to pluck Great Gray Owl vocalizations out of
nearly 64,000 hours of sound he recorded. For his
Ph.D., he expanded on that work, examining how
the remote devices could help locate Great Gray
 Owl nests and document nesting behaviors.
Typically, Medley would just walk away from
the recorders and leave them to their job. But
on this night he also demonstrated the standard
monitoring technique of broadcasting territorial
calls into the forest. This method of eliciting a re-
sponse from nearby males can be useful, but it also
has drawbacks for a bird highly sensitive to distur-
bances. Achieving a less-invasive yet equally effec-
tive alternative technique is what makes Medley’s
approach cutting edge.
He reached over to a speaker in a waterproof box on
the ground and started broadcasting a taped recording.
“Whoooo … whoooo … whooo … whooo … whooo …
whooo … whooo … whoo!” the speaker rumbled.
Medley sat in silence, his head swiveling slightly,
straining to sieve a response out of the soft background
chattering of Hermit Warblers, robins, and crickets.
“Whoooo … whoooo … whooo … whooo … whooo …
whooo … whooo … whoo!” the speaker boomed again.
An airplane roared overhead, distant but distracting.
The broadcast tape played out a 10-minute cycle,
JAKE STANGEL
but nothing answered. Then as Medley was begin-
ning to pack up, he detected a faint, unmistakable
hoot of a Great Gray Owl on the opposite edge
of the meadow: “Whoooo … whoooo … whooo …
g whooo … whooo … whooo … whooo … whoo.”
NOW He froze and a wide smile spread across his face.
Great Gray Owls can be Bingo.
difficult to detect, even
for experienced field
H
istorically, ornithologists have had
biologists. Joe Medley far more rudimentary tools at their dis-
has gotten around this posal. In 1979, Jon Winter, a north-
problem by using a remote ern California birder, drove more than
recording system. 12,300 miles in a blue Nissan pickup, spending
70 days in the field traversing the bird’s presumed
range. In spite of his efforts, he located just seven
birds and five nests. Ultimately, he estimated the
state’s population at 53 birds, a find that led Cali-
fornia to list the Great Gray as a state endangered
species in 1980.
For the next two decades, only a handful of
studies added to that body of knowledge. Then
In 1979, Jon Winter West Nile virus landed in North America in 1999,
drove 12,300 miles in famously causing crows to drop dead in the streets
a blue Nissan pickup, of New York City, Washington, D.C., and beyond.
spending 70 days As the virus moved west, its casualties included all
27 captive Great Gray Owls at The Owl Founda-
traversing the bird's
tion, a bird-rehabilitation facility in Ontario. John
presumed range. He
Keane, a wildlife ecologist at the Forest Service Pa-
located just seven cific Southwest Research Station, saw opportunity
birds and five nests. in those grim statistics.
FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 35
 In 2004, as West Nile virus spread throughout
California, Keane drummed up funding to collect
blood samples from Great Gray Owls and Spotted
Owls to screen for antibodies to the disease. More
followed, giving researchers momentum to address
other questions: How could they best track Great
Gray Owl populations, given that they were so rare
and hard to find? And were the Sierra Nevada owls
genetically different from the rest of the North
American population?
Keane and Josh Hull, now recovery division
chief for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s
Sacramento field office and an adjunct professor
at University of California, Davis, realized they
could use blood samples from the West Nile sur-
vey to determine how long the Sierra birds had
been separated from the main population. “We
knew that [Great Gray Owls] are isolated now,
but we didn’t know whether that meant they
were isolated a million years ago, 500 years ago,
50 years ago,” Hull recalls. They also decided to
collect molted feathers to see whether Hull could
extract DNA to identify individual birds.
From the fieldwork’s start, banding Great
Gray Owls proved a challenge. The animals are
well camouflaged and easily spooked. “If you see
a Spotted Owl, you can walk right up to the tree
where it’s sitting,” said Medley, who joined the
team in 2007. “With Great Gray Owls, they see
you from a long ways away and they will flush,
and you wouldn’t hear them.” Even after the team
managed to catch 32 birds using a baited trap,
the bands proved nearly impossible to see among
the thick feathers covering the owls’ legs. To truly
make progress, they needed new techniques.
36 AUDUBON | FALL 2016
g
T
he world is full of elusive bird species.
SOUND CHECK To search for some of them, such as the
From left: Joe Medley Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Kurt Fristrup,
carries recording a bioacoustical scientist with the National
equipment to set up in Park Service’s Natural Sounds Program, had begun
a meadow; an owl pellet using remote recorders. When he encountered
found on the edge of the Medley and Keane at a Great Gray Owl symposium
meadow contains the in 2008, he encouraged the pair to try using them to
bones of small mammals; eavesdrop on the owls. Medley jumped at it.
a pan trap used to catch The next field season, Medley was hanging
owls for banding; the his recording equipment on the fringes of 50 wet
recorder logs sounds for meadows in Yosemite National Park and in the
a week or more. Stanislaus National Forest. Months later he had
about 40 terabytes of data, only 5 terabytes shy of
the volume of data collected by the Hubble Space
Telescope in its first 20 years of observations. His
next step was to fine-tune the voice-recognition
software to distinguish between other animals and
the owls, and then the unique sounds of mom, dad,
and their chicks.
This proved tremendously difficult. At first, the
software tagged everything that remotely sound-
ed like an owl: Coyotes yipping. The rumble of a
While the core high-elevation jet. Bears crunching on the micro-
of the California phones. The constant beeping of a Red-breasted
population is pro- Nuthatch, like a truck stuck in reverse.
tected in Yosemite The worst were the incessant alarm calls of
National Park, Douglas’ squirrels. No matter how much Medley
federal lands can’t tweaked the software, the squirrel calls “skipped
shelter the birds right through,” because they were so similar to juve-
JAKE STANGEL (2)
nile owl calls. It was a major problem. If he couldn’t
from vehicle
find a way to deal with all the false positives, he
collisions, wildfires,
wouldn’t be able to use the software to detect young
disease, and birds, a key indicator of the population’s health.
climate change. Meanwhile, results from the blood samples were
 trickling in—no trace of West Nile virus antibod-
ies. But they did show clear genetic evidence that
the Sierra Nevada owls were a separate subspecies.
“It was pretty exciting,” Hull says. “We didn’t know
it would be as distinct as its own subspecies when
we started.” They published the findings in 2010:
This tiny population of Sierra Nevada owls, now
named Strix nebulosa yosemitensis, had managed to
survive despite isolation from populations in Can-
ada for nearly 27,000 years, a relict population left
over from when the owls lived in the south during
the last Ice Age—a boreal bird that has evolved to
cope with a much more temperate climate.
By the following winter, Medley had used a
statistical tool called a random forest analysis to fi-
nally crack the false-positive problem and make his
surveillance technique work at a practical level. As
he culled the data, insights began to emerge. For
one thing, Great Gray Owls were positively noisy
when people weren’t around. In the end, he identi-
JAKE STANGEL (2); ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID ALLEN SIBLEY
fied 7,445 male, 13,163 female, and 43,004 juvenile
calls, and showed that acoustic monitoring was as
effective as traditional survey techniques, with the
advantage that it doesn’t bother the birds.
“Say you have a project coming up like a road
expansion,” Medley says. “If your goal is just de-
termining whether or not an owl is there, you can
use the recorders and it doesn’t disturb the birds
whatsoever. You can get comparable results to the
more-invasive traditional broadcast methods.”
Park ornithologist Sarah Stock oversees Yo-
semite’s Great Gray Owl program, which includes
funding for Medley’s research. She sees the value
of using the remote-recording units in Yosemite,
especially when it comes to figuring out where a
GREAT GRAY OWL
Scientific Name:
Strix nebulosa
Range: Mostly resident
in Alaska and Canada,
south to Oregon, Idaho,
Wyoming, Minnesota,
and Wisconsin. Isolated
population in Sierra
Nevada. Also northern
Europe and Asia.
Habitat: Mainly in dense
coniferous forest with
open meadows or bogs.
Status: Uncommon but
widespread.
Threats / Outlook:
Global warming–related
changes like drought and
fire, habitat loss from
old-growth cutting, and
disease pose risks. Habitat
management and artificial
nest sites may help to
sustain populations.
pair of owls is nesting. “Nest searching for Great
Gray Owls is extremely difficult, in contrast to
other species of owls,” she says.
But Stock is even more excited about the team’s
genetics work. So far, more than a hundred indi-
vidual owls have been identified from the feathers
found in 8 to 10 meadows. “It could be a real game
changer,” she says. Currently, if her survey crews
see a Great Gray Owl, they have no idea whether
it is the male that was there the previous year or a
new individual. DNA from dropped feathers can
answer that question.
No one knows how much individual birds move
around during the summer, or how long the birds
live, or whether adult birds return to the same
meadows year after year. Those questions can now
be answered, too. More important, by tracking
the number of individuals, researchers can tell if
the population is growing, stable, or in decline—a
critical piece of information when the owl numbers
are so vanishingly small.
A
lthough the core of the california
Great Gray Owl population lies within
Yosemite National Park, its boundaries
can’t protect the birds from vehicle col-
lisions, wildfires, disease, and climate change. Just
three years ago, the Rim Fire incinerated an area
more than six times the size of Washington, D.C.,
burning 10 of the 18 meadows in Yosemite with
suitable nesting habitat for Great Gray Owls. Cattle
grazing, the loss of large dead trees for nesting, and
accelerating second-home development put addi-
tional pressures on birds outside the park. Climate
Continued on page 50
FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 37
 CONUNDRUM

LET
THEM
EAT
CHICKEN
Dozens of Bald Eagles are flocking to an organic farm in
Georgia each winter to dine on an all-you-can-eat bufet of
pasture-raised chicken. What’s a sustainable farmer to do?
BY SUSAN MATTHEWS | PHOTOS BY BRYAN MELTZ

Dozens of Bald Eagles have begun flocking to

an organic farm in Georgia each winter to dine
on an all-you-can-eat bufet of pasture-raised
chicken. What’s a sustainable farmer to do?
BY SUSAN MATTHEWS
g RETRIEVAL DUTY
Daniel Coady, head of the
poultry operation at White
Oak Pastures, walks the
farm at dusk to collect the
remnants of chickens torn
apart by eagles.
 n a battle between a bald eagle and a
I
chicken, the chicken is definitely the long shot.
And yet you can’t help but root for the eagle. It
is a magnificent creature, precision-built to do
two things that reliably fill humans with awe—fly
and kill—and it looks completely at ease doing both.
Swooping down, the eagle unfurls its hand-like
claws, scoops up a chicken, and sweeps up to a tree,
whereupon the larger bird lays the smaller bird on
a branch to allow for easy consumption. It’s unclear
exactly when the chicken dies, but the eagle’s beak is
quite effective at pulling out the other bird’s meat.
After a few minutes, all that remains is a clump of
feathers and discarded viscera. These gory leavings
splatter anything below the tall oaks at White Oak
Pastures, a family farm in rural Georgia—including,
one morning, Jenni Harris’s SUV.
Jenni’s father, Will Harris, the fourth-generation
owner of White Oak Pastures in the tiny town of
Bluffton (population: 100), is laughing as he tells me
about the gut-drenched vehicle. Jenni was unper-
turbed, he explains; she simply wiped the bloody goo
off the windshield before driving away.
What else could she do? The slaughter here is
relentless. White Oak is home to one of the largest
pastured chicken flocks in the country; at any given
time, 60,000 birds wander the land in accordance
with pasture-raised parameters. As the next level be-
yond free-range, this farm never contains its adult
birds indoors, instead allowing them to roam with-
out restraint at all times. This also means that for the
Bald Eagles that showed up a few years ago, White
Oak is an all-you-can-eat buffet.
When I visited in January, at least 75 Bald Eagles
were living on the farm, where they overwinter Oc-
tober to March. At that time, Harris estimated each
raptor was killing up to four chickens a day, racking
up a total of at least $1,000 in daily losses. Due to the
birds’ protected status under the Bald and Golden
Eagle Protection Act and other federal laws, Harris
had few options. He couldn’t kill them. He could try
to shoo them, but most methods would be costly and
likely to scare the chickens before the eagles.
So for a time the farm tried to live with them.
Harris chose to view the sacrifice of some of his prin-
cipal product in terms that verged on the spiritual.
“You’re supposed to give 10 percent to the church and
we don’t really do that, but we’re giving 10 percent
to nature,” Harris says. Though by this past winter,
White Oak probably gave a little more than it could
truly afford: Right around the time Harris contacted
the National Audubon Society, in December 2015,
the eagles had moved from attacking chickens only
to taking down turkeys, too. A few weeks later they
went after the newborn goats. The U.S. Department
of Agriculture has a program that reimburses farm-
ers who incur losses from protected wildlife, but to
get the money, you must prove the predator caused
each death—a complicated endeavor when you’re
talking about thousands of chickens.
Of all places for this to happen, White Oak is
probably one of the best spots for the eagles to have
staked a claim. When he realized the predators were
not going anywhere, Harris alerted the Georgia De-
40AUDUBON | FALL 2016
partment of Natural Resources (DNR) to the birds’
While a human
observer might presence and asked for advice on how to handle
them—a refreshing change from the “shoot, shovel,
perceive the
and shut up” strategy some farmers might employ,
eagles’ actions says Jim Ozier, former eagle coordinator for DNR.
as lazy, they’re Of course, this holistic approach toward both farm-
maximizing ing and animals may explain why the eagles are there
caloric intake in the first place. During the past 20 years Harris
and minimizing has transformed White Oak from an industrial cattle
energy output. It operation into a farm that produces a wide variety
may not be the of organic, sustainable products. “Everything we’re
kind of impres- trying to do, we’re trying to emulate nature,” Har-
sive behavior ris says, though he quickly admits, “Sometimes it’s
we’d like to see, imperfect and sometimes it sucks.”
And sometimes it backfires. It may be true that
but it’s clearly
the more natural and more humane way to raise a
effective. chicken is to let it run around in the grass rather than
live its days cramped in a cage. But the raptor mob
isn’t just bad for the chickens or for Harris’s profit
margins. It’s also bad for the eagles themselves. The
high concentration could have negative ramifica-
tions. If one gets sick, for instance, all of them could
fall ill. What’s more, juveniles form bad habits: Pick-
ing off captive chickens does not require the same
skill as, say, snatching wild catfish from the churn-
ing Chattahoochee River. So no one benefits from
the current setup—not the Harris family, not the
eagles, and certainly not the chickens. The question
at White Oak, where the trees rain guts, is how to fix
the problem.
he situation is difficult to remedy
T in part because it is unique. While non-
breeding eagles are known to gather in
large concentrations in winter where food
is abundant, such as points along the Mississippi
and reservoirs on the southern Great Plains, they’re
usually feeding on fish, not poultry. Most people
who pasture-raise chickens have much smaller
flocks, and on any farm you might expect to see a
few chickens roaming. At White Oak, if you’re in
the right place, the birds appear in thousands-strong
swarms. The chickens tend to congregate around
their small homes—modified sheds on skids, each
with attached tarps that block wind and shade seed
and water. The houses are clustered in groups of six
and are moved every few days, following cattle as
they graze from pasture to pasture across the 2,500-
acre property. The arrangement benefits bird, rumi-
nant, and pasture alike: As the animals move across
the land, their droppings help fertilize it. The chick-
ens also eat bugs in the cow dung, cutting down the
number of pests that bother the cattle and reducing
the risk of infection by some smaller parasites and
g EASY PICKIN’ disease-carrying larvae that would otherwise thrive
Bald Eagles probably in manure.
don’t consume more than When Harris took over the farm from his father,
one chicken a day, though it was solely a cattle ranch. Like any comparable in-
they may kill others that dustrial livestock operation, the animals were fed on
aren’t eaten. The raptors bought grain, raised in close quarters, injected with
circle above the portable antibiotics regularly, and eventually shipped West
chicken houses, where to huge slaughterhouses. It was a profitable venture,
they are guaranteed a operating with only three full-time employees. But
fresh meal. as Harris tells it, he simply couldn’t stomach the un-
2016 BACKLIGHT, INC.

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 41

naturalness of a process he had come to see as cruel.
So he had to learn how to create a system that al-
lowed the animals to move more freely and didn’t re-
quire antibiotics. Thus began a years-long evolution
in which he rebuilt his farm, moving from a beef-
centric system operating only through the grace of
nitrogen-based fertilizers into a full-cycle ecosystem.
Today White Oak Pastures raises cattle, pigs,
sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl,
ducks, and geese. It also runs an organic produce
farm and small egg, honey, and pet-treat operations.
The pet treats are made with the leftover ligaments,
skins, and bones from livestock slaughtered on site.
Between 2007 and 2011 Harris spent $7.5 million
building two abattoirs, one for poultry, one for red
meat. Thanks to the slaughterhouses, the farm now
employs about 130 people—more than the perma-
nent population of Bluffton. White Oak slaughters
30 cows a day in a relatively calm and peaceful set-
ting, especially compared to the industrial slaugh- g in farmers markets in Georgia and Alabama. Har-
terhouses where White Oak cattle used to be killed, FAMILY BUSINESS ris is trying to drum up more online business direct
which process up to 400 animals per hour. Will Harris, farm owner, from consumers, who he thinks will buy more con-
“When I was a commodity farmer, all I thought and Jodi Harris Benoit, sistently and thus give White Oak a more guaran-
about was how many pounds of beef I could wring his daughter and the teed source of income. One possible upside of the
out of this farm at the lowest possible price,” Harris farm’s events manager, eagles’ presence is that the increased attention could
says. It’s raining, and we’re in his Jeep, driving on a share an office at White also increase profits. After White Oak posted a
path through his fields. The front seat is his primary Oak Pastures. Harris photo of the raptors on Facebook in early Decem-
office. He creeps around the edges of the fields with Benoit has found that ber 2015, requests to see the birds started coming
his seatbelt buckled underneath him, making it easy eagle-focused tours in. Weekends at the farm’s six guest cabins quickly
to hop out and open a gate, occasionally pausing our bring in paying visitors, booked solid, an unusual feat in the winter.
conversation to take phone calls streamed through which help ofset the Still, White Oak isn’t yet profitable enough to
his car speakers. Business, conducted at about five cost of chicken losses to have clearly warranted the millions in investments
miles per hour. the raptors. made. “If you had a Harvard MBA candidate look
Today his business card describes him as a land at my operation and an operation like my cousin’s
steward. Since introducing his new method, he’s ex- from a purely economic perspective, she’d say,
panded the farm, each year buying land from neigh- ‘That’s the better investment by far, because he’s
boring farms and transforming White Oak from getting a higher return with less risk,’ ” Harris says.
fertilizer-dependent raw earth into rich grassland But he believes his way will win out in the end, be-

BELOW, FROM CENTER: GALEN ROWELL/GETTY IMAGES; ISTOCK

that sustains his cattle. As we off-road around the cause his land is healthier.
property, he tells me how long he’s worked each plot.
It’s been particularly rainy, so at each field he pulls

A
t dawn and dusk throughout the
over to inspect the water running off the pasture. On winter, if you pull off the road near a
the oldest land he’s owned, the runoff is clear—a sign cluster of White Oak’s chicken shacks,
that no topsoil is leeching out. On younger land, it’s you’re guaranteed to see at least a dozen
muddied with red Georgia clay. On his neighbor’s eagles, some perched in trees and some snatching
land, which is owned and farmed industrially by his prey below. A human observer might perceive the
cousin, it’s opaque. magnificent raptors’ actions as lazy, but Ozier de-
“It’s like blood,” I say. scribes them as “naturally efficient.” After all, they’re
“It is blood,” Harris replies. maximizing caloric intake and minimizing energy
White Oak Pastures primarily sells its products output. It may not be the kind of impressive behavior
in Whole Foods from Miami, Florida, to Princeton, we’d like to see, but it’s clearly effective.
New Jersey, and west to Columbus, Ohio, as well as I’m sitting on the trunk of my car one evening

The Bald Eagle’s 1782 1940 1963 1972

Return The Bald Ea- Realizing that eagle Only 417 nesting pairs The United
BY JONATHAN CAREY gle becomes numbers are de- remain in the Lower 48, States bans
the national clining as a result of largely due to the introduc- the use of
emblem of the extensive shooting tion of DDT after World DDT.
United States; and nesting habitat War II. Eagles that eat
as many as 100,000 loss, Congress passes the fish contaminated with
wild nesting pairs inhabit Bald Eagle Protection Act, the pesticide produce thin
what will become the lower making it illegal to possess, eggshells that often break
48 states. kill, or sell the bird. during incubation.

42AUDUBON | FALL 2016

watching eagles take their pick of the poultry when
Harris pulls up in his Jeep. I ask him whether the ea-
gles drive him crazy. “You bet,” he says. Most of the
time he’s pretty good-natured about the birds, jok-
ing about their presence, but standing before them
he knows he’s watching money swirl down the drain.
There weren’t always so many eagles, because
there weren’t always so many chickens. Six years
ago, there were no eagles on the farm. Then Harris
brought in the chicken operation. By the next year,
a dozen eagles showed up, and the year after that,
around 30. This past winter that number more than
doubled; in one photograph, 78 eagles perch in the
towering oaks that border much of the farm. Their
postures are both regal and self-assured—it’s almost
as if they know how admired and protected they are.
“I don’t know how they spread the word,” Harris
says. “Must be on their eagle blogs.”
As much as the uninvited guests aggravate Har-
ris, the chickens themselves don’t even seem to no-
tice the huge predators in their midst. A Bald Eagle
can land in the middle of dozens of chickens and
they’ll continue pecking at the ground as if nothing
were there. “Once I even saw a Bald Eagle inside a
chicken shack, just picking them off one at a time,”
the poultry manager, Daniel Coady, tells me. The
chickens didn’t make a peep.
Harris hired Coady in May 2015 to “figure out”
the chicken situation. Coady came to the farm via
an untraditional background, having worked most
recently as a chemist in an IBM Research lab. For
him, it’s not the loss of life at White Oak that’s both-
ersome; it’s the system’s inefficiency. Like any true
scientist, Cody is meticulous about tracking his sub-
jects. While we’re talking in a chicken house, I point
out a chick flopping around on the floor. Coady
scoops it up, puts it on the ground outside the shack,
and waits a full five seconds for it to get up and walk.
It doesn’t. The quick assessment convinces him it’s
not healthy enough to survive. Coady shrugs at me
apologetically before snapping the chick’s neck with
his fingers and tossing it to the side for his “mor-
tality guys” to pick up and count later, adding one
more piece of information to the database that tracks
chicken deaths and their causes.
Even discounting the three or four chickens each
eagle takes every day throughout the winter, Coady
thinks the farm’s chicken-mortality rate is too high.
It’s roughly 15 percent throughout the year, though
some weeks it’s higher and some weeks it’s lower.
He’d like it to be somewhere around 10 percent—far
below the estimated 18 percent mortality rate the
Most people USDA expects for free-range chickens (for com-
who pasture- parison, it’s 4 percent for confined chickens). When
raise chickens chicks get scared, they “smother,” all cramming into
have much a corner of their house where they feel safe. Some in-
evitably suffocate amid the melee. Any time it rains
smaller flocks,
the chickens smother, so at any sign of this weather,
and on any day or night, Coady drives out to the shacks and tries
farm you might to separate crammed-together chickens. He thinks
expect to see a he may have a better solution to cut down on smoth-
few chickens ering: Redesign the houses so they don’t have cor-
roaming. At ners. The eagle problem is less easily solved.
White Oak, if Harris has turned to state and federal agencies for
you’re in the help. In February Georgia DNR employees visited
right place, the the farm and made a number of recommendations.
birds appear Two of the main suggestions—put up wire over a
in thousands- swath of pasture to keep out eagles, or move the
chickens closer to humans—were impractical for
strong swarms.
White Oak. They’d prevent the chickens from fol-
lowing the cattle, thus unraveling Harris’s carefully
built system. The farm has adopted targeted noise-
makers, which go off in the trees and, so far, cause
the eagles to scatter. There’s no guarantee that they’ll
continue to work, however, and the cost in terms
of man-hours and money adds up; White Oak has
spent $5,000 on noisemakers that someone must
manually set off at dawn and dusk.
Harris is in talks with the USDA about seeking
reimbursement for his financial losses through the
Livestock Indemnity Program, which offers 75 per-
cent of the average fair-market value of each animal
lost, up to a maximum of $125,000 a year. The tricky
part is proving that the eagles directly caused the
losses, and the government demands hard evidence.
Coady’s meticulous tracking of chicken mortality
may not be enough; the program asks for other doc-
umentation, such as records from a veterinarian or
from the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
or photographs or video of the attacks.
Ironically, the eagles themselves might help al-
leviate some of the financial strain they’re causing.
As events manager, Jodi Harris Benoit, another of
Harris’s daughters, runs the farm’s agritourism busi-
ness, which is exactly what it sounds like. The birds
are helping address one of her big challenges: There
isn’t that much for people to do on the farm, besides
learn about things like beekeeping and seed starting.
(Harris Benoit has had to dissuade many kindergar-
ten teachers from bringing their classes by explain-
ing that “it’s not a petting zoo.”) But everyone loves
watching Bald Eagles.
In January, the monthly Farm Day focuses on
Continued on page 51

1973 1984 2007 2016

Under the newly created
Endangered Species Act,
southern populations of
Bald Eagles are classified
as endangered, and the
bird is listed as threatened
in Washington, Oregon,
Minnesota, Wisconsin,
and Michigan.
Bald Eagle numbers rebound On June 28, the U.S. Fish
to more than 1,750 breeding and Wildlife Service an-
pairs in the Lower 48, up from nounces that the Bald Eagle
791 in 1974. In addition to the is recovered and removes
DDT ban and other conserva- the nation’s symbol from
tion measures, various cap- the list of threatened
tive breeding programs have and endangered species.
contributed to the increase. Nearly 10,000 nesting pairs
inhabit the Lower 48.
Bald Eagle numbers con-
tinue to increase, with the
birds expanding into more
and more of their historic
range. Today the United
States, including Alaska, is
home to more than 140,000
of the magnificent birds.

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 43

 FIELD
GUIDE

T HE BASICS
BIRDING Take your skills to new heights. After all,
that’s where the raptors are.

Red-tailed
Hawk . . .
Recognizing Raptors or Not?
Of all the North
birders trained to id birds by their plumage are typically mystified by their first hawkwatch— American hawks,
the Red-tailed is
from a distance, raptors may be near impossible to tell apart. To succeed, you’ll need to rethink your
the most familiar.
concept of a “field mark.” Focus on the traits that you can make out, such as size, shape, overall color But with a dizzying
or tone, and the manner and cadence of the bird’s wing beats. Distant IDs aren’t made instantly— amount of variation,
they’re built, by piecing together multiple clues that favor one species over another. —Pete Dunne it can also be the
most vexing. Next
time you think
you see one, use
this handy quiz to
check your gut.
(Alternates are one
1
of multiple pos-
sibilities.)
2 3
Is it wearing
“pants”?
Yes: Ferruginous
Hawk
4 5 6 7 No: Red-tailed
8 Hawk

How big is it?

10 Jay-size: Sharp-
9 shinned Hawk
Football-size: Red-
tailed Hawk

15 How does it fly?

Hovers: Rough-
14 legged Hawk
11 12 13
Glides: Red-tailed
North American raptors on the wing 1) Sharp-shinned Hawk; 2) Ferruginous Hawk; 3) American Kestrel; 4) Red-tailed Hawk; Hawk
5) Merlin; 6) Northern Harrier; 7) Bald Eagle; 8) American Kestrel; 9) Osprey; 10) Red-shouldered Hawk; 11) Northern Harrier;
12) Peregrine Falcon; 13) Sharp-shinned Hawk; 14) Rough-legged Hawk; 15) Turkey Vulture. What is it hunting?
Birds: Peregrine
Size and Shape vultures) are super-size, darker- Motion Falcon
Most birds of prey fall into four plumed titans with motions that Manner of flight can be useful, too, Rabbits: Red-tailed
major categories. (Northern Harrier, make spare use of their wings. when getting down to species. The Hawk
Osprey, and kites are a few excep- American Kestrel’s flight is batty
tions.) These core attributes will Complexion and flat; the Merlin’s wing beats What color is
help you choose the right clique: Once you’ve sorted your groups, are fast, powerful, and piston-like. its tail?
FRANCOIS PORTMANN; BIRDS #2 AND #14: ISTOCK

• Buteos are large, broad-winged,
short-tailed lugs with spare and
labored wing beats.
• Accipiters are small, narrow-
tailed forest dwellers with short,
rapid, bursting flaps, punctuated
by a glide.
• Falcons are slender- and pointy-
winged speedsters with steadier
wing flaps.
• Big Black Birds (eagles and
it’s time to narrow down the Kestrels float when they glide; the Bold black and
candidates. Look for specific fea- heavier Merlins sink. Peregrine white stripes:
tures—though fine distinctions Falcons have shallow, elastic wing Red-shouldered
in plumage might be hard to pin beats—you can practically watch Hawk
down. For instance, the signature the motion ripple down the falcon’s Thin brown and
double ’stache on an American long and tapered wings. As the bird tan stripes:
Kestrel’s face might not be obvi- approaches, make sure to test your Juvenile Red-tailed
ous, so rely on its overall paleness hypothesis; other clues will become Hawk
to help distinguish it from the more obvious. And don’t worry, Red stripes: Adult
slightly larger and darker female even the experts get fooled. It’s what Red-tailed Hawk
and juvenile Merlin. keeps them coming back. —Sharon Stiteler

44 AUDUBON | FALL 2016

 Longest raptor Peregrine Falcon: 16,000 miles Experts share
migrations in other fall life-list
Swainson’s Hawk: 12,000 miles
North America lessons at audu-
(round-trip) Broad-winged Hawk: 8,700 miles bon.org/birding.

H O ME I MP ROV E ME N T

Host a Family of
American Kestrels
most raptors tend to maintain distance from
humans—but not kestrels. With their coppery cloaks,
streaky faces, and aerial antics, they can be a backyard
spectacle. But loss of nesting habitat has helped send
the bird into serious decline. To bolster the population
(and your birding) consider hosting a kestrel family. Best Raptor
Madison Audubon’s Brand Smith, coordinator of one Guides
of the largest kestrel-nest-box programs in the coun- Whether you’re
try, offers simple tips for making your property friend- a seasoned hawk
lier to the birds year-round. —Dora Chi watcher or just
getting started,
Provide Shelter these guides will
Kestrels nestle into natural and artificial cavities, whether help improve your
trees in rolling grasslands or concrete pockets in major cities. ID skills. Jerry
They tend to perch on power lines while hunting, and so in Liguori’s Hawks
Smith's experience, boxes near those are more actively used. from Every Angle
Building the boxes does take a bit of handiwork; blueprints ($20) highlights
can be found through the American Kestrel Partnership. 19 common U.S.
species and ofers
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MARCEL VAN KAMMEN/NIS/MINDEN PICTURES; MIKE FERNANDEZ/AUDUBON; MEGAN KHINES/FLICKR CC BY-SA 2.0

T HE BIRDIST Supply Food simple yet specific

Kestrels typically feed on insects like dragonflies and tips for naming
Start With a Little grasshoppers, bite-size rodents, and small birds. “My most them in flight.

Vulture Practice successful box was next to a field where someone grew sun-
flowers,” says Smith. He also suggests placing a bird feeder in
Liguori’s Hawks
at a Distance
clearings to attract prey to the area. ($20) pinpoints
want to start id’ing raptors? Flex your skills on 29 birds of prey
vultures first. Sure, they’re kinda creepy: They feast on Reduce Hazards from afar in a
roadkill and spend their days scanning for dead things. “If you want to encourage kestrels to move in, you need to variety of settings.
They’re not exactly cuddly either. (Feathers just get in lessen or eliminate the use of pesticides on your lawn,” says Birding bigwigs
the way when you’re trying to jam your head deep into Smith. After all, pesticides cut down the number of insects and Pete Dunne, David
a rotting animal.) But is their ugly reputation deserved? limit the birds’ prospects for finding food. Check audubon.org/ Sibley, and Clay
No way. Vultures are the best. audubon-near-you to see if your nearest Audubon chapter or Sutton combine
First of all, eating carrion isn’t evil; it’s polite. It center has more information on local kestrel populations. their knowledge
cleans up the planet and prevents the spread of nasty in Hawks in Flight
diseases. Vultures also poop on their legs to keep cool, ($26), which
which is so much greener than cranking up the air- includes illustra-
conditioning. tions, photos,
Plus, from a beginner birder’s perspective, vultures and engaging
are generous and available. You could spend all day text packed with
looking for some hawk hiding in the canopy, but there useful details.
always seems to be a vulture soaring slowly in full view. With composite
They’re easier to identify, too: Turkey Vultures are photos of birds,
dark brown with silvery flight feathers and red heads; along with quizzes,
Black Vultures are jet black with silvery “jazz hands” The Crossley ID
on their wingtips; California Condors are more elusive Guide: Raptors, by
but basically the size of airplanes. Richard Crossley,
So the next time you see a vulture circling, don’t Jerry Liguori, and
shudder. Reach for your bins, give it a wave, and try Brian Sullivan
not to act dead. —Nick Lund ($30), provides
excellent training
Visit audubon.org to read the Birdist’s weekly column. for the field.

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 45

 FIELD
GUIDE
TRAVEL Where to catch the incredible spectacle of raptor migration.

Hawk Mountain,
Pennsylvania, and
Cape May, New Jersey
Only 125 miles apart
as the hawk flies, two
of the most famous
U.S. hawkwatch sites
see large numbers
for different reasons.
At Hawk Mountain,
updrafts from winds
striking the Kittatinny
Ridge allow hawks to
sail effortlessly for miles
southward along the
thin spine. At Cape
May, the birds concen-

5
trate at the southern tip
hawks, eagles, and falcons tend to be
of New Jersey before
solitary most of the time. We encounter beating back northward
them mainly as isolated pairs or lone indi-

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TIM LAMAN; KEVIN T. KARLSON; JOHANSEN KRAUSE; EWAN BURNS; ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID ALLEN SIBLEY
to cross Delaware Bay
viduals, hunting widely dispersed prey. But at a narrower point. In
during fall migration, geography concen- Five Raptor both locations, north-
trates them in certain areas, allowing birders west winds are key to
Migration large numbers of raptors
to see dozens, hundreds, or even thousands Hotspots moving through.
in a day. Migrating raptors save energy when
they can, so they’ll glide on updrafts along Golden Gate Raptor Florida Keys
north-south ridges. Most avoid crossing Observatory, California Hawkwatch
Grail Bird open water, so they pile up on coastal penin- One of the best-known Although most migrat-
Northern Goshawk hawkwatch sites in the ing raptors are thought
sulas or clump together where they have to
Powerful preda- western United States to avoid flying over
tors of northern
detour around large lakes. Follow the birds lies just north of the water, surprising num-
and montane to these key concentration points to catch Golden Gate Bridge, bers follow the chain of
zones, goshawks the spectacle this fall. —Kenn Kaufman where migrating birds of the Florida Keys toward
are often hard to prey concentrate before the southwest every fall.
see because they crossing the mouth of Big numbers of Ospreys
hunt by stealth San Francisco Bay. Red- and world-record counts
inside the forest. tailed Hawks, Sharp- of Peregrine Falcons
As migrants they shinned Hawks, and are the draw here, but
regularly appear Turkey Vultures are the Northern Harriers,
at Minnesota’s main attractions, along
Hawk Ridge but with more than a dozen
are scarce at other raptor species. The
most hawkwatch observatory, easily acces-
sites; October sible in the Marin Head-
and November lands, conducts daily
are the best times counts from September
to see them. through November.

46 AUDUBON | FALL 2016


Sharp-shinned Hawks,
and others are regularly
seen; subtropical raptors
like Swallow-tailed
Kite and Short-tailed
Hawk add even more
variety to the mix. Curry
Hammock State Park,
halfway down the Keys,
is the official count site.
Hawk Ridge, Minnesota
When southbound
raptors reach the north
shore of Lake Superior,
most turn to follow it
west-southwest. Num-
bers build until they
reach the ridge above
the shoreline at Duluth,
Minnesota, at the lake’s
western end. Once a
site where many hawks
were shot, Hawk Ridge
now draws thousands
TOP LEFT: LAURA ERICKSON; BOTTOM: EWAN BURNS
Sample of raptor counts in 2015 For more fall
Corpus Christi, TX: 660,189 destinations, visit
Detroit, MI, and Windsor, ON: 159,510 audubon.org/
Hawk Ridge, MN: 25,282 travel.
4
Tips for
First-Time
Hawkwatch
Visitors
Plan Your Visit
To figure out when
diferent species
of watchers. High- pass a given site,
lights here include big visit hawkcount.
flights of Broad-winged org and select
Hawks in September your count on the
and a good chance for interactive map.
Northern Goshawks in Also look there for
late fall. local weather tips
to help you pick
River of Raptors, GE AR the best day.
Veracruz, Mexico
Where the coastal plain Looking Sharp A spotting scope can be a boon at a Respect the
narrows to a thin strip hawkwatch, where raptors often fly high overhead; Counter
between the mountains Maven’s S.1 scope ($2,100) delivers crisp, bright im- At many sites it’s
of Veracruz and the ages thanks to powerful 25-50X magnification and a someone’s job to
Gulf of Mexico, more 80mm fluorite objective lens. No matter the climate, count every hawk.
than four million rap- a layer is a must: The waterproof, breathable High Don’t interrupt her
tors pour through the Sierra Isles Jacket ($100) keeps you dry and comfy with questions,
gap each fall, includ- in rainy conditions; ExOfficio’s BugsAway Damselfly unless it’s a slow
ing most of the world’s ($80) is a mostly mesh jacket perfect for hot, buggy day and she starts
Swainson’s Hawks, places; when the mercury drops, Therm-A-Rest’s the conversation.
Broad-winged Hawks, Honcho Poncho ($130) provides cozy protection
and Mississippi Kites. that doubles as a blanket. —Alisa Opar Listen Up
The prime viewing sites, If experienced
in Cardel and Chichi- hawk watchers are
caxtle, are easy to reach. I F YO U WAN T TO… on site, stay close,
look where they’re
Let Someone Else looking, and listen
Write the Itinerary to their comments
about the birds
Idaho Birding Trail The landscapes and habitats of passing overhead.
Idaho are so diverse that the statewide birding trail
takes in no fewer than 173 hotspots, divided among Ditch Field
four sections of the state. Raptor fans will gravitate Marks
to the southwest, especially the Snake River Birds of Red tail on a
Prey National Conservation Area, for high numbers of Red-tailed Hawk?
Golden Eagles, Prairie Falcons, Ferruginous Hawks, Square tail on
and other species. Idaho is home to many other kinds a Sharp-shin?
of birds, too. Cool conifer forests host a varied array Those might be
of songbirds, from Mountain Chickadees and West- helpful marks
ern Tanagers to Cassin’s Finches. Broad lakes and elsewhere, but at
marshes provide habitat for Trumpeter Swans, Sand- a hawkwatch, look
hill Cranes, and a notable array of ducks. Find maps for shape, flight
at fishandgame.idaho.gov/ifwis/ibt/ and explore other style, and subtle
birding trails at audubon.org/travel. impressions.
FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 47
 FIELD
GUIDE
PHOTOGRAPHY For a powerful image, focus on
birds that convey strength.

most birds are small and dart about—not raptors. Find a Bird-Brained
Red-tailed Hawk perched on a tree limb or light post and you’ll wonder Don't resort to bait.
Learn to anticipate
why you ever wasted time chasing a Blackburnian Warbler with a cam- raptor behavior and
era. But raptors also provide photographers with a unique and addictive position yourself
challenge, especially during migration. To get the best shots, learn what accordingly.
ridges or coastlines the birds follow and in what weather conditions.
Timing
And if you’re just starting out, here’s a hot tip: Practice on gulls. Perched raptors will
Grail Bird often defecate or
Gyrfalcon stretch their wings
Native to the Arctic GEA R just before they
barrens, this take of.
majestic falcon is Stalking Prey With its fast autofocus and
a rare fall migrant 10-frames-per-second capability, Canon’s EOS Direction
in the Lower 48 7D Mark II ($1,600) is great for capturing birds in Larger raptors with
TOP: RON DUDLEY; ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID ALLEN SIBLEY

(so rare, in fact, motion; the crop-sensor camera's smaller field of a big wingspan and
it’s also known as view also enables your subject to fill a larger por- heavy body tend to
the “Holy Grail tion of the frame. Bonnie Block paired it with a take of into the wind
Bird”). Try your Canon 500mm f/4 IS II USM lens ($8,999) for her for aerodynamic lift.
luck on the famed winning Bald Eagle photo in the 2016 Audubon
Kittatinny Ridge Photography Awards. Getting the perfect Angle
out East; winter shot takes time, so prepare for a long day: The From high perches,
will ofer better double-wall vacuum insulation of Kleen Kanteen’s large birds are more
chances in Michi- Insulated Classic 20-ounce bottle ($31) keeps bev- likely to take of
gan, the Great erages the perfect temperature for hours, and the at a downward or
Plains, and coastal small-but-mighty TravelChair Slacker tripod stool horizontal angle than
Washington. ($20) will help stave off discomfort. —Alisa Opar small raptors.

48 AUDUBON | FALL 2016

 Federal protection for raptors After other fall
Species protected by Migratory Bird Treaty Act: 71 migrants? Go to
Species and subspecies protected by Endangered Species Act: 9 audubon.org/
Species protected by Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act: 2 photography.

4
Find a Count Respect the Roost Raptors are skittish birds, and so
Not all hawkwatch photography requires sensitivity and respect. This is es-
sites are created pecially true at nesting time. Flushing adults of of nests
equal. Although leaves chicks vulnerable to predation, overexposure, and
lesser known, injury. Adults may also abandon a nest if unduly dis-
these two are turbed. Maintain your distance by shooting only through Expert
especially good for a long lens. And, please, don’t post the location of sensi- Tips
photography. tive nests on social media. If you find a resting raptor in
winter, when its next meal is uncertain, avoid flushing it as Acquire a
well; the bird needs to conserve body heat and calories. moving subject
In general, note that disturbing or flushing threatened or by following it
endangered birds is a form of harassment, which is ille- with the camera’s
gal under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Endangered hot shoe and lens
Species Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection front, keeping your
Act aford some raptor species further protection. Report eyes just above
Lighthouse Point any violations you witness to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife the camera body.
Park, Connecticut Service authority in your region. —Melissa Groo When the raptor
Less than two lines up with these,
hours from move your eye to
New York City, HAVE A SEAT the viewfinder.
Lighthouse Point
reports more fall
raptors, on aver- The Virtues of a Vehicle Shoot at the fast-
est shutter speed
age, than any site after retiring from a job teaching high school biology, Ron Dudley took his possible. Raise
northeast of Cape love of natural history to the field. He now spends most days photographing raptors from your ISO settings
May—including a Ford F-150 in his home state of Utah. Using your vehicle as a mobile blind has distinct to the highest level
some unusual advantages, he says. “Birds are much, much less afraid of a vehicle than they are a person (but not so high
ones, like the on foot, and so you can get much closer.” Rather than use a specialized beanbag to support that you’re getting
Zone-tailed Hawk. his camera lens, Dudley hacked a pool noodle—slitting it down its length, covering it in noise) and set
On a good day duct tape to keep it from squeaking, and fitting it to the window frame. He also built a lens your f-stop to the
hawks cut through caddy for his console that holds the camera securely over rough roads but enables him to lift lowest setting. Use
the park at head it out in an instant. Shooting from a window limits the angle of the shot, but that’s nothing proper autofocus
height or below. some “creative driving” can’t solve—and it helps to have side mirrors that fold out of the way. settings for fast-
“You’d be surprised at the things that go into my choice of a new vehicle,” Dudley says. moving subjects.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: TOM MANGELSEN; RON DUDLEY (3); TAHOELIGHT.COM; STAN TESS/ALAMY

Ensure synchro-
nous panning
by keeping the
subject in the exact
same location in
Goshute Moun- your viewfinder
tains, Nevada while tracking the
You have to hike raptor’s move-
2.5 miles straight ments.
uphill to get to
the hawkwatch Try shooting in
site and pack in manual mode
everything you when you have a
might need. But changing back-
being 9,000 feet ground. It allows
up a mountain you to find the
yields interesting perfect exposure
perspectives and for light or dark
angles. Goshute birds and keep it
is also great for constant as the
Golden Eagles. raptor moves.
—Luke Tiller —Kevin Karlson

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 49

GREAT GRAY OWLS Continued from page 37

change poses another major threat. Scientists listed

the owls in 2014 as one of the bird species in the
Sierra Nevada that will be particularly vulnerable to
changes from a warming planet.
Given these pressures, a coalition that includes
the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and
The Institute for Bird Populations is working on
projects to increase protection for the owls. A 2015
study cataloged the 56 known nesting records in
California since 1973, and found a surprising 21
percent of the nests in hotter, lower habitats—rais-
ing a red flag, since this is also prime land for sec-
ond-home development.
The study also underscores the importance
of artificial nest trees, which have been the Forest
Service’s answer to the special needs of the Sierra
Nevada owls. Unlike their northern cousins, which
nest mostly in abandoned stick nests, the Sierra Ne-
vada birds nest only in snags, the broken-off tops
of large-diameter dead trees, which can be in short
supply given logging practices in the national for-
ests. The lack of suitable nesting trees may explain
why there are so few Sierra Nevada owls. Forest
managers have tried to remedy this problem by cre-
ating artificial snags, lopping off the tops of selected
big trees near prime wet meadows. g lars, and pinpointed the source of their distress: a
Medley’s detective work helps address another HUNTING GROUNDS Great Gray Owl perched on a Jeffrey pine about
challenge on Forest Service property. The pub- The scientists traverse a 100 yards from where he stood. Its fine brown-
lic lands are “multiple use,” so ranchers can get wet meadow in the Sierra and-gray feathers neatly blended against the pine’s
permits to graze cattle in the lush wet meadows Nevada where Great Gray dappled trunk. The giveaway to the bird’s presence:
the birds favor. “Grazing—and overgrazing—are Owls prey upon small the thin white “mustache” of feathers underneath
a primary threat,” Keane says, because cows can mammals. its huge facial discs, flashing now and then like a
alter meadows by chomping and trampling grass- faint smile.
es, which reduces prey numbers. But if biologists A century ago, Joseph Grinnell was alerted
know where the birds and their nests are located, to a different owl on another Jeffrey pine by the
they can protect those areas. scolding chatter of a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and
The state’s new Great Gray Owl conservation wondered how a bird from the north could be so
plan, which is still pending final approval, builds at home nesting in the wilds of the Sierra Nevada.
on this knowledge. It encourages land managers Medley and his colleagues now know the an-
to safeguard the big-diameter trees the owls de- swer to Grinnell’s question. The owl that gazed
pend on, promotes the use of artificial nesting trees across the meadow was an Ice Age remnant, a
where natural ones have been cut or destroyed by northern bird that proved adaptable enough to sur-
fire, and names the feather DNA forensics and vive in tiny numbers in California’s more temperate
Medley’s remote-recording technique as new climate. Now the biologists believe they have the
monitoring options to consider. tools to secure the birds’ future here. A

Nancy Bazilchuk lives in Trondheim, Norway, where

B
ack in the stanislaus national for-
est Medley followed up his evening of
broadcasting calls with a visit to one of
his favorite meadows, emerald and radi-
ant after a recent rain. Hermit Warblers and juncos
trilled atop a soft chorus of katydids and crickets as
Medley pointed out “tree islands,” groups of trees
that stick out like thumbs into the grassy areas, a
key feature that attracts owls.
The tree islands offer good perches from which
Great Gray Owls can listen for and catch voles
she writes about science and the environment for New
Scientist, Scientific American, and other publications.
Volume 118, Number 5, Fall 2016. Audubon, ISSN 0097-7136,
the magazine of the National Audubon Society, will be pub-
lished six times in 2016 (January, March, May, Summer, Fall,
Winter). Editorial and advertising offices: 225 Varick Street,
7th Floor, New York, NY, 10014; 212-979-3000. Postmaster:
Send address changes to National Audubon Society, P.O. Box
727, Neenah, WI, 54957-0727. Periodical preferred postage
JAKE STANGEL

and gophers, he said, which is one reason he often paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing oices. Cana-
finds owls here. As if to underscore his words, two dian GST Number is R127073195. Canada Post International
Steller’s Jays erupted from across the way, scream- Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement
ing excitedly. Medley stopped, raised his binocu- No. 190314. Printed in USA.

50 AUDUBON | FALL 2016

 EAGLES VS. CHICKENS Continued from page 43

the birds. The six onsite cabins, which sleep up to six

people and go for $99-$259 a night, are all booked Anatomy of a Killer
for the event, and the 40-person workshop ($55 a How Bald Eagles maintain an ironclad grip at the top of the food chain.
head) is sold out. Most attendees are photographers BY SABRINA IMBLER
lugging serious gear, intent on getting close-ups. Yet
Harris isn’t shy about attempting to recruit them as
customers: “Go home and order a chicken,” he wryly
suggests at the end of his talk, before everyone loads
into trucks to go see the eagles. “Not only can you
help us with our economic hardship, but you can be
damn sure that that was a healthy chicken—that son
of a bitch was quick.”

H
arris has his own ideal solution,
and it has nothing to do with noise-
makers or reimbursement programs
or tourism. If everyone farmed in the
nature-first way he does, he says, eagles wouldn’t
concentrate on his farm. Flocks of chickens scat-
tered across the Georgia countryside would natu-
rally cause eagles to disperse into smaller, healthier
populations. Of course, a pasture-raised chicken
revolution won’t happen any time soon, and Harris
says he has no interest in evangelizing for his cause.
He’s too busy plotting how to best make White
Oak thrive.
On my first night on the farm, Harris drives
me past Bluffton’s main street to the Kolomoki
LEGS WINGS
Mounds. Native Americans constructed the earth- An eagle’s remarkable A Bald Eagle, which
en buildings sometime between 350 and 750 A.D., gripping strength comes weighs 8 to 14 pounds,
and it was one of the largest settlements north of from its legs. Muscles an- can swoop down at
Mexico at the time. The settlement flourished for chored to leg bones close around 30 miles per
the same reasons White Oak has prospered for five the talons by contracting hour and snatch up prey
generations—the rich clay soil and the warm, rain- tendons, which have that is roughly half its
heavy weather pattern coming up from the Gulf ridges that interlock, al- weight, in part thanks
of Mexico make the area fertile. As Harris and I lowing the raptor to main- to its enormous six- to
BEAK
sit in the stopped Jeep, gazing at the grass-covered tain a firm hold on prey eight-foot wingspan. If
The beak sharply tapers
for long periods of time a fish is too heavy for an
mound, he explains why this spot is special. at the end into a hook
without putting intense eagle to carry, the wings
Harris sees the land as sacred, and as self- strain on its muscles.
that snags and tears up
can serve as rudimen-
appointed “land steward,” he sees himself as a care- prey. Nares, or open-
tary oars, allowing it to
taker—one individual in a long line of people who ings, on either side of the
swim its meal to shore.
have tended this land, and who might go on to beak enable breathing
while diving at incred-
farm it for centuries more. If it’s cared for properly.
ibly fast speeds.
“Nature abhors a monoculture,” Harris utters often,
and it’s this belief that justified his transformation DIGESTIVE TRACT
of White Oak. Farming his land as he does now A crop in the esophagus
ensures that it will continue to be healthy, be it for stores up to two pounds
future farmers or future wildlife. For now, he’s will- of food, allowing eagles to
ing to accept his oversized eagle population as the EYES
survive for days without
best evidence he’s got that he’s swung the pendulum hunting. A combination of
Keen vision enables an
back in the right direction. Not that he has much of a gizzard that grinds food
eagle to spot small prey TALONS
a choice. A and exceptionally strong
from almost a mile away. Each scaled foot has four
stomach acid allows
Each eye has two foveae, sharp, powerful talons
eagles to swiftly digest
Susan Matthews is the senior science editor at Slate and or centers of focus, al-
prey bones; the calcium is
up to two inches long in
was formerly the senior web editor at Audubon. This is lowing for simultaneous females and 1.5 inches in
repurposed for their own
her first feature for Audubon. forward and lateral vision, males. Three talons face
bones and eggshells.
and a sliding, translu- forward and one faces
cent inner eyelid called backward, giving eagles
ONLINE: Bald Eagles target avian prey other than chick-
THIS PAGE: ISTOCK (4)

a nictitating membrane a viselike grip on prey.

ens. This summer a nest cam on Hog Island, Maine,
wipes away debris every Bumps on their toes help
captured rare footage of a Bald Eagle attacking young few seconds, like built-in grasp wriggling fish.
Ospreys. Watch the stunning video at audubon.org/ windshield wipers.
baldeagleattack.

FALL 2016 | AUDUBON 51

 THE ILLUSTRATED AVIARY

Reimagining John James Audubon’s “Birds of America”

CALIFORNIA CONDOR BY JOE CIARDIELLO

the california condor became a celebrity after its brush with extinction
in the 1980s, and it has continued to make headlines as populations have recovered since
then. So Joe Ciardiello’s regal portrait of North America's largest bird is a natural fit with
BOTTOM (DETAIL): JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

his life’s work: caricature-like portraits of the world’s most famous figures, from Charles
Darwin to Yogi Berra. Ciardiello, 63, rarely uses pencil in creating his portraits. He prefers
to warm up with several ink sketches until he’s distilled an organic likeness, and then adds
watercolors sparsely to capture the essence of his subject. When depicting the California
Condor, neither Ciardiello nor John James Audubon worked from a live bird: Audubon
sketched from a specimen in London in 1838, while Ciardiello drew inspiration from
photos of the condor, as well as watching its close cousins, Turkey Vultures, from the See all of John
window over his drafting table in his Hunterdon County, New Jersey, studio. With the James Audubon’s
condor’s wrinkles and adornment of spiky black feathers, Ciardiello sees it as having Birds of America
almost human characteristics. “Even though it’s this scavenger, there’s something noble at audubon.org/
about its appearance,” he says. “I thought of it as just doing another portrait.” a birds-of-america.

52 AUDUBON | FALL 2016

 Want to bring more
birds to your home?
By growing bird-friendly plants, you give birds the food
and shelter they need. To learn how to bring more birds
to your yard and find the best plants for the birds in your
area, check out Audubon’s native plants resources.

audubon.org/native-plants
AMERICAN GOLDFINCH AND SUNFLOWER. PHOTO: SALLY STONE/NATURE’S HEALING IMAGES
 Audubon Bird Food
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