Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
mallards and Canada geese. I expect to see little else. But
fugetaboutit!
I can
barely keep up with the rush of cardinals, blue jays, white-throated sparrows,
black-crested titmice, mourning doves, black-crowned night herons, wood
ducks, cormorants, red-tailed and Cooper's hawks, crows, blackbirds, and
three varieties of woodpeckers. I leave after two mornings of birding, having
seen more species—thirty-one—than I saw in four days of traveling through
Yellowstone! Perhaps I should have expected more species in the rich decidu-
ous forest of New York than in the high montane west, but I i gured my longer
visit to Yellowstone would compensate for regional dif erences. Historical
records since the late 1800s suggest that about the same number of bird species—
two hundred—are regularly encountered in both parks. From a bird's per-
spective, a large park created by human hands or by nature is not all that
dif erent.
With my graduate students I have counted birds from Seattle's urban core to
its fringing forests nearly every spring and summer morning for the past de-
cade. Most of the forests we studied held few giant and ancient trees—loggers
cut them down a century ago—but substantial evergreens typically around
one hundred years old were plentiful. Here, with standardized ef orts, we can
truly gauge the ef ect of urbanization on the variety of birds. When we stood
quietly in the industrial downtown of the city for a ten-minute count, we
would tally ten to i fteen species. That might not sound like many, but to be
counted the birds must be seen or heard nearby—that is, within about 150 feet
of us. Pigeons, crows, house i nches, and house sparrows were common, as
they are in any western North American city. Occasionally, an Anna's hum-
mingbird buzzed us. This little jewel has taken advantage of warming climates
and feeders to move north and invade Seattle, even living in our cold mist
during the winter months. When we went far from the city to places our society
