We know that our wild, native birds are steadily declining in number. But why exactly is this happening? Because with a few well-known exceptions, birds do not adapt easily to changes in their environment. Most birds are very finely tuned to a specific habitat, and cannot readily move into another should they lose the first one. For instance, the Kirtland’s Warbler only nests in stands of young jack pine; when birders and biologists realized that the only nesting grounds for Kirtland’s Warbler that anyone could still find were in Michigan – and that precious few breeding pairs were left - the DNR and the U.S. Forest Service set aside that land for preservation. This warbler cannot adapt to any other type of environment. Numbers of these birds have increased slowly, and as long as the jack pine forest in Michigan remains protected, the Kirtland’s Warbler may continue to be saved from extinction.

The same is true for most wild birds. Take note of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which apparently needs a very large territory of specific swampy tupelo and cypress trees to survive. As their natural habitat was cut down to make way for agriculture and highways in the early part of the 20th century, Ivory-billed Woodpeckers began to disappear. They were not able to adapt to smaller tracts of forest, or move to other types of trees or food supplies.

Some birds, known as “woods birds,” such as the beautiful Scarlet Tanager and Wood Thrush, need large areas of unbroken woods to live in; they cannot adapt to small, broken-up woods, divided by highways and farms. Small tracts of woods are becoming more common, and large unbroken woods are rapidly disappearing, as people cut down more trees and build more highways and shopping malls. Thus, the Scarlet Tanager and Wood Thrush are slowly being phased out of existence. They too are unable to adapt to a changed environment.

When birds cannot adjust to any environment other than one that has their specific natural requirements, the result is they cannot find food or build a nest and raise young; the species begins to die out.

Those birds that will survive into the next century will be those that have learned to live alongside human beings, and who can respond quickly to changes in the environment. These birds are known as “habitat generalists;” they can survive just about anywhere. These are the familiar ones you see every day, Robins, House Sparrows, Barn Swallows, and Crows. They nest under the eaves of our houses; they can eat road kill, commercial birdseed, and suet. The birds may be wild, but they have adjusted to us and learned to co-exist with our sky-scrapers, glass windows, and freeways.

It is the other ones, the truly wild ones, that are slowly disappearing. As we cut down more and more trees, and lay more and more asphalt, they are losing their homes and nesting territories. Their time-tested and finely honed methods of surviving and thriving don’t work any more.