Category: conservation

North America’s most endangered birds Top 10: 7 The Florida Scrub-Jay

Text by Audubon Introduction The Florida Scrub-Jay lives only in Florida, in rare areas of oak scrub that must be renewed periodically by lightning-ignited fires. Seemingly inexorable development in the state has fragmented much of the scrub-jay’s habitat, minimizing the occurrence of fire. Unburnt, the oak scrub tends to become overgrown and evolve into sand […]

North America’s most endangered birds Top 10: 5 Kirtland’s Warbler

Text by Audubon Introduction Kirtland’s Warbler is a small – they weigh only half-ounce each – migratory songbird that nests exclusively under trees in young jack pine forests in Michigan and sometimes Wisconsin and Ontario. Historically, this habitat is renewed when naturally occurring fires renew forests, with the heat from the fire forcing open the […]

North America’s most endangered birds Top 10: 4 The Gunnison Sage-Grouse

Text by Audubon. Introduction The Gunnison Sage-Grouse, a chicken-sized ground bird, depends on sagebrush habitat for cover throughout the year and feeds exclusively on sagebrush during the winter. During the spring, summer, and fall, the grouse also browses on other plants and insects. Once native to New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, Gunnison Sage-Grouse […]

North America’s most endangered birds Top 10: 3 The Whooping Crane

Text by Audubon Introduction The poignant irony of human engagement with endangered birds is captured in the image of a delicate open-cockpit ultralight aircraft that looks like one of Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines guiding a flock of large, elegant white-andblack Whooping Cranes on their annual migration. Whooping Cranes once bred easily in the central […]

North America’s most endangered birds Top 10: 1 The Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Text by Audubon Introduction The Ivory-billed Woodpecker once ranged widely across the southeastern United States, including Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, as well as in Cuba. As logging reduced the hardwood and pine forests that constitute its habitat, however, the bird became increasingly rare. Indeed, having not been […]