11.26.2022

CONW disappearing? No.

"You have already lost if you are always fearful of losing everything."

― Kamand Kojouri
Click on the above image to read the DNR article.

Or maybe it's on account of birders going to the same location over and over and using playback to lure the birds into the open for a better view and/or photographs. At least one birder seems to think so, but more on that later. While Connecticut Warblers (CONW) may be disappearing from Wisconsin, I think this is a rather alarmist sentiment. The bird is notoriously difficult to detect and the bulk of the global breeding population resides in remote areas of Canada, making censusing problematic or impossible. The International Union for Conservation of Nature ranks this species a Least Concern (LC) and the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada regards the bird not considered in trouble. For the time being it isn't even on the Partners in Flight Watchlist. 

So what's going here?

Curiously, sightings near where my tiger beetle posse found CONWs this June seem to have been removed from eBird. Stranger still, other spring 2022 sightings I recall from other parts of Northern Wisconsin haven't been reported or have also gone missing. I suspect reports have been removed by eBird administrators to protect the species. That's fine, I suppose. 

A few months back one Wisconsin birder wrote to me about this location: 
“Those are the last 3 breeding CONW in the state, and they are being eBirded too often. I am afraid for them. I found these years ago when the rest and I mean all the rest of their breeding habitat had been clearcut. I told one wrong person and now it's a zoo. I feel terribly guilty. I'm convinced that we're losing my favorite warbler.”
The LAST three? Really!? That seems improbable, but it might be. If they're breeding, then perhaps there are also a few females. If so, presumably they raised young birds during the breeding season. Is site fidelity high for this species? That I do not know, but CONW habitat preferences are extremely variable throughout its breeding range. The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is a pretty large chunk of land (858,400 acres) and I doubt a mere handful of birders have accurately censused these birds. We're not losing this species, probably not even in Wisconsin. 

My sense is that a few birders want to protect where they traditionally find CONWs, keep them off of eBird and paint an alarmist picture of their status in Wisconsin as a form of justification. Having said all of that, if at the same time habitat is protected, then great. I just find the article is a disingenuous take on the status of the Connecticut Warbler. You might read the above DNR article and think this species is as imperiled as the Kirtland's Warbler, for example. I found at least one estimate stating that the Canadian CONW population is over 1 million birds. 

Take a look at this eBird map from Spring Migration 2022 for CONW:
And just around Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota:
You simply don't have that many sightings for a highly imperiled yet secretive bird. Are they decreasing? Probably. A great many neotropical songbird species are in decline, which I've written extensively about on this blog. Over the past three decades in my little neck of the woods, I'm lucky if I find one or two CONWs during spring migration ― they're fairly difficult to detect. Extirpation from Wisconsin? Could be! Given a warming climate and changes to habitat, it wouldn't surprise me in the least that this bird's range is shifting slowly northward. They've never really been exceedingly abundant in Wisconsin and it wouldn't take much change in the climate and habitat to prompt them to abandon Northern Wisconsin for more suitable breeding territory to our north.

Are CONWs going extinct? Eventually. But not during my lifetime.