Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2025 i Audubon Magazine

In south-central Chile, the remnants of a once vast network of wetlands endure in and around Concepción, the country’s second-largest city. The ecosystem is under threat from industrial expansion, urban development, and pollution, all of which have drastically reduced its size, decreasing the habitat available for migratory birds that have long depended on it. A new $147 million wetland revitalization project aims to turn things around. The project is a pilot of the Americas Flyways Initiative (AFI), a collaboration among Audubon, BirdLife International, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean. Harnessing a mix of funding and working hand in hand with local communities, AFI has set out to facilitate 30 nature-based economic development projects that protect and restore critical ecosystems by 2050. “It’s a win-win,” says Santiago…

New Tradition This year blind and visually impaired birders headed into the field to log a first: The inaugural Blind Birder Bird-a-Thon celebrated the many ways to observe and appreciate birds beyond visual perception. Cofounded by Donna Posont, profiled in our Fall 2024 issue, the event aims to build community among people who may have felt isolated in their hobby or been led to believe birding wasn’t for them. Organizers plan to hold it annually—but also emphasize there’s no need to wait to enjoy the outdoors. Read more or listen to the story at audubon.org/blindbirdathon. RE: The Summer Issue Our Summer 2025 cover story featured efforts to restore Piping Plovers to the Great Lakes. “The cover photo by Steve Jessmore captured my heart,” ELIZABETH LORD wrote. “The image of the nurturing…

IN THE NEARLY THREE DECADES that Barbara Driscoll has lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the city has become brighter. Sunshine pours onto parts of town that were cool and shady and bounces off windows of new apartments and shopping centers. It’s a sign thatthe city’s tree canopy, one of its defining features, is disappearing. Chapel Hill is one of many North Carolina communities experiencing an influx of residents and, in turn, a significant loss of trees. The state, among the fastestgrowing in the country, is losing an average of 4,500 acres of urban canopy to development each year. The trend is especially troubling as climate change accelerates: Along with their scenic appeal, trees provide shade, soak up rainfall, and absorb carbon dioxide. The state is losing an average of…

LIMINAL OFFERING VESSEL: AMERICAN OYSTERCATCHER AND TIDE POOLS BY RACHEL FRANK See other artwork from The Aviary series at audubon.org/the-aviary. sculptors often spend a lot of time with their subjects, but rachel frank takes that connection to another level. As a rehabilitator at the Wild Bird Fund in Manhattan, she has treated many species, and she infuses her ceramic art with that intimate knowledge. Here, Frank depicts an American Oystercatcher in its tide-pool habitat—“this hidden world that we don’t really get to see too often.” The shape is inspired by ancient Mediterranean ring-kernos, circular pieces with bowls attached to hold offerings. Frank molded the hollow vessel from clay and added details like seaweed and mussels. She mixed her own glazes to get the colors just right and fired the sculpture…

CAMILO SANABRIA GRAJALES can still remember the bird that changed his life—the one that made him fall in love with birds. It was an Azulejo Común, or Blue-gray Tanager, that he saw when he was six years old. Grajales took a long look through a pair of borrowed binoculars, and “from then on, I started to see them with different eyes, literally. And I began to delve deeper into this world.”Now, at age 14, Grajales is an accomplished bird photographer; he wowed the judges in the 2025 Audubon Photography Awards (page 19), becoming the first youth prize winner from Latin America. That’s because this year’s competition stretches across the hemisphere: For the first time, residents of Chile and Colombia joined those in the United States and Canada in entering their…

ON A SWELTERING JUNE AFTERNOON outside the Cooper Park Houses in Brooklyn, a small group peer through binoculars at pigeons in a nearby tree. NYC Bird Alliance educator Yamina Nater-Otero hands out field guides in English and Spanish and explains that pigeons’ distinct markings make them ideal for practicing bird identification skills. But you don’t need to be able to identify birds to enjoy birding, she assures the group. This beginner-friendly outing is part of a pilot program designed for the city’s public-housing residents. More than 500,000 people, or 1 in 17 New Yorkers, live on 335 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) campuses, which are remarkably rich in green space. As the effort’s leaders see it, that’s a huge opportunity to introduce birding—and its physical, mental, and emotional benefits—to…

Every spring they returned fat to the Arctic to breed. Every autumn even more flew south. ONASOFTSTRETCHOFTUNDRA, WHERE Alaska’s Colville River seeps and braids toward the nearby Beaufort Sea, Dan Ruthrauff bends to examine the sedges. His rubber boots squelch in the wet give of mossy ground on this August evening. Every blade in sight is gnawed, its tip dried brown. “This used to be a meadow,” he says, gesturing to a mile-wide area where Lapland Longspurs, plovers, and sandpipers once flourished in lush, calf-high vegetation. Now it’s a putting green, shorn by one of the Pacific Flyway’s fastest-growing colonies of Lesser Snow Geese—birds that, until recently, hadn’t nested on Alaska’s coastal plain in significant numbers. Ruthrauff, a shorebird biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Alaska Science Center, and…

Climate change, species extinctions, and other environmental issues can be scary to think about—especially if you’re a kid. But experts say there are things adults can do to help children understand the problems and find hope in the solutions. DON’T: Ignore It Adults should not shy away from having hard conversations, says Susan Clayton, a psychologist at the College of Wooster: “If it seems like a topic that kids are not allowed to discuss, that’s likely to just increase their anxiety.” Start by asking how they feel, Clayton says, and tell them it’s reasonable to be concerned. DO: Express Optimism It’s also important to share solutions, says Christie Manning, an environmental studies professor at Macalester College. “Research shows that we are moved both by a sense of worry as well…

Celebrate 120 years of Audubon by deepening your impact for birds like the Northern Parula. Start a monthly pledge with Audubon today. The birds we love are in trouble. Right now, they face catastrophic weather events, environmental degradation, and an escalating climate crisis. Many of the species that live around us and delight us each day may not survive—withoutthe sustaining support of compassionate people like you. Join our committed flock of monthly donors today, and help advance the science, advocacy, and on-the-ground conservation these vulnerable species need to survive. Please act now. With as little as $25 a month—less than $1 a day—you can strengthen your support for imperiled birds in our quickly changing natural world. Become a monthly donor today! Go to audubon.org/birdmonthly.…

BIRDS ADAPT. THEY HAVE TO. Each season brings shifting conditions—droughts, floods, wildfires, disappearing habitat. Still, they find ways to adjust. Some alter the timing of their migrations. Others look for new food sources, choose new nesting sites, or stop and rest at different locations during their journeys. Their resilience inspires mine. As we close out the National Audubon Society’s 120th year, I have been reflecting on what it takes to endure. It is not strength alone. It is also the ability to change—gracefully, urgently, and with purpose. This is true for birds. It is true for conservation. And it is true for organizations like ours. Audubon has never stood still. From our earliest campaigns to end the plume trade to our work today to safeguard habitat and address the climate…

SWARMED BY MOSQUITOES AND carrying 10-foot metal poles, biologists Erik Johnson and Olivia Butler splash through a swampy nature preserve in Lafayette, Louisiana, on a mission. A concert of bird calls rings out, but the Audubon Delta scientists listen for one in particular: a lear, high-pitched sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet—the tune of the bright yellow Prothonotary Warbler, or “swamp canary,” as they’re nicknamed in Louisiana. Stopping near a nest box, Johnson stretches a net across the poles while Butler places a yellow rubber duck—the perfect color and size to act as a decoy—nearby. She then plays a variety of warbler calls on a speaker, trying to lure a bird. For 15 minutes, flashes of yellow swoop from branch to branch—until finally, one flies into the net. “Yes!” Butler whispers. The…

JENN LODI-SMITH COULD HAVE fallen in love with birds at many moments. As a girl, she watched shorebirds with her mom on Assateague Island. As a teenager, she marked up a Peterson Field Guide—then forgot about it. She liked birds but never became enamored. That is, until her nature-loving kids came along and turned Lodi-Smith into a full-blown birder. Today the family volunteers at a banding station and vacations at Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine, where Lodi-Smith first learned about “spark birds”: a term birders use for the animals that inspired their adoration. She was instantly captivated. A psychology professor at Canisius University in Buffalo, New York, she studies how major life events like going to college can influence someone’s personality—and spark birds do just that. In 2022 Lodi-Smith…

CAROLINE BARNES, AN ILLUSTRATOR IN MASSACHUSETTS, had never seen Wild Turkeys until about 20 years ago. In the dead of winter, she was surprised to spot two of the fowl—among North America’s bulkiest native birds—roosting in a tree outside her home in Brookline, near Boston. “I fell in love,” she says. She was witnessing one of the 20th century’s great conservation wins. Before colonial settlement, millions of turkeys roamed North America from the Atlantic coast to the southern Rockies. But by 1930, logging, agriculture, and overhunting had nearly driven the bird to extinction. In much of the East, the species had already disappeared. A Massachusetts official even grouped turkeys with now-extinct Passenger Pigeons and Great Auks: all “gone forever” from the state, all cautionary tales. But these quintessentially American birds…

SQUIRRELS CAN BE FOUND IN ALL SORTS OF habitats, from boreal forests to suburban backyards. But let’s be honest; you don’t really care where they live, so long as it’s far, far from your bird feeder. Many people go to great lengths to deter squirrels, from buying seed coated with chili pepper to engineering squirrel-proof feeder setups that would make Rube Goldberg proud. But experts say that the more than 65 species of tree and ground squirrels native to North America are worthy of not just respect but also admiration. “They are remarkable for how successful they are in places that are undergoing massive environmental change,” says Brad Cosentino, an ecologist at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The same instincts that drive tree squirrels to ransack bird feeders also make…