Protecting warbler habitat: The American Bird Conservancy, the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation and the Nature Conservancy have joined forces to purchase and in conjunction with the Missouri Department of Conservation, protect 880 acres along Horse Creek, a tributary of the Current River, on behalf of the nearly-endangered Cerulean Warbler.  The Cerulean has declined about 70% since the early 1960s.  Preventing clearcutting, using prescribed burns and other land-enhancement management will improve Cerulean habitat and keep cowbirds from moving in.

Beyond both being flying animals that eat bugs, the preservation of both bats and birds may depend on the conservation efforts on behalf of each. Bird lovers: if you think bats are scary creatures, what’s happening to them is incredibly frightening—and the same destructive forces imperil our feathered friends!

Mick and I joined Audubon with a big interest in bats, not birds. EOAS has supported our chiropte­ran interests, most notably in the 1980’s by fully endorsing efforts to protect the bat hibernaculum on Pilot Knob. A colony of endangered Indiana bats were threatened by repeated human disturbance, and after a youth was severely injured by rock collapse while trespassing into the mines, there was talk of dynamiting the entrances shut: this would have eliminated the bats completely. Our Chapter strongly lob­bied for protection, and eventually the U.S. Fish and Wildlife took over ownership and secured the mountain top with a wire fence. Through the years Chapter members have helped with gate installation and ongoing bat research at Pilot Knob. Last fall Mick and I assisted state and federal biologists in net­ting, banding and counting bats at Pilot Knob. Trapping and releasing bats is a way of studying popula­tion changes.  On September 26^th, we netted for just two hours, and obviously many bats successfully eluded the traps, and more were still exiting the mines when the count was ended. Still the total count was impressive: 957 Indiana bats; 312 northern myotis; 112 little browns; 8 eastern pipistrelles;  2 grays; 2 big browns; 4 small-footed bats; and 1 red bat.

The Indiana bat colony, unfortunately, is only a remnant of the huge colony that used the mines in past years. Surveys in the 1950s reliably documented 80,000 to 100,000 bats. It seems that a mine col­lapse in 1979 blocked off major sections of the mine, and quite possibly killed large numbers of bats directly. This is one of the consequences of bats having been forced by human disturbance from their pre­ferred caves into such unstable sites. Still, what’s left of the Pilot Knob colony seems to be holding its own, perhaps even increasing a little. Because of conservation efforts here and elsewhere, Indiana bats in general appear to be slowly coming back from the population collapse that occurred in the latter half of the 20^th century. And it looks like the mountaintop may again become accessible to the general public: a tourist attraction for the area, a mountaintop woodland for birds, and an underground home for the bats.

But let me get back to bats and birds more generally. Global climate change is a major concern for both. Earlier springtime warming causes birds to start their northerly migration sooner, sometimes ahead of the ripening of their customary food crops: insufficient food supplies can lead to starvation of many adults and poor reproductive success for the survivors. Likewise, bats that end their hibernation too early because of unseasonably early warming may find there are too few insects to restore the bats’ body weight. The increasing numbers of summer heat spells and droughts also kill food sources for bats and birds, and the hot summers are especially hard on the young of both.

Another shared conservation issue for bats and birds is mortality caused by collision with wind­mills, windows and cell towers. As windmills proliferate, more birds and bats are being decimated by the blades. This is not to take away from the importance wind power may have on reducing the nation’s need for fossil fuels (coal furnaces contribute to climate change and mercury poisoning, clearly bad for bats and birds). Fortunately, new innovations in windmill design and window coverings may save our flying friends. Shared towers and more satellites are possible answers for reducing cell tower collisions.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the strange malady killing bats in the northeast, commonly dubbed the White Nose Syndrome for the conspicuous symptoms that appear on cave-hibernating bats shortly before they die of starvation.  Declines exceeding 75% have been occurring over the past two years. Researchers now think they have identified a fungus as the culprit: much more research is needed if a cure—or pre­vention—is to be found, and so far we are fortunate that the disease has not spread further west. But one can be certain that what is learned in trying to stop (or at least minimize) the catastrophe will be important as we continue to help other animals struggling to survive. Perhaps someday wild-captured bats can be bred to restock areas where they have precipitously declined or disappeared—using the California condor and the Whooping Crane recovery programs as templates for such success.

There is no doubt that the greatest threat to bats and birds is the human species; we’ve been unkind to both, and our impact has worsened tremendously with our own population explosion. But our one sav­ing grace is that we do have a large cranium capable of turning our destructive tendencies and technolo­gies into life-saving strategies, for ourselves and for other species. All winged creatures deserve their right to fly and coexist with one another and with us: that is the harmony on which all life depends.

“You’re a bird watcher, aren’t you,” Mr. Claude Klepzig said when he saw me raking leaves in my yard.  He leaned back on his son’s pick-up truck.

   “It was right after the first World War.  I was only about six years old.  My family lived on the Current River in Shannon County and we traveled down into southern Missouri looking for timber to buy.  We visited a family at Wilderness, Missouri, and I was left in the company of an old man while my folks went out to see the timber.

   “The old man said, ‘Come here, Sonny, I want to show you something.’  He led me to some nearby trees and said, ‘Look at those branches hanging down.  See how they are bent down instead of growing up like branches are supposed to do?  That’s because flocks of wild pigeons used to come here and roost by the millions.  The weight of those birds year after year on those branches caused them to grow that way.  And today there’s not a single one of those wild pigeons alive.’”

   That was the first time I thought about the Passenger Pigeon roosting here in Missouri.  But I had read quite a bit about those birds that were once the most abundant bird in North America.  John James Audubon said he saw flocks that completely darkened the skies when they flew over.

   During the 19^th Century this species went from being one of the most abundant birds on the planet all the way down to extinction.  Passenger Pigeons traveled and roosted in the largest groups or flocks of any other creature.  They were considered such a threat to farmers that in 1703 the Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec formally excommunicated them.

   It was possible to see flocks of them a mile wide and 300 miles long, taking several days to pass and containing up to a billion birds.  In the summer the birds lived in North American forest habitats east of the Rocky Mountains but in the winter they often migrated to the southern United States and even to Mexico and Cuba.

   They were considered a very “social” bird, living in colonies stretching over hundreds of square miles.  They practiced “communal breeding” with up to a hundred nests in a single tree.

   From the normal predators there was “safety in numbers” since flocks often numbered into the hundreds of thousands of birds.  Wolves, foxes, weasels and hawks could not possibly dent the enormous population.  But this communal breeding became dangerous when man discovered that the birds had commercial value. 

   Prior to the arrival of Europeans, native Americans occasionally used pigeons for meat.  But in the early 1800s commercial hunters began killing them on an enormous scale, netting and shooting them to sell in city markets as food.  They also used them as live targets for trap shooting. 

   John James Audubon described the slaughter preparations at a known pigeon-roosting site:

   “Few pigeons were then to be seen, but a great number of persons with horses, wagons, guns and ammunition had already established encampments on the borders.  Two farmers from the vicinity of Russelsville, distant more than a hundred miles, had driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fattened on the pigeons, which were to be slaughtered.  Here and there the people employed in plucking and salting what had already been procured, were seen sitting in the midst of large piles of these birds.  The dung lay several inches deep covering the whole extent of the roosting place.”

   Boxcar loads of pigeons were shipped to Eastern cities.  In 1805 the price of a pair of pigeons in New York City was two cents.  They were fed to slaves and servants who often saw no other meat.

   Although it was evident the numbers of birds seemed to be decreasing, the slaughter still continued.  One market hunter shipped three million birds in the year 1878 when more railroads were being developed following the Civil War.

   But the extinction of the species was also attributed to several other causes.  Loss of habitat was caused by deforestation as the settlers cleared more and more farmland.  As their numbers decreased the birds could no longer rely on their high population density for protection or for success in their breeding strategy.

   One of the last big colonies of Passenger Pigeons was at Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878.  Hunters were killing 50,000 birds each day for a period of five months.  And in 1896 the final flock of 250,000 birds was killed by “sportsmen” who knew it was the last flock of that size.

   The last confirmed sighting of a Passenger Pigeon in the wild was near Sargents, Ohio, on March 22, 1900.  For several years a reward was offered for a living specimen but none were found.  A number of potential sightings were reported but not confirmed in the years to 1930.

   The very last living bird was named Martha.  She lived in a cage in the Cincinnati zoo and she died on September 14, 1914.

   Across the United States there are a number of places whose names are in remembrance of the former abundance of the species.  A few examples are: Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; Pigeon Lakes, Minnesota; Pigeon Point, Minnesota; Pigeon Roost State Historic Site, Indiana; Pigeontown, Pennsylvania; Pigeon Hill in Marietta, Georgia, and many others.