For more than three decades, Dr. Ronald Canterbury has been waking up before dawn and setting up nets out in places across the country like Crosby Township, a rural part of Hamilton County.
As an ornithologist, it's all part of his job keeping track of the health of various bird populations. Though he's focused especially on species like the dwindling golden-winged warbler, he keeps tabs on a number of local bird species too. And what he's been seeing lately is distressing.
"Birds are in big decline," he says. "I don't catch nearly as many as I did 20 or 30 years ago. Twenty years ago I would trap 50 to 70 birds (in a day). Nowadays the numbers are more like 10 to 20. Most species are declining, and we know that from many other forms of research."
Some local species are seeing population declines as big as 60% or 70% since the 1960s. Those declines have accelerated more recently, Canterbury says, due to things like habitat loss and climate change.
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Canterbury says development of formerly rural areas has deprived birds of places to rest, mate and eat. But it's also put new dangers in their way — traffic, house pets like cats, and other hazards kill billions of birds a year across the globe. Canterbury partners with other researchers to find ways to mitigate those risks.
"A big one I'm working on, especially in the Greater Cincinnati area, is window fatalities," he says. "They can't see glass — we're killing a large number with windows."
Canterbury says stopping the decline is of vast importance. Of course it's pleasant to hear bird songs and to go out and bird watch. But there's more to it than that. Canterbury says many species — he names various kinds of swallows for example — provide a very real benefit to public health. Without them, big problems will emerge.
"There are lots of diseases we're worried about now transmitted by mosquitos and ticks," he says. "Birds eat a lot of those."
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Canterbury says there are reasons to be encouraged. He teaches students at UC's Center for Field Studies near Miami Whitewater Forest in Crosby Township. He's seen the number of young people concerned about birds — and fired up to research them — on the rise.
This year, he's teaching about 50 students how to band birds so changes in their health and overall population numbers can be better understood.
Canterbury and his students set up nets, catch birds without injuring them, record their sex, weight, age and other vital data, and then affix a small identifying band on them before setting them free. The data collected through this process gives researchers like Canterbury a better idea of how well various species are holding up to the challenges they face and new ways to help them recover.
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He says there are all kinds of things people can do on a daily basis to help preserve local bird populations. Those include:
- Turning off porch lights at night. Lights at night confuse birds' migratory and sleep patterns.
- Keeping pets indoors. Studies suggest house cats kill up to a billion birds a year.
- Removing invasive plants and planting native species instead of a traditional grass lawn. These give birds safer nesting spaces, food and attract insects birds eat.
- Advocating for larger preserves providing habitat for birds and other wildlife.
Saving birds has a ripple effect too, Canterbury says.
"You're saving much more than the bird sometimes," he says. "You might be working on a cerulean warbler, but if you go down the food web, you're going to be saving a white-footed mouse on the ground, an owl that would eat that mouse, insects and all kinds of things."