There’s a Yellow Bird in My Yard

A little bird from Central America made a big stir in Albuquerque a couple weeks ago when it took up residence in a suburban back yard. The Yellow Grosbeak is rarely seen in the United States and has never before been spotted in New Mexico. The event has bird watchers traveling hundreds and even thousands of miles just to catch a glimpse of the small bird. The event has left bird watchers and scientists alike speculating on what may have caused the bird to travel so far away from its native range. Deforestation, pollution, and urban sprawl are of course popular choices, but I have another idea: Birds fly.

I’ve seen the pictures and I’ve seen the video on CNN. The Yellow Grosbeak is a pretty little bird, but it’s not especially remarkable and prior to it’s recent media coming out party, I’d never even heard of it. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to identify it. If I were to see a Yellow Grosbeak, my thoughts would probably go something like, “hey, there’s a yellow bird in my yard, how pretty.” Most people’s reaction to seeing this bird would be very similar to mine. The National Audubon Society boasts a membership of “over 400,000”. For simplicities sake, let’s say there are half million people in this country who could identify a Yellow Grosbeak (a gross exaggeration). Let’s also assume that there are 250 million people living in this country (a gross understatement). Simple math would tell you that only 1 in every 500 people could positively identify a Yellow Grosbeak if they noticed one. These pretty little yellow birds could be flying all over the southwest and we might never notice! In fact, I saw a couple pretty little yellow birds in my wife’s office the other day. Of course I’m pretty sure that they were Parakeets.

All I’m saying is that just because we haven’t noticed something doesn’t mean it’s not there. The same argument can be made about the previously extinct Ivory Billed woodpecker that was re-discovered in a flooded Arkansas forest last year. There are only about two and half million people in all of Arkansas to begin with. So if we use the same Audubon math that we used above there were no more than 5000 people in Arkansas who could have identified the bird to begin with. The woodpecker’s preferred habitat is flooded hardwood forest swamps that are generally only visited by duck hunters for a couple months out of the year. The duck hunter’s reaction to pictures of the Ivory Billed woodpecker: “Oh, I’ve seen those things before.” Sure, they probably actually saw Pilleated woodpeckers which are similar in size and appearance to the Ivory Billed woodpecker, but you never know. Those woodpeckers could be living all over the woodlands of Arkansas and Louisiana. There just aren’t enough people who are actually looking for them.

Birds can fly and birds migrate. The next time you see a pretty bird in your back yard, you might want to look it up and see what it is. Then again, would you really want hundreds of people from all over the country camped in front of your house with cameras and binoculars? If I saw a little yellow bird in my yard, you’d probably never hear about it.

Date Added: 20-03-2006