1 of nature's rarest birds about to mark 5 years since comeback from near extinction

A five-year anniversary is coming next month for one of nature’s most beloved yet elusive creatures.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted Kirtland’s warbler from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife on Oct. 9, 2019.

The tiny songbird’s recovery from near-extinction has been hailed as one of North America’s greatest conservation achievements. It was one of the first birds placed on the federal endangered species list after the government created it in 1973.

Though it hangs out much of the year in northern Lower Michigan’s jack pine forests, there are a couple of Ohio connections to the bird.

The first recorded sighting of a Kirtland’s warbler was on May 13, 1851, on a farm near Cleveland owned by Dr. Jared Kirtland.

His son-in-law, ornithologist Charles Pease, shot it. Neither he nor Dr. Kirtland recognized the species.

The two consulted Spencer F. Baird, a renowned bird biologist and assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, according to a 2012 article published by the University of Michigan Press.

Following a lengthy analysis in Washington, it was confirmed that the bird Mr. Pease shot was an undiscovered species at the time, so the decision was made to name it after Dr. Kirtland, a one-time probate judge, physician, member of the Ohio House of Representatives, and co-founder of both a medical school and the forerunner to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

“This species, which was shot near Cleveland, Ohio, by Mr. Charles Pease, May 13, 1851, is appropriately dedicated to Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, of Cleveland, a gentleman to whom, more than any one living, we are indebted for a knowledge of the Natural History of the Mississippi Valley,” Mr. Baird wrote in the Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York.

Another Ohio connection to the bird has closer ties to Toledo.

Although Kirtland’s warbler spends most of its time in northern Michigan or in the Bahamas, its winter home, it is known to use the western Lake Erie region, including Magee Marsh, as a stopover point during its spring migration, usually around the second week of May.

The flyway comes right through northwest Ohio. Other preferred stops along the migration route are in southern Georgia and northern Florida, according to Dave Ewert, an American Bird Conservancy senior conservation scientist.

Mr. Ewert was one of three speakers on a webinar the group hosted to celebrate the upcoming fifth anniversary of the Kirtland’s warbler delisting.

“It is the rarest North American migratory species by far,” he said. “Because of the intrigue of the Kirtland’s warbler, people have studied it intensely.”

Population estimates go back to 1951. By 1971, two years before the Endangered Species Act came into existence, the bird’s future was in doubt because it was believed there were only 200 of them remaining.

A Kirtland’s warbler recovery team, consisting of multiple local, state, and federal governmental agencies, universities, and nonprofit science groups, grew out of an advisory committee to develop conservation strategies, such as trying to keep distance between the tiny songbird and its chief nemesis, the brown-headed cowbird.

Given the opportunity, cowbirds — about three times bigger — will lay their eggs in the nests of the warblers, which leads to all kinds of problems.

Kirtland’s warbler now has a breeding population of about 4,800 birds. One of the more encouraging signs, though, is research showing the songbird is moving beyond northern Michigan jack pines and is spreading its wings into parts of Wisconsin and Ontario, speakers said.

“Are we done?” asked Steve Roels, the American Bird Conservancy’s Kirtland’s warbler program director and conservation team coordinator who was also a webinar speaker. “Do we get to throw a party and move on to another species? No, we can’t do that. We have to maintain our conservation focus.”

Climate change is making it more difficult to maintain a conservation focus for just about any species these days, the experts said.

But there’s an extra challenge for Kirtland’s warbler because of its reliance on the Bahamas as a winter home.

“As a small island nation, we're susceptible to the effects of climate change,” said the webinar’s other speaker, Giselle Deane, Bahamas National Trust senior science officer.

Those impacts include fire and sea level rise, as well as hurricanes and storms in general that are occurring with greater frequency and intensity. All can quickly destroy wildlife habitat on the Bahamian islands, Ms. Deane said.

Such events also can mean there might not be enough food for them when they arrive, she said.

Pressure also comes from developers.

“The heavy reliance on tourism for the Bahamas is very big,” Ms. Deane said. “Increased tourism means there will be an increase in development.”

The birds seem to prefer the central Bahamian islands over others.

They are no stranger to the island of Eleuthera in particular. Their numbers are so abundant there that locals welcome their arrival with kind of a festival atmosphere, Ms. Deane said.

“The people of South Eleuthera look forward to it every year,” she said.

And here’s a fun fact about Kirtland’s warbler that a lot of people don’t know: They like goat farms.

Goat farming is a popular industry in the Bahamas. For reasons unknown, the birds like to hang out with the goats.

It apparently has something to do with the natural mowing that the goats perform. “Grazing keeps plants short and scrubby,” Ms. Deane said.

The answer may be more about basic food and water needs, though.

The birds do love their fruit down there, Mr. Ewert said.

“Because goats require water, goat farms often sit in areas with a high water table,” according to the American Bird Conservancy’s website. “Such locations often support food production for the Kirtland's warblers during the late winter dry period.”