Why are Seattle’s birds in decline?

It’s barely 7 a.m. and Michael Witter wants to be very clear. Today is not going to be a good day for birding.

In fact, we might not see many birds, he explained. Some might not even consider what we are here to do as birding at all.

For the last 15 years, Witter has come once a month to this urban patch of old-growth forest in Seward Park to take inventory of the birds here as part of the Neighborhood Bird Project, a Seattle volunteer-run citizen science project that predates the smartphone age.

But according to the organization’s first comprehensive analysis of the data, the birds are not doing well. Across the eight sites — which included flagship parks like Seward Park, Discovery Park, Golden Gardens Park and Magnuson Park — the diversity of bird species declined by 18% and the average number of birds observed in each survey declined by 21%.

Seward Park was a bright spot in the survey results. The number of birds and species diversity were found to be relatively stable.

So on this mid-August morning, something else was going on.

Standing in the upper parking lot, Witter explains we are in the dreaded time of the year that comes after the song-filled breeding season and before the fall migration. Most birds, tired from attracting a mate and raising chicks, are quietly busy molting, he said.

And, in the heavily forested Seward Park, most of the bird identification is done by recognizing chirps, calls and burbles from a deep menu of species rather than through a pair of binoculars, which is disorienting even for experienced birders, Witter said. 

Since 1994, volunteers with Birds Connect Seattle (previously, the Seattle Audubon Society) have gathered once a month at parks across the city early in the morning to do these standardized and systematic surveys, representing one of the longest-running urban citizen science bird projects in the country.

While Seattle’s bird decline is probably too slow and gradual for a casual birder to notice, the findings align with what has been documented nationally, said Joshua Morris, conservation director at Birds Connect Seattle. North America has lost 3 billion birds since 1970 — or around 30% of what was observed that year — according to a 2019 paper in Science.

Walking around the peninsula 

Despite Witter’s pessimistic outlook on seeing or hearing many birds, we were immediately rewarded with views of a juvenile barred owl perched above a picnic table, pointed out by a park ranger. It’s also hard to be too upset on a warm summer morning when both Witter and another longtime volunteer, Jon Woodard, are wearing shorts. 

Witter and Woodard pull up a map of Seward Park with two trail loops outlined in green and yellow highlights. Each will take one loop and stop at eight predetermined stations. As is the case across all the surveying sites, at each station the volunteers will note the time and then count the number of species they see or hear within a certain radius over five minutes.

Our first stop is in a wetland located near the park’s central spine. Barely able to see more than 5 feet in front of us, Witter gets to work by simply listening. Over the hum of a motorcycle, he tallies down nasally red-breasted nuthatches, the whipping call of a Bewick’s wren and a Hutton’s vireo.

We move into a valley for another count and then an open forest before stopping at the park’s oldest and largest tree, a “granddaddy Doug fir.” By this time, it’s clear Witter’s knowledge of both the park and its natural history is not limited to the birds. He identified a barn owl as being the source of a feather on the trail and pointed out another Douglas fir, likely scarred by a fire in the early days of the city.

We head down the eastern shoreline as the day stretches toward midmorning. The park is in full force with joggers, cyclists and even a group of open-water swimmers. Witter points out dying madrona trees, poison oak and at the southern terminus of the peninsula, a grove of oak trees, a dry habitat native to the Pacific Northwest. Right before the final station facing a grassland meadow, we spot a silent brown creeper moving up the trunk of a cedar.

Birds on the decline

The Birds Connect Seattle analysis also showed the steepest declines were found among shorebirds, blackbirds, swallows and kinglets, which mainly hang out in mature forests.

Species like the common murre, sanderlings and the black scoter had not been recorded in the surveys in over a decade, according to the report. The report also noted that many of the species that have declined in Seattle are designated as vulnerable to climate change by the National Audubon Society.

In the Seattle group’s surveys, Discovery and Magnuson parks were found to have seen declines in bird counts of around 25% and 32%, respectively. Washington Park Arboretum had the largest decline, a 41% decrease in counts.

While it’s difficult for any ecology study to point to exactly why an animal population has declined, said Morris at Birds Connect Seattle, habitat loss is the historical driver. The time during which volunteers documented the large decline in birds at the Arboretum was the same time the park lost 16 acres to the Arboretum trail, he said. While three trees were planted for every one cut down, it takes time for that forest to mature.

Across all the parks, aerial insectivores — which include the swallows, swifts and flycatchers that hunt insects in the air — in particular declined the fastest among land birds, with a decrease of 59%. Cliff swallows saw a 96% decrease in their counts since 2005, followed by Vaux’s swifts and barn swallows at 92% and 81%, respectively.

These birds have been identified as species of concern as their decline, likely driven by pesticide use and loss of nesting sites, has been noted nationally. 

With any citizen science effort, it’s possible the data has been distorted. Volunteers could have gotten better or worse at identifying birds over the years, or it may be that more birds are identified when there are more volunteers, Morris said. Or it’s possible that counts have been exaggerated or underreported — an easy possibility when birding by ear.

However, for the conservation organization, these results renew calls to protect the city’s existing green spaces and canopies, reduce insecticide use and artificial lights, minimize bird collisions with windows and spur individual action.

Benefits of slow birding

While the bird diversity and count declines weren’t found to be statistically significant at Seward Park, it’s possible there is another thing endangered here. 

Woodard and Witter have been the sole monthly volunteers at Seward Park for over a decade. Other volunteers moved away years ago. When I ask if they fear the count wouldn’t go on without them, they simply nod.

It’s not just Seward Park, said Morris. The ebb and flow of volunteers is an “increasing pain point” for the organization, which has had to shuffle volunteers across the parks to cover all the routes.

Given the large time commitment of the project, Morris said, the organization may hold discussions in the future with volunteers on how to adapt the project to answer specific conservation questions.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic made birding a mainstream hobby, birding apps like Merlin and eBird have taught scores of young people and casual strollers how to identify species both visually and by call. For better or worse, these apps also offer a gamified experience of nature. For some, the appeal of birding is inextricably linked to adding more species to their “life list” — an ongoing tally of birds they’ve spotted — or even to competing with other birders.

Perhaps for this reason, or lack of awareness, the birding boom has not been extended to the survey efforts at Seward Park. 

Decades ago, Witter had a front-row seat to the more extreme end of birding as a guide on the Pribilof Islands, a remote place in the middle of the Bering Sea. Routinely, visitors would be uninterested in seeing species already on their lists for the year, even if they had flown across the country to be there.

While you might not see an extraordinarily rare bird at Seward Park, these monthly surveys are a sort of antidote, a slow version of birding. Over a decade ago, there was a flock of parrots in the park, Witter recounts. Since then he’s noticed flocks of killdeer north of the park and observed the disappearance of sandpipers, swifts and swallows.

There is something to be learned when you show up month after month at the same place, noticing how things change — through seasons, people or trees. Not only the bird population, but the life around it.

As for birding by ear, don’t be intimidated, Witter said. Anyone can learn it, especially with the help of Merlin, the most popular bird identification app. 

“Tell your friends,” Witter joked.