an avian cure for seasonal depression
related: i have a t-shirt that says "birdwatching goes both ways"
life felt utterly purposeless as the winter of 2020-2021 approached. atop covid quarantine, we’d have to deal with winter putting an end to regular outdoor gatherings. much of north america would endure one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record. but then, as if answering our prayers, nature did something sort of weird. it flung brightly-colored songbirds from remote boreal forests toward city parks, backyards, and gas station parking lots across the united states.
it felt like divine intervention: a combination of ecological factors triggered a rare “superflight” of finches. representatives from every species of eastern forest finch left their usual habitats in search of food, and in many cases, they relied directly or indirectly on human help. it was a symbiotic relationship: as these birds munched hungrily at our bird feeders, i and many birdwatchers finally had a reason to put on pants. these visitors galvanized a community of finch fans, drove support to a new nonprofit called the finch research network, and inspired a recently-published field guide, the stokes guide to finches of the united states and canada by lillian stokes and matt young. since the authors are my friends, i figured i’d do a little promo for it while exploring the enduring popularity of this bird family.
finches are a challenging group to draw a box around. whereas sparrows are mostly shy ground dwellers and swallows are aerial insectivores, the finches represent a family of 230+ bird species inhabiting every continent but antarctica (they’re introduced to oceania) from the southern tip of argentina to the tropical rainforest to the high elevations of tibet to the northernmost reaches of canada’s northwest territories. they feature a shocking array of colors, habitats, and beak shapes.
but a closer look makes it more obvious how our different finch species are related: here in north america, their diets of mostly seeds and fruits causes many finches to move around in ways that break precedents set by other songbirds. most other birds head north in the spring, breed in the boreal summer while feeding on a glut of insects, and return to the tropics for boreal winter as temperate forest insects become scarcer. but plants don’t necessarily produce large fruit and seed crops annually, so finches must be prepared to move. here’s a paragraph from an old post on this topic so i don’t have to write it again—just replace all the eastern temperate forest words (“deciduous,” "beech nuts,” “acorn,” “gray squirrel,” “blue jays”) with boreal forest words (“coniferous,” “spruce cones,” “mountain ash berries,” “red squirrel,” “finches”)
there’s suspicion that this movement has something to do with mast crops, where mast refers to tree fruits like beech nuts and acorns. lots of animals rely on deciduous mast, like gray squirrels and blue jays. but if these animals eat too much of the mast, then the trees can’t reproduce. so, ecologists hypothesize that in some years, all of the trees in the forest synchronize to produce so much mast that some of the seeds can escape consumption by seed eaters. all that food causes those animals’ populations to balloon, so the trees produce few or no seeds the following year to try and limit those populations. but blue jays have wings, so birds in areas with little to no mast might choose to migrate.
finch movements in response to masting cycles is a long-established idea in the bird-observing community. my favorite bird, the red crossbill, has been documented irrupting all over europe for centuries. and today, community scientists document mast crop abundance both on paper and in inaturalist projects to help us understand where finches will end up each winter. ontario biologist ron pittaway first conceived of this forecast decades ago, and biologist tyler hoar has since taken it over.
but 2020 was different. in part boosted by an outbreak of a native forest insect called the spruce budworm, several species of finches had better-than-average breeding years. at the same time, few conifer species produced cones that autumn—so it seemed like finches would move. tyler’s forecast was cautiously optimistic as other conifer forest birds like the red-breasted nuthatch started moving in the late summer. and soon a firehose of finches were blasting out of the boreal—flocks of pine siskins numbered in the thousands, evening grosbeaks attended feeders across the east as far south as florida, and redpolls, an arctic tundra species, showed up in new mexico. i spent many mornings observing red crossbills, usually a bird of the mountains here in new york, at brooklyn’s floyd bennett field and green-wood cemetery, and an evening grosbeak visited my street trees.
i’ve written about all of that before, though. what i haven’t written about is that irruptive finches are strongly attracted to human-altered areas, not just in new york, but everywhere. seasoned birders in eastern north america know that the easiest place to see the rare, fruit-loving pine grosbeak in winter is a crabapple-lined parking lot—often that of a gas station or mall. though more eager to eat insects in summer, pine siskins and evening grosbeaks happily hang at bird feeders alongside cardinals and blue jays. without native conifer cones available, red crossbills will go for concentrations of norway spruces and japanese black pines in cemeteries and along highways. these birds were hungry, and we were the an easy source of food.
while we were keeping these birds alive, they were doing the same for us, in a way. back in 1979, a medical director named r.a.f. cox wrote the following in a note titled “ornitherapy” for the british journal of medicine: “to the depressive or physically homebound, the simple pleasure of watching birds can be an incalculable comfort, while a deeper study of their identification and behaviour can add a new dimension to the most despondent of lives. as a tranquilizer, birdwatching may be as effective as any drug, but cheaper and safer than many.” that should sound familiar to the many birders who took up the hobby in 2020. plenty of research has demonstrated that encounters with wild animals and immersive outdoor activities can help reduce blood pressure, improve mood, decrease stress, etc. or, in other words, it was like nature sent a dose of cortisol-lowering medicine to our homes and local birding patches to help with covid-induced seasonal depression.
now, this would all seem like an adorable codependant relationship between human and bird. but in many cases, we’re benefiting a lot more from the finches than the converse. most notably, the evening grosbeak is the most rapidly-declining songbird in north america, for reasons that are still unclear but may have something to do with the availability of their preferred spruce budworm prey—a pest to humans we control via widespread pesticide application. hawai’i once had 55 species of native finch called honeycreepers, all evolved from a group of eurasian rosefinches that somehow ended up on the islands. today, all but 18 of those species are extinct and others will go extinct soon, specifically due to disease-carrying mosquitoes that humans brought to the islands.
but maybe 2020’s divine appearance of winter finches will help in the long run. it’s true that we’re losing birds at an alarming rate—there are 2.9 billion fewer breeding birds in north america than there were 50 years go. at the same time, we’re actually pretty good at keeping around the birds we care about. the population of peregrine falcons, ospreys, and bald eagles have all been on the rise thanks to targeted conservation. waterfowl populations overall have been doing ok, since their habitat is protected and managed by funds raised from hunting tags. given the fan base growing around finches since covid, maybe we can do the same for them.
i hope you’ll check out the new finch field guide and see why they’re one of my favorite groups of birds. i also encourage you to support bird conservation work—such as the finch research network, an organization which funds finch-related causes like protecting the honeycreepers. and if you want to meet a bunch of fellow finchheads, you can check out the finches, irruptions, and mast crops facebook group i am an admin for.
postscript:
i have an important announcement to make.… drumroll… I’M GOING TO ANTARCTICA!i leave on december 1 for buenos aires, then the boat departs on december 6. i’m thinking about writing a really long daily logbook for brittany a la logbook for grace and maybe i’ll publish some stuff from that here.
in the meantime, here’s where you can find me if you want to see me before i go:
10/27: queer birders walk, 10am, greenwood cemetery main gate (free!)
11/3: they blinded me with science x queer birders bird drag, 7:30pm, the flying fox tavern (free!)
11/9: bird walk at shirley chisholm state park fountain ave entrance, 9am (free, note date change)
11/10: 9:30am @ canarsie park, seaview av + east 88th st (free, register here)
11/16, nighthunters bird trivia and owl prowl, 4:30pm @ wave hill in the bronx ($65, register here)
finally: i’ve actually been on two trips since my last post, one to north dakota for brittany’s 10-year college reunion and one to calgary, canada for work. i was really hoping to find a species of finch in canada called the gray-crowned rosy finch, but instead all i could muster was… this great gray owl, the world’s largest species of owl by length and one of the most sought-after species of owl in north america. ah, well. but jokes aside, this was one of the most incredible bird experiences of my life. i found the bird on a lonely road outside of the city, just a few feet from the car. it hunted right in front of me without a care and gave me a several-minute show before flying off.
