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Mass Audubon Oriole Project 2009
Season Summary
Three beautiful males in an aerial ballet
(probably more of a battle)
In and out of the oak trees in my back yard!
Quite a sight and quite a sound!
- M. Tyler, Randolph
Another Record Breaking Season!
Once again, Bay State oriole fanatics outdid themselves and sent us record numbers of reports. We now have records from over 90% of Massachusetts towns including over 1250 confirmed nests. This brings the total records in the database to nearly 14,500. The detailed scorecard follows.
2009 Scorecard (2008 results in parentheses)
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Total orioles reported this season: 3,508 (3,374)
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Total Records in database: 14,441 (10,895)
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Total localities reported this season: 1,902 (1422)
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New localities: 1,347 (957)
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Repeat localities: 555 (465)
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Active nests confirmed this season: 320 (245)
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Total nest records in database: 1,259 (939)
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Participants this season: 973 (710)
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Towns reporting this season: 276 (266)
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New towns: 17 (19)
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Total towns in database: 317 (300)
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Towns with highest oriole counts
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Plymouth: 121
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Boston: 91
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Newton: 68
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Watertown: 61
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Falmouth & Lexington: 55
It should also be noted that there were numerous "honorable mentions" with 46 towns reporting 20-50 birds, far higher than in past years.
See map versions of some key statistics from this and previous years. We present the information in map format to control for differences in level of effort across towns.
Champion Oriole Counters
John Galluzzo of Weymouth captured top honors with 65 orioles counted on the South Shore. Perennial high-scorer Sharla Fenwick of Plymouth placed respectably with 40 birds followed by Dave Larson of Haverhill with 34 and Karen Nelson of Shrewsbury at 31. As with the towns many oriole pollers sent records in the teens and twenties.
End of Phase I
The completion of the 2009 season marks five years of counting Baltimore Orioles with each year significantly superseding the previous one in terms of number of citizen scientists participating, breadth of coverage and number of orioles and oriole nests recorded. This represents a huge effort involving thousands of people and has left no doubt in our mind that people care enough about the fate of these spectacular birds that they will take the trouble to make careful observations and send us the results. For this we are very grateful and hope that our loyal field workers will stay on board as we enter the next phase of the project. New oriole enthusiasts will of course continue to be most welcome, and we hope and trust that oriole watchers will be willing to help us track other Birds-to-Watch such as American Kestrels and other species that we will add to the website.
What Have We Accomplished?
In addition to assembling a formidable army of oriole counters we have:
- Created a baseline record of oriole occurrence (and especially nest records) in all regions of the state. This was one of the primary goals of Phase I and is critical to measuring changes in oriole populations in the future. This is almost certainly the densest record of Baltimore Oriole occurrence ever amassed over such a large area.
- Tested and refined a reporting technology that has become increasingly friendly to both users and analyzers. In the project's early years we depended mainly on people filling out and mailing printed cards. While many were game to submit records via e-mail, our first on-line reporting system was a bit cumbersome. But we've made steady improvements culminating in the addition of the Oriole Locator tool, which has enabled us to move away from written cards almost entirely.
- Greatly expanded awareness in the public at large about the gradual decline of Baltimore Orioles and many other "common" birds that are becoming scarcer year by year in barely noticeable increments. Declines by as much as 70% in populations of species thought to be invulnerable have occurred in the UK sand elsewhere, and it has become clear that we cannot continue to focus all of our attention on the rarest of the rare.
- Introduced many people of all ages to one of our most beautiful, musical and interesting songbirds. The comments section of our database is filled with statements like this one from Rosemary Saeed of Malden: I heard the male singing this bright beautiful morning after I had dropped off my son at the Early Learning Center at 8:00 am ~ The male was singing from the top of an oak tree behind the school in a nearby neighbor's yard ~ The song echoed a bit off the steep terrain behind the tree's location ~ beautiful!!!
What have we learned about Baltimore Orioles?
It is not possible to make any sweeping generalizations about how orioles are doing in Massachusetts with only five years of data. However it is possible to make a few observations based on what our oriole watchers have told us. The good news is that orioles are still fairly common at least locally throughout the state with many birds returning in successive years to past nesting areas. On the other hand, we get a certain number of e-mails that begin something like: "We had several pairs of orioles in our neighborhood for years, but now..."
In scouring our own communities for orioles, we are sometimes surprised by where we find orioles and where we don't. Some areas that seem ideal based on what we know about oriole habitat preferences (quite a lot), are devoid of orioles, while others, seemingly marginal, are brimming with them. Clearly there are preferential and/or negative factors that we don't (yet) understand.
Our correspondents frequently recount events in the lives of "their" orioles often involving threats to nest and young. Predators (crows, jays, grackles and cats) appear in these accounts much more frequently than cowbirds. The former of course tend to be more conspicuous and no conclusion can be deduced from random anecdotes, but it spotlights a question to look at as we go forward.
Orioles are often drawn to golf courses as good nest sites with multiple pairs present along some fairways. Wooded cemeteries which would also seem to be excellent oriole habitat seem in general not to be as popular. What does this tell us about oriole nesting preferences?
There are many other intriguing insights that we have gleaned from our oriole watchers' observations. These do not solve the many mysteries that still remain about orioles' lives, but they do suggest some questions we should be asking in the next phase of our study.
What's next?
Over the winter Mass Audubon scientists, mapping experts and IT specialists will be looking at our five years worth of data and boiling it down to the components—e.g. nest records that have been followed faithfully over multiple years and towns, parks and similar defined areas where all (or nearly all) oriole pairs have been located—that will be most useful in tracking population changes over time. We will also be thinking about key questions about oriole behavior that could be answered by our volunteers. These refinements will be reflected in changes in methodology for Phase II of the project that will begin next spring. We will still welcome newcomers to the project and will still want to get oriole records from those areas that are presently under sampled, but we will also be asking willing participants for more specific kinds of information and perhaps a more detailed account of their birds' lives. We will publish new guidelines on the website in early spring.
THANK YOU!
If, as many ornithologists now fear, we are in the midst of an era of a broad-based decline in the populations of many bird species including many of our most familiar "common" birds, the conservation challenges we face will not be addressed by a few knowledgeable people spending large amounts of money on the recovery of a few high profile species. We will need many eyes watching what is going on in the natural systems of their home communities. Creating networks of knowledgeable and experienced watchers who care about keeping their neighborhoods safe for Baltimore Orioles and other elements of our natural heritage is a key goal of the Birds-to-Watch program. This cannot happen without your participation. We're grateful to you for working with us on orioles and hope you will continue to help us understand and protect the birdlife of Massachusetts.
A special Thank You to volunteer Ruth Hopkinson who has spent countless hours over the last two seasons, pulling together the statistic that appear in the scorecard above—by no means a trivial task!
Learn more
Learn more about the Oriole Project, including how you can contribute:
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