The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel has been organizing the Champions of the Flyway fundraiser since 2014.
PLYMOUTH – Lisa Schibley studies the picture on the screen, the plumage, color, shape of the beak, definitive stripes. Her eyes scan, calibrating size and shape. She clicks to the next photo, which is so like the last bird you wonder if it’s the same one. But, no. There’s a tiny swatch of color on the wing, a slightly different shade of grey. She smiles and clicks to the next one, with even more subtle vagaries of tans and browns.
They’re called warblers, and there are 19 different species of them in Israel.
That may not seem like a terribly important fact, but it’s going to matter on March 31 when 25 teams set out at midnight in Eilat, Israel, for a 24-hour competition to see which team can document the highest number of bird species. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel has been organizing the Champions of the Flyway fundraiser since 2014, all to raise money for different conservation projects. This will be the third year Manomet Inc. has participated, and the very first year an all-woman international team will compete.
Shibley, who is the International Shorebird Survey coordinator at Manomet, will be on that team.
“I am incredibly lucky to be able to represent Manomet on Women in Steppe,” Schibley said. “Alena Kacal, Lidiya Naiomi Jurborskyi-Skhinas, Amy Summerfelt and Hannah Buschert are my teammates, representing the East and West Coast of the USA, Trinidad and Tobago, Israel and Uzbekistan, and we are so excited to positively crush it.”
The optics company Kowa is sponsoring the team.
A flyway is the region where the birds fly between their breeding and feeding zones in the north and south.
“They breed in the north in general,” she said. “In Eurasia, they breed in the tundra of northern Russia and come down to India and Africa.”
In Israel, birding is dominated by men, according to teammate Kacal, who is the director of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory. Kacal notes the disparity between genders and birding in a survey of birding she conducted in Israel. She suggests that the gender-divided culture of Israeli society has influenced bird watching participation.
The all-woman team, then, is about removing these barriers; you could say Kacal’s hope is a migration of women into this male-dominated field.
So, Schibley and company have their work cut out for them. At midnight, March 31, the teams will assemble at the appointed spot at the southern tip of Israel and begin documenting and searching for birds. The pitch black of night will mean identifying species by just their calls, Schibley said, so her research includes memorizing the songs of a bird as well as its look. By March, she will need to be able to identify 263 different species.
No one sleeps for the 24-hour race that gives higher points to rare bird sightings. The key is spotting the most species, so Schibley said her team will likely be identifying owls and marsh birds at night, and combing the skies, brush and trees for the others during the day, like those warblers. Eyewitness accounts that are backed up by other team members count toward the score, and competitors take pictures of birds when possible, to prove they were spotted.
Why bother tracking birds?
Bird migrations and activity are a litmus, or indicator, of the environment, Schibley explained – its overall health. This competition will raise money to save the Steppe eagle, which was recently red-listed as endangered when its numbers declined rapidly. The Steppe eagle’s migratory pattern runs from northern Asia all the way down to southern Africa.
But the Steppe eagle isn’t the only species with plummeting numbers. Ornithologists recently revealed an alarming statistic: The North American bird population has dropped by 2.9 billion breeding adults.
Global warming has wreaked havoc on Arctic insect populations, with early hatchings due to off-season warming spells. That means the birds arriving there for their annual migration aren’t finding enough food, Schibley explained, because the insect cycles are no longer coinciding with the birds’ arrivals. Subsequent flooding as well as loss of habitat as the global human population continues to increase to 7 billion have spelled bad news to bird and other animal species forced into the red zone of the endangered list, or even extinction.
But the story of the formerly endangered bald eagle is a reminder that species can be rescued by sustainable living if people make changes, Schibley said. In 1963, there were only 487 pairs of these birds remaining. But the Endangered Species Act and American Eagle Foundation and American Bird Conservancy worked to save them, and today, bald eagle numbers have rebounded.
The same could be true for other species, she said. That’s why Manomet Inc. and other organizations continue to work toward a brighter future where humans can coexist with animals without wiping them out or destroying the environment. In addition to bird-banding and tracking migrations, Manomet Inc. works with the forest and food industries as well as businesses to reduce carbon footprints and make them more economically viable.
Money raised from the Champions of the Flyway will benefit Birdlife International partners in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to help save the Steppe eagle.
So far, Women of the Steppe has raised approximately $6,000 for the cause; the team needs to meet its goal of raising $12,000. Every penny goes to conservation.
Schibley said she’s hoping this competition will raise awareness and save the Steppe eagle from extinction.
To make a tax-deductible donation, visit champions-of-the-flyway.com/womeninsteppe and click on the “donate” button. For more information on Manomet Inc. visit manomet.org.
