To the Editor:

Over the course of the past several years I have noticed that I am seeing fewer red-winged blackbirds, fewer cedar waxwings, and fewer goldfinches. Is the climate crisis causing decreases in the numbers of songbirds?

The global climate crisis has brought a large change to weather in Northern New York and throughout the Northeast. Late Spring and Summer have become times of many days of cold rain. Often the rain falls all night; often it falls through much of the daylight. How can the tiny baby birds of the songbird species survive the onslaught of nesting-season cold rain? Their nests are open to the sky with only the wet bodies of their mothers to protect them.

I remember a vireo nest from last Spring. The female was sitting on eggs in a lone nest near our trail. We observed her there repeatedly. Then came the days of coming and going where the vireo was bringing food to her nestlings. These days of feeding young at the nest were strikingly short-numbered. In no more than a week, the mother bird stopped coming. After several days of no activity at the nest, my brother sprang the beech branch down. We looked inside; the nest was empty.

There was much cold rain in the nesting season last year. I wondered then as I am wondering now if all the cold rain had killed the baby vireos. Are the decreased numbers of goldfinches, blackbirds, and waxwings that I have been observing in recent years the result of young birds being killed by much cold rain? We know so little of the lives of birds. Their nests are most frequently in forest or marsh, off and away, out of sight. The deaths of young birds would take place completely unknown to us.

We must begin asking ourselves, how is the global climate crisis affecting birds? How much harm are the birds experiencing now? How much more harm will be brought upon them as the climate crisis worsens? Humans have caused the climate crisis. It is our responsibility to make a substantial effort to know what impact the crisis is having on birds and the other animals.

Donald Hassig
Colton