It’s not every day that an eight-pound book lands in my mailbox. “The Breeding Birds of Minnesota” is not only a tome; it’s a monument to the thousands of volunteers and professionals who had a hand in creating it, and a treasure trove of stories and images of birds in our state.
Distinct from a bird guide, a bird atlas describes the distribution, abundance, seasonal patterns, and long-term population changes of 250 birds that nest in Minnesota. But this brand-new atlas for Minnesota goes beyond that, providing not just dry counts but vivid descriptions, stunning photographs, images to show the kinds of habitat each bird favors, graphs for population trends, and estimates of vulnerability to climate change and other threats. It’s an engaging way to find out more about our birds and how they are doing.
One of the authors, Lee Pfannmuller, attributes the origin of bird atlases to the ambitious environmental legislation of the 1960s and 1970s. “Those laws required environmental review, endangered species protection, and other actions which required us to have more information,” she told me. On-the-ground conservation and good land use planning required more precise information. “If you want to protect a part of St. Louis County as habitat for an endangered bird, it doesn’t help to know it’s there, in an area as big as New England,” she observed.
And everyone knows how much birders like to go out and add to their life lists. But no one could have predicted how long this project would take. It began officially in 2009, after several years of discussion and planning among national and state government agencies and voluntary organizations. And only now, 15 years later, the finished product rests on my lap.
Funding for the project came from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (funded by the Minnesota Lottery) and Minnesota Audubon.
Pfannmuller described the work behind the book for Agate Magazine in 2018. Thousands of volunteers tramped the state, following a defined protocol and concentrating their efforts on pre-determined locations in each of Minnesota’s 1,806 townships. The University of Minnesota Duluth’s Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) trained skilled field staff to survey more remote and challenging areas. These counters were screened: they took hearing tests; they had to be able to identify 86 bird songs. Then they were trained for several days “to make sure everybody would be doing it in approximately the same way,” according to co-author Jerry Niemi, a bird expert and administrator at NRRI at the time. “And they weren’t paid a lot of money; they did it mostly for the love of it.”
Five years later, in 2014, the data was in, but it still needed to be verified. I asked co-author Jan Green how that was done. With a soft chuckle, she replied, “Intuition.” Like other serious birders, Green has an overall understanding of which birds are likely to be found in which landscapes. “Is it reasonable,” she asked herself, “to have seen that bird in that place at that time?” Knowing which birds’ calls can be easily confused revealed some mistakes; the authors also looked for notes and more details on questionable observations. Once they were satisfied with the accuracy of the data, they turned it over to NRRI staff, who in 2016 designed a new website. The site has seen a lot of use, with 18,000 users and 54,000 visits just in the last six months. The most frequently used features are the interactive maps, which pinpoint observations of each species.
Before this major effort, the last comprehensive look at Minnesota’s bird population was a two-volume survey produced by T.S. Roberts in 1932. Roberts was a medical doctor; he helped found the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota (named after its chief benefactor, a former patient of Dr. Roberts.)
In addition to his teaching and doctoring, Roberts was also a very good writer. As Lee Pfannmuller points out, in the early days of birdwatching, field biologists didn’t have the equipment we have today—cameras, binoculars, and audio equipment. Instead, they had their language. “And I think people like Roberts, Aldo Leopold, Arthur Bent, and even Audubon used their beautiful language to describe these birds and they often described them better than we can today.” She included a quote from Roberts in the new atlas that describes the short, buzzy song of the grasshopper sparrow. “Its song is so thin and so weak, that the grasshopper after which he is named would be ashamed to have it come from his fiddle.” Not very complimentary, but an evocative description!
Another example of descriptions by earlier authors is this appreciation of the Upland Sandpiper from Aldo Leopold: “Whoever invented the word ‘grace’ must have seen the wing-folding of the plover [Sandpiper],” a bird described more precisely by Paul Johnsgard, who noted that after alighting on a perch, they raise both wings above their bodies “momentarily, ballerinalike, before inserting them delicately inside their flank feathers.” Makes me want to go right out and look for one!
These colorful quotes from earlier observers help fill out the histories of the birds included in the atlas. Because it’s the first bird atlas for Minnesota, the authors wanted to provide as much historical information as possible. And these descriptions certainly help the reader get to know the birds. Speaking of closer, when I saw photographer David Brislance’s full-page image of a bright-eyed Black-capped Chickadee, after an involuntary gasp, my first thought was, “Well, that’s the closest I’ll ever get to a chickadee, even though they’re at our feeder every day.”
Credit must go to Brislance and the many other photographers whose work enriches the book. The images are not just beautiful; they clearly highlight the characteristic features that help birders identify each one.
Another segment that helps the reader understand and appreciate each species is the summary of the conservation challenges they face. These include the birds’ vulnerability to climate change and other factors.
Take —at random—the Gadwall. Saluting the males as “dapper in their breeding plumage…” the entry goes on to include the origin of the scientific name (Mareca strepera: marecca is Brazilian for “smaller duck,” and strepere is Latin for “to make a loud noise”), the distribution over time as recorded by Roberts and more recent writers, their present abundance, and—in the case of the Gadwall—the expansion of the species to the west. “Although these potential gains are promising, it is critical that aggressive wetland and grassland conservation efforts continue to help ensure the future of this elegant but often overlooked waterfowl species,” the account concludes.
The authors agreed it was important to include this information about the challenges confronting our birds. Pfannmuller points to an appendix showing that most boreal species will disappear from Minnesota as we reach 1.5 degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels. “It’s heartbreaking, and I don’t think most people have any concept of that,” she says. “Some of the creatures that are in this book won’t always be there.”
But thanks to this book, people will always be able to see what’s here now, and hopefully —after 20 years or so—how things have changed. Better still, many of us will be inspired by the book to take the actions necessary to protect our breeding birds whenever possible.
Lee A. Pfannmuller served as state planning coordinator and interim executive director at Audubon Minnesota. She was director of the Division of Ecological Resources at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, where she also spent fifteen years working with the Nongame Wildlife Program, the Natural Heritage Program, the Scientific and Natural Areas Program, and the Division of Minerals.
Gerald J. Niemi is a retired professor of biology. From 1988 to 2008 he was director of the Center for Water and the Environment at the Natural Resources Research Institute, University of Minnesota Duluth. His research focused on birds, the Great Lakes, conservation, and natural resource sustainability.
Janet C. Green has been observing and studying Minnesota birds since the 1960s. She has been involved with the National Audubon Society, the Duluth and Minnesota Audubon Societies, the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union, and DNR Advisory Committees. Author of many bird books and guides, she is cofounder of the Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve.
