There have been 450 bird species identified in the United States and Canada.

Some, like the European starlings, introduced to this continent, are not a species of concern. They certainly don’t need protection.

However, 81 of those 450 bird species are in a position, without special actions to protect them, to disappear. I have, especially in the past 25 years, noticed a significant loss of birds.

Doing some research, I found an organization called Partners in Flight that has gathered information for many years.

PIF has identified and charted six reasons for bird’s vulnerability: breeding distribution; nonbreeding distribution; breeding threats; nonbreeding threats; population sizes; and population trends. The latter looks at the long-term population losses, and those seeing at least a 50% population decline are classified as most vulnerable.

Some birds, like the lesser prairie chicken, have been most affected by the loss of their breeding areas (breeding threats), while the Eastern whip-poor-will is losing ground due to breeding threats and where it winters (nonbreeding threats). In the early 1980s while living in East Penn Township, I listened to whip-poor-wills calling almost nightly. After that, quiet evenings.

PIF has identified those 81 species and documented the causes of their declines. Some species have one major factor influencing their declines, but most however have many. Sixteen of those species I have seen in our region. Local birders, like Dave, Rich and I, have all seen the declines, especially in the last 20 or more years.

Let me refer to a few of which that have seen dramatic losses.

From about 1962 through 1967 I found a number of long-eared owls in a hemlock grove directly behind the Pohopoco Rod and Gun Club clubhouse south of “the Old Big Creek Highway,” now Pohopoco Drive. I believe in 1968 or 1969 the club property was condemned for the construction of Beltzville Dam. The hemlock grove remained, but I believe construction disturbance nearby pushed the owls away. Since the ’80s I look there every year for the owls or their pellets. No luck; they’ve experienced a 91% population decline nationwide.

Golden-winged warblers, losing their habitats in the Appalachians, may soon be on the endangered species list. We used to locate them atop the Pocono Plateau near the pumping station in Penn Forest Township. My last sighting there was in 2013. I’ve returned to that area each spring, sometimes multiple times each year, and have not seen another. The golden-winged warbler faces multiple problems; probably four or five of PIF’s factors listed above. One particular problem is hybridization with the blue-winged warbler. I’ll focus on hybrids in a future column.

(Birds like the prairie, golden-winged and blue-winged warbler actually thrived after large forest tracks were logged. The slow reforestation with few mature trees was to their liking.)

What can we do to help? We somehow have to limit urban sprawl. Housing developments gobbling up grasslands, meadows and forests. Find ways to control the rapid expansion of warehouses and data centers into those same areas.

If a warehouse has to be built, at least require that its roof hold solar panels that otherwise may have been erected in fields or, even worse, in forested areas, ruining even more breeding areas.

Also, cities in major flyways in spring, and especially autumn, need to reduce brightly lit tall buildings, which need patterned films applied to windows to make them look solid.

I was fortunate to have had a chance in my lifetime to observe many of these now-threatened birds. Let’s give our future generations some of those same opportunities. Here are 16 of the 81 vulnerable bird species that have bred, migrated through, or have been seen in the Carbon County area: Bicknell’s thrush, wood thrush, golden-winged warbler, Connecticut warbler, Cape May warbler, prairie warbler, Canada warbler, Kentucky warbler, cerulean warbler, bobolink, red-headed woodpecker, long-eared owl, Eastern whip-poor-will, olive-sided flycatcher, evening grosbeak and black-billed cuckoo. I have seen all but one of these.

True or False: Probably the biggest factor in our imperiled bird species is their loss of nonbreeding areas (wintering areas) in the tropics.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: Buffleheads rely on Northern flickers to utilize the cavities they excavate in tree trunks for the duck’s nests the following years.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com