The Legislative session in 2024 was a short, 30-day session solely focused on the state’s budget. But in that short time, we saw huge successes for conservation funding, which will ensure restoration and protection work will happen on the ground at a far greater scale than New Mexico has ever been able to do.

New Mexico’s 2024 legislative session ended with a historic $300 million appropriation for the Land of Enchantement Legacy Fund. This will support land and water conservation, agriculture, and outdoor recreation projects.

In the 2023 session, Audubon was part of a large coalition which worked to establish the Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund. Prior to this fund, New Mexico did not have a dedicated source of revenue for conservation work. Not only did this mean agencies had to request additional money from the legislature every time they wanted to do a large project not within its regular budget, it also meant we did not have the often-required matching dollars to secure federal money.

Click here to read full story in the Audubon Southwest newsletter

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Rosy-faced lovebirds are charismatic, petite parrots. They also aren’t afraid to use their heads — literally — to get around an awkward situation. A new study offers the latest evidence of the problem-solving prowess of the clever birds.

“They’re these incredibly smart animals who are really good problem solvers, and that also extends to the way that they move,” said Edwin Dickinson, a biomechanist at the New York Institute of Technology.

The parrots proved their talents to Dr. Dickinson and colleagues recently in a lab as they navigated perches that got smaller and smaller. When a rod got thin enough, the birds gave up on trying to keep their balance with two feet. Instead, they moved beneath the wire, hanging from their beaks and swinging their legs and bodies, almost like a monkey swinging from tree to tree in a forest.

Click here to read full story in the New York Times

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A new study has shown why Cooper’s Hawks and Sharp-shinned Hawks can share the same backyard when hunting at bird feeders. The research analyzed more than 1,000 observations of accipiter predation from Project FeederWatch, a partnership between the Cornell Lab and Birds Canada, which collects data from people across the U.S. and Canada who count birds at their feeders each winter.

The study revealed which birds are on the menu for the two well-known feeder stalkers. Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks are North America’s most common accipiters – the group of hawks that specializes in hunting birds on the wing. Their ranges overlap widely, and researchers wanted to know if differences in prey preferences might be one reason that these two similar species are sometimes able to share the same space.

Cooper’s Hawks are much larger than sharpies – on average, they weigh twice as much and are 50% longer. Nevertheless, the research team found that small songbirds – especially finches and sparrows – were top menu items for both Cooper’s and sharpies. The overall favorite: Dark-eyed Juncos. “Juncos are like the popcorn of the avian world,” says lead author Eliot Miller, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab.

While the petite Sharp-shinned Hawks heavily favored these smaller species, the bulkier Cooper’s Hawks went for both the popcorn and the hot dogs. Along with taking their share of small birds, Cooper’s Hawks frequently targeted medium-sized birds such as doves, starlings and blackbirds. “The smaller birds are much more abundant across different habitats,” says Miller, “so it makes sense that both hawk species would exploit that resource.”

The FeederWatch data also showed that many of the most-preyed-upon bird species – including juncos – shared a tendency to forage and feed on the ground. On the contrary, small songbirds such as chickadees and nuthatches – which abscond to a safe perch after quickly plucking seed from a feeder – became hawk food much less frequently.

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North America’s three rosy-finch species – Black, Brown-capped, and Gray-crowned – nest along talus slopes and snowfields up to 14,000 feet, among the highest altitudes for any birds in North America. These uncommon birds forage for insects and seeds on bare soil amid sparse tundra vegetation, traveling in small flocks that, because they seldom encounter humans, can be surprisingly tame. Due to the inaccessibility of their habitat, however, many of the surveys traditionally used to assess trends in rosy-finch populations miss them almost completely. In winter, these birds descend to lower elevations, but their nomadic habits still make it hard to estimate their numbers.

Now, the threat of climate change is spurring new urgency throughout the Southwest to learn more about the health of rosy-finch populations, and predict what could become of them as the snowy reaches where they live warm up.

In New Mexico, all three species can be found in winter at Sandia Crest, near Albuquerque, where they are banded from November through March each year as part of the Rosy-Finch Project, run by Rio Grande Bird Research. In Utah, the Sageland Collaborative also fits birds with leg bands containing microchips that can be “read” by special high-tech feeders hosted by ski resorts, allowing researchers to follow the movements of individual birds over time and estimate their lifespans. (So far, some tagged birds have continued to reappear for three years.)

Meanwhile, the Rosy-Finch Working Group, formalized in 2021 and including representatives from state agencies, nonprofits and universities throughout rosy-finches’ range, seeks to develop improved, standardized survey methods to accurately monitor rosy-finch populations. One study conducted by Colorado Parks and Wildlife and finalized this year found the state has an estimated 115,000 to 150,000 Brown-capped Rosy-Finches – a surprisingly healthy population.

Matt DeSaix, a Ph.D. student with Colorado State University’s Bird Genoscape Project, headed up a recent genetic analysis of Brown-capped Rosy-Finches, with an eye to both the species’ current genetic health and what the future might hold. He and his colleagues sequenced genes from feather and blood samples collected from birds at 11 sites spanning the species’ breeding range. They found no concerning lack of genetic diversity, nor any evidence of inbreeding at any of their sites, supporting the conclusion that the population is robust.

DeSaix’s project combined two methods of forecasting what might happen to rosy-finches in a warming world. His analysis suggests that good rosy-finch habitat will contract and that some amount of natural selection will have to take place for the birds to continue to flourish in the places they currently live. But he cautions that we still don’t know enough about these birds and how they use their habitats to say for sure what will happen.

The Rosy-Finch Working Group is already striving to identify potential ways to help buffer rosy-finches against the worst effects of climate change. Possibilities the group hopes to explore include improving habitat in the birds’ lower-elevation winter ranges by promoting native plants and fighting invasive weeds, and physically removing trees that may encroach upslope into rosy-finches’ winter foraging habitat as temperatures warm.

American Bird Conservancy

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The winter 2024 season of Climate Watch runs from January 15 through February 15. Birders throughout north-central New Mexico are needed to participate in this Audubon community-science effort. We already have observers in 12 areas around Cerrillos, Pecos, Santa Fe and White Rock, but need many more for easily accessible birdy areas including Galisteo, Lamy, Los Alamos, Española, Las Vegas, Taos and all parts north to Colorado.  Target species for Climate Watch include bluebirds, nuthatches, goldfinches, and Spotted Towhees. Observers will need to record their sightings from 12 stations in a single day in suitable habitat for one of the target species. Can you take a day to make this contribution to a large, long-term dataset? If you are already participating in Climate Watch, would you be willing to have a new observer join you? For more information, contact Albert Shultz at shultzaw@gmail.com or 505-699-1521.

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