BirdFest & Bluegrass gets serious about threats to birds

Birds are all over the sky — aren’t they? If so, why has 2018 in particular been deemed “Year of the Bird” by National Geographic, the National Audubon Society and 150 other worried agencies and nature watchers?

Because birds are not all over the sky the way they used to be. That’s despite this year’s centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, an agreement between the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan and Russia that makes it illegal to hunt, kill, capture or sell some 800 species of migrating birds. But the treaty still doesn’t block pollution, climate change, disappearing habitat; meanwhile, political and legal challenges to protections — like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act — are unending.

Birds are in widespread danger, according to a vast and growing amount of evidence. The latest is a study by a British agency called Bird Life International, which found that 40 percent of the world’s bird species are in decline, and one species in eight faces global extinction.

All of which is why the Friends of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge haven’t just embraced 2018 as the Year of the Bird and planned another annual BirdFest & Bluegrass festival; they’ve also crowned their own local Bird of the Year to draw attention to that species’ dependence on locally disappearing habitat.

The Ridgefield refuge’s Bird of the Year for 2018 is the California scrub jay, “one of the many species that depend on the Oregon white oak for food,” said BirdFest & Bluegrass coordinator Alix Danielsen. Oak savannas once covered 1.8 million acres in the Pacific Northwest, he said, but are down to 47,000 acres now.

“At the refuge, we are embarking on an important ‘oak release’ project over the next year … enhancing an area of the refuge with a large population of oaks that are currently being overcrowded by Douglas firs,” Danielsen said. “Our project will help increase biodiversity, enhance and protect habitat for a large number of species that depend on the oaks, including the scrub jay.”

As you can see from the annual BirdFest & Bluegrass button by Patrick Hildreth, the California scrub jay also plays one mean fiddle.

Dancing like craniacs

The busy schedule for BirdFest & Bluegrass features everything from kayak and canoe outings to birding walks and workshops — including sessions on photography, watercolor painting and even bird language. Vendors and artisans in the birder’s marketplace will showcase clothing, pottery, paintings, photography and much more. That’s set for all day Oct. 6 at the Ridgefield Community Center.

Open bluegrass jams will be at various locations around town throughout Oct. 6, too. The members of the Misty Mamas bluegrass band, who are known for signing like birds, will host workshops in both harmony singing and guitar playing (intermediate level). Afterwards, at 2 p.m. Oct. 6, the Misty Mamas will perform a family-friendly show at the Old Liberty Theater ($5 donation to the Friends organization suggested, or buy one of those scrub jay buttons for $5).

But the weekend’s real highlight is a group of special outings that organizers call once-in-a-lifetime (so don’t fail to preregister as soon as possible; the fee is $30). The migrating sandhill cranes that roost in droves at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge make for “a pretty fantastic sight,” said Eric Anderson, a deputy project manager at the Ridgefield refuge.

“Cranes are solitary critters. To see a concentration of dozens of them — there are just a few places in this area where that happens,” he said, and the refuge is one of them.

Take the sandhill crane tour — a 500-yard hike to a blind that’s usually off-limits to the public, Anderson said — and what you’ll see are majestic white birds with wide wingspans and distinctive red forehead markings arriving (in the evening) or departing (in the morning), loudly calling to each other and performing surprisingly complex hopping-around dances. While those dances are usually meant to attract mates, they often appear simply to express some essential crane joie de vivre.

“Sometimes the dance involves wing flapping, bowing, jumping, putting on quite the show,” the Friends organization says. “Some just can’t keep their feet still, and dance all year long.”