LAS CRUCES - Researchers at New Mexico State University are inviting members of the public to share information on a recent mass die-off of migratory birds — right from their mobile phones.
Reports from around the state indicate migratory species are dying in numbers described as "unprecedented" Saturday by Martha Desmond, a professor in the university's department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology.
Last weekend, biologists from NMSU and White Sands Missile Range examined nearly 300 carcasses gathered at the range and in Doña Ana County, but based on photos, videos and written observations from locations statewide, professor Martha Desmond anticipates the casualties are in the hundreds of thousands, "if not millions."
On golf courses, hiking areas and residential neighborhoods, residents have reported birds of migratory species dying in groups and living birds exhibiting lethargic and unusual behavior — not eating, flying low or gathering on the ground and being hit by vehicles.
The affected birds included both insect- and seed-eaters, but did not appear to include resident species such as roadrunner or quail.
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The carcasses collected by the researchers in Las Cruces will be sent for laboratory analysis, but results could be weeks away at the earliest, Desmond said.
On Monday she said the die-off might involve multiple causes, from drought conditions to early migration caused by wildfires in the western United States.
Desmond did not rule out potential impact of unseasonable cold weather and early snowfall in northern New Mexico last week, but said southern New Mexico temperatures "shouldn't be cold enough to kill birds. Birds migrate … with cold fronts, so it's actually these fronts that push them south, that help them move."
Also, large numbers of birds were found on White Sands Missile Range on Aug. 20, before the cold snap, with many reports of odd behavior and large die-offs preceding it.
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Desmond said the team was seeking permission to take feather samples before sending the carcasses for necropsy, because isotope analysis can help determine the birds' points of origin.
Using mobile app to gather data
Meanwhile, NMSU graduate student Allison Salas said the iNaturalist website and mobile app, a collaboration between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, can help researchers gather data on the species and regions where the die-off is taking place.
Salas set up the Southwest Avian Mortality Project within the app to allow members of the public to contribute their findings. Once a user locates the project, Salas said, "you can become a member and you can follow along to see everybody's submissions to keep up to date with it."
"It's designed for everybody and anybody across the country," Salas said. "Anybody that comes in contact with a dead bird can take a picture or just write a description and upload it to the app. As the project manager, I can see all of those submissions. … It just helps us monitor the full extent of this mass mortality."
Users can post photos to the app from their cell phones and/or write text descriptions of what they observe, while metadata from many devices can fill in the time and location of the photographs automatically.
"The iNaturalist app is actually designed to help new naturalists go out and observe things in their environment and take pictures," Salas said. "If I go out and take a picture somebody else has to agree with the I.D. that I suggest on my observation."
New Mexico Wildlife Center in Española confirmed Monday that the state Department of Game and Fish would collect bird carcasses from their facility Tuesday for laboratory analysis.
Migrating birds under stress
Audubon New Mexico Executive Director Jon Hayes also said there were likely overlapping factors in the recent die-off, although without necropsies it was a matter of educated guesses.
"During migration, it's an incredibly stressful time for these birds," Hayes said in an interview Monday. "They are already riding right on the line of starvation and survival during migration."
Hayes said he suspected recent high winds in New Mexico had a stronger impact than the cold temperatures, although that alone would not account for a mortality event likely involving hundreds of thousands of birds.
On Saturday, Desmond surmised that birds may have been forced by the western wildfires to begin migration before they had accumulated enough fat to provide energy for the flight. Hayes suggested an additional factor could be plumes of smoke or other conditions forcing birds to alter their route.
"When they have to deviate from their path and aren't doing the most direct, straight route, they're burning energy more," Hayes said.
Additional hazards faced by the birds are southwestern drought conditions and reduced insect populations that feed insectivores, any combination of which could result in large fatalities, but Hayes said that generally speaking, bird populations are resilient enough to absorb years with higher mortality events among birds.
"Now, if you see bad year after bad year after bad year, which is what we're worried about, that's when you start to get concerned," he said.
Hayes also warned that climate change is driving extreme weather, drought effects and exacerbating the scale of wildfires and hurricanes, making severe events, and their consequences for natural systems and species, more frequent.
"You can't tie any one event to climate change," Hayes said, "but the likelihood that these (events) are going to happen more frequently is something we can reliably predict based on climate models."
He added: "This is going to be something that's more and more common if we don't start to get our hands around this."
Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.
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