Get Involved! Join the Conservancy's online community and you can explore new places, receive email you want and build your own personalized nature page!   Go Deeper Why all this work for such a little bird?Learn more about why the Kirtland's warbler is big news for conservationists.

"Protecting the Kirtland's warbler takes many people at many organizations. My work would not be possible without the partnership of the International Program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Institute of Tropical Forestry of the U.S. Forest Service and the Bahamas National Trust."

By Dr. Dave Ewert
Director of Conservation Science

I am preparing for another winter in the Bahamas, and while it may seem like a dream assignment, the reality is a lot of hard work. Most people come to the Bahamas for sun and sand, but I’d rather be in the dense, prickly scrub than on the beach.

I’m in search of a little bird that weighs less than the change in your pocket and could fit in the palm of your hand. The Kirtland’s warbler spends its winters in the Bahamas, and a lot of the birds search for food in the scrub of Tarpum Bay on the island of Eleuthera, a sliver of an island on the eastern edge of the Bahamas.

Kirtland’s warblers may come in a tiny package, but they are big news for conservationists. Their bright yellow bellies get duller in the winter, and the birds replace their characteristic mating song with an indistinct chirp. And, to make matters more challenging, these tiny Bahamian islands are the only place on Earth you can find Kirtland’s warblers in the winter.

Tracking Kirtland’s warblers is slow and painstaking. I get up before dawn and drive to the scrub. Working with Bahamian students and other conservationists, we have our nets ready by sunrise, and we slowly pace the net lanes until mid-morning, back and forth through narrow trails listening for the occasional chirp and looking for the distinctive bobbing tail. On good days we get just one warbler, but on a really exceptional day—the best of the year—we might catch, band and release five or six birds. For all this work, the job is still immeasurably rewarding.

We follow the birds’ spring migration to northern Michigan, where the warblers’ persistent “chip-chip-che-way-o” mating song and brightened yellow bellies makes our job a lot easier. This past spring, I took a small group of Bahamian students and Michigan colleagues to find the Bahamian-banded birds as they find their mates during breeding season. In small teams, we listen and wait much as we do in the Bahamas, but in the jack-pine forests of the Huron-Manistee National Forest, a good day of banding might yield as many as ten birds.

The Bahamian students I work with speak to one of the great successes of this program. The students work with me for two years in both the Bahamas and Michigan, and they also help count other bird species native to the Bahamas. By the end of their fellowships, they have contributed significant data to their country’s bird surveys, and two recently graduated fellows have returned to the Bahamas as trained and tested conservationists—one of the greatest gifts we can offer these songbirds and their brethren.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Layne Kennedy (Dr. Ewert with net); photo © Melissa Soule/TNC (Dr. Ewert in Michigan); photo © Janet Clark/TNC (Bahamas student); photo © Dave Currie (banded Kirtland's warbler).