THE EVENING GROSBEAK PROJECT
International Road to Recovery

With a 92% decline since 1970, evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus) was cited as the steepest declining landbird in the continental United States and Canada in the Partners in Flight 2016 Landbird Conservation Plan. Causes for the decline are not fully understood, but may be a result of several factors including spruce budworm (Choristoneura spp.) population cycles, forest alteration and loss, collision and disease mortalities, and climate change factors. Following several conservation listings, evening grosbeak has garnered conservation attention from the recently formed Road to Recovery (R2R) Initiative as it was called out as one of 91 bird Species on the Brink of Endangerment. To donate click above.

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227

Finch Species
Worldwide

60

Red Listed
Finch Species

41

Endangered or Extinct Finch Species

Hawaii’s Finches

THE HONEYCREEPER PROJECT

The iconic finches of Hawai‘i are facing a conservation crisis. Non-native predators, the loss of habitat, and invasive species have negatively affected them for hundreds of years, and these issues continue to be problematic, but it’s the introduced avian malaria that is the greatest threat to their survival. Climate change leading to increased temperatures has further exacerbated the situation in the high-elevation forests, facilitating the spread of malaria into areas that were once largely free of the disease. Four Hawaiian honeycreeper species have been pushed to the edge of extinction and are in need of your help: the endangered ‘akikiki (Oreomystis bairdi) and ‘akeke‘e (Loxops caeruleirostris) on Kaua‘i Island, and kiwikiu (Pseudonestor xanthophrys) and ‘ākohekohe (Palmeria dolei) on Maui Island.

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ABOUT FiRN

Mission: Dedicated to the study and conservation of finches and their habitats globally.

The Network: We want FiRN to be about you, and about the community and network of people that might want to be involved in a global research network interested in observing and studying finches. We hope to fund student projects in time. “The Crossbill Project” will be the flagship project of FiRN. We officially launched FiRN around Tyler Hoar’s Winter Finch Forecast September 20, 2020, and we hope to have as many of you, finch enthusiasts, hop on board and join in on the fun. It’s all about engaging with nature and the network!

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Sign up above for the 2023 Spring Membership Newsletter focusing on finches of Hawaii

NEWS/BLOG

The Crossbill Project and Call Recognition Model

Purpose is to provide a stable, long-term home for Red Crossbill research over a broad front: call recognition, field observations, recordings, assortative mating and call type delineation by sound and range. Provide information to the scientific community on the validity of call types and potential full-species separations for flight call types, geographically isolated populations (old world versus new world) etc. One purpose would be to serve as arbiters of flight call determination via audiospectrographic analysis. We are also using machine learning algorithms to develop tools for detecting North American Red Crossbill flight calls in audio recordings and classifying them to call type. The tools will be continually improved to accelerate research and teach citizen scientists about crossbill ecology.

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