Flycatcher survives Republican assault for now

Half of all migratory birds in North America move through the Patagonia, Arizona flyway and along the San Pedro River. 

In 2019 warblers, swallows and flycatchers began dying in large numbers throughout the southern Rockies. Scientists who study them note their emaciated conditions and reduced body fat. 

In 2020, to preserve more habitat for birds like the southwest willow flycatcher, the US Forest Service imposed more stringent measures under a legal settlement to keep grazing cattle away from waterways in New Mexico's Gila National Forest and Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

In 2023 the Center for Biological Diversity sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service because of the agency's failure to better protect the Gila River from erosion caused by livestock.

A federal court upheld the southwestern willow flycatcher’s protection under the Endangered Species Act following a lawsuit by the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association. The Fish and Wildlife Service listed the southwestern willow flycatcher as a federally endangered subspecies in 1995 following widespread habitat loss across its range in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. When cattle graze in riparian areas, they tend to eat the young cottonwood and willow trees flycatchers need to breed and propagate. They also can trample streambanks, interrupt water flows and jeopardize water quality, endangering flycatchers' and other species’ habitats. The service found the highest number of breeding territories along the middle Rio Grande and upper Gila River in New Mexico, and Roosevelt Lake and the San Pedro and Gila River confluence area in Arizona. [Southwestern willow flycatcher keeps its protected status after ranchers lose legal case]

The robins that love juniper berries and the dark-eyed juncos that feed on grass seeds winter here in Santa Fe County. Pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) live here year round and mob the bird bath in a flock of about forty every morning but the bird's numbers have declined 80% in the last fifty years. 

ip image captured through the porch screen is that of a crissal thrasher which is considered quite rare in our part of New Mexico.