“It's an empty feeling in your stomach that these same birds that you grew up with just aren't there anymore.”
U.S., Canada have lost 3 billion birds since 1970. Scientists say 'nature is unraveling.'
By Jeremy Deaton
Pete Marra remembers birdwatching in the woods behind his childhood home in Norwalk, Connecticut, in the 1970s, gazing up at common nighthawks as they extended their long, pointed wings and soared through the air. “They were these aerial acrobats,” he said. “They did ballet.”
By the time he got to high school, the woods had been cut down to make room for houses, and the nighthawks had begun to disappear. Today the bird has all but vanished from his old neighborhood.
“They're rare in Connecticut now. They're rare in many places,” said Marra, now an ecologist who is the director of the Georgetown Environment Initiative. “It's an empty feeling in your stomach that these same birds that you grew up with just aren't there anymore.”
Pete Marra is an ecologist and the director of Georgetown University’s environment initiative in Washington, D.C.
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THIRD OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS FACE EXTINCTION
