Invasive Bird Species Can hurt Native Birds

For my second blog post, I decided to do it on how invasive species can hurt native birds. One of the main cause for this is an invasive brood parasite.

What is an invasive brood parasite?

An invasive brood parasite, is a bird that will lay legs in other birds nest and sometimes discards the host bird’s eggs. The brown-headed cowbird, is an example of a bird that does this, but however it is not an invasive species. They do however pose a threat to native birds. The birds that are a main concern, for the native birds in the United States are Eurasians Birds species such as the cuckoos.  

Most of the native birds respond to knowing that they have an invasive brood parasite egg, once they figure out they do have an egg in their nest they dump it out of the nest. But will the native birds know the difference from the eggs from the Eurasians cuckoos?

They have been sighting of cuckoos in the United States, but so far they only have reached Alaska. The Eurasians cuckoos are hard to see just because they are small, and secretive. So there has not been an estimated amount of how many have already infiltrated the United States.

 

Bering Strait

The Bering Strait is how the Eurasians cuckoos have been coming to the United States. This is a barrier that separates American from Eurasia. As Vladimir Dinets states “that the cause of warmer climate, is provoking the birds to move. This is also becoming a problem because there is more vegetation in the Bering Strait.” With the more vegetation there is in the Bering Strait, it is becoming more of a concern because the birds will be able to travel, and more invasive bird species will start to coming to the United States. With the Bering Strait having vegetation it is allowing the brown-headed cowbird go and disturb native Asian birds.

The Bering Strait used to be just a tundra, since it has been untouched the last twenty or so years, it had started to grow trees. So my question is should we go in and cut down the trees and make the Bering Strait back into tundra, or let it keep on growing and have it pose a more of a threat to our native bird species?

 

                          Figure 1 Common Cuckoo

The Eurasian Cuckoos are very secretive, and you can mostly hear them from sound to spot them. They do have a similar sound like the Cuckoos in the United States. In this picture above is a common cuckoos, and they have been spotted as far in southeast Alaska. For the last few decades the rise of Eurasian Cuckoos have been noticed in Alaska. One of the main reason they could be crossing is because of the warmer weather, that we have been experience. So would global warming be an issue if the days get warmer, and so would we be seeing more off these invasive birds?

Vladimir Dinets who is a psychology professor at University of Tennessee Knoxville stated “Considering how sparse the observational coverage of Alaska is, these records suggest that Common Cuckoos could already be breeding in North America and using a novel migration route,” Brown-headed cowbirds have also been using the Bering Strait and are causing a problem for Native Asian Birds.

Just like the brown-headed cowbirds Eurasian Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds nest. But the difference in their eggs are huge. A Eurasian Cuckoos can adapt their eggs to look exactly the host eggs, this can effect a lot of native birds species, like American Robins and warblers.

My question for you guys is that should we prevent the Eurasian Cuckoos into coming farther in the United States? I feel like the only way to stop the prevention of Eurasian Cuckoos is to go into the Bering Strait and make it into a tundra again, so birds cannot move freely to cross and come as they go. This can help prevent Native American Birds from Eurasian Cuckoos, and also help protect Native Asian Birds from the Brown-Headed Cowbird.  I feel like we need to protect our native birds, for our future generations, so they can observe and learn from them and learn to help protect our native species.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Eurasian cuckoos pose new threat to native North American birds." BirdWatching. N.p., 13 Oct. 2015. Web. . <http://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/blog/2015/10/13/eurasian-cuckoos-pose-new-threat-to-native-north-american-birds/>. Accessed on 27 Apr., 2017.

"Invasive Species Can Hurt Native Birds." THE WILDLIFE SOCIETY. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://wildlife.org/invasive-species-can-hurt-native-birds/>. Accessed on 27 Apr., 2017.

Figure 1:  BirdWatching <http://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/blog/2015/10/13/eurasian-cuckoos-pose-new-threat-to-native-north-american-birds/>.