Wisconsin’s Vanishing Songbirds

Help keep our birdfeeders, fields, and forests from going silent

Three little girls birdwatching

North America has lost 30% of its birds since 1970. Warblers, finches and sparrows are among the hardest hit. Wisconsin is suffering these losses too and they’re continuing.

Our pleasure in seeing and hearing a variety of songbirds will go away if we don’t act now. We’ll lose a lot more, too.

  • Birds disperse seeds, pollinate plants, and help reduce crop and forest pests

  • Birds are “canaries in the coal mine,” alerting us to unhealthy conditions for people & wildlife

Can you imagine our world without songbirds?

A male Connecticut warbler sitting on a jack pine tree branch

Looking for a needle in a haystack, March 17, 2023

Can you imagine a world without songbirds? March 15, 2023

A woman reaching up to examine plants on a shelf at a sale

Native plant sales bloom across Wisconsin, March 19, 2023

Bird News

Young purple martins peeking out of a martin house

Hungry for more? View now.

Baltimore Oriole perches on a feeder.

We can do this!

  • “Increasing the percentage of native plants in suburbia is a grassroots solution to the extinction crisis. To succeed, we do not need to invoke governmental action; we do not need to purchase large tracts of pristine habitat that no longer exist… We can each make a measurable difference almost immediately by planting a native nearby.”

    Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home and founder of Homegrown National Park

  • “So much of what we think about in environmentalism is finger-wagging and gloom-and-doom, but when you look at a lot of those examples where people are taking things into their hands, they’re joyful. That’s healing not only for land but for our culture as well — it feels good.”

    Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

  • “Another positive thing about working to address bird-window collisions at home is you don’t need permission from anyone. It’s your house, it’s your window. It’s also empowering. There’s not a lot of conservation issues where you can say, 'I want to do something' and the next day actually do the thing you’re talking about.”

    Bryan Lenz, Glass Collision Program Manager for American Bird Conservancy