Birds are in trouble everywhere, but it turns out our birds here on the East End are in even worse shape than most.
On our beaches, shorebirds are struggling, losing 33 percent of their population since 1970. In our trees, songbirds continue to experience significant population declines, losing 27 percent in the same period. That’s according to the 2025 State of the Birds report, “a status assessment of the health of the nation’s bird populations” published by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative last week.
This is all bad, depressing, and overwhelming. However, according to Tina Phillips, the assistant director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Center for Engagement in Science and Nature, individual actions do matter.
In a phone call, she listed the top five actions concerned citizens can take: Take your cats indoors, or at the very least fit them with a Birdsbesafe collar; treat your windows with decals from Feather Friendly to reduce bird strikes; use native plants in your garden; stop uplighting trees, and nix pesticides and herbicides.
“I’m a huge advocate of individual action,” Ms. Phillips said. “Though individual action alone is not enough. Even if government and policy were in place but individuals did nothing, that wouldn’t get us where we need to be. We need both.”
Of the 718 species examined in the report, 112 are at their “tipping point,” which means they’ve lost 50 percent of their population in the last 50 years and need “immediate help through voluntary and proactive conservation action.” The tipping point category is further divided into red, orange, and yellow crisis categories.
Of the 42 red alert birds, just one, the saltmarsh sparrow, breeds in East Hampton, specifically in salt marshes along Three Mile and Accabonac Harbors. The species has lost 75 percent of its population since 1990, according to the American Bird Conservancy, and will go extinct without intensive conservation efforts.
At a March 4 East Hampton Town Board work session, Councilwoman Cate Rogers said the Accabonac Harbor Protection Committee was working with the Peconic Estuary Partnership, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Nature Conservancy to ascertain the bird’s population in the town’s marshes. It is intensely susceptible to sea level rise and marsh health.
While the town participates in an endangered species management program that seeks to protect nesting piping plovers (itself an orange-alert bird), there are no such protections for the saltmarsh sparrow.
Meanwhile, despite the town’s efforts, plovers ended 2023 (the last year data was available online) with the fewest successful fledges since the town began keeping records in 2008. Predation from crows, gulls, racoons, and foxes was the most common reason for nest loss, but new cameras have documented many off-leash dogs in plover nesting areas, which are protected only by “symbolic fencing” consisting of bakery string hung between poles. Is it enough to protect the birds?
Ms. Phillips studies human behavior in a quest to make positive change. “It starts with education and awareness, and at the end of the day it comes down to understanding entitlement. What are the root causes of why people are unwilling to put their dogs on a leash? They see the space as a place of freedom for the dogs, even though I’m sure there are signs underscoring the importance of the habitat.”
She said better signs could help — “signs showing pictures of leashed dogs, promoting the idea of shared spaces. People should take pride in the fact that birds are choosing this area. Norm-based messaging might be really powerful. A sign that says something like, ‘More and more people are leashing their dogs to protect these birds.’ “
Other birds familiar to East Enders have also reached the tipping point. The Least tern, chimney swift, the beloved wave-chasing sanderling, the great black-backed gull, and beautiful songsters like the wood thrush and prairie warbler, to name just a few, all require immediate help.
Songbirds around the perimeter of your property need natural food sources. “Plant a native garden,” Ms. Phillips said. “Start small. Put it on a five-by-five piece of property in your yard that can’t be mowed. Put some native plants there. Let them establish. I can’t emphasize enough the role of native gardening.”
Consider adding an oak tree. It’s a keystone species that not only provides nuts for birds like the tufted titmouse and the blue jay, which are losing a food source because of the death of beech trees from beech leaf disease, but also hosts over 900 species of caterpillar, a food source for many species of nestling birds.
If you’ve ever heard a loud “thunk” come from a window only to look outside to find a crumpled bird beneath it, consider treating the window with decals from Feather Friendly. It’s inexpensive, easy, and effective.
In 2023, more than a thousand birds died when they smacked into a building at Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America. “Since that dreadful night they’ve worked with Feather Friendly to outfit their convention center,” Ms. Phillips said. “They went from 1,000 birds dying during one night of fall migration to five.”
Despite the tragedy at McCormick Place, Ms. Phillips says only 1 percent of bird mortality comes from skyscrapers. “Cities have lots of windows, but it’s only a small percentage of the surface area of glass across the country. Forty-six percent of bird-strike deaths come from residential homes. Many of these birds migrate all the way from South America only to meet their death at someone’s window.”
“If something isn’t good for the birds, it’s not good for us, or our pets, either,” Ms. Phillips said of pesticides and herbicides. “People are looking for pristine, manicured lawns and hiring companies that spray the heck out of those lawns. To the extent that people can sacrifice their lawn for something that is more natural, that is going to be helpful.”
With just a few weeks before migration begins, enjoy the birds you do see. There will be fewer this year than last. Don’t take their presence for granted.
