Audubon Magazine Winter 2020

The high Arctic is dangerous in the dark of winter. Temperatures drop to–40 degrees. Ice cracks underfoot. Polar bears roam. Yet scientists on the Alfred Wegener Institute’s MOSAiC expedition braved these hazards so they could study the Arctic atmosphere for a full year. They have urgent questions about why the region is warming faster than elsewhere on Earth, and clouds may be key. “Clouds are one of the leading sources of uncertainty in our models,” says expedition co-coordinator Matthew Shupe with the University of Colorado and NOAA. So in October 2019 the Polarstern icebreaker was locked into the frozen ocean near the North Pole and left to drift as scientists sampled the sea, ice, and atmosphere. The data will yield insights into the Arctic’s cloud cycle and a sharper picture…

Acknowledgment For centuries before the first colonizers arrived, Indigenous people across the Western Hemisphere developed deep relationships with the land they lived on and the animals they shared it with. In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, this November we published a series of online essays and stories that feature Indigenous people from North America and their cultural connections with birds, past and present. One of those pieces, “The Tale of Chipilo Crisopario,” can be found on page 18 of this issue. To read the rest of these stories, please visit audubon.org/indigenous. Fall 2020 I’m so impressed with the excellence of your Fall 2020 issue! Not only is it beautiful page after page, but the editorial staff shows such sensitivity—to the bird species, of course, but also to many of the critical…

AS 2020 DRAWS TO A CLOSE, life remains upended—and with it, many of the traditions this time of year typically brings. Some comforting rituals can carry on (go ahead, bake the ultimate holiday cookies! page 50), while others, like far-flung travel and large family gatherings, are painfully still on pause. Given our current reality, it seems fitting the cover story for Audubon’s Winter issue features birds we describe as the “ultimate homebodies.” After fledging, young Florida Scrub-Jays stick around the nest, where the birds live as close-knit families (and presumably also struggle with homeschooling). When they do strike out, they don’t stray far. Development has divided the state’s once-contiguous scrub, so the jays now dwell in isolated populations. As Carrie Arnold describes in her feature (“The Key to Saving Florida Scrub-Jays May…

AS THIS ISSUE OF AUDUBON goes to press, the election is just wrapping up—with the exception of a couple of runoff elections like those for the Senate seats in Georgia. People are rising up to demand action on climate change and racial equity. And birds are telling us there is no time to lose. We need bold, equitable, and durable action on climate. That’s why Audubon’s 1.9 million members are helping to lead this movement. Rural and urban, progressive and conservative, Black college students and white grandparents all agree that everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, should have equal access to clean air and water and feel safe and welcome in the outdoors. The tone of the recent election season put a spotlight on the deep divisions in our nation. Audubon…

WHEN LISA MANUEL WAS A child, her mother would take her to Quitobaquito Springs, a rare oasis amid the giant cacti and rolling hills of southwest Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. For at least 10,000 years, the spring has been a vital source of water for wildlife and people, including the Tohono O’odham and Hia-Ced O’odham, whose ancestral territory spans the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s been a part of my family all my life,” says Manuel, a descendant from the Hia-Ced O’odham. “It’s a beautiful place. It’s a sacred place. I sit there and I pray.” For months Manuel and others have fought to defend this ancient haven, which they fear is being destroyed by construction of President Donald Trump’s signature border wall just 200 feet from a pond the spring feeds. Since August…

ON A FRIDAY IN OCTOBER, AN eight-week-old Common Loon glides back and forth, ready for lunch. When a researcher pours wriggling fish through a chute into its enclosure, she dives and nabs one after another, barely surfacing. In a pen nearby, a second waits a turn. The youngsters look right at home, but they’ve traveled a long way. Born in Maine, they were brought to Massachusetts weeks after hatching—the latest recruits in an effort by the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) to return this species to its historic range. Loons were once an iconic presence in the state’s glacial lakes. “They were a natural nester here,” says Andrew Vitz, state ornithologist at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. In 1854’s Walden, Henry David Thoreau recounts playing hide-and-seek with the bird—its “demoniac laughter”…