UW News

October 16, 2014

Birds right at home in ‘subirdia’

News and Information

Human sprawl is usually a threat to wildlife, but some birds buck the trend. Can we help biodiversity take wing in our suburbs?

Anna's hummingbird at feeder.

Anna’s hummingbird at feeder. UW graduate student Jack DeLap did illustrations for the new book.Jack DeLap

So ponders University of Washington’s John Marzluff in a piece he penned for Aeon, the digital magazine of ideas and culture that posts an original essay every weekday.

During a decade of bird counts and research, the UW prof of environmental and forest sciences found an unsurpassed variety of birds in suburbia. Even nearby forest reserves were less diverse than housing developments, golf courses, cemeteries, shopping centers and the like.

The essay appears as Marzluff’s latest book, “Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife,” hits bookstores.

Book cover shows birds nesting in mailbox“I am not claiming that suburban sprawl is the answer to our conservation prayers: Many species of sensitive and rare birds could never survive in our ’burbs,” he writes in Aeon. “Even fewer animals that crawl or walk, such as mammals, reptiles and amphibians, manage to live long among us. And, where terrestrial biological diversity is greatest – in the magnificent tropical rainforests – biodiversity is steadily lost with progressive development.

“But development can enrich local areas by providing what many tolerant species require,” he says.