Global Warming and Population Responses among Great Plains Birds

Book excerpt: "Based on an analysis of 47 years (1967-2014) of Audubon Christmas Bird Counts (CBC), evidence for population changes and shifts in early winter (late December) ranges of nearly 150 species of birds in the Great Plains states is summarized, a region defined as including the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas panhandle. The rationale for this study had its origins in Terry Root's 1988 Atlas of North American Wintering Birds. ... The present analysis includes all of the 40 annual CBC surveys from the 1967-8 to the 2006-7 counts, plus the results of the most recent 2013-14 CBC. The present summary quantitatively describes the early winter abundance for 147 of the most commonly encountered regional species, illustrating their temporal changes in geographic distributions and relative abundance between 1967 and 2014"--Publisher description.