It’s peak bird migration season in Colorado. But their populations are in a steady decline.

Jessica Colby had just seen the first yellow-rumped warbler of the spring Next a pelican arrived at the lake at the Majestic View Nature Center in Arvada Turkey vultures are a sign of spring reported Colby the nature center s assistant director and a Denver Audubon master birder They started arriving the last meager weeks All of the fly eaters are showing up They can t be here in the winter because we don t have flies Phoebes meadowlarks flycatchers It s an exciting time of the year for Colorado birdwatchers An American Gold Finch spotted just outside the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Arvada Colorado on Friday May Photo by Andy Cross The Denver Post Over the next two to three weeks millions of birds will fly through the state s night skies as they migrate north for the summer All will pause to rest and eat during the day Particular may stay until fall to mate and raise offspring Others will continue their journeys north to as far away as Alaska And all of them will be in danger As Colorado enters its peak bird migration season forecast to run Sunday through May songbird populations are in decline The list of declining species includes the lark bunting Colorado s state bird which has seen its population drop by in the last years according to eBird an online database that tracks bird populations in the United States But scientists and bird watchers say humans can do things to help their migratory visitors It s a pretty dramatic shift unfortunately for that species declared Kyle Horton an assistant professor of fish wildlife and conservation biology at Colorado State University The State of the Birds review produced by the U S North American Bird Conservation Initiative Committee in March determined a third of all American bird species are at what researchers call a tipping point meaning they are showing long-term declines and in selected cases have perilously low populations The overview for the first time this year also expressed concern for ducks which have trended downward in fresh years after historically being a bright spot Furthermore the journal Science on Thursday published a new examination that indicated of North American bird species are in decline and populations dropped largest part steeply in places where those species were the majority of abundant The reports come five years after a landmark review published in Science that manifested a loss of billion birds in North America in years That description sounded the alarm and led scientists and conservationists to begin community awareness campaigns on how to help birds That s the origin of the National Audubon Society s semi-annual Lights Out Undertaking which encourages people to turn off outdoor lights at night when birds are on the move A great blue heron left and two American avocets are seen in a retention pond at the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Arvada Colorado on Friday May Photo by Andy Cross The Denver Post For several multiple thousands of years these birds have migrated under the cover of darkness looking at stars to deal with explained Horton who is also the principal investigator at CSU s AeroEco Lab which studies bird migration In the last years it s gotten much brighter Migratory birds are attracted to the glow of cities and might fly off module or waste resource circling them In the greater part extreme cases they collide with buildings he noted But even turning off outdoor floodlights in the suburbs helps If a person is leery of having their property absolutely dark they should use lightbulbs with a more orange glow Horton mentioned It s hard to think that would matter but it s a collective action that if we buy into it we can make a difference he mentioned It helps migratory birds but it also helps a lot of wildlife that s disrupted as well Birds migrate at night for various reasons of the the majority compelling birds you ll see in Colorado This file is auto-generated function d l use strict l querySelector d addEventListener undefined typeof URL d wp d wp d wp receiveEmbedMessage d wp receiveEmbedMessage function e var t e input if t t secret t message t value a-zA-Z - test t secret for var s r n a l querySelectorAll 'iframe data-secret ' t secret ' ' o l querySelectorAll 'blockquote data-secret ' t secret ' ' c new RegExp https i i i