Why are birds important indicators of watershed health?

In the Why Birds? page of their website, the National Audubon Society lists these reasons why birds are valuable indicators of watershed condition .

Birds live in a wide range of habitats and they can be affected by many different impacts including land use changes, invasive species and pollution. They can integrate and accumulate environmental stresses and can indicate when some aspects of watershed health are being compromised.

Birds are easy to observe and study, and many species have already been well-studied. Researchers have studied many aspects of bird physiology, taxonomy, and ecology. In addition, long-term trend data on bird population trends from volunteer monitoring programs greatly add to our understanding of how birds are doing over time. The Audubon Christmas Count, conducted for 100 years, is the longest running avian data set.

Birds are important to the public; people notice when birds are declining and will take action to improve conditions for birds. For example, public interest in birds has resulted in the success of many volunteer monitoring programs, such as FeederWatch and the Audubon Christmas Bird Count .