GoldenCheekedWarbler_ItsaFraud_Jones_Tim_WimberleyTX_22May2022_Reel4108.mp3

Tim Jones [00:00:00] It's a fraud.

Tim Jones [00:00:03] You know, you cannot tell me that there are more warblers around now, than there were then. There may be more warblers in the preserves, but you can't extrapolate that to everywhere.

Tim Jones [00:00:15] And I know there's not, there are certainly not more warblers here, than there were. We may have seen a warbler; I know we've seen warblers out on Waterstone, years before, but we see one a year, maybe. We don't see them every year. We may see one, and it could be passing through because it's just a little place.

Tim Jones [00:00:37] And, you know, the threats to a warbler are many. You know, climate change is a major threat because it's drying up all the water places. It's killing off all the insect base. So there is a major threat to that. Look at this drought: that there's no insects... What do the birds eat?...

Tim Jones [00:00:59] When you cover up everything with asphalt and concrete, where do they make their nests, you know?

Tim Jones [00:01:06] And then there's what's called edge effects. And ranchers, you know, are going to have their way with everything they can. So they have brown-headed cowbirds. You know, they're called cowbirds because they follow cattle around looking for the bugs that cows kick up. Right?

Speaker [00:01:22] But brown-headed cowbirds, the only way they survive is by predating, or being nest parasites, on other birds. And those birds are ones that are too stupid to know that that egg in their nest is not one they laid. They can't tell for some reason. They can't tell because a cowbird's a little bit bigger, whatever. But it's a bigger egg, makes a bigger bird. So the brown-headed cowbird causes nest predation on these, these neotropical passerines...

Tim Jones [00:01:57] We have what's called an edge effect, a brown-headed cowbird goes in about 100 yards into a wooded area. That's about as far inside a wooded area as they go, because they forage in the pastures and things. But they, they nest, they look for nests about 100 yards into a wooded area.

Tim Jones [00:02:19] So what happens when you've got a wooded area that's 200 yards by 200 yards? That's pretty good little patch there, right? You'd think. Except the brown-headed cowbirds are coming in from every direction. There's no place safe. And that's what habitat fragmentation is.

Tim Jones [00:02:43] And that's what's happened to the Hill Country, all over the place. It's been fragmented, horribly, by roads and by ranching and land development. And it's been going on for decades.

Tim Jones [00:02:57] And now they're saying, "Oh, there's more warblers than there ever were."

Tim Jones [00:03:00] Well, that's a goddamn lie. There's nothing more than there ever was, except people.