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Coffee planters help birds
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Coffee plantations in the tropics destroy habitat necessary for both tropical birds and birds that nest in the United States and Canada and winter in the tropics.
Many of the birds that breed in the Wenatchee River Watershed in the spring and summer spend their winters in Mexico, Central and South America. Traditional, "shade-grown" coffee plantations provide some of the last remaining forests of this region, providing essential habitat for the birds. By choosing shade-grown coffee, you are helping to protect vital winter habitat for birds like Calliope Hummingbird, Western Wood-Peewee, Bullock's Oriole and most of our warblers.
In spring and summer, the environs of Leavenworth host migratory songbirds that fill the air with vibrant songs of courtship. Of the 338 neotropical migratory bird species that nest in the U.S. and Canada but winter in Mexico, Central America and South America, 161 species (65%) return to the Leavenworth area each year to nest in our forests and in riparian areas along streams and lakes. Nearly half of these are songbirds.
Songbirds depend on good habitat for food, water, shelter and nesting sites near Leavenworth as well as good wintering habitat in countries to the south - Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador and Chile - and good stopover sites in between. To address the habitat needs of our shared birds, citizens of all countries in the hemisphere now work together through Partners in Flight, an international cooperative venture made up of agencies, environmental groups and private landowners.
But there are some specially marked coffee certified to have been grown in the shade within fairly natural tropical forests, without pesticides, allowing a great many more bird species to thrive than do on sun coffee plantations or plastic-covered shade coffee plantations. Drink coffee that is certified to be shade grown and organic and you will be helping a great many native tropical species and quite a few of North America's neotropical migrants, including :
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Broad-winged Hawk
American Kestrel
Lesser Nighthawk
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher
Willow Flycatcher
Alder Flycatcher
Least Flycatcher
Hammond's Flycatcher
Brown-crested Flycatcher
Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher
Western Kingbird
Yellow-throated Vireo
Blue-headed Vireo
Warbling Vireo (see the picture)
Red-eyed Vireo
Yellow-green Vireo
Violet-green Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Barn Swallow
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Swainson's Thrush
Wood Thrush
Golden-winged Warbler
Tennessee Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Northern Parula
Yellow Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Golden-cheeked Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Townsend's Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Worm-eating Warbler
Ovenbird
Louisiana Waterthrush
Kentucky Warbler
Mourning Warbler
MacGillivray's Warbler
Hooded Warbler
Wilson's Warbler
Canada Warbler
Yellow-breasted Chat
Summer Tanager
Western Tanager
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Indigo Bunting
Painted Bunting
Orchard Oriole
Baltimore Oriole
Those birds are directly helped by being able to live in shade-grown coffee plantations. Other species are helped when less of the tropical forest is burned or cut to make a coffee plantation.
Of course, trees aren't the only plants in the rainforest, and it turns out that coffee plants do best when there is something else: epiphytes. A recent study from Mexico found that the presence of shade trees doesn't guarantee a farm's suitability for a wide range of species.
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