An image of a blue jay | Stock photo from Pixaby: CCO license.
Adam Schaffer, forty-five years old, has spent nearly 20 years watching birds across Northwest Arkansas.
He didn’t start with some grand environmental mission. It began at the Ozark Natural Science Center near Huntsville sometime in the mid-2000s.
Then came local NWA Audubon meetings, then an ornithology class in college with longtime Arkansas biologist Doug James. One step led to another, and now it’s just part of how he sees a place.
“The first thing you notice when you’re outside is the birds,” Schaffer said. “They’re out during the day. They sing. They’re easy to spot.”
But Northwest Arkansas is changing fast. Bentonville pushes into Centerton. Rogers presses south and north at the same time. Fields disappear. Tree lines shrink. Schaffer has watched those changes through bird records — sometimes literally.
He once helped digitize old sightings for a statewide database. One entry stuck with him: A bird had been spotted “between Rogers and Bentonville.”
“There is no ‘between’ anymore,” he said.
The Northwest Arkansas Audubon Society still tracks what lives here through its annual Christmas Bird Count in Fayetteville. The count has run since the 1950s. Volunteers walk routes each winter, writing down every bird they see. The data goes to the National Audubon Society for long-term study.
“It helps scientists understand what’s actually happening out there,” he said. “Not just year to year, but over decades.”
And what’s happening, he said, isn’t subtle.
Habitat loss is the biggest local threat. Fields turn into subdivisions. Patches of woods vanish behind apartments and shopping centers. Birds lose nesting ground first, then feeding ground, then shelter.
“Most of these birds migrate,” Schaefer said. “If they don’t survive the winter in Mexico, they never come back here. So we feel things that happen far away.”
Climate has started shifting things too.
Birds like Eastern phoebes and pine warblers that used to leave for the winter now stay. “We didn’t used to see fish crows here,” Schaffer said. “I didn’t even know what one was when I was a kid.”
Birds respond early. That’s why people call them environmental indicators. The canary in the coal mine wasn’t just a metaphor — it was practice. When air turned bad underground, the bird showed it first.
“They’re some of the easiest things to track,” Schaffer said. “And they change fast when something’s wrong.”
Even people who don’t consider themselves birders still care, he said. They stop him in parking lots, in backyards, at fences.
“Everybody asks what bird that is,” he said.
The question isn’t whether people care — it’s whether they know what actually helps. Schaffer said a practical way for locals to help is to focus on native plants. He pointed straight to Bradford pear trees — the white-flowering trees scattered all over Fayetteville.
“They look nice,” he said. “But they’re basically dead space for birds.”
Their leaves don’t feed native insects. And birds don’t feed their young seeds — they feed them insects.
“If you plant an oak tree instead, there are over 450 species of caterpillars that can live on that one tree,” Schaefer said. “With a Bradford pear, there’s almost nothing.”
Schaffer still goes on field trips when he can. He still goes on bird counts, and still pays attention.
“Once you start noticing birds,” he said, “you start noticing everything else changing with them.”