Here’s a entry in the occasional Know Your Coffee Bird series, which profiles birds that utilize shade coffee farms. This post is about a species people might not immediately connect with coffee. It is a finch, related to more familiar goldfinches (both American and European), and like them primarily eats seeds and favors a variety…
Author: JulieCraves
Finding Bird-Friendly coffee – now easier
The Bird-Friendly website at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has made it easier to find local and online retailers of Bird-Friendly certified coffee. There is an interactive map to find local roasters. I found the page for online purchases is especially nice — each coffee has a brief description and a direct link to the…
15 years of Coffee & Conservation
I made the first post on this website on this day in 2005. I initially envisioned a modest collection of resources explaining the importance of “shade-grown coffee” to biodiversity, birds in particular. As an ornithologist, I knew how critical wintering habitats in the tropics are to the birds that I studied here in North America….
Integrated Open Canopy: a land sharing strategy for coffee
Some time ago, I wrote a detailed post about “land sharing” versus “land sparing“, two agriculture strategies. In a nutshell, land sharing is the use of cover crops, interplantings, and other measures that seek to approximate natural habitat, inviting birds and other biodiversity within the crop. Land sparing utilizes a patchwork of more intensive agriculture…