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…
Birds and other biodiversity
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…
Know Your Coffee Birds: Elfin-woods Warbler
A profile of a bird species that has a very special, recently defined connection to coffee.
Support shade coffee for Golden-winged Warblers
Support a conservation program that provides native shade trees to Nicaraguan coffee farmers.
Research: More birds eating coffee berry borers
Summary of recent research directly from the paper, not the press release.
New orchid species named for coffee company
A species of orchid is named for a coffee company (Puro Coffee) that contributed to the preservation of land on which the orchid — among other species — was discovered. Includes a coffee review.
Know your coffee birds: American Redstart
A look at the charming and lively American Redstart, a warbler commonly found in Latin American shade coffee farms in winter.
Know your coffee birds: Ovenbird
The Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus) is often heard before it is seen, a loud ringing “tea-cher, TEA-cher, TEA-CHER!” broadcast from close to the forest floor through much of the eastern U.S. and Canada during the nesting season. Ovenbirds are large warblers, no relation to the Ovenbird family Furnariidae found in the tropics. However, both the warbler…
Know your coffee birds: Malabar Barbet
A profile of the Malabar Barbet, the first Old World species in our series on Know Your Coffee Birds. This one is found only in India’s Western Ghats.
Know your coffee birds: Scarlet Tanager
Learn more about the brilliant Scarlet Tanager. It inspired my love of birds and my career, and is symbolic of “our” birds that winter in the tropics on shade coffee farms.
Research: Borer-eating warblers may need nearby forests
Want warblers to eat your coffee berry borers? Give them some forest to sleep in.
Research: Types of fruit trees on shade coffee farms important
It’s not just that you have fruit trees on a farm, but what types they are, that are important for birds.
Research: Shade coffee important to amphibians
This paper looked at the diversity and abundance of frogs and salamanders in an area of tropical montane cloud forest, shade coffee farms, and corn plantations in southern Mexico.
Know your coffee birds: Hispaniola’s Palm-Tanagers
There are two species of palm-tanagers (Phaenicophilus) found on Hispaniola, the island comprised of the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti. One is the widespread Black-crowned Palm-Tanager (P. palmarum). The other is the only species of bird unique to Haiti: the Gray-crowned Palm-Tanager (P. poliocephalus). The latter is restricted primarily to the Tiburon Peninsula, the long…
Share it or spare it?
Intensifying production while conserving biodiversity Food security and the ability of agricultural lands to feed over 9 billion people by 2050 is an increasingly-discussed topic. Part of this issue is how to conserve biodiversity while boosting agricultural capacity, either by increasing the productivity of land currently in production through some sort of intensification, or expanding…