With the swoop of her pen, or these days her keyboard, Begley is now convinced that man-made climate change is endangering birds of certain feathers. In one of her many non-referenced peril piece, she states rising "sea levels due to global warming isn't helping shorebirds." Funny how this apparently disastrous rise in sea level has gone unreported everywhere, except maybe in a certain PowerPoint presentation. Begley is asking Newsweek's readers to take her multi-tiered statements as a matter of faith (as fact would be pushing it). Read the entire piece, and try not to stumble over the hundred or so other reasons for why these birds may be in peril, but it just wouldn't make flashy headlines or reading. This must have been her Thanksgiving message to her loyal readers.

Suburbanites who put out black-oil sunflower seeds for their local songbirds are small compensation for the threat that suburbanization itself poses to several species. The red-cockaded woodpecker, for instance, has seen its home in the Southeast's long-leaf pine forests converted to suburbs and farms, isolating populations and slashing its numbers.

Habitat loss and hunting have long led the list of threats to birds (and other species), but climate change has joined the list. The Kittlitz murrelet, for instance, breeds and feeds around Alaska's tidewater glaciers, which are retreating as the world warms. Drought and other consequences of climate change are threatening the survival of the lesser prairie-chicken of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. The warming arctic is melting the habitat of the spectacled eider and making it easier for foxes, mink, gulls and jaegers to snatch chicks from their nests. In addition, the warming seas are altering the distribution of clams, a chief source of winter food for eiders.

Not surprisingly, the rise in sea levels due to global warming isn't helping shorebirds. The sharp-tailed sparrow, for instance, lives only in a narrow band of salt marsh along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. As seas rise, its home shrinks. Global warming is also altering ocean circulation and the distribution of fish, mollusks and other bird foods, with the result that the Xantus's murrelet, for instance, which nests on islands off Southern California, and other coastal seabirds are imperiled due to food shortages.

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