Does your coffee support wintering warblers?

[Cirsium]

Making sense of coffee labels: Does your coffee support wintering warblers?

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Many of the colorful songbirds that are just now leaving us for the winter, including warblers, tanagers, orioles, and grosbeaks, will spend the next five months in and around shade coffee plantations in Mexico and Central and South America.

Shade-coffee plantations—particularly ones that grow coffee under a natural forest canopy—are increasingly being deforested, leaving North American migrants with fewer places to spend the winter.

The good news, Stutchbury said, is that you can have your dark roast and your songbirds too if you buy sustainable coffee, particularly Bird Friendly coffee.

“If every birder in the U.S. committed to drinking Bird Friendly coffee, the market would grow 1,000-fold,” said Bill Wilson ...

Where to buy Bird Friendly Coffee
Grab a supply of Bird Friendly coffee with the help of these Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center pages: ...

Making sense of coffee labels: Does your coffee support wintering warblers? – Round Robin

[havalotta]

I'm going to look for the bird label the next time I buy coffee to see if we've any here.

[benj1]

On the Smithsonian list I found a small roaster in Northern Virginia that I could visit on my regular travel route. Turns out she only has "Bird Friendly Coffee" 'sometimes', and had none when I was there. I can and will get "Rainforest Alliance" here locally from now on.

[scarecrowsdrm]

Hubby and I have been ordering Audubon "Rainforest Alliance" coffee online for a while now and love the flavor as well as the fact that it is shade grown and more bird friendly. As well as organic.

[sprucetree]

That's a good point Mrs. Scarecrowsdrm, Chances are plantation coffee like Maxwell House, Folgers, and 8 o'clock need spraying because their grown as a mono-crop.

The birds really do a good job on pest control. In fact there's a grub that's ruining coffee beans that the birds control and the plantations are helpless.

[Cirsium]

Bird Friendly Coffee Sources
Migratory Bird Center
Smithsonian
National Zoological Park

Bird Friendly® Coffee Sources
Companies that roast Bird Friendly® coffee and sell it online.

Online Sources of Bird Friendly Coffee - Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center - National Zoo| FONZ

[Cirsium]

The true cost of coffee
How your morning cup of joe can help save the birds you see this spring

BirdWatching Magazine
Contributed by Julie Craves
Published: December 23, 2012

My job as supervisor of avian research at the Rouge River Bird Observatory of the University of Michigan-Dearborn calls on me to capture and band Swainson’s Thrushes, White-throated Sparrows, Nashville Warblers, and other migrants as they stop to rest and refuel in the leafy woods adjacent to the university’s Environmental Interpretive Center, outside Detroit.

This morning was different. It was winter, and I was monitoring mist-nets strung miles to the south of Michigan, at the far end of many songbirds’ long migratory paths. ... Today the mix of species was more representative of my Central American location.

Coffee is a small tree that naturally grows under the canopy of other trees. Although it originated in Africa, it thrives in the tropics worldwide and is harvested on 25 million acres of land. Coffee cultivated in a traditional manner — that is, under shade — provides very good habitat for birds and other wildlife. ... Unfortunately, a quest for cheaper coffee over the last several decades has caused tens of thousands of acres of this valuable land to be destroyed.

During my travels in Latin America, I have visited and surveyed birds on coffee farms in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, and Mexico. The vast majority are not large plantations but family-managed operations that average about a dozen acres in size. Again and again, I have been struck by the importance of shade coffee to birds and biodiversity — in some areas, shade coffee seemed like the only land use that preserved trees and natural habitat.

Several government agencies and nonprofit organizations have formulated criteria to help define aspects of ecologically friendly and environmentally sustainable coffee production. Producers that meet the standards can have their coffee certified, and you and I can use the certifications to choose brands that don’t contribute to the destruction or degradation of bird habitat. (To learn about common certifications, see the box below.)

Cheap coffee is not sustainable, not for the farmer and not for the environment. I can’t state it any plainer than this: If you are buying inexpensive grocery-store or fast-food coffee, you are contributing to the destruction of bird habitat and the decline of migratory songbirds. It’s one of the worst things you can do for the environment on a daily basis — and one of the easiest things for you to change. ...

The true cost of coffee - BirdWatching Magazine

[Cirsium]

A suggestion (printable pdf) for the store manager where you buy your coffee:

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migratorybirds/coffee/StoreManagerRequest.pdf
.

[havalotta]

Done! Thanks

[Cirsium]

Bird Friendly Coffee Now Available at a Major Retailer
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
By Gustave Axelson

Smithsonian-certified Bird Friendly coffee is the strictest standard for shade-grown, organic coffees, but it can be hard to find in stores. This became somewhat easier in June 2013, when Whole Foods Markets began carrying Bird Friendly–labeled coffee in their 300+ stores across the U.S. and Canada.

Robert Rice, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (which created the Bird-Friendly certification criteria), hopes birders will show retailers that there is a strong market for Bird Friendly coffee. Rice encourages people to thank the store managers at Whole Foods for carrying Bird Friendly coffee in their stores (or if they don’t find the Early Bird Blend, to ask managers about it). He also is interested in hearing from people about their experiences looking for Early Bird Blend coffee at Whole Foods.

Bird Friendly Coffee Now Available at a Major Retailer – Round Robin
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