surveys dead birds By Jack Kintner Julia Parrish has been
studying seabird populations long enough to know that their
survival rates can be useful indicators of the health of a
marine ecosystem. The trouble is that counting birds is
approximate at best, making it difficult to develop good
relative measurements of increase or decline. Unless, of course,
the birds have died. Though most people aren’t drawn to a bird
carcasses on the beach, and carrying them or any part of them
off the beach is illegal, Parrish feels that counting beach-cast
dead birds is a good way to keep track of coastal environmental
health. “They’re a good source of data because there’s a lot of
them,” she said, “and they can be thoroughly examined and
photographed, and contain a lot of valuable information.” The
associate professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the
University of Washington gave a talk recently in Bellingham
about this and the organization she started eight years ago to
survey area beaches called the coastal observatio