One Saturday morning in June, Amy Simmons spotted some sparrows flitting around a coastal marsh in Maine. She and her two companions, all dedicated bird-watchers, quickly identified one of the foraging birds as a Nelson’s sparrow, a small, round bird with a yellow stripe over its eye. The stripe over this sparrow’s eye had a more saturated, orange tint, and its breast was speckled with black and white. It was a saltmarsh sparrow, a species threatened by sea level rise. Without significant conservation action, climate change could render the species extinct by the middle of this century, some scientists predict.

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Persons: Amy Simmons, ”, Simmons, Ms Organizations: National Audubon Society, Cornell, of Ornithology Locations: Maine