VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) — Songbirds have got a friend in James Taylor.
The singer-songwriter will donate part of the proceeds — an estimated $200,000 — from his concert tomorrow in Virginia Beach to help protect habitat for birds that stop on Virginia’s rural Eastern Shore as they migrate south for the winter.
“It just feels good to me to be able to play music and also try to benefit this effort,” Mr. Taylor said during a news conference today at the Verizon Wireless Virginia Beach Amphitheater, where he will open his summer tour tomorrow.
Mr. Taylor said the money will go to the Southern Tip Partnership, a coalition of government agencies and conservation groups that for almost 20 years has been buying and protecting land on the southern tip of the Eastern Shore.
Millions of small songbirds that live in Canada and the northeastern United States head each year to tropical rain forests in Central and South America to spend the winter.
Along the way, they are funneled into the bottom end of the Eastern Shore, a peninsula separated from mainland Virginia by the Chesapeake Bay. There, they need trees and shrubs to provide insects and berries to eat for energy to cross the Bay and complete their journey — and to help them hide from predators, such as hawks.
But the area also is prime real estate for development.
“It would be a real tragedy if just unconsciously and almost casually we allow this … internationally recognized, crucial habitat to just disappear overnight,” he said.
Mr. Taylor, who is active in other environmental causes, said he was drawn to helping birds because “their song is the music of the biosphere.”
“They’re the soul of the planet, really,” he said.
He learned about challenges to the birds’ habitat from one of his friends, Laura McKay, program manager of the Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program.
Over the past two years, Mr. Taylor and his wife have donated money for land and habitat restoration on the Eastern Shore, including an effort to plant bird-friendly trees and shrubs.
“He’s had to listen to me talk about these birds on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and how important they are, and finally he said, ’We just have to do a benefit concert,’ ” said Ms. McKay, who attended college with Mr. Taylor’s wife, Kim.
Mr. Taylor said he hadn’t been to the Eastern Shore but hoped to take his family kayaking there today.
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