A DC Birding Blog

Early Invertebrate

2012-01-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

This has been an unusual winter in several ways, not least of which has been the persistently warm weather. A cold snap has rarely lasted longer than a day or two, and the first snow of the winter did not arrive until last weekend. One consequence of this is that the normal spring processes are running ahead of schedule. Daffodils have been sprouting over the past few weeks. Yesterday afternoon, it was warm enough for a slug to be out and active.

Loose Feathers #327

2012-01-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

Snowy Owl at Siletz Bay NWR in Oregon / Photo by Roy W. Lowe (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

A pair of endangered Short-tailed Albatrosses has produced a chick for the second year in a row at Midway.
Songbirds that prey on caterpillars focus their hunting on certain types of trees, like cherry trees, that are most nutritious for the caterpillars.
A new study finds that Archaeopteryx had black wing feathers.
The RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch is happening this weekend, January 28-29. If you live in the U.K. (or will be visiting), please contribute to this citizen science project. Here is a gallery of some birds featured in the count.
Starlings have a contradictory image: they are often unwelcome at birdfeeders (and are invasive in North America), but people are thrilled to see their massive murmurations near roosting sites.
Scientists have found new concentration and breeding areas for the threatened Japanese Murrelet.
A Blackbird is not a black bird when it has a case of leucism.
Jason Berry set a new big year record for Washington, DC, with 218 species in 2011.

Nature blogging

Laelaps: New Jersey’s Turnpike Croc
Compound Eye: Real-life SpiderMan: Thomas Shahan
Observations: Jumping Spiders Use Blurry Vision to Catch Quick Prey with Precision [Video]
BESG: Brahminy Kite altercation with House Crow
Outside My Window: Winter Trees: White Oak
Round Robin: Sharpen Your Skills and Help Train Merlin™
The Birdist: Are Birds Dislocated By Global Warming "Countable"?
10,000 Birds: Birding On The Cheap: Rio Grande Valley
Bourbon, Bastards, and Birds: Winter Tour Part II: Ocean Shores Cripplers and Even Snowy Owls Need To Vomit
The Freiday Bird Blog: Rare and Hurt and, What Do Birds Mean to You?
Nemesis Bird: Townsend’s Warbler in PA!
On the road: eBirding Honduras

Environment and biodiversity

The USDA issued an updated Plant Hardiness Zone Map. This new map reflects warming due to climate change.
Barack Obama addressed 8 environmental issues in the State of the Union address; all were energy-related and none addressed wildlife conservation directly.
Mountain yellow-legged frogs of the Sierra Nevada may be classed as endangered since their population has fallen 90% due to the spread of a chytrid fungus.
A rainforest survey in southern Suriname found 46 new species and 1,300 species overall. The overall species total included 215 species of birds. The newly-discovered species included one new frog, eight new freshwater fish, and many insects. Here is a gallery of some of the new species.
A British woman crossed Antarctica on skis.
During early stages of BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration pressured government scientists to underestimate the flow rate from the broken wellhead.
A federal judge ruled that Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, was not responsible for some civil compensatory claims but would have to pay fines and punitive damages.
The biggest trees in the world are already on the decline and face further challenges from climate change.
Despite greater environmental awareness and regulations, 87 species of marine mammals have been eaten in 114 countries over the past two decades. In fact, consumption of meat from marine mammals has been on the rise since the 1970s.
Restored wetlands are rarely as good as original wetlands at harboring biodiversity and sequestering carbon. This finding supports the need to protect original wetlands wherever possible.
The Obama administration issued a new forest management plan that it says will rely to a greater extent on science and collaboration with outside conservation groups.

Mercury Poisoning Is Harming Songbirds

2012-01-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

Wood Thrush / USFWS Photo

A new study by scientists at the Biodiversity Research Institute confirms that songbirds suffer harmful effects from ingesting methylmercury, one of the toxic chemicals produced by burning coal for energy. Despite some moves towards cleaner energy sources, coal is still the principal fuel for producing electricity through much of the Midwest and Northeast. The emissions from power plants include methylmercury in addition to carbon dioxide and other chemicals; the methylmercury is absorbed by tree leaves or falls to the ground in rainstorms and subsequently enters the food web.

The new study found dangerously high levels of mercury in several Northeastern bird species, including rusty blackbirds, saltmarsh sparrows and wood thrushes. Previous studies have shown mercury’s effects on loons and other fish-eating waterfowl, as well as bald eagles, panthers and otters. In one study, zebra finches lost the ability to hit high notes in mating songs when mercury levels rose, affecting reproduction.

“We’re seeing many other species in a much larger landscape of harm from mercury,” said the principal author, David C. Evers, who is the institute’s executive director. He called the Environmental Protection Agency’s new mercury standards, adopted last month and scheduled to take effect over the next four years, “an excellent step forward in reducing and minimizing the impact on ecosystems and improving ecological health, and therefore our own health.”

And the results of mercury poisoning were quite severe, even at fairly low levels of contamination.

Songbirds with blood mercury levels of just 0.7 parts per million generally showed a 10 percent reduction in the rate at which eggs successfully hatched. As mercury increases, reproduction decreases. At mercury levels of greater than 1.7 parts per million, the ability of eggs to hatch is reduced by more than 30 percent, according to the study.

Over all, birds in contaminated sites were found to be three times as likely to abandon their nests or exhibit abnormal incubation or feeding behavior. In some nests, the chicks seemed to have been affected most; they vocalized less and did not beg as aggressively to be fed.

Such consequences mimic the effects of mercury on humans whose primary contact with the toxin is through the consumption of fish. The contamination can be passed to children in the womb or while they are nursing, damaging their nervous systems and impairing their ability to learn.

The authors found similar effects in bats that they tested. Perhaps the new mercury regulations will reduce some of these problems over the next decade or two.

Birds on Stamps

2012-01-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

If you are looking for bird-related stamps, there are some new stamps depicting birds of prey from the US Postal Service. Here is what the USPS has to say about them, from the product page:

The U.S. Postal Service® salutes five kings of the sky with the Birds of Prey stamps: the northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), osprey (Pandion haliaetus), and northern harrier (Circus cyaneus).

These powerful birds are depicted in colorful portraits and shown from the neck up. The artwork appears against a plain, white background.

Birds of prey, also known as raptors, thrive in diverse habitats and live on every continent except Antarctica. The roughly 500 species of raptors include birds that hunt by day, such as falcons, eagles, and harriers, and birds that hunt by night — the owls. They share several common characteristics; birds of prey are carnivorous and use their powerful talons to capture prey. Their exceptionally keen eyesight allows them to see small objects in detail, even from a great distance. As predators high on the food chain, raptors play an important role in maintaining the balance of nature.

Illustrator Robert Giusti worked with art director Howard E. Paine on this issuance. Giusti painted the original designs in acrylic on canvas board. The "Birds of Prey" stamps are being issued in self-adhesive sheets of 20 at an 85-cent denomination, which is the price for single-piece retail First-Class Mail weighing more than two ounces and up to and including three ounces.

I doubt I would have use for a sheet of these since I rarely send letters that heavy, but if you do, these are some stamps to use. Other wildlife-related stamps currently available include the 65-cent Baltimore Checkerspot stamps and the first-class Save Vanishing Species stamps featuring an Amur Tiger.

On the Snowy Owl Invasion

2012-01-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

Snowy Owls have migrated south in impressive numbers this winter. Unlike some irruptions, which affect one part of the continent but not others, this year's Snowy Owl irruption has been observed across North America. Even Hawaii recorded a Snowy Owl, a first state record (which was promptly shot by airport officials). The New York Times reports on the scale of the Snowy Owl irruption:

The irruption started in late fall and is expected to end by March or April. In few places are people as excited as in Kansas and Missouri, where snowy owls are exceedingly rare. Ninety have shown up in Kansas this winter and 40 in Missouri. Until this year, the highest number counted in Missouri had been eight.

“It’s a massive movement,” said Mark Robbins, the ornithology collection manager at the University of Kansas.

When five of the birds took up residency at Smithville Lake, near Kansas City, Mo., it created an “owl jam,” Mr. Robbins said. Thousands of people have driven there to see them, he said, and hundreds of owl seekers have shown up at Clinton Lake near Lawrence, Kan....

Geoff LeBaron, director of the Audubon Society’s Christmas bird count, said that it was hard to estimate how many snowy owls flew south in this irruption because the latest data has not been tallied, but that the overall number was probably a few thousand. Despite the surge, the society says, snowy owls are thought to have been in decline since 1945.

There is far more data on the scope of this migration than in years past, thanks to a citizen science project based at Cornell called eBird, which is run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society. Bird-watchers around the country call in sightings, which are plotted on a map that shows precisely where the birds are wintering.

“A lot of people who have never seen one before have rushed out and seen multiples,” said Marshall Iliff, an ornithologist at Cornell and the project’s leader. “And photographers are having a field day.”

Additional hot spots include the mouth of the Columbia River in Washington State, with 10 to 13 birds; 20 at Lake Andes National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota, and 30 in Boundary Bay, near Vancouver in British Columbia.

The owls are even showing up in urban and suburban areas, along highways, on signs and fence posts, and in other places where people can more easily spot them. It has been a good snowy owl year at Logan Airport in Boston, too. Because the airfield looks like tundra, snowy owls tend to flock there, and they must be trapped and removed.

“We’ve removed 21 so far this year, and the average is six,” said Norman Smith, who works for the Massachusetts Audubon Society and traps the birds. The most ever trapped was 43 in 1986, Mr. Smith said, “but the year’s not over.”

To be more precise, birders do not "call in sightings" to eBird but enter sightings through web-based checklist forms on the eBird website. For more on the causes behind this year's Snowy Owl irruption, see this post by David Sibley. He gives a more clear account of what probably happened than The New York Times does.

I have only seen the one Snowy Owl (pictured) that was present at Merrill Creek Reservoir so far this winter. So this winter has not been quite as memorable for me as the winter of 2009, when I saw four Snowy Owls over the course of the winter, or the winter of 2010, when I saw two Snowy Owls at Parker River NWR in Massachusetts during the Superbowl of Birding.

Review: A Field Guide to the Southeast Coast & Gulf of Mexico

2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

As birders we encounter a lot more than birds during the course of our birdwatching. These organisms are often interesting and beautiful in their own right, but knowledge about their life histories and how to identify them can be spread across many identification guides, some quite technical. A solution is now available for the southeastern coastline of the United States in the form of Noble S. Proctor and Patrick J. Lynch's A Field Guide to the Southeast Coast & Gulf of Mexico. This new book follows in the footsteps of the pair's A Field Guide to North Atlantic Wildlife from 2005. Unlike the habitat guides in the Peterson series, which focus on identifying ecosystem types from indicator species, Proctor and Lynch's guide will help identify prominent species within coastal ecosystems.

"Southeast coast" for this book is defined as the U.S. coastline from North Carolina to Texas-Mexico border. This includes beaches, brackish bays and salt marshes, and the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico to the edge of the continental shelf. Ecosystems there are influenced by offshore currents, principally the Gulf Loop Current and Gulf Stream. It is also shaped by the many streams and rivers that flow into the Atlantic and the Gulf. These build up barrier islands with sediments and nourish salt marshes with nutrients, which allow such diverse ecosystems to flourish. These estuaries are important conduits for annual migrations – for birds that stop to feed along the way and for saltwater fish that must swim upstream to spawn. Humans are also altering these ecosystems through climate change, pollution, overfishing, and building artificial reefs offshore.

Birds are are the most conspicuous creatures in coastal habitats, and they get extensive treatment in A Field Guide to the Southeast Coast & Gulf of Mexico. Coverage of birds is limited to raptors and waterbirds, and even within those boundaries, it is incomplete. Rails, for instance, are not included. The bird illustrations are generally useful and accurate. I was surprised, though, not to see a depiction of the pale southeastern form of the Red-shouldered Hawk. The depiction of an immature Black-crowned Night-Heron looks misshapen. Fish and sharks also receive extensive coverage, with an emphasis on commercially-important fish. Plants and marine invertebrates get compressed treatment. If you have an interest in botany or collect and identify seashells, you may want more specialized guides for those subjects. (I do not know which to recommend.) Other groups treated in the guide include aquatic reptiles (mainly sea turtles and crocodilians) and marine mammals. As part of their emphasis on conservation issues, the authors highlight the names of endangered and threatened species (according to the IUCN Red List) in red. It is particularly striking to see just how many species are threatened. In some cases whole pages of sharks, fish, or marine mammals are red.

Proctor and Lynch's A Field Guide to the Southeast Coast & Gulf of Mexico covers the most notable organisms of the southeastern coast and offshore areas of the U.S. It would serve as a useful field guide for casual visitors to southeastern beaches, anglers and scuba divers, or for birders looking for help identifying non-avian wildlife. However, it is not sufficient as a stand-alone bird guide, even for waterbirds. For complete coverage of birds, I would suggest turning to the recently-published 6th edition of the National Geographic guide or David Sibley's guide for eastern birds.

Trees in the Snow

2012-01-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Oddly enough, yesterday was the first snowfall here since the winter started a month ago. These trees stood together in Donaldson Park. The Greater White-fronted Goose was nowhere to be found.

Bare Branches

2012-01-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Two sets of bare branches stand against a late afternoon sky. The first is a London plane tree. I am not sure about the second, but chances are that it is a honey locust.

Loose Feathers #326

2012-01-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

A Short-tailed Albatross hatched at Midway for the second time, ever / Photo by Pete Leary (USFWS)

News about birds and birding

A recent study attempts to explain why Barn Owls are able to fly noiselessly. Cited factors include its slow flight speed, wing curvature that allows each wing beat to produce more lift, and soft fringes on the wings and dense plumage overall that muffles sound.
Tiger sharks in the Gulf of Mexico are eating songbirds disoriented by the lights on oil rigs.
Someone recorded video of a Hooded Crow snowboarding on a rooftop in Russia.
Native forest birds in Hawaii are having trouble completing their annual molts. The likely cause is lack of food due to competition with introduced species.
European birds and butterflies are having difficulty moving north quickly enough to keep pace with climate change.

Nature blogging

Sibley Guides: Distinguishing male and female American Goldfinches
The Drinking Bird: The Black Hole of Birding
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Male bowerbirds use forced perspective architecture to get more sex
Birding Is Fun!: Nesting Black-billed Magpies
Bourbon, Bastards, and Birds: Plains Plovers
ABA Blog: Thoughts on Planning a Big Year at the Beginning of the Year
The Birder's Report: Falcated Duck at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge
Outside My Window: Winter Trees: Red Oak
Bug Eric: Wasp Wednesday: Not Wasp VI
Safari Ecology: Life spans of tropical birds
Neurotic Physiology: Friday Weird Science: Is that ostrich flirting with me?

Environment and biodiversity

This week, the Obama administration denied a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried oil from tar sands mines in Alberta for refining in Texas. The State Department said that it needed more time to evaluate the project than the 60-day deadline imposed by Congress in December. Cancellation of that route could mean more tanker traffic departing from British Columbia. The Obama administration also left the door open for TransCanada to reapply with an alternate pipeline route. Here are some of the animals that would be affected by the Keystone XL pipeline's route.
In 2009, scientists discovered over 19,000 new species. These included 7 birds, 41 mammals, 120 reptiles, 148 amphibians, 314 fish, 626 crustaceans, 9,738 insects, 1,360 fungi and 2,184 plants. That brings the number of known species over 1.9 million, but there may be as many as 10 million undiscovered plant and animal species.
According to NASA, 2011 was the ninth-warmest year on record. Here is an animation of the average global temperatures since 1880.
The Amazon is actually two distinct forests, one much richer in biodiversity than the other.
The Catalina Island fox has rebounded from a low of 100 individuals in 1999 to 1,542 today thanks to conservation efforts. The population had been about 1,300 before it was devastated by an epidemic of distemper.
About six million bats have died from white-nose syndrome in the past six years – many more than previously estimated. Here is an interview on the disease's potential for spreading west.

Greater White-fronted Goose at Donaldson Park

2012-01-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

As I was wrapping up my usual circuit around Donaldson Park yesterday afternoon, I stopped to scan the 300+ Canada Geese in the field next to the tennis courts. On my first scan, I didn't notice anything unusual, but I then heard a high-pitched, three-noted honk that I knew was not made by a Canada Goose. I scanned again and found a Greater White-fronted Goose fairly close to me. Since it showed no signs of flying away, I sat and watched it for a while as it foraged in the soccer field. Though it was slightly smaller than the Canada Geese in the same flock, it mostly held its own against its neighbors and occasionally fought back when they got too aggressive.

Greater White-fronted Geese breed in the Arctic across the northern hemisphere. Three subspecies breed in Alaska and Canada, and one subspecies that breeds in Greenland, flavirostris, is a rare visitor to the U.S. east coast. Members of this subspecies are somewhat larger and darker than the other subspecies and have an orange bill, all of which are consistent with the bird I saw, though I hesitate to call it such without having other birds for comparison. Greater White-fronted Goose is a fairly uncommon bird in eastern North America, though this winter may be an exception to that rule. Most of the flavirostris population migrates eastward to winter in Ireland and Scotland, and most of the continental North American populations migrate west of the Mississippi. That makes it a good county bird in addition to being a really good county bird.

Aside from the unusual goose, I mostly saw the usual birds during my walk yesterday. One exception was a pair of Peregrine Falcons that I saw fly upstream along the river. The falcons were flying in tandem and briefly put all the gulls to flight. The gulls all settled down when the falcons continued on their way.

Data in Underbirded Areas

2012-01-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

EBird is encouraging its users to add distribution data to its database by birding underbirded areas.

eBirders often email us and ask where they should go birding to make the biggest impact in regions with little data. It's perhaps little surprise that eBird checklist submissions are most dense in areas with large human populations, so getting away from those areas is a good first step for filling in the data gaps in eBird. But seeing these gaps can be really astonishing, and with the help of map wizard Paul Hurtado, we've come up with a neat way to visualize eBird data density at the county level. These maps are a visualization of the total number of eBird checklists submitted in each US county in the month of January across all years. Pull up your state map and see how your home county is faring. And better yet, find a county that's white, pink, or yellow, and go do as many eBird checklists as you can there this January!

They provide a map that shows each of the states in detail. The lighter-colored counties are the ones with the least amount of data. My state is very well covered with few real gaps. The lesser birded counties are one urban county (Essex) and two far-flung rural counties (Sussex and Salem).

County Birding with Patrick

2012-01-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I joined Patrick Belardo to check out some of the waterbird hotspots around Middlesex County. We started out at the Edison Boat Basin, where a Glaucous Gull has appeared regularly for the past week or so. At that point, the river was partly frozen, and there were relatively few gulls present. Those that were huddled together at a distance, too far and too tightly-packed to pick out the gull in question.

Our second stop was at Old Bridge Waterfront Park in Laurence Harbor, which sits on top of a Superfund site. (A plan to clean up the site is still pending.) This park offers a broad view of Raritan Bay from a different angle than is available from South Amboy or Pirates Cove. There were many rafts of waterfowl visible, but most of them were pretty far out. The most numerous seemed to be Greater Scaup, followed by American Black Ducks. We tried to pick out some Lesser Scaup or other unusual ducks without success. The flocks included three Common Goldeneyes and a few Hooded Mergansers. One Horned Grebe was visible very far out.

At Morgan Avenue in South Amboy, we saw mostly the same species as at the previous stop, with the exception of a lone Sanderling and a huge flock of Brant. A stop at Raritan Bay Waterfront Park was a bit more productive. In addition to the same flock of Brant, we were able to spot Red-breasted Mergansers, a Red-throated Loon, and a Horned Grebe. Just before we left the park, Patrick noticed an immature Bald Eagle flying over the mouth of the Raritan River near Perth Amboy.

Most of the ponds on our route were frozen over, so few birds were present on them. Waterworks Park in South Amboy had the same flock of American Coots that I saw there several weeks ago. (The Redhead was gone, though.) A large flock of gulls at Townelake in Sayreville included one adult Lesser Black-backed Gull that Patrick picked out while the bird was still asleep.

A stop at Sayreville Marsh was our most productive of the morning. The waterfowl on the river included two Ruddy Ducks, an American Wigeon, and a Canvasback. (I initially thought it was a new county bird for me, but it turned out not to be.) A Great Cormorant flew past us, and another was sitting on one of the pilings. Patrick spotted a raptor hovering over a distant landfill (the one across the river from the industrial site). When it was hovering faced towards us, few markings were visible, but when it turned in circles, a light head and white tail band became visible. Through his scope, it was possible to see the dark underwing markings characteristic of a light-morph Rough-legged Hawk. Unlike the Canvasback, this was a new county bird for both Patrick and me; it leaves me at 200 birds in Middlesex County.

After Sayreville Marsh, we stopped once more at Edison Boat Basin to check for the Glaucous Gull and found... Fish Crows. So that wrapped up a good morning of birding.

Jelly Fungus

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

This little clump of jelly fungus was on the side of a tree at the John A. Phillips Open Space Preserve on Saturday. Jelly fungi (order Tremellales) are so-called because of the gelatinous consistency of their fruiting bodies. This may be the species known as brown witch's butter (Tremella foliacea), also known as jelly leaf. That species occurs late in the season and grows on both hardwoods and conifers. The species parasitizes other fungi that grow on the same trees.

Phillips Preserve

2012-01-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had the chance to explore a park I had not visited before, the John A. Phillips Open Space Preserve in Old Bridge. The park is one of several within the Spotswood Outlier, the northernmost portion of the Pine Barrens. While the Spotswood Outlier is separated from the main body of the Pine Barrens by about ten miles, it is ecologically very similar. The soil is very sandy, and the woodland is a mix of oaks and pitch pines.

While the woodland was lovely, there were relatively few birds around yesterday. I encountered a few mixed flocks that seemed to be mostly Tufted Titmice and Carolina Chickadees. One flock had a Brown Creeper and Hairy Woodpecker in addition to the more common birds.

I am not sure whether these holes were the work of a woodpecker or larvae of some sort. Perhaps both were involved.

Review: Wicked Bugs by Amy Stewart

2012-01-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

Most insects we encounter are benign, even beneficial, performing pollination services or breaking down waste and debris. Even spiders and centipedes, the arthropods most likely to creep me out, are unlikely to pose a threat to humans and help control various household pests like flies, silverfish, and roaches. However, there are a proportionately small number of arthropods that can be annoying, destructive, or worse in their interactions of humans. Many of these are treated in Amy Stewart's latest book, Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects.

The "bugs" of Wicked Bugs are not strictly true bugs, insects in the order Hemiptera. Stewart uses the term in its popular sense to refer to small creatures with jointed legs, and even to some that are not strictly arthropods. These include insects, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, ticks, worms, and more.

Each "wicked bug" is treated separately, with its own short account of incidents in which the species figured prominently. Stewart follows up with the bug's life history and what, if anything, can be done to prevent or cure outbreaks. Interspersed among the individual accounts are short chapters treating groups of insects together, such as garden pests, stinging ants, or destroyers of books. (The latter account contains a quote attributed to Desiderius Erasmus: "books, to be saved from the worms, must be used.") The accounts are labelled with scary-sounding terms like "painful," "destructive," "horrible," or "deadly." Where possible, Stewart includes major contemporary issues like Formosan subterranean termites undermining the integrity of floodwalls (and other structures) in New Orleans or swarms of sand flies attacking U.S. soldiers stationed in the Middle East.

The book has some bias for pests that affect North America and Europe. Many of the most serious insect pests in these two regions were imported, usually accidentally. However, the book covers dangerous insects from all over the world. Some of the most fearsome insects come from tropical regions. Some were already familiar to me, either from first-hand experience or from reading about them, but many were not.

I would recommend Wicked Bugs to anyone with an interest in insects or who wants to learn more about preventing insect pests. Despite its cringe-worthy subject matter, the text is engaging and informative and may appeal even to people who do not like insects all that much. When it comes to problem insects, knowing what they are and how to deal with them is half the battle.

Here is an interview with the author:

The High Bar w/Warren Etheredge & Amy Stewart from The High Bar on Vimeo.

Loose Feathers #325

2012-01-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Male Short-tailed Albatross and Chick / Photo by Pete Leary (USFWS)

News about birds and birding

Wandering Albatrosses are benefiting from climate change since changes in winds near the South Pole have allowed them to take shorter and more frequent foraging flights. This has resulted in healthier offspring. The changes are not necessarily long-term, however, as further warming is expected to change the winds again.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to regulate the Hawaiian swordfish fishery to protect endangered Short-tailed Albatrosses, a pair of which recently started breeding on the Midway atoll.
Because of a warming climate, elk have been overgrazing songbird habitat in mountainous areas of Arizona. The elk are having a negative effect on Red-faced Warblers, among other species.
A Chinstrap Penguin spotted in the South Shetland Islands appears to have isabellinism, a genetic mutation that dilutes its feathers' pigments. This penguin appears almost like an albino, but with a pale brown back. There is a picture of this unusual bird at the link.
Here is a photo of a Blackthroat, a member of the robin family.
Zebra Finch chicks are able to recognize their relatives by smell.
The series on Elegant Quail in The New York Times wraps up this week.
Here is an interview with the author of The Owl and the Woodpecker on this year's Snowy Owl irruption.

Nature blogging

AnimalWise: Show Me the Honey! Honeyguides and Humans Team Up at Dinnertime
The Nemesis Bird: Birds in Flight – Evening Light: Using the ‘Golden Hours’ to get great flight shots!
Myrmecos: English Majors Discover a New Species in Manhattan, Everywhere
Anything Larus: A Taste of the Pacific Northwest
The Daily Wing: Getting Gulls
10,000 Birds: What is a Kumlien's Gull?
Not Exactly Rocket Science: No, wait, THIS is the world’s smallest frog
10,000 Birds: In defense of county listing
Birding Is Fun!: Winter Birding Traditions
Outside My Window: Winter Trees: Norway Maple
Chuqui 3.0: How not to be a doofus with a camera
10,000 Birds: Birders Ignoring Signs

Environment and biodiversity

The US EPA released data on greenhouse gas emissions throughout the country for the year 2010. At the link you can find information on the top polluters in your state. Here is the emissions map for New Jersey. You can refine the search to the county level as well.
A camera trap took the first known photograph of a Myanmar sub-nosed monkey. The species was described in 2010 from a specimen killed by a hunter, but the species has never been encountered alive in the wild by a scientist.
Secretary Salazar approved a 20-year ban on mining around the Grand Canyon. The ban covers mining of uranium and other minerals but not exploration for oil or natural gas.
A new snake species, Matilda's horned viper, was discovered in Tanzania. The species is assumed to be critically endangered based on its rarity. It is worth clicking through to see the photos of it.
National parks will waive admission fees this weekend in honor of Martin Luther King Day. The National Park Service has posted a list of the fee free dates and parks for 2012.
Increasing urbanization in Bolivia and Peru is threatening to overwhelm Lake Titicaca with sewage and other pollutants.
Gulf currents helped break down the oil spewing from BP's broken well by circulating oil-eating bacteria back to the wellhead again and again. As a result, oil disappeared more quickly than it would have otherwise.

A Canadian Gull

2012-01-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

During the Long Branch CBC, Patrick's friend Mike spotted a banded Ring-billed Gull at Spring Lake. I stopped and photographed it to record the band code, JX3, in white lettering on a blue band. Yesterday I was reminded to submit it by a comment on the photo above. Once I did submit it, I got a response pretty quickly. This gull was banded at Île Deslauriers in Québec on June 8, 2011. Île Deslauriers is just a little north of Montréal. At the time of its banding, this gull was an adult. You can read more about the study on the project website.

Whooping Cranes in Texas and Louisiana

2012-01-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Whooping Cranes / Photo by Steve Hillebrand (USFWS)

Following up on yesterday's post, here are the current statuses of the other two Whooping Crane flocks in the United States. The cranes mentioned yesterday are part of an eastern migratory flock that conservationists have been trying to establish to help the species recover. That flock spends its summers in Wisconsin and winters in Florida. The cranes in the eastern flock can all trace their ancestry to captive birds from the western flock, which breeds at Woods Buffalo National Park in northern Canada and winters at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. This is the only Whooping Crane flock that I would call truly wild, as its breeding and migration are unassisted by humans. That flock may face trouble this winter thanks to a severe drought.

“We’re in the midst of a drought compounded by the presence of red tide,” says Dan Alonso, manager of Texas’s Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is an over-wintering ground for the cranes.

Lack of freshwater has made the waters too salty for crane dietary staples like blue crab and wolf berries, as well as boosting toxic red tide. With nothing to eat, surviving the winter will be a challenge and malnourished cranes may not have the energy and resources to return to their breeding grounds, Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.

Water for whooping cranes is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit filed in 2010 by The Aransas Project against the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The Project pointed to water management during a 2009 drought—a winter in which 23 cranes died—as causing harm to a federally-recognized endangered species. The two-week trial concluded in December, and the outcome could force the commission to consider cranes in water management.

For now, the Aransas refuge is taking its own steps to save freshwater, including collecting rainwater. Alonso noted that about 9,000 acres of proscribed burns are planned to open habitat for the cranes. He also asked that visitors keep their distance from the birds, to prevent stressing the cranes further during these tough times.

Despite the drought, Alonso remains hopeful regarding the birds: “We do hope to break that record of 300 cranes.”

Meanwhile there is an attempt underway to create a third, presumably nonmigratory, flock in Louisiana.

Despite the rough start, state officials are moving forward with plans to bring more cranes to the White Lake area, about 40 miles southeast of Lake Charles. They released a second group of 16 young birds into the marshes in late December.

Biologists see the state's wetlands as the best chance to establish a new population of whooping cranes in the wild and to improve the odds for the long-term survival of the tallest North American bird....

Officials want three distinct groups of cranes because the Aransas flock is at risk. The wintering grounds are vulnerable to rising seas, storms and chemical spills, while drought and diversions of water for growing cities have increased the marshes' salinity, killing the crabs the cranes eat....

Louisiana was home to whooping cranes until 1950. With the species near extinction, biologists removed the last one from the area for its protection.

Experts attribute the species' decline in the state to hunting activity, flooding and the conversion of tall-grass prairies into rice fields. Still, they see the area as an ideal place for the birds because of its remoteness and abundant fresh water.

Whooping Crane Flights to Continue

2012-01-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

Whooping Cranes / USFWS Photo

The FAA granted Operation Migration a one-year waiver to the rule banning pilots to receive pay for playing ultralight aircraft.

Nine young whooping cranes grounded in Alabama since December can resume their winter migration to Florida guided by their surrogate mother -- an ultralight aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration decided today.

Because the endangered birds were in mid-migration, the FAA granted a one-time exemption to let Operation Migration continue, The New York Times says.

The hatchlings, the ultralight and its human pilot (wearing a bird costume) have been cooling their heels in Franklin County, Ala., about 550 miles from their final destination. They left Wisconsin in late fall.

Presumably this will allow the young cranes to reach their assigned wintering grounds in Florida before the winter ends. Meanwhile, Operation Migration will need to either work out its issues with the FAA or come up with a new plan for helping the birds migrate next fall.

Birds on an Overcast Afternoon

2012-01-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was not nearly as warm as Saturday, but it still was not very cold. I took a short walk around Donaldson Park and added a few new year birds for my county. Soon after I entered the park, a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds flew overhead. As I rounded the trail past the boat ramp, I noticed a Hooded Merganser swimming with a couple of Mallards. That sighting means that I have now seen all three species of merganser in the county this year. (Now, does anyone have a spare Smew?) Finally, there was a Red-tailed Hawk sitting on top of the radio tower, a species I somehow had not seen yet this year. Canada Goose numbers were down yesterday (perhaps because of extra people walking dogs and running remote-control cars around), and I was not able to find the Cackling Goose among the relative few that were present.

Birding Johnson Park

2012-01-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

Not a bird.

Yesterday morning, I walked most of the length of Johnson Park, or at least most of what it easily accessible to the public. None of the birds were particularly extraordinary, but a few are not always easy to find in the county. First off, there were huge numbers of gulls, and almost all of them seemed to Herring Gulls. I estimated about 950 Herring Gulls spread over 3 or 4 flocks, with the largest flock having 500 Herring Gulls in it. Try as I might, I was not able to pick out any unusual gulls in those flocks. Canada Goose numbers seemed on the low side for that park (only 620), but it is possible that some had already left by the time I counted them.

As usual, there were a lot of waterfowl gathered around the Landing Lane bridge. These included Common Mergansers, Common Goldeneye, Ring-necked Ducks, and Bufflehead. I crossed the bridge and walked a bit up the canal towpath to get a better look at the latter two species. By the way I got to their original location, though, most of them had disappeared, so the extra distance did not really pay off much. Between Landing Lane and East Jersey Olde Towne, I found a Brown Creeper along the edge of the woods. I also saw two Cooper's Hawks. One was getting harassed by crows across River Road from the stadium; the other was sitting in a creek near the railroad bridge. One other notable sighting was a Great Blue Heron that was standing in a creek near the Rt 18 bridge. I rarely see Great Blue Herons foraging in a location that densely wooded on both sides.

Daffodils? In January??

Yesterday was unusually warm, with a high of at least 64°F. December temperatures were well above average, and we have had only a few short cold spells, so it was no wonder to see daffodils poking up through the leaves. Still, I take it as an indicator of just how crazy this winter has been.

Cackling Goose at Donaldson Park

2012-01-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

On Thursday afternoon, I found a small goose among a flock of over 600 Canada Geese in Donaldson Park near the tennis courts. After watching it for a while I concluded that it was most likely a Cackling Goose based on a combination of features. Its bill was noticeably short compared to nearby Canada Geese, its head was fairly blocky, and its back and undersides were noticeably pale – almost grayish – compared to the nearby geese. This feature stood out more in person than in my photos. It was also small compared to the flock as a whole, though quite of the Canada Geese were smaller than average themselves.

When I returned to the park yesterday afternoon, the Cackling Goose was there again, this time in the field at the foot of Second Avenue.

A few other notable birds were also present in Donaldson Park on Friday afternoon. One was the American Pipit shown above, which flushed from the field at the foot of Second Avenue and landed in the nearby brush. Another was an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull that was among a huge gull flock (mostly Herring Gulls) between the park and Rutgers Boathouse. To cap things off, a Merlin flew by while I was walking at the other end of the park.

Loose Feathers #324

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Snow Geese at Bosque del Apache NWR / Photo by Lee Karney (USFWS)

News about birds and birding

Tom Reed set a new big year record of 362 species for New Jersey in 2011. The old record of 337 was broken by five birders in 2011, and a few other birders came close to matching the record.
The Whooping Cranes led by Operation Migration have been grounded due to a legal dispute over the operation of the ultralight aircraft.
The kittiwake population has fallen by 40% since 2000 in the U.K. All seabird colonies in that country have suffered losses over the same time span.
Hitchcock's famous film, The Birds, was partially inspired by an incident in 1961 when thousands of seabirds in the San Francisco became disoriented and died. The incident is now believed to have been the result of an algae bloom that produced domoic acid; when seabirds ate marine animals that had consumed the acid, they too became poisoned by it.
Programs to protect Snow Geese have worked so well that some conservationists worry that the population is too large and has started negatively affecting smaller species like Greater White-fronted Geese. What, if anything, to do about it remains in question.
A recent expedition rediscovered the Timor Bush-warbler, which had not been recorded since its original discovery in 1932.

Nature blogging

Myrmecos: Did a parasitic fly cause Colony Collapse in bees?
The Marvelous in Nature: Rough Stink Bug
ABA Blog: AOU Check-list Proposals
Extinction Countdown: Elephant Week: Poaching and Ivory Smuggling at Record Highs in 2011
Birding Dude: Grace's Warbler - How IT Unfolded
The Freiday Bird Blog: Sunrise Promises, Hope Delivers. . .and Learning Shorebird Calls Helps
Observations: Late Bloomer: Trailblazing 18th-Century Woman Botanist Finally Honored with Namesake
Bird Light Wind: Little Bee-eater

Environment and biodiversity

Here is a photo gallery of some animal species affected by the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
A trail camera captured a photo of wolf OR-7, which recently became the first wild wolf recorded in California since the 1920s.
The FDA is restricting more antibiotics from use in livestock due to the growing problem of resistant bacteria.
Organic foods may not be as sustainable as they seem; in some cases production of organic produce may overtax water tables or the food may be transported long distances.

Eurasian Wigeon in Perth Amboy

2012-01-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

Last week, during the Raritan Estuary CBC, one of the parties found a drake Eurasian Wigeon along the Perth Amboy waterfront. The bird was later refound by other birders, including my friend Patrick, at the Cornucopia Cruise Lines docks a little further upstream from Perth Amboy. Yesterday I finally had a chance to go see the bird. It was not immediately visible from the Cornucopia parking lot, but I was able to find it by following a paved pathway from the parking lot upstream towards the Rt. 35 bridge. There were quite a few ducks tucked close to shore. In addition to the unusual interloper, there were American Wigeons, Gadwall, American Black Ducks, and Red-breasted Mergansers.

Eurasian Wigeon is an unusual bird for New Jersey and is even rarer in Middlesex County. Most records in the state come from coastal hotspots like Cape May, such as the ones I saw there in January 2010 and again in November 2010. Given its rarity, it should not be a surprise that this was a new county bird for me, #199.

Birds and Fireworks

2012-01-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

Last year, thousands of blackbirds died on New Year's Eve in Beebe, Arkansas. This year it happened again, though in smaller numbers.

"Well, there was just birds falling down on the street and people dodging and missing them," Taylor said. "And we were down the street picking them up. We got called out by the chief and we all [came] out trying to pick them off the street."

Taylor added that the Game and Fish Department took about 30 of the nearly 100 birds for testing to try to determine what happened.

Fireworks were blamed for the deaths of thousands of blackbirds last year, but it's unclear whether fireworks were the cause this time. Police imposed an impromptu ban on fireworks when the birds began falling this year.

Lt. Brian Duke of the Beebe Police Department told ABC this year wasn't nearly as bad as last year, when the birds covered the streets of Beebe. This year, they were concentrated in a smaller area and the birds were cleaned up quickly. There haven't been any reports of people being hit by a falling bird.

Biologists said last year's kill was caused by birds who were spooked off their roosts by the loud explosions and began flying into homes, cars, telephone poles and each other.

Apparently the problem of birds being startled by fireworks is not limited to Arkansas.

It turns out that birds are easily startled by fireworks. A study in the November/December issue of Behavioral Ecology used weather radar to track birds disturbed by New Year’s Eve fireworks for three years in the Netherlands. They found that thousands of birds took to the skies shortly after midnight and didn’t settle down again until 45 minutes later.

The scientists estimated that hundreds of thousands of birds, including several species of migratory waterfowl, were disturbed by the fireworks each year in the Netherlands alone. “The unexpected loud noises and bright lights fireworks produce are probably a source of disturbance for many species of domestic and wild animals,” the scientists wrote.

Most of the time, birds won’t die from the fireworks displays, as they did in Arkansas, the researchers note. But they still suffer from disrupted sleep, interrupted feeding and the energetic costs of flight and resettlement.

This is such a consistent problem that perhaps the presence of large bird flocks should be a consideration in the timing and location of fireworks displays.

My Best Photos of 2011

2012-01-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

In 2011, I took at least one photo on every day of the year and uploaded it to Flickr. A lot of users do projects like this, sometimes called a 365 project. I never really announced that I was doing one but just tried to keep it going for as long as I could. Here is a sample of my best images from last year, one from each month.

January: Red Crossbill at Seven Presidents Park
February Tonight's Sunset (2/10/2011)
March: Sun Rises Over Cape May Point
April: Snowy Egret
May: Bleeding hearts
June: Oriental Beetle
July: Red-banded Hairstreak
August: Gray-hooded Gull is not impressed by your Wonder Wheel
September: Trichopoda pennipes
October: Hoverfly
November: Rose and fallen leaves
December: Douglas Firs

Eight of those twelve images were shot within a short walking distance of my home.

From among those photos, I feel that my best was this image of a hoverfly I took in October. It was feeding on a chrysanthemum in my backyard. A lot of elements came together in a photo that I did not expect to turn out so well: good lighting, enough depth-of-field to keep most of the insect in focus, and a flower whose rays lead the eye naturally to the insect. I blogged about this image once before.

My best bird photo of the year was probably this photo of a Snowy Egret that I took at the South Cape May Meadows in April.

We are already on our third day of 2012, and I am still reviewing what happened last year. My blogging will turn to things from the new year soon, though.

The Birds of 2011

2012-01-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

I saw ten life birds in 2011. Three of them were during the Superbowl of Birding in Essex County, Massachusetts. As it turns out, I will not be going there in 2012, but hopefully some other fun events will take its place this year. My best bird was probably the Gray-hooded Gull at Coney Island. The Varied Thrush I saw in Central Park was a species I had long anticipated seeing. The Greater White-fronted Goose at Duke Island Park made up for some frustrating misses on past attempts to see the species. Here are all ten of my life birds from the past year.

Species	Location	Date
Varied Thrush	Central Park	11 Jan 2011
Dovekie	Gloucester Harbor--Jodrey StateFish Pier	29 Jan 2011
Barrow'sGoldeneye	Cape Ann--Penzance Beach	29 Jan 2011
Lapland Longspur	Sunshine Dairy Farm	29 Jan 2011
Red Crossbill	Seven Presidents Park	31 Jan 2011
Sora	Charles Rogers Wildlife Refuge	01 May 2011
Curlew Sandpiper	Heislerville WMA	14 May 2011
Gray-hooded Gull	Coney Island Beach	02 Aug 2011
EurasianCollared-Dove	Cape May Point -- Lincoln &Whilldin	10 Aug 2011
GreaterWhite-fronted Goose	Duke Island Park	01 Dec 2011

2011 turned out to be an excellent year for county birding. I had tremendous luck finding unusual species on my patch, particularly a Grasshopper Sparrow that surprised me one morning. I also had the opportunity to explore some parts of the county that I had not seen before or had not visited in a long time. Each of those visits added new species to my growing county list, which is twenty-eight species higher than it was this time last year. Here are the rest of my new birds for Middlesex County.

Species	Location	Date
American Kestrel	Edison Boat Basin	06 Feb 2011
Common Redpoll	Donaldson Park	15 Feb 2011
EasternScreech-Owl	Highland Park	20 Feb 2011
Redhead	Duhernal Lake	24 Feb 2011
Rusty Blackbird	Johnson Park	05 Mar 2011
Wilson's Snipe	Johnson Park	26 Mar 2011
NorthernGannet	Morgan Avenue Mudflats	09 Apr 2011
Glossy Ibis	Donaldson Park	12 Apr 2011
Broad-winged Hawk	Donaldson Park	14 Apr 2011
Northern Bobwhite	Morgan Avenue Mudflats	15 Apr 2011
Common Raven	Johnson Park	17 Apr 2011
GrasshopperSparrow	Donaldson Park	27 Apr 2011
Purple Martin	Donaldson Park	06 May 2011
Chestnut-sidedWarbler	Donaldson Park	09 May 2011
ProthonotaryWarbler	Donaldson Park	10 May 2011
Worm-eatingWarbler	Rutgers Preserve	11 May 2011
Marsh Wren	Cheesequake State Park	21 May 2011
Forster's Tern	Morgan Avenue Mudflats	26 May 2011
Black-belliedPlover	Pirates Cove	26 May 2011
Piping Plover	Pirates Cove	26 May 2011
Ruddy Turnstone	Pirates Cove	26 May 2011
Black Skimmer	Pirates Cove	26 May 2011
AcadianFlycatcher	Pirates Cove	26 May 2011
Little Blue Heron	Morgan Avenue Mudflats	05 Aug 2011
Yellow-crownedNight-Heron	Pirates Cove	05 Aug 2011
Caspian Tern	Morgan Avenue Mudflats	20 Aug 2011
Tennessee Warbler	Rutgers Preserve	16 Sep 2011
Least Flycatcher	Red's Marina	02 Oct 2011

By the numbers:

Total life birds overall: 351
Total state birds: 292 (12 of them new in 2011)
2011 New Jersey year list: 235
Total county birds: 198
2011 Middlesex County year list: 178
Total yard birds: 71 (3 of them new in 2011: Snow Goose, Wild Turkey, and Black-throated Green Warbler)

Warm Weather and Half-Hardies

2012-01-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

A banded Ring-billed Gull from Spring Lake

As the sun rose on the first day in 2011, I was standing on a beach in Sea Girt looking for seabirds at the start of the Long Branch Christmas Bird Count. Since New Year's is on a Sunday this year, the Long Branch CBC for the 2011-2012 CBC season fell on New Year's Eve. So I ended 2011 the way I started it: counting birds around Spring Lake for the Long Branch CBC. Last year, Patrick, Patrick's friend Mike, and I did that area on our own with two feet of snow on the ground, so that many areas were impenetrable. This year we were assisting Glen Mahler, a birder who has done that section for years and knows the territory very well, including some hidden spots that are not obvious on the maps. Warmer temperatures meant that all water was open so the waterfowl were more spread out. It also kept birds further north than usual, so it was a good year to find half-hardy species and a bad year to find strays from further north.

Destroyed boardwalk in Spring Lake

We started out by doing a tour of the ponds in our area to count waterfowl and any other birds that might be around. When Patrick and I arrived, Glen had already found a Brown Pelican, a very rare bird for this count circle. Wreck Pond held a Great Egret, an unusual bird for the Long Branch CBC, along with Hooded Mergansers, Red-breasted Mergansers, and Black Ducks. Stops at other ponds turned up Gadwall, Brant, American Coots, Ruddy Ducks, and Ring-necked Ducks. It was not until late in the morning that we finally found our first American Wigeons and Green-winged Teal. Black-crowned Night-Herons were in their usual spot on Silver Lake. Once we had accounted for the waterfowl, we turned to land birding. Our most productive spot was along the southern shore of Wreck Pond, where Patrick and I saw two Gray Catbirds, a Yellow-breasted Chat, and a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher in quick succession. The Yellow-breasted Chat was a special find for me since it was my first ever in the state and the first I had seen since about 2007. Subsequent stops for land birds were not quite as productive, though we did add quite many species, including a House Wren along the creek behind a sewage treatment plant.

Sunset over the outflow from Wreck Pond

In the end, we tallied 70 species for our section, which ties Glen's previous record for that part of the count circle. The Long Branch CBC as a whole tallied at least 116 bird species on count day, along with a few other count week species.

Lesser Black-backed Gull

2011-12-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon, I found an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull along the edge of the artificial pond at Donaldson Park. At first it stood in the shallow water, and then it moved up onto the bank and stood there for a while. The mantle was clearly slate-gray, and its legs were obviously yellow in the afternoon sunlight. Light streaking on its crown and nape also indicates its identity. Oddly enough, there were no Great Black-backed Gulls present, or at least none that I saw. However, there were Herring Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls. This was a nice sighting to close out my county birding year.

Loose Feathers #323

2011-12-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

Tundra Swans / Photo by D. Montgomery (USFWS)

News about birds and birding

California may list the Black-backed Woodpecker as a threatened species. While the species is not endangered on a continental level, it is rare in that state, and its habitat is subject to intensive logging.
Biologists are studying the Red Knots that winter along the Gulf Coast to assess whether that population is stable.
Here is a map of this winter's Snowy Owl irruption, via eBird and BirdsEye.
Scientists are studying hybridization patterns between Gambel's and Elegant Quail.
The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to create wind development zones to reduce impacts of wind energy on birds and bats.

Nature blogging

10,000 Birds: Rufous Hummingbirds – The Accidental Tourists
bootstrap analysis: updated: plotting a christmas bird count circle
Bug Girl's Blog: Roaches and Woodpecker Conservation
A Blog Around the Clock: The wonderful quail…and what Sen.Coburn should learn about it.
The Scicurious Brain: Cocaine and the sexual habits of quail, or, why does NIH fund what it does?
Flickr Blog: Thomas Shahan’s Spiders in National Geographic
PetaPixel: Magical Photos of Insects Shot Using Ordinary Household Objects

News about the environment and biodiversity

When a gray wolf wandered from Oregon into California this week, it became the first wolf recorded in California since 1924. The wolf's movements are being tracked with a radio collar.
Since gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, elk and coyote populations have declined, while aspen, willow, and cottonwood trees have bounced back. The beaver population has also increased.
The Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers has been healthier this year thanks to above-average rainfall.
A new study argues that beavers shaped much of North America's landscape.
Newly-released satellite imagery shows the development of tar sands mining in Alberta, Canada.
Like adult butterflies, caterpillars also engage in mimicry to appear similar to species with chemical defenses.
A federal judge has blocked California's low-carbon fuel law, which was intended to help the state meet its goals for greenhouse gas reductions.
Madrid has created a new six-mile-long park to rejuvenate a stretch of the Manzanares River and reconnect city neighborhoods that had been cut off from each other by a freeway. The project included digging tunnels to bury the freeway.
Bunker fuel spilled into San Francisco Bay during the Cosco Busan accident in 2007 was particularly toxic to the bay's herring population, which is important for seabirds and other marine predators.

Resident Birds

2011-12-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Two of the ubiquitous species in my area during the winter months (well, year-round, really) are the House Finch (above) and House Sparrow (below). Oddly, neither of these species is native to this area. The House Finch is a western species. Its eastern population grew from birds that escaped from the pet trade. The House Sparrow population grew from a series of deliberate releases in the 19th century.

Bizarro Birds

2011-12-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

Birding in Johnson Park is usually an opportunity to observe the strange forms that result from domesticating waterfowl, and Monday was no exception. The bird above looks like the product of a Canada Goose interbreeding with a domesticated goose, probably a Greylag. This goose looks a bit different from the Canada X Greylag crosses that I normally see because of its mostly white face and white belly band. Greylag still seems like the most likely candidate based on availability.

This duck is one of many Mallard domestic breeds. It looked larger and bulkier than the wild Mallards nearby.

A Christmas Bird Count Without Birds?

2011-12-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

White-throated Sparrow in Donaldson Park

Yesterday was the Raritan Estuary Christmas Bird Count, my local CBC. As in past years, I participated along with my mother and sister, and we worked a section of the count circle that includes my patch, as well as a few other locations. Unfortunately, the birding yesterday was as slow as I have ever seen it in my area. Even Canada Geese and gulls, two mainstays for my area, were relatively few compared to past years. Common land birds were sparse as well; we only recorded four American Robins in the course of the day.

At least the starlings showed up

The highlights for the day were all in Johnson Park. They included a Wood Duck and two Common Goldeneye on the river, a Bald Eagle that flew overhead, and a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker across River Road from the tennis courts. Also in Johnson Park, a Cooper's Hawk was harassing a Red-tailed Hawk. In Donaldson Park, I noticed that some of the Canada Geese were harassing a European Starling. I would have thought that a starling would be too small for the geese to care about it, but these geese were very aggressive. The count ended with 41 species and about 2,900 individual birds for our section.

Christmas Fern

2011-12-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

One common fern from eastern North America is the Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides). Christmas ferns stay green year-round, even through the coldest parts of winter. Because of this and their tolerance of multiple soil conditions, Christmas ferns are popular as ornamental plants. In the wild, this fern is partial to upland woodland, particularly rocky soil and wooded slopes.

Late December Frost

2011-12-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it!

Ring-billed Gulls

2011-12-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

When the fields at my patch get wet from rain or flooding (or both), the puddles become a foraging area for waterbirds. Yesterday a group of Ring-billed Gulls were loafing and foraging in one of the wet fields near the pond. Here are a few of the birds.

Loose Feathers #322

2011-12-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

Snow Geese and Ross's Geese at Sacramento NWR / Photo by Steve Emmons, USFWS

Birds and birding news

Scientists are urging that at least one third of "forage fish" like anchovies and herring be left for seabirds to eat. The high commercial demand for "forage fish" is starting to put seabird populations such as gulls, kittiwakes, terns, puffins, and penguins at risk.
When Lesser Kestrels and Jackdaws breed in mixed colonies together, they keep a truce of sorts: the Lesser Kestrels help protect the Jackdaw nests, and in return the Jackdaws do not prey on the Lesser Kestrels' eggs.
A study in Oregon found that thinning forests to give them old-growth characteristics (and thus make extra habitat for Spotted Owls) chases out flying squirrels, the Spotted Owl's primary prey.
A pair of Whooping Cranes are wintering in western North Carolina.
The captive Spoon-billed Sandpipers that were taken to the U.K. are now out of quarantine.

Nature blogging

Neurotic Physiology: The only thing birds have to fear is fear itself
The Freiday Bird Blog: A Tale of Two Counts
Laelaps: Why Is a Pelican Like a Whale?
10,000 Birds: Merry Christmas Shearwaters!
ABA Blog: Chicago mystery hummingbird a mystery no more
Beetles in the Bush: A Riot of Colors
BugBlog: Pholcus phalangioides, the Daddy Long-leg spider
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Why aren't all chilies hot?

Environment and biodiversity

November 2011 was the 12th warmest November on record.
The EPA's new mercury rules became final this week. Unlike past rules, the current rules will cover mercury sources like aging power plants that were grandfathered under the Clean Air Act. These plants will either need to come into compliance or shut down.
Over 40,000 Monarchs were counted wintering at Ellwood Mesa in California.
Some winter nature photos in honor of the solstice included this snowy landscape from the Sierra Nevada and pronghorn running in the snow.
Here is a Christmas-themed gallery of insects (mostly multicolored beetles).

A Possible Benefit of Nest Parasitism

2011-12-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Shiny Cowbird / Photo by Lip Kee Yap

Brown-headed Cowbirds are well-known among birders for parasitizing the nests of other songbirds, particularly sensitive species like Kirtland's Warbler. Nest parasitism, in this sense, means laying eggs in the nests of other songbirds for the host birds to incubate and feed. Such nest parasitism puts pressure on the host species, but scientists studying Chalk-browed Mockingbirds (Mimus saturninus) and Shiny Cowbirds (Molothrus bonariensis) in South America have found an unexpected benefit.

Shiny cowbirds regularly visit mockingbird nests and attack and puncture any eggs they find there -- damaged eggs are later removed by the mockingbird host. During these visits cowbirds will often lay their own eggs in the nest for mockingbirds to hatch and bring up alongside their own chicks.

Whilst mockingbirds will mob an attacking cowbird, once an alien egg has been laid in their nest they will usually accept it -- even though it looks very different from their own eggs.

The researchers recorded video of 130 cowbird visits to see what happened to the eggs in mockingbird nests over three breeding seasons. They experimentally manipulated clutch compositions to compare host egg survival in clutches with different numbers of cowbird eggs. They found that mockingbird eggs were more likely to survive a puncture attack when more cowbird eggs were present in the nest.

Computer simulations showed that this is likely to be a widespread phenomenon, and that, paradoxically, the greater the local density of parasites, the stronger the benefit hosts get from the presence of parasite eggs.

It would be interesting to see if this applies to parasite-host relationships elsewhere as well.

Surprise Ducks

2011-12-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

One of the great things about birding is its capacity for surprise. No matter how much you may think a bird might be a given species, it is always worth a closer look because it could be something else. Yesterday as I was walking through my local patch, I saw large numbers of the usual waterfowl like Canada Geese and Mallards. Across the river were some small, very white ducks. At first, I though they were probably Common Mergansers since those are usually present along this stretch of the river from December through March and even April. However, I checked more closely, and they turned out to be Common Goldeneye, a less common species for the site. It was hardly a rarity, but it was still a present surprise and a reminder of the importance of testing assumptions.

Fishing Line and Birds

2011-12-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

At one time or another, we have probably all seen a bird hampered by fishing line, with the line wrapped around its legs or tangled elsewhere on its body. This is a widespread problem, especially since plastics line fishing line persist in the environment.

The problem is not new — or limited to Prospect Park. Birders in other city and state parks report similar cases. The Ocean Conservancy in Washington points out that monofilament fishing line, which is made from an individual fiber of plastic, has been in use since World War II, and as the decades pass, it has accumulated in the water and on land. For a quarter-century, the conservancy has organized coastal cleanups throughout the world on a single day in September. Over that time, 1,340,114 pieces of discarded fishing line have been collected, according to the group.

“Plastics in general are the most persistent forms of marine debris,” said Nicholas Mallos, a conservation biologist with the conservancy. “Once monofilament line becomes loose in the marine environment, it poses a serious threat.”

Birding groups and wildlife experts say that most fishermen and women are quite likely unaware of the impact on wildlife. The solution, they contend, is more education, as well as the availability of secure receptacles for old fishing line and hooks. Open trash cans easily overflow, they say, and the wind blows the line away.

Birds at South Amboy

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I birded two sites in South Amboy, the mudflats at Morgan Avenue and Waterworks Park. At the first site, there were a large number of the expected gull species loafing on the sandy spit or resting in the bay. As I was looking through those, a flock of Brant flew in and landed nearby. They proceeded to act as Brant normally do until the flock got spooked and took off. Some American Black Ducks and Red-breasted Mergansers were present further out in the bay. Very few land birds were evident at either site.

The pond at Waterworks Park had more waterfowl, chiefly a flock of Canada Geese and about 35 American Coots. I had not seen that many coots in a while, so it was fun to watch them. They were particularly active and vocal yesterday. Out in the middle of the pond, there was one duck that took me a while to identify. Eventually I settled on female Redhead, but I was left with a little uncertainty. I find it much easier to identify Aythya ducks when there are in a group and individuals can be compared with each other.

Both photos show the same individual, but the color looks different in the second because the direction of light changed.

Finally, here is a view out into Raritan Bay at the end of Cliff Avenue.

Loose Feathers #321

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Tufted Titmouse / Photo by Bill Thompson (USFWS)

News about birds and birding

Fossil feathers found among fossilized ibis remains give a sense of how the birds lived and looked. Though the birds were flightless, their feathers show adaptations in common with relatives that are able to fly. Some feathers were dark brown or black while others were light brown or white, suggesting that the ancient ibis may have looked something like an immature White Ibis.
The American Bird Conservancy is asking the Department of the Interior to develop regulations to govern how wind farms affect birds and other wildlife.
Ostriches and emus are among the few birds that have a phallus; unlike mammals but like other birds, the erection mechanism is lymphatic fluid rather than blood.
A British birdwatcher did not like the movie version of The Big Year.
Sparrows exposed to the threat of predators produced fewer offspring than those that suffer less of a threat.
Scientists have discovered new breeding sites for the rare Black-throated Robin in central China. The species is related to the European Robin but looks a lot like North America's Black-throated Blue Warbler.
At least 1,500 Eared Grebes were killed when they got confused during a storm and collided with a parking lot. Most likely they mistook the dark asphalt for water.
British police caught an egg collector with over 700 wild bird eggs in his home.
Tinton Falls, New Jersey, is looking for a way to rid themselves of the large number of gulls that are attracted to a nearby landfill.
A photo of King Penguins won the first Mongabay.com photo contest.
Sierra Leone is trying to attract birdwatching tourism.

Nature blogging

NCSU Insect Museum: Lessons from Georeferencing Bumble Bees
10,000 Birds: Why is the Robin’s Breast Red?
Not Exactly Rocket Science: The two twists that let hummingbirds fly like insects
The Daily Wing: Mid-Priced Spotting Scopes
The Dragonfly Woman: Photographing Insects with iPhone + PhotoJojo Macro Lens
Beetles in the Bush: Swift Tiger Beetle: Species on the Brink
Sphere: Diving Ducks and Oyster Beds
Extinction Countdown: Sperm Bank and Reproductive Research Could Help Save Tasmanian Devils from Extinction

Environment and biodiversity

A research team has found more than 1,000 new species in the Australian outback, and there may be thousands more waiting to be discovered there.
Scientists found 208 new species in the Mekong Delta just in the past year.
Two newly-discovered frogs from Papua New Guinea are the smallest known tetrapods. The frogs are 8-9 mm long.
Here is a look back at some of the scientific research done at Antarctica since Amundsen reached the South Pole 100 years ago this week.
A fossil squid had complex eyes with 16,000 lenses per eye.
A newly-discovered species of tree frog has complex vocalizations that sound more like a bird than typical frogs.
Scientists have found a new species of pit viper in Tanzania but are keeping the location secret because of the viper's rarity. A few vipers have been collected to start a captive breeding program.

Species Missing Endangered Species Act Protection

2011-12-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Cerulean Warbler / Photo by Lana Hays

It is no secret that the Endangered Species Act gives incomplete protection to vulnerable species in the United States. Not all vulnerable species are listed, and even when a species is listed, a recovery plan may take years to create or lack adequate funding. A new study attempts to quantify just how many species lack Endangered Species Act protections.

A study - now published in Conservation Letters - has compared the ESA list of endangered species with the world's leading threatened species list, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

The study has found that of the American species included on the IUCN Red List, 40% of birds, 50% of mammals, and 80-95% of other species such as amphibians, gastropods, crustaceans, and insects, were not recognised by the ESA as threatened.

This amounts to approximately 531 American species on the IUCN Red List that have not made the ESA protection list. These include bird species such as the critically endangered Kittlitz's murrelet (Brachyramphus brevirostris), the endangered ashy storm-petrel (Oceanodroma homochroa), and the vulnerable cerulean warbler (Dendroica cerulea).

"The ESA has protected species since its establishment in 1973, and it may have prevented 227 extinctions. However, the implementation of the ESA by successive US governments has been problematic, including poor coverage of imperilled species, inadequate funding, and political intervention," says study leader Bert Harris, a native of Alabama who is undertaking his PhD with the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and School of Earth & Environmental Sciences.

"Vague definitions of 'endangered' and 'threatened' and the existence of a 'warranted but precluded' category on the ESA list are also contributing to the gap in species classification," he says.

Locust Trees in Black and White

2011-12-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

The locust trees that I like so much are mostly bare, aside from a few stray seed pods. Even in winter, though, their crooked branches make the trees visually interesting, both in small details like above and in wider views like the ones below.

Bracket Fungi

2011-12-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

These white bracket fungi covered the side of a tree at the Great Swamp on Saturday. Since I am a novice at identifying fungi, I am not going to venture a guess as to what they are.

Gulls, Geese, and Puddles

2011-12-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Rains last week left large puddles at my patch for these Ring-billed Gulls and Canada Geese to bathe in and drink.

Scenes from the Great Swamp

2011-12-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was at the Great Swamp NWR. There was very little visible or audible bird activity while I was there. In fact, there were not even many waterfowl, which is what I had hoped I might see there. So instead of looking at birds, I found myself looking at reflections in the water.

Kirtland's Warblers Like Young Forests

2011-12-10T23:27:00.000-05:00

One of the early conservation challenges in rebuilding the Kirtland's Warbler population was providing sufficient nesting habitat. These birds nest in jack pines that are five to fifteen feet tall – in other words, very young forests. Jack pines need fire for their seeds to germinate, so stands of young jack pines are relatively uncommon in a context where forest fires are carefully controlled. Fortunately, conservationists found ways around this problem, and the Kirtland's Warbler population has recovered steadily since its nadir.

Kirtland's Warbler / Photo credit: Dave Currie

An interesting finding is that Kirtland's Warblers prefer young, disturbed forests on their wintering grounds as well as their breeding grounds.

But those extensive efforts only occurred at the Kirtland's summer home, so a team of researchers reviewed the conditions of many a warbler's winter home - the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. They did this by painstakingly putting together Landsat data to create cloud-free images of the isle's forest cover....

The researchers did this not just once, but ten times, obtaining a record that spans a 30-year time period. According to Helmer, this allows them to tell how long it had been since the forest was last disturbed by fire, crops or grazing.

What the scientists discovered was that, like in their summer homes, Kirtland's warblers are found in young forests. On Eleuthera, these forests only occur after a disturbance of some sort - like fire, clearing for agriculture, or grazing. And grazing turns out to be a disturbance the warbler can live with just fine. Old forest whose underbrush has been munched on by goats provides the most suitable habitat for warblers, said Helmer.

The results, published in this month's issue of Biotropica, suggest that goat grazing stunts the forest regrowth, so that the tree height doesn't exceed the height beyond which important fruit-bearing forage tree species are shaded out by taller woody species. Helmer said that understanding how and where the warbler's winter habitat occurs will help conservation efforts in the Bahamas.

Helmer said that a unique feature of warbler's winter habitat is that the age of this forest correlates very strongly with its height.

Loose Feathers #320

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Brown Pelicans overwintering at Oregon Coast NWR / Photo by Roy W. Lowe (USFWS)

News about birds and birding

Birders on San Clemente Island off southern California found a Red-flanked Bluetail, a very rare bird for North America. The species breeds in Siberia and winters in southeast Asia.
Sixteen captive-bred Whooping Cranes arrived in Louisiana as part of the attempt to reintroduce a third Whooping Crane population there.
Penguins may time their dives according to the work their muscles are doing. The average penguin flaps its wings underwater 237 times in between breaths at the surface.
A Critically Endangered ibis species was found in Cambodia for the first time in almost a century. This species, the Giant Ibis (Thaumatibis giganteawas), is believed to have only 100 breeding pairs in the world.
A new conservation reserve at Volcan Antisana in Ecuador is home to numerous sensitive species, including Andean Condor (Vultur gryphus), Silvery Grebe (Podiceps occipitalis), and Black-faced Ibis (Theristicus melanopis).
According to a study using geolocators, South Polar Skuas follow a similar figure-eight migration pattern whether they spend the Antarctic winter in the North Atlantic or North Pacific.
Energy utilities have decided not to build a wind farm in a key breeding area for Marbled Murrelets.
The Bureau of Land Management as created a new conservation strategy for the Greater Sage-Grouse and will implement in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.
An unknown person has shot 28 birds with a pellet gun over the past month in Contra Costa County, California. (via 10,000 Birds)
Scientists studying seedeaters in South America believe that the birds may be in the midst of evolving into separate species because they differ widely in plumage and song but not in genetics.
Almost 140 Greater Flamingos were killed when they flew into a power line in western India.

Nature blogging

Sibley Guides: Identification of white geese
Seabrooke Leckie: Smooth Green Snake
Bug Eric: Wasp Wednesday: Not Wasp V
10,000 Birds: Extreme Digiscoping: Flashing Little Owls
Bourbon, Bastards, and Birds: The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: Birding By Yourself - A Lonely And Embarrassing Habit.
Outside My Window: Winter Trees: Honeylocust

Environment and biodiversity

Global emissions of carbon dioxide rose by the highest amount on record last year.
Scientists rediscovered the rare Cockerell's bumblebee in New Mexico; the species was last recorded in 1956.
A new report found that three-quarters of butterflies in the U.K. have declined in population and half have more restricted ranges compared to a decade ago.
Meanwhile, several butterfly species found in North America's Pacific Northwest are likely to become extinct in the near future.
New research has turned up additional evidence that the Mayan civilization collapsed because of deforestation that led to declines in precipitation accompanied by severe droughts.
New York purchased a 1,200-acre parcel of forested land in the Catskills to protect New York City's watershed.
Mongabay.com has been posting photos of amphibians this week, including a blue-and-yellow poison frog, two tiny newly-discovered frogs, and a red-eyed tree frog.

Blog Carnivals

Circus of the Spineless #68

Delaware Bayshore Is an Important Bird Area

2011-12-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

New Jersey's Delaware Bayshore has now been designated as a Globally Significant Important Bird Area.

To achieve the “Globally Significant” label, [New Jersey Audubon] and National Audubon submitted years of annual shorebird and waterfowl survey data to a panel of nationally and internationally recognized experts. The panel found that four species were present in numbers that met or exceeded the quota required to trigger the “Globally Significant” designation: The Bayshore is a crucial stopover site for migrating Red Knots and Ruddy Turnstones, and provides critical winter habitat for large concentrations of Snow Geese and American Black Ducks. The survey data was collected in annual surveys by wildlife biologists from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP).

Stretching along approximately 50 miles of coastline, from Fairfield Township in Cumberland County to Cape May Point in Cape May County, the Delaware Bayshore IBA includes about 50,000 acres, much of which is protected conservation land, including 13 state Wildlife Management Areas and the Cape May National Wildlife Refuge....

Awareness of the Delaware Bayshore’s importance began to grow in 1982, when staff at the New Jersey Audubon Society began the first aerial shorebird surveys to quantify the number and species of shorebirds using the Bayshore. These aerial surveys were later assumed by the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, which has performed them annually since 1986. The state also performs the annual winter waterfowl surveys that led to the inclusion of American Black Ducks and Snow Geese in the “Globally Significant” designation....

Of the four species named in the Globally Significant announcement, the plight of the Red Knot and Ruddy Turnstone is the best known and lends a bittersweet note to the designation. While recent surveys show significant numbers of birds refueling at the Bayshore during spring migration (12,000 to 16,000 Red Knots and 17,000 to 37,000 Ruddy Turnstones), they are lower than numbers of 95,000 Red Knots and 80,000 Turnstones recorded in the early aerial surveys. A precipitous decline in these populations began in the mid-1980s, when horseshoe crab harvesting rose dramatically for use as bait. The horseshoe crabs’ eggs are essential food that allows these long-distance migrants to make it to their summer arctic nesting grounds to breed.

I am actually surprised that this area was not designated as an Important Bird Area sooner since the importance of the area for migratory shorebirds (especially Red Knots) has been known for some time. Much of the area is already protected, so I am not sure whether this designation will lead to further conservation measures.

A Birding Big Year in 2011

2011-12-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Amidst the talk over the recent movie based on Mark Obmascik's The Big Year, a birder named John Vanderpoel is doing an ABA big year and compiling some impressive numbers.

John W. Vanderpoel, who now lives in Colorado, has spotted 736 species of birds in 2011.

That means he has the second-biggest Big Year ever. He trails only Sandy Komito of New Jersey, who logged 748 species in 1998.

The 62-year-old Vanderpoel passed Virginia birder Bob Ake, who had 731 species in 2010, for second place.

He is only the 15th birder in the United States to log 700 species on a Big Year.

Topping 700 made him “happy and humble,” he wrote on his Big Year blog.

Apparently he has already reached one of his original goals:

He said his goal was to get to 700 species, not to set the record. In fact, he was the quickest Big Year birder to reach 700 species.

He has also seen 911 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians in his travels. His goal: 1,000.

Will he reach Komito's record? At this point it seems unlikely that he will pick up the 12 species he would need to tie the record (or the 13 to break it), but it is still possible. You can follow the rest of his big year on his blog.

Mute Swan at Donaldson Park

2011-12-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

As I was walking around Donaldson Park (my patch) yesterday, I saw a Mute Swan on the park's pond. Mute Swans are not uncommon in New Jersey. In fact, they are very common in certain locations like Cape May or the Meadowlands. However, this was only the second time I have seen one on my patch (the first time was last Sunday). Since it was foraging close to the edge, I stopped to take some photos.

Snowy Owl at Merrill Creek Reservoir

2011-12-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, a Snowy Owl was reported at Merrill Creek Reservoir in Warren County, New Jersey. If current trends continue, it may turn out to be part of the vanguard in a Snowy Owl irruption year. That aside, it has stuck around for a few weeks and has been seen by numerous observers. Yesterday, I finally got a chance to visit the reservoir and see it. Normally, when I visit Merrill Creek, I prefer to stay in the wooded wildlife sanctuary on the north end of the reservoir, but yesterday I decided to walk all the way around to see the owl and look for any waterfowl that might be hanging around the edges of the reservoir.

As you can see from the photo, I was successful in finding the Snowy Owl. Thanks to some directions posted on Friday on Jerseybirds, the owl was fairly easy to find. The owl is visible from the top of the main dam, on the south side of the reservoir. The dam is very high, so a scope will give better views, but I was able to see the owl and watch it turn its head back and forth just with binoculars.

The rest of my walk was fairly quiet, with only a few bird flocks here and there. I saw a lot fewer waterbirds than I expected: only about two dozen Buffleheads and a half dozen Horned Grebes. It felt a little strange to be walking around a body of water with no Canada Geese or Mallards visible. Land birds were also a little sparse. The highlights were a couple of calling Hairy Woodpeckers and a pair of Eastern Bluebirds. Somehow, though, I managed to add 13 species to my bird list for Warren County.

Finally a Greater White-fronted Goose

2011-12-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

On Thursday, I had a chance to see a bird that has been on my wishlist for a while: a Greater White-fronted Goose. This was one of the last waterfowl missing from my lifelist that I could see in the eastern United States. I had attempted to see it on a few other occasions in a few other places but missed each time, often getting there a day or two after the last known sighting. Early this week, I found out about one that had been observed at Duke Island Park, a small park near the confluence of the North Branch and South Branch of the Raritan River. So on Thursday I went out to see it.

As it turned out, this turned out to be one of the easiest life birds I have ever looked for. The Greater White-fronted Goose was associating with a large flock of Canada Geese, and on Thursday morning, the flock was in the park's small pond. The Greater White-fronted Goose was on the side of the pond closest to the parking lot, so I had spotted the bird within five minutes of arriving. It stayed on that side of the pond for the entire time I was there, so I had plenty of opportunity to watch and photograph the goose.

Greater White-fronted Geese breed in the Arctic. Most winter in western North America and eastern Canada, but a few show up in the eastern United States each winter. These geese are slightly smaller than Canada Geese and resemble Greylag Geese, which provided the ancestral stock for most domesticated barnyard geese. They are recognized by their distinctive bright orange bill with a white vertical stripe at the base of the bill. They also have black barring on their breasts, but that field mark was mostly not visible on this bird since it was sitting in the water. In the photo above, you can see one of the black bars poking just above the waterline.

The rest of the park was pretty quiet. On the road leading from the park commission building to the dam, I saw a half dozen Eastern Bluebirds, two Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, and three Yellow-rumped Warblers. Other characteristic winter birds were present, like White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos. One Blue Jay was making some odd noises that sounded more like chirps than like the typical Blue Jay calls. (Now that I think of it, I probably should have tried recording its vocalizations.) I was surprised to see two Orange Sulphurs, one of which is in the photo above. I had not seen any butterflies in a while and figured that they had been killed off by recent cold weather.

Loose Feathers #319

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR / Photo by Marvin De Jong (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

Extra-pair copulation gives male Great Tits a chance to have chicks with more females but comes with the cost of their mates copulating with other males. As a result, male tits that "cheat" do not have more offspring than those that do not "cheat."
An endangered Hawaiian goose, the Nēnē, now has a population of 2,000 individuals, a substantial improvement over the situation 60 years ago, when only 20-30 individuals existed.
Whooping Cranes wintering in Texas may have a hard time finding food this winter because the drought and lack of water flow from nearby rivers are making the marshes of Aransas NWR too brackish. The cranes are currently at the center of a lawsuit over water rights.
The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia is posting a new page from Audubon's The Birds of America each day.
The NY Times profiled the Nuttall Ornithological Club, the oldest birding group in the U.S.
A study shows that populations of British farmland birds continue to fall.
Elegant Quail proved difficult for scientists to trap during a recent research expedition.

Nature blogging

Maniraptora: The economics of tree swallow brood sex ratios
10,000 Birds: Digiscoping With An iPhone 4S
The Birdist: Birding the north Mississippi Delta
Laelaps: Paleontologists Uncover Wyoming’s Formidable Fossil Frogmouth
Birding Is Fun!: What is Birding?
Stokes Birding Blog: Photographing Birds in Flight, Tips
Outside My Window: Winter Trees: White Ash
The Dragonfly Woman: Sexing Giant Water Bugs
Bug Eric: Spider Sunday: Spider Sex Ed
The Nemesis Bird: Are we on the verge of a Snowy Owl irruption?
The Rattling Crow: Great Tit nestlings respond adaptively to different antipredator alarm calls

Environment and biodiversity

Vietnam is home to a newly-discovered species of ferret-badger.
Several new species of butterflies from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula were identified from collection specimens by DNA barcoding.
The USDA is releasing a scale insect in Hawaii as a biocontrol for invasive strawberry guava (Psidium cattleianum).
Two conservation organizations have offered a $500 reward for anyone who photographs the South Florida rainbow snake (Farancia erytrogramma seminola), which is believed to be extinct.
The Brown Argus butterfly is shifting its range in response to climate change.
A doctoral student is studying biodiversity at three coffee farms.
This fall and winter, Monarchs face a tough migration to Mexico because of historic drought conditions in Texas and adjacent states.
Since wolves were introduced to Yellowstone in 1995-1996, scientists have been studying how environmental changes affect the population.

Cloudy Days in Black and White

2011-12-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

The last few days have had some long stretches with heavily overcast skies. This can create some challenges for photography, as the decreased amount of light leads to slower shutter speeds and less contrast. One option to create interesting photos is to make the sky as light as possible and convert to black and white. This emphasizes shapes and makes the photos look a little less gloomy. Here are a few of my attempts at this process.

This is probably my best image of a Turkey Vulture to date.

Ravens Communicating by Gestures

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

A new study find that ravens can gesture with their wings or bills to point out objects.

To see if ravens communicated using gestures, scientists investigated wild ravens in Cumberland Wildpark in Grünau, Austria. Each bird was individually tagged to help identify them.

The researchers saw the ravens use their beaks much like hands to show and offer items such as moss, stones and twigs. These gestures were mostly aimed at members of the opposite sex and often led those gestured at to look at the objects. The ravens then interacted with each other — for example, by touching or clasping their bills together, or by manipulating the item together. As such, these gestures might be used to gauge the interest of a potential partner or strengthen an already existing bond.

"Most exciting is how a species, which does not represent the prototype of a 'gesturer' because it has wings instead of hands, a strong beak and can fly, makes use of very sophisticated nonvocal signals," Pika told LiveScience.

Apparently, the ability to use gestures for communication is a trait rarely found outside of primates like humans and chimpanzees. It has been recorded among dogs that have been trained by humans, but not among other animals in the wild.

Louisiana Whooping Cranes Not Doing Well

2011-11-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Whooping Crane / Photo by Ryan Hagerty (USFWS)

Over the past year, U.S. and Canadian wildlife conservationists began an attempt to establish a third Whooping Crane population in Louisiana. (The others are a wild flock that breeds in Woods Buffalo National Park in Canada and winters in Aransas NWR in Texas and a reintroduced flock that migrates between Wisconsin and Florida.) So far, the birds have not fared well, with four of the ten birds dying of natural causes and another two being shot to death. Reintroduction is a long-term project, though, and having a third flock is important enough to keep it going despite the initial setback.

Prior to February’s reintroduction, the last time a wild whooping crane was seen in Louisiana was in 1950. The conversion of marsh habitat to farmland, destructive hunting practices and other factors led to the bird’s disappearance from the region.

But the Louisiana reintroduction has had strong backing from Salazar, U.S. President Barack Obama’s top conservation official, who described the whooping crane as “an iconic species” whose return to the state represented a “milestone moment” for international wildlife preservation.

The whooping crane’s population was down to just 22 in 1941, prompting a joint U.S.-Canada recovery effort that has become a global model for endangered-species conservation....

But the proposed Louisiana flock is considered crucial to eventually removing the species from North America’s endangered list because increasing the number of separate, self-sustaining populations — and diversifying the range of whooping crane habitats — is seen as the bird’s best defence against a catastrophic collapse from disease, an extreme weather event or other disasters.

Another 16 Whooping Cranes will be released at the same site in Louisiana next month. Hopefully this group will fare better.

Review: National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Sixth Edition

2011-11-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

The National Geographic Society has refreshed its venerable Field Guide to the Birds of North America with a new revised edition. This sixth edition comes with substantial updates and enters a field guide market crowded with some great field guides and many more good ones. In this review, I will focus on what is new in the sixth edition and how it compares to another guide with painted illustrations that covers the same area, The Sibley Guide to Birds.

What is new in the sixth edition? There are 23 new species, which brings the total species covered up to 990. Over 300 painted illustrations (about one tenth of the total) have been added or revised. Range maps are updated to include new data and display migration ranges in addition to the breeding and wintering ranges. There is also an appendix of maps showing the ranges of subspecies for birds that have multiple forms. (My understanding is that both the migration ranges and subspecies maps are new for the sixth edition, but I do not have a copy of the fifth edition to check on this.) Taxonomy is also updated to reflect changes in the AOU Checklist through summer 2011. In the case of wood warblers, the scientific names are updated, but the ordering of species is not.* (I imagine it was easier to alter the text of the species accounts at the last minute than it would have been to reorder the illustration plates.) The plates were redesigned to make the illustrations less crowded, though to my eye, some plates still look rather crowded (especially among gulls and terns).

Harlequin Ducks from Field Guide to the Birds of North America

In comparison to The Sibley Guide, birds are posed more naturally, in the ways in which you might see them in the wild. Birds in the National Geographic guide look more lifelike, for the most part, and their colors seem more true to nature. Many birds are presented in a 3/4 view that shows the breast or back more clearly than in The Sibley Guide. Its smaller size makes it more portable than Sibley's guide for North America (though it is slightly larger than Sibley's regional guides). Despite its smaller size, the National Geographic guide manages to include more descriptive text per species.

The Sibley Guide retains some advantages of its own. Birds are posed more consistently so that you see each species from the same angles as related species, with which they are most likely to be confused. Sibley painted flight illustrations for every bird in the guide; this can make a difference for some situations. In some cases (like Redhead vs. Canvasback), Sibley does a better job of showing differences in shape. I also much prefer Sibley's illustrations of sparrows to those in the National Geographic guide.

Pink-footed Goose from Field Guide to the Birds of North America

The look and feel of this guide is very similar to Svensson et al.'s Birds of Europe, though it lacks some of the instructive text that makes that guide stand apart. I know some birders who still swore by older versions of the National Geographic guide long after the Sibley guide came out. After spending some time with this guide, I can see why. This is a fine resource to use as a primary field guide, particularly if you want one that covers all of North America. I could also see it being useful on cross-country trips, especially to areas where both eastern and western birds are both routine. Birders will probably want to have both National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America and The Sibley Guide to Birds on their bookshelves.

This review is based on a copy provided to me by the publisher. The field guide is supplemented by an online birding site.

* That said, the Cerulean Warbler is referred to as Setophaga cerulea in the species account and Dendroica cerulea in the introduction.

November Berries

2011-11-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

Fruit-bearing trees and shrubs help many bird species make it through our cold northern winters. Here are a few plants that are still bearing berries near the end of November. All of these photos were taken in the past few days. Above is a very familiar tree, American Holly.

This is a Winterberry shrub, which loses all of its leaves in the fall but retains its berries through much of the winter. The shape of this individual plant suggested that it was a cultivar, though I do not know which, if any, it would be. I have never observed birds eating Winterberry fruits, but something must eat them as their fruit disappears gradually over the course of the winter.

Above are some rose hips from a Multiflora Rose shrub. Birds will eat these, sometimes in preference to berries from native shrubs. Multiflora rose is very invasive and may take over old fields if it is not kept in check.

Indian Coralberry is a native fruit-bearing shrub.

Most of the crabapples have been eaten already, mostly by European Starlings and American Robins, but a few are still lingering on the branches. Some of the remaining ones are starting to shrivel.

Not all fruit-bearing shrubs and trees still have their fruit. This Arrowwood Viburnum has been stripped bare of berries, leaving only empty fruit clusters behind.

Great-Looking Maybe, But Not With These Birds

2011-11-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

Life is running a gallery of "Great-Looking Gifts" on their website, and the glass bird feeder shown above is one of them. Here is what they say about it:

The one thing aquariums have over birdhouses is that you get to watch your fish whenever you want. Now birdhouses get their own high-visibility makeover: This sculptural Mod Glass birdfeeder has an appealingly spare, modern feel — and allows you to observe your colorful feathered friends as they're nibbling. ($78, apartment48.com)

When I saw this image, the first thing that struck me was what birds they chose. The bird inside the feeder is a Common Redpoll, which breeds in the Arctic and migrates to southern Canada and the northern United States for the winter. The blue bird on the right is an Indigo Bunting, which breeds across the eastern United States and southern Canada and migrates south to Central America and the Caribbean for the winter. As far as I can tell, their breeding ranges do not overlap. These are two species that you are highly unlikely to see at the same feeder at the same time. The birds are also out of scale with each other, which makes the Photoshopping more obvious. Indigo Buntings are slightly larger than Common Redpolls but not twice their size, as this bunting appears to be.

Beyond that, I am not sure how functional this feeder would be in practice. The bowl seems very shallow and would not hold a lot of seed, so it would need constant refilling. If it swings back and forth, a lot of that seed could get knocked out. I can also imagine squirrels jumping on the feeder and either knocking it down or knocking the seed out. So if you are looking to splurge on a new bird feeder, I would suggest passing on this and looking for something more functional.

Loose Feathers #318

2011-11-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

California Condors in flight above Bitter Creek NWR in California / Photo by Scott Flaherty (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

European researchers have found that the warming climate has slowed migration. In Finland, waterfowl are migrating up to a month later than they did 30 years ago. Researchers in the U.K. found that many migrants are not flying as far south as they used to.
A few conservation websites featured Mexico's lesser-known turkey, the Ocellated Turkey in honor of Thanksgiving week. Here is one from Mongabay.com and another from the American Bird Conservancy.
LiveScience interviews the scientist who discovered that Anna's Hummingbirds chirp with their tail feathers rather than their mouths during courtship display flights.
A study finds that European Starlings learn patterns of food availability quickly but have trouble recognizing a slightly different pattern.
Conservationists are trying to discourage Oregon residents from feeding pelicans along the coast.
Despite conservation efforts populations of the endangered Florida Scrub-Jay have fallen by 25% in managed areas and up to 35-40% in the rest of Florida.

Nature blogging

Living Alongside Wildlife: This Thanksgiving, Don’t be a Hog (Nosed Snake)
Laelaps: Alabama’s Wealth of Fossil Dinosaur Feathers
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Microraptor – the four-winged dinosaur that ate birds
Bourbon, Bastards and Birds: Secret Hooded Merganser Courtship Grounds
Tails of Birding: Owl - Omen of Evil
ABA Blog: I Don't Know
Coyote Crossing: Energy waste as seen by the International Space Station
Coffee and Conservation: Know your coffee birds: Scarlet Tanager

Environment and biodiversity

A study on ecotourism found no detrimental effect from ecotourism on wild mammal populations and suggested that ecotourism could help conservation by providing an economic incentive to preserve areas along rivers, which tend to be under pressure from human settlements.
A federal appeals court restored Endangered Species Act protections for grizzly bears around Yellowstone National Park.
The American Museum of Natural History discovered 11 new sweat bee species, including five from New York City and its suburbs, which are published in the journal Zootaxa. The five New York bees are Lasioglossum gotham, found at the New York Botanical Garden and Brooklyn Botanical garden; L. ascheri, from Westchester and Suffolk counties; L. katherinae, from Brooklyn and Nassau County; L. rozeni, from Suffolk County; and L. georgeickworti, from Queens and Nassau and Suffolk counties.
A newly-discovered orchid from Papua New Guinea is the only species of orchid known to flower only at night.

Sweetgum in Autumn

2011-11-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

This Sweetgum tree stayed green and turned fairly late this fall. When the tree has its leaves, it is easily recognizable by its five-pointed leaves, which are green in summer and turn yellow or red in autumn. In winter its bare branches form a conical shape.

In autumn, Sweetgum trees produce distinctive spiky seed balls. Right now, the seed balls are still mostly green. Over the next month or so, they will turn brown and fall. After they open, they will look something like the seed balls in this photo.

Bare Branches

2011-11-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

Now that leaves have fallen, bare branches are silhouetted against gray skies.

Azaleas in Autumn

2011-11-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Azaleas are better known for their colorful flowers in the spring, but in the fall they produce some lovely colors, too. Here are two separate azalea shrubs, one with yellow leaves and the other with red leaves.

For good measure, below is a rhododendron bud, with yellow azalea leaves in the background.

Salton Sea's Future in Doubt

2011-11-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Salton Sea in California is well known among birders for its breeding populations of waterbird species and the migratory birds each year. Because of changes in the amount of water runoff to the sea, its future as bird habitat is in question. The sea is rapidly evaporating, and its edges are turning into dusty flats. This situation is likely to get worse in the future without active intervention.

With evaporation outpacing incoming agricultural runoff, a thin sheet of water less than an inch deep and 100 yards wide on the east side of the sea's Mullet Island is all that protects tens of thousands of breeding and roosting cormorants, pelicans and herons from coyotes and raccoons....

Environmental conditions are expected to get much worse in a few years at the Salton Sea, a non-draining body of water with no ability to cleanse itself. The sea was created in 1905, when the Colorado River broke through a silt-laden canal and roared unimpeded for two years into the Salton Sink.

Irrigation runoff traditionally helped stabilize the salinity of the sea, and enabled fish to thrive and make the region a haven for tens of thousands of birds and migratory waterfowl, including endangered species such as peregrine falcons, bald eagles, Yuma clapper rails and pelicans.

As it stands, salinity levels at the Salton Sea are about 50,000 parts per million parts of water, authorities said. By comparison, the salinity level of the Pacific Ocean is about 35,000 ppm.

Long-predicted catastrophic changes may begin to unfold in 2017, after an abrupt decrease in the amount of water flowing to the Salton Sea....

The surface will drop about 20 feet by 2030, Cohen said, shrinking the sea's volume by more than 60% and tripling its salinity. The effects will include the loss of fish and the tens of thousands of birds that eat them. The birds that remain will suffer from disease and reproductive deformities.

There is currently a lawsuit underway that seeks to remedy some of the problems that were not addressed in a water deal from 2003 that affects the status of the Salton Sea.

Birds along the Canal

2011-11-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I walked a segment of the Delaware and Raritan Canal upstream from the access point at Griggstown Causeway. The woods along the towpath were very birdy, though most of them were common species. White-throated Sparrows seemed to be in every shrub or tangle of vines. A Hermit Thrush was with one of the sparrow flocks. Several groups of Carolina Chickadees and Tufted Titmice roamed around, but they did not seem to have any less common birds flocking with them. At one point, I heard some Eastern Bluebirds calling, but I could not track them down. Near the spillway where I turned around, I spotted a flock of 20 or so Rusty Blackbirds. They were foraging in the woods along a creek and were moving around pretty actively. These birds are, sadly, harder to find than they used to be, so I enjoy any chance I get to see them.

Killing Songbirds for European Cuisine

2011-11-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's Loose Feathers, I linked to a report on an incident in which Hungarian officials seized a shipment of about 10,000 illegally-killed songbirds. The dead songbirds were most likely headed for restaurants in northern Italy. Traffic in wild songbirds is unfortunately routine in Europe, even though it is officially illegal in most of the EU. The most famous of the trafficked songbirds is probably the endangered Ortolan Bunting, part of Francois Mitterrand's last meal. However, many other species are also involved. Conservation organizations in Europe are doing their best to curtail the trade in songbirds, with mixed success so far.

Bee-eater / Photo credit: BirdLife Cyprus

Cyprus has been a center of songbird trapping, particularly during migration seasons when many birds are passing through the island on their way to and from mainland Europe. This fall almost 867,000 birds had been killed by mid-October.

The toll is estimated on the basis of field data from BirdLife’s ongoing field monitoring of trapping activity with mist nets and limesticks, part of a systematic surveillance programme. This latest estimate – 866,905 birds- represents the number of birds killed between Thursday 1st September and Sunday 9th October 2011. The trappers are after Blackcaps and other songbirds, which will end up as illegal, and expensive, ambelopoulia delicacies served up in law-breaking restaurants, allowing the trappers to make huge profits. The first estimate for the autumn 2011 season, posted on September 12th, was for almost 90,000 birds, but trapping has gained pace since then. The estimate will be updated every Monday until the end of October.

BirdLife Cyprus is asking birdwatchers and other wildlife lovers to sign an online petition asking the government of Cyprus to intervene. So far over 15,000 people have signed.

Loose Feathers #317

2011-11-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Rufous Hummingbird / Photo by Roy W. Lowe (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

Mating for life appears to reduce stress levels in Greylag Geese, particularly during fights, when males who have a partner nearby have lower heart rates than males without a partner.
Hungarian officials recently seized a shipment of illegally-killed songbirds that was probably headed for restaurants in northern Italy. The birds included Eurasian Skylarks, Calandra Larks, Red-throated Pipits, Bluethroats, European Goldfinches, Fieldfares, Mistle Thrushes, Reed Buntings, and White Wagtails.
Thirteen endangered Spoon-billed Sandpipers arrived in the U.K. to serve as a base population for a captive breeding program. Conservationists hope to use captive breeding to supplement the declining wild population.
Thanks to a nestling monitoring program, 20 Scarlet Macaw fledglings took flight this year in Guatemala. Conservationists check nests and remove and hand-rear weak chicks to improve their chances for survival.
The American Bird Conservancy has published a booklet on designing buildings to prevent bird kills.
A scientist writes about studying Elegant Quail in Mexico.
Central Park launched a website about eight penguin chicks being reared at the Central Park Zoo. The site includes video of the chicks.

Nature blogging

Maniraptora: Bird-friendly California vineyards may have fewer pests
10,000 Birds: Why do birds living near Chernobyl have smaller brains?
The Birdist: Birds at Large: The Big Bang Theory
The Brownstone Birding Blog: Keys To Proper Misidentification Of Birds
Bird Light Wind: SF Bird Encounters – The Mural; The Making of a Mural (part 1); Part 2; Part 3
Birding Is Fun!: Bird Hygiene
Snail's Tales: Jaws of a different kind
BugBlog: How to get a snail to go aaaaah!
Bug Eric: Wasp Wednesday: Anacrabro ocellatus
Pixiq: Animal Group Portraits
The Freiday Bird Blog: Birds and Habitat: Cox Hall Creek WMA

Environment and biodiversity

Exploration for oil and natural gas in the Arctic assists predators and scavengers while hurting ground-nesting birds. The link has a gallery of some of the winners and losers.
Despite what some politicians say, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has been a success so far.
The Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission is reducing the allowable catch of menhaden by 37%. Menhaden is used for such things as livestock feed, fertilizer, pet food, and fish oil, but is also an important prey species for many species of larger fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.
Scientists studying fossil moths from 47 million years ago found that some of them had brightly-colored wing patterns, which suggests that they were active during the day.
Camera traps found five wild cat species, including one that is critically endangered, in a Sumatran forest that is threatened by logging.
An oil well off the coast of Brazil is leaking oil. Chevron claims to have the spill under control.
TransCanada is exploring alternative routes for the Keystone XL pipeline that would avoid an environmentally sensitive region of Nebraska. One option is to reverse the flow of the existing Seaway Crude Pipeline, which has not been used much in recent years.
A new study considers the ways in which New York state might be affected by climate change. Among other things, the Finger Lakes region will become hospitable to vineyards, while coastal communities will be susceptible to rising sea levels.
Spiders.us is a new website for spider identification.

Chipped Bark

2011-11-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

While I was at Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Refuge on Saturday, I cam across a tree that had obvious damage to its trunk. A large section of bark was stripped away, and the wood underneath was chipped in a square-edged pattern. I was curious what would cause this pattern. The damage was too high to be the work of beavers. It is about the right height for deer, but would deer chew the wood underneath as well? Could a person have done this? The same pattern was not evident on nearby trees, so whatever did the damage was attracted to this particular tree.

Blueberry Leaves

2011-11-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

At this point in the fall, the most colorful trees and shrubs that still have leaves tend to be introduced exotics like Norway Maple, Japanese Maple, and Winged Euonymus. One native shrub that still has colorful leaves is highbush blueberry. Fruits of this species are an important source of food for birds and other wildlife in early fall. By this point, any fruit is long gone, and the leaves have turned deep red.

Dried Goldenrod

2011-11-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

After goldenrods bloom, they dry out and produce fuzzy clumps of seeds along the flower stems. The individual seeds are small and have silky parachutes attached so that the wind will disperse them. I think the plant above is one of the Tall Goldenrods I identified at the site of the former marina. Here is a photo of one in bloom from early October.

When I walked through the marina yesterday morning, I did not see or hear many birds at all (unlike last week). The most notable bird was an Osprey that flew back and forth along the river.

Animals Using Culverts to Cross Roads

2011-11-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

Stone culvert / Photo by Wikipedia user Valerius Tygart

Researchers in Maryland studied whether and how animals (including birds) were using culverts to cross under roads.

Raccoons will use any kind but deer avoid culverts with cobbled floors and eastern gray squirrels don’t seem to like arch-shaped passages, the study’s lead author, ecologist J. Edward Gates, said Friday. Great blue herons prefer box-shaped culverts with sandy bottoms, the study found....

Culverts are tunnels, usually made of concrete or metal, that allow water to flow beneath roadways. Animals moving along stream banks may naturally follow the water through culverts, Gates said.

Researchers documented 57 species using the conduits, including nesting barn swallows, feral cats and white-tailed deer — a species of particular concern because they cause dozens of deaths in collisions each year around the country....

The study found deer using tighter passageways than previously documented — as small as 3.2 feet high and 4.7 feet wide....

He said preferences for certain culvert shapes may have more to do with what’s on the tunnel floor. Many box-shaped culverts studied were made of concrete whereas the rounded conduits were all made of corrugated metal. The boxy shape preferred by herons also provides room to spread their wings and quickly escape, the study says.

The study was funded by the Maryland State Highway Administration to see if culverts could be used to provide wildlife with safer ways to cross roadways. Highways present a real barrier to large wildlife. If they choose to cross, they risk death or injury. If they choose not to cross, they lose access to the foraging habitat on the other side of the road as well as the opportunity to mate with members of their species that live on the other side. (The latter is especially a problem when endangered or declining species are involved; in the mountain west, wildlife bridges are being built over interstates to avoid genetic isolation.) For drivers, there is a risk of vehicle damage or injury when larger animals try to cross the road. Perhaps the solution to the problem is more or better culverts where roads can accommodate them.

Winding Down

2011-11-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I walked through Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary to see what sort of birds were moving through. I followed the field loop trail and part of the dogwood trail, for those familiar with the preserve. Most of the trees were already bare, with most of the exceptions being beeches or oaks. The preserve looked so different from the last time I was there in late summer.

The trails were fairly quiet with only a few small flocks of birds being active. Most of them were common resident species, but Dark-eyed Juncos and Hermit Thrushes marked the onset of winter birding. A couple hawks passed overhead: a Red-tailed Hawk and a Cooper's Hawk. The constantly agitated behavior of the American Crow flocks suggested that there might be more raptors around than those two.

The exception to the small flocks rule were large roaming flocks of blackbirds. The biggest one I saw mostly consisted of Red-winged Blackbirds, maybe about 100 in all. Among them were a small number of Brown-headed Cowbirds and two Rusty Blackbirds. There were also Common Grackles in another flock.

Most of the plants in the meadows were dying back, with only the dried stalks still standing.

Red Maple in Autumn

2011-11-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Red Maple is a common and widespread native hardwood tree. It grows across the eastern U.S. from southern Florida north to Newfoundland and from the Atlantic coast west past the Mississippi River. Red Maples are easily recognizable for their leaves with three main lobes and red leafstalks.

In autumn, the leaves turn red, sometimes very dark red, though some leaves may be orange or yellow.

Most of the Red Maples I see regularly are young trees, so they are still fairly short, like the one above.

However, Red Maples can grow to be 60 to 90 feet tall when they are mature, like this one, which I photographed against the sky.

Loose Feathers #316

2011-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Snowy Plover / Photo by Keenan Adams (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

Almost 500 birds of 30 species were found dead at a wind farm in West Virginia in October. It appears that instead of colliding with wind turbines, they were attracted to the 250-watt floodlights at an electrical substation, where they either died from exhaustion or crashed into one of the substation's structures. The deaths happened during an overcast or foggy night, conditions when artificial lights are especially confusing to migratory birds.
Anna's Hummingbirds are able to stay active in wet weather because they shake their heads and twist their bodies rapidly in flight to cast the water off their feathers. The link has a video of this behavior.
Hawaii is becoming the planet's extinction capital as many of its endemic species are in serious decline or already extinct. Among the species is the 'Alala, or Hawaiian Crow, which is extinct in the wild but still has a captive breeding program that may some day result in reintroduction.
The earthquake in Oklahoma stirred up a swarm of birds, bats, or insects that was dense enough to be visible on weather radar.
An article on this year's Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival includes excerpts from an interview with Greg Miller, the birder portrayed by Jack Black in The Big Year.
In summer, King Penguins at South Georgia Island bathe in streams and mud to keep from overheating.
A same-sex pair of African Penguins at the Toronto Zoo is going to be separated in an attempt to get them to breed. The African Penguin population is declining in the wild, and the two male penguins were acquired by the zoo to participate in a captive breeding program.
The Guardian has some suggestions about making a garden hospitable to wintering birds.
Some vineyards in New Zealand have used live falcons to guard their grapes against songbird flocks that feed on them. A similar solution is being used at some vineyards in Sonoma County, California.

Nature blogging

10,000 Birds: Tubenose Taxonomy 101
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Cross-dressing raptors avoid violence
Laelaps: Debating Diatryma
Audubon Guides: Formerly Known As the Louisiana Heron
The Skeptical Moth: Diversification of Moths with Teeth
Compound Eye: Naskrecki’s “Relics” argues for a conservation ethic rooted in evolutionary history
The Dragonfly Woman: The Long, Involved Process of Giant Water Bug Mating
Lawyers, Guns and Money: Endangered Species and Environmental Leverage
Martin's Moths: The village of Moth

Environment and biodiversity

Facing political pressure from both sides, the Obama administration decided to delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 elections. Environmentalists were increasingly vocal in opposition to the proposed pipeline. In the most recent action, 12,000 protesters surrounded the White House to demand that the pipeline be stopped. Yesterday's announcement came on the heels of a decision by the State Department to investigate possible conflicts of interest.
Meanwhile, the Interior Department will open new oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska but keep the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the U.S. off-limits to drilling.
Even though the threat of climate change is well documented and some steps to reduce the threat are underway, global emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise. Meanwhile, fossil fuel use is rising again in the United States as the economy slowly recovers from its deep recession.
Spruces along the edge of the tundra are growing faster as the climate warms. The news for northern forests is not all good, however, as warmer temperatures also increases the threat of wildfires in interior forests.
New research finds a decrease in the wintering population of Monarch butterflies in Mexico from 1994 to 2011. Habitat fragmentation in both breeding and wintering areas appears to be the major cause of their decline. This fall, drought in Texas and other southern states will pose an additional challenge for migrating Monarchs.
A new spider species with a white cephalothorax was found in Australia. The link has an image of this unusual-looking spider.
The western black rhinoceros is extinct in the wild according to a report by the IUCN. The same report notes that 25% of the world's mammals are facing extinction. Meanwhile, the Sumatran tiger continues to survive in what remains of its range.

Blog carnivals

Circus of the Spineless #67

Review: Arctic Autumn by Pete Dunne

2011-11-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

Pete Dunne's current writing project is a four-part series of books based on seasons in North America. The first was Prairie Spring, a book I have not read. The second, Bayshore Summer, a book I reviewed last fall, was set in Cumberland County, New Jersey, where Dunne currently lives. In the third volume, published this fall, Dunne turns his attention northward in Arctic Autumn: A Journey to Season's Edge.

The "autumn" of the book's title is not autumn as readers in a temperate climate might conceive it. At northerly latitudes, the warm season is short and summer is fleeting. By the end of June, when summer in the temperate zone is just getting started, Arctic-breeding shorebirds are already starting to migrate south. Thus Dunne begins his narrative at the summer solstice in June and continues through to November, when polar bears near Churchill, Manitoba, begin moving from their dens on land out onto sea ice, where they will spend the winter hunting. The Arctic is so vast that it is impossible to cover all of it in one book. Instead, the chapters are vignettes, each taking place at a different site in a different part of summer.

While the book is nonfiction, it is told as a first-person narrative, almost like a travel diary. Pete Dunne and his wife, Linda, travel to different parts of the Arctic to experience the season for themselves. Some locations are visited with tour groups, like Bylot Island in Nunavut. Others are explored with smaller groups, like a caribou hunting trip Dunne took with a guide and one other person. The material in each chapter is based on their interactions with the natural world of the Arctic and with the people there. Chapters include dialogue with residents of the Arctic or people who lead tours there. Dunne interweaves his own experience of the places he visits with their natural history.

The impact of humans on the Arctic is never far from Dunne's narrative. Ecotourism has an impact, of course, since animals alter their behavior when they know they are being watched, plus there is the pollution created by flying hundreds or thousands of miles to visit the Arctic. (Its effects are not all bad, though, as ecotourism contributes to local economies and may provide an economic incentive for conservation.) Native residents also have an impact, though theirs is small.

Dunne is more concerned with the large-scale changes wrought by modern technology and energy use. Climate change is gradually reducing the area covered by sea ice and making survival more difficult for polar bears and other animals that depend on sea ice for part or all of their life cycle. It will surely affect other wildlife as well by changing when food becomes available or reducing permafrost. A second major impact is oil exploration. In the U.S., whether to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling has been a contentious political issue for the past decade. In places where drilling is allowed, like in the areas of the National Petroleum Reserve adjacent to Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, habitat is cleared to make way for infrastructure, and the site is often fouled by toxic chemicals. Beyond those obvious effects, there is a more subtle one. The pipelines, buildings, radar towers, and vehicles become inviting perches or nest sites for predatory birds, and the waste produced by human habitation attracts opportunistic scavengers. These scavengers would just as soon eat eggs and nestlings as other foods. The presence of these and other predators associated with human infrastructure puts additional pressure on the waterbirds and songbirds that breed in the Arctic. A third impact that Dunne discusses is hunting, both the small-scale sustainable hunting that Dunne and others practice and the large-scale market hunting that decimated the polar bear population in the 20th century prior to the signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1973.

Arctic Autumn showcases Pete Dunne's writing at its best. The narrative is engaging, occasionally humorous, and informative. At several points, I found myself wanting to visit the places Dunne describes, especially during the chapter about a canoe trip he and his wife took with two other naturalists down the John River in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The book is illustrated with Linda Dunne's photography – black and white photographs for the chapter headings and several plates of color photographs in the middle of the book. Readers interested in the Arctic and fans of Pete Dunne's writing should enjoy this book.

This review is based on a review copy provided by the publisher.

Birds at the Marina

2011-11-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I walked through the site of the former Red's Marina in Highland Park. All of the marina buildings are now gone, and so are the boats. The site is now overgrown and in the midst of natural succession. Unfortunately a lot of the plants taking root there are invasive. Mugwort is especially conspicuous in the open areas at the site. There are a lot of native plants, though, enough to make the site attractive to birds passing through.

When I walked through the site yesterday, a lot sparrows were working an area that had been full of blooming goldenrod and boneset a month or so ago. There were Song Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows, of course, but also a handful of Swamp Sparrows. A Winter Wren chattered from the shrubs on one side of the site. When I looked in the other direction, a big flock of Golden-crowned Kinglets was working its way through the lower branches of the trees along the river. I reported 8 to eBird, but there could easily have been a lot more than that. Two Belted Kingfishers flying in tandem popped up over the shrub line, flew low over my head, and continued flying down the river. I assume these were a pair, but I did not get a good look at their chest markings.

The recently-released movie, The Big Year, highlights the competitive side of birding, in a particularly extreme form. A North American big year takes skill, but also the time and money to chase birds around the country. My typical experience of birding is a lot more like the paragraph above: appreciation of common birds, with an occasional rarity mixed in. I think that is probably true for a lot of other birders as well.

National Moth Week 2012

2011-11-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

For over a decade, British moth enthusiasts have participated in National Moth Night, an annual event. In recent years, the event has become increasingly popular. Most observers record moths in their backyards, but some prominent institutions have set up moth traps as well. Next year, the United States will have a new mothing event, National Moth Week, which will be July 23-29, 2012. Here is Dave Moskowitz of the Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission on the purpose of the event:

Why moths? With more than 10,000 species in North America alone, moths offer endless options for study, education, photography and fun. Moths can be found everywhere from inner cities, to suburban backyards and the most wild and remote places. The diversity of moths is simply astounding. Their colors and patterns are often dazzling or so cryptic that they define camoflauge. Shapes and sizes span the gamut with some as small as a pinhead and others as large as a hand.

Most moths are nocturnal creatures of the night, and need to be sought to see – others fly like butterflies during the day. Finding moths is easy and can be as simple as leaving a porch light on and checking it after dark. Serious moth aficionados use special lights and baits to attract them. Moths are also featured widely in literature and art providing a different angle for enjoyment and study.

Moth Nights are often held by nature groups and allow an easy opportunity for an introduction or for more serious pursuits. National Moth Week brings together everyone interested in moths to celebrate these amazing insects. It is hoped that groups and individuals from all across the country will spend some time during National Moth Week looking for moths and sharing what they’ve found.

During National Moth Week, attend a Moth Night event, start one, get some friends and neighbors together and check the porch lights from time to time, set up a light and see what is in your own backyard, read literature about moths. But no matter what, participate; the richness of moths is sure to fascinate. National Moth Week: Exploring Nighttime Nature.

I have been to several moth nights in East Brunswick where I met Dave and other local moth enthusiasts. The events are fun to attend. On a good night in favorable habitat, there are plenty of moths to look at and opportunities to talk to people with similar interests. It is easy to find moths in your own backyard by leaving a porch light on or setting up a moth trap. Organizations also run moth nights easily as long as they have a good spot to set up a sheet and a UV light. For more information on participating, see the National Moth Week website.

Fall Colors at Lord Stirling Park

2011-11-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

Even though a lot of trees have passed their peak foliage, some trees such as oaks still bear plenty of colorful leaves. A lot of colorful trees were on display at Lord Stirling Park on Saturday. Here are a few of the trees I saw. The one above is a sycamore along a boardwalk near the nature center. I forgot to check if this was a true sycamore or a London Plane. In direct sunlight, its leaves looked golden yellow.

This oak tree's looked more like orange brown.

Up close, this Red Oak's leaves looked bright red, especially when they were lit from behind in the morning sunlight.

Sparrows at Lord Stirling Park

2011-11-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I visited Lord Stirling Park in Somerset County in the hopes of finding some sparrows. The park has a mix of woodland and meadow habitats in addition to the swamp that the area is known for. I have had some luck with sparrows there in past autumns, such as the Lincoln's Sparrow I found in 2007.

The morning started out slow, with some flocks of White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos but not much else. As I continued around the trails, I found a few Eastern Bluebirds. One of the bluebirds flew up to a nesting box, clung to the front of the box, and stuck its head through the entrance hole as if it were feeding a nestling or checking out the cavity. Soon it was joined by a second bluebird, and both birds perched on top of the box. I am not sure exactly what it was doing. It seems too late for nestlings, so perhaps it found a source of invertebrates, maybe a spider web or a mass of insects seeking a sheltered place to spend the winter.

When I got to the farthest meadow, near the west observation platform, I finally found some bigger sparrow flocks, though most of the birds were either White-throated Sparrows or Dark-eyed Juncos. A few flocks included Swamp Sparrows and Song Sparrows. As I rounded the south end of the main pond on my way back to the parking lot, I enjoyed a nice view of a Fox Sparrow, a highlight on almost any birding trip.

Honey Locust

2011-11-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

This is an old and magnificent honey locust tree that I see every day. Honey locusts have compound leaves with tiny leaflets that turn golden yellow in the fall. Up close, the leaflets are not that impressive, but from a distance the tree looks like a mass of gold. There was another old and magnificent tree, an elm, that stood next to this honey locust, but it was removed this summer due to disease. That made me wonder how much longer I would be able to enjoy this marvelous tree.

Loose Feathers #315

2011-11-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

Sanderling / Photo by Keenan Adams (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

A study concluded that birds passing though central California have been growing larger in response to climate change. The study used banding data collected over the past forty years at Point Reyes Bird Observatory. Meanwhile, birds elsewhere have been shrinking rather than growing according to research conducted in eastern North America.
Experiments showed that Eurasian Jays plan for the future by caching food that they may want to eat but will be in short supply later.
Gunnison Sage Grouse prefer isolated nest sites that are over a mile from human development.
NPR has a slideshow of seabirds killed by eating plastic. These are albatross chicks on Midway that were fed bits of plastic by their parents until their guts became too full of plastic to process real food.
Whooping Cranes are arriving at their winter habitat in Aransas NWR. There is some concern that the cranes may be affected by an ongoing outbreak of red tide, which has killed 4.2 million fish since September.
Researchers found the remains of a bird colony from the Cretaceous in Transylvania. The colony was probably swamped by a sudden flood that left eggshells and dead birds in its wake. At the time, Transylvania was an island inhabited by a variety of unusual dinosaurs. The birds in the colony were enantiornithines, with toothed beaks and claws on their wings.
Seabird colonies in Scotland had yet another poor breeding season. The colonies have fallen over 53% since 2000.
A survey in Australia was dedicated to finding the remaining population of the Orange-bellied Parrot, one of the world's rarest parrots. There are less than 50 left in the wild, mostly near Melbourne.
Meanwhile, the overall outlook for Australian birds has worsened according to a report from last year. For a variety of reasons, from invasive species to fire practices, 13% of Australian bird species are considered threatened or worse.
An exhibit in London features art work commemorating birds that have been lost to extinction.
A rare white kiwi in New Zealand survived surgery to remove a blockage from its gizzard.

Nature blogging

Not Exactly Rocket Science: Stunning wren duets are conceived as a whole but sung in two parts
10,000 Birds: Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus
Maniraptora: Evolution of Hawai'ian honeycreepers
Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog: The Impulse to Chase
Net Results: Myth-busting: Birds, buckthorn, and diarrhea
BHL: Book of the Week: Voyages to South America
The Daily Wing: Ten Tips for Winter Birding
Birding Is Fun!: Big Brown Bird with a sharp tongue and a limp
PetaPixel: Breathtaking Murmuration of Starlings Caught on Camera
The Nemesis Bird: TRULY rare birds

Environment and biodiversity

A new study finds that the summer dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay have declined over the past few decades thanks to efforts to reduce pollutants upstream.
DNA barcoding of crustaceans found on dead corals suggests that coral reefs may hold more biodiversity than thought.
A trade association of Gulf fishermen is starting a program to certify fish to reduce concerns about seafood mislabeling.
Climate change, invasive insects, and other causes are pushing trees to shift their ranges across the American West. Among the findings is that lodgepole pine and Engelmann spruce will decline while Douglas fir and western hemlock will expand. Wetter areas in the Pacific Northwest will see less change than drier areas elsewhere.
South America was home to a small mammal with unusually large teeth in the Late Cretaceous.
Two herpetologists are trying to save the endangered frogs in Ghana.
A project is underway to capture trash floating down the Los Angeles River before it reaches the sea. Trash screens will catch and collect debris at storm drains before it causes problems downstream.
Odorous house ants, common on the mainland United States, are now invading Hawaii.
Three new unusual-looking tube-nosed bats were discovered in the forests of Cambodia and Vietnam. The link has photos of the new species.

Blog carnivals

Green Standards to Incorporate Bird Safety

2011-11-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

For a long time, green building standards, as codified by the LEED program, focused on a building's energy use, often to the exclusion of other environmental considerations. One significant problem is that LEED-certified buildings often have large expanses of glass to let in light and heat and reduce energy use. Those same energy-efficient windows attract birds, which crash into the windows when they mistake reflections for trees and sky. Thanks to the work of the American Bird Conservancy and the Bird-Safe Glass Foundation, LEED certification will soon include credits for reducing bird fatalities.

To earn the credit, buildings must comply with one facade requirement, one interior light requirement and one exterior light requirement and develop a monitoring program.

The facade requirement focuses on the creation of “visual noise” to help birds distinguish inviting sky from unwelcoming wall by the making glass less reflective and more textured and/or opaque.

The lighting requirements can be met through actions as simple as turning off all the interior lights in a building at night or making sure that exterior lights are not angled up into the sky.

This looks like a step in the right direction. A green building ought to be safe for wildlife, to the extent that this is possible.

Invasive Mussels and Birds

2011-11-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

Quagga Mussel / USGS Photo

Zebra mussels first appeared in the Great Lakes in 1988, mostly likely carried in a ship's ballast. They multiplied rapidly and disrupted the lakes' ecosystems. More recently, zebra mussels have been pushed out by another invasive species, the quagga mussel, which has similarly disruptive effects on the underwater ecosystem. The changes caused by the invasive mussels seem likely to affect bird life around the lakes.

One way is through food availability:

Gary Montz, an aquatic invertebrate biologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said, "If we see a disruption in the base of the food chain by extremely high densities of zebra mussels, this could impact food for larval fish. That in turn could impact other aquatic life that depend on such fish."

That includes fish-eating birds -- loons, mergansers, grebes, cormorants, scoters and gulls.

Zebra Mussel / USGS Photo

There also seems to be a connection with disease and toxicity:

"Zebra mussels have a connection with avian botulism," said Carrol Henderson, superintendent of non-game wildlife for the DNR. Botulism is a byproduct of mussel waste. The waste is eaten by fish, which then can infect fish-eating birds.

Thousands of birds in the eastern Great Lakes have died of botulism poisoning since 1999. Species again include loons, mergansers, grebes, cormorants, scoters and gulls.

Some species of diving ducks eat the mussels. Zebra mussels have been a dominant food consumed in the eastern Great Lakes by greater and lesser scaup and bufflehead ducks. Concentration of trace elements in the mussels kills the birds.

The scaup population fell from an estimated 7.5 million breeding birds in the 1970s to fewer than 4 million in 2005, according to author James H. Thorp. The figures come from his book "Ecology and Classification of North American Freshwater Invertebrates."

Leaves in the Snow

2011-11-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Some snow remains from Saturday's snowstorm. The piles of snow here and there create the unusual sight of bright fall foliage on or under snow. Here are a few leaves from a flowering dogwood in the snow.

Pintails in Highland Park

2011-10-31T09:00:00.000-04:00

Saturday's snowstorm was followed by a strong cold front that pushed some migratory birds southward. Other bloggers who got out yesterday morning will probably have more birds to report than I do. In the afternoon I walked around Donaldson Park, my local patch. Despite not bringing my binoculars, I saw five Northern Pintails in the park's pond. I see pintails at that location only once or twice a year, and only during fall migration. These birds most likely arrived on the previous night's cold front and will probably depart in the next day or so.

Snow in October?

2011-10-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, New Jersey had a highly unusual October snowstorm, the first since 2008. Usually the state gets its first significant snowfall in mid-December. With a wet snow and leaves still on the trees, there were a lot of reports of limbs breaking (though I did not see any limbs down myself). Some of the trees, like the dogwood above, looked extra colorful with the combination of red or orange leaves with a white frosting of snow.

Flowering Dogwood in Autumn

2011-10-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

In autumn, the leaves of flowering dogwoods turn red, ranging from a bright red to a dark purplish red. These two photos were taken on separate days. The one above is from Thursday when it was raining. The one below is from yesterday, when it sunny.

Loose Feathers #314

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

Merlin / Photo by Bill Thompson (USFWS)

Birds and birdwatching news

About 103 Spoon-billed Sandpipers were recorded recently in China at a site north of the Yangtze Estuary. The site was only recently discovered to be an important shorebird staging area and is currently not protected.
The West Nile Virus has done so well in North America because it mutated to be spread more easily by the local mosquitos and found a reservoir among American Robins.
A new study on how woodpeckers avoid brain injury argues woodpeckers' brains are protected by the looping shape of their hyoid bones, a lower mandible longer than the upper mandible, and a spongy bone structure to distribute the force of the blows.
One unexpected effect of oil exploration in the Arctic is that predators use the infrastructure for dens and nesting and then use that as a base to prey on the nests of migratory birds. The rise in predation has particularly hurt Laplan Longspurs and phalaropes.
Conservationists are trying to remove the house mouse population from Farallon Islands because the mice are causing Burrowing Owls to stay longer on the islands through the fall and winter, which in turn puts stress on Ashy Storm-Petrels.
Tests on Bald Eagle eggs show that the species has benefited greatly from the regulation of dioxin discharged in paper mill wastewater.
Two birders are competing to set the new big year record in New Jersey.
Duke Farms is restoring a 500-acre wetland to provide more suitable habitat for marsh birds, especially the Northern Harrier.
A scientist tells of sampling bird populations at Yanaba Island in Papua New Guinea.

Nature blogging

Sibley Guides: Does technology make birders lazy?
The Drinking Bird: Birder Jargon Project: Along came a Sparrow
Round Robin: See the Only Known Images of the Lost Imperial Woodpecker [Video]
Greg Miller: Who’s The Best Birder In The World?
The Nemesis Bird: Photo Study: Yellow-rumped Warbler
Extinction Countdown: Please Don’t Feed the Endangered Eagles?

Environment and biodiversity

A new study has officially linked white-nose syndrome in bats to the fungus Geomyces destructans and demonstrated that bats can pass the fungus to each other. The finding opens a way forward for combating the disease, perhaps through a vaccine. There is some evidence that the fungus originated in Europe and spread to North America, where bats had not evolved resistance to the fungus.
The federal government has designated 140 square miles of critical habitat for endangered black abalone snails along the Pacific coast of California. Their numbers crashed during the 1980s due to disease.
The Obama administration wants to impose a 20-year ban on new mining claims around the Grand Canyon.
The Condit Dam on Washington's White Salmon River became the second-largest dam to be removed to restore fish passage. The dam blocked the annual migrations of salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey for spawning.
A new study confirms interbreeding between the eastern population of coyotes and wolves in the Great Lakes region. The study also showed that coyotes colonized the east via two routes: one around the Great Lakes and the other through southern states. The coyotes in Northern Virginia followed the northern route.
Poachers killed the last living Vietnamese rhinoceros, a subspecies of the Javan rhinoceros.
There are fewer American martens in California than in the past, which may be linked to a reduction in suitable forest habitat.
Here are the results of another environmental photography contest.

American Oystercatcher Banding

2011-10-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

Banded shorebirds at Cedar Key, Florida

The Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey is participating in a multistate banding project to monitor American Oystercatchers.

The oystercatcher is an especially easy bird to survey during fall migration due to its distinct features. Not only do they stand apart from other shorebird species with their unique orange bill and striking coloration, but color bands help us determine individuals as well. Banding efforts have been underway in New Jersey since 2004 in order to give insight to researchers regarding the
oystercatcher’s breeding habits, pair behavior, and migration patterns. About 300 oystercatchers have been banded in New Jersey to date, including a significant percentage of the state’s estimated 400 breeding pairs.

Adult oystercatchers are captured every year during their breeding season using a trap called a noose carpet. This flat trap, which is covered in noose knots, is partially buried under the sand near the oystercatcher’s nest. A wooden decoy is placed in the middle of the trap. When the breeding pair catches sight of the decoy imposter, they approach it to defend their territory and get caught in the trap. Once trapped, researchers place two orange bands with a two letter/digit code, denoting that they were caught in New Jersey, and one silver U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service band on their legs. They also take a variety of body measurements and obtain a DNA sample from a feather for further research. Chicks are also banded a few weeks after hatching and before they are able to fly.

The process of banding oystercatchers, while time consuming, has taught us many important things. Among many other findings, banded birds have helped us confirm that oystercatchers are long living, and exhibit strong site fidelity and pair bonds. Individual color bands have also shown us their migration route, as well as how long they stay at their migration stopover sites and wintering grounds.

Oystercatchers banded in each state covered by the project are given a different color band. If you happen to spot a color-banded oystercatcher, you can report the observation to the American Oystercatcher Working Group.

Boreal Habitats and Birds at Risk

2011-10-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

Three conservation organizations (Nature Canada, NRDC, and the Boreal Songbird Initiative) have issued a report discussing the threats to birds in three areas of the boreal forest that are currently coming under increasing pressure from human activity. You can view a quick summary, a press release, or the full report (pdf). The forests and wetlands of the boreal are home to billions of birds from over 300 species, which use the habitats for nesting, and in some cases wintering, territories. That includes more than half of the world populations of 96 species. Alterations to those habitats, especially to water quality, will effect how well they can support bird life. Many species that breed in the boreal forest winter in the United States or further south. Changes in boreal habitats could, in turn, affect how many birds we see during spring and fall migrations.

Here are a few affected areas discussed in the report:

In the Hudson and James Bay Lowlands, forests were flooded as part of hydroelectric projects. The area provides breeding habitat for 28 waterfowl, 21 other waterbirds, and 19 shorebird species. Hydroelectric energy is clean in the sense that it does not produce carbon emissions, but it comes with the cost of lost breeding grounds for birds and contaminated fishing areas for native inhabitants.
At the Peace-Athabasca Delta, tar sands mining is reducing water quality, and flows have dropped. The delta is recognized as a global IBA and a significant wetland under the Ramsar Convention. It is home to 215 bird species, including the endangered Whooping Crane, which breeds in Wood Buffalo National Park. The delta itself is protected, but the waters flowing into the delta are not, and those upstream activities threaten the productivity of the wetlands downstream.
Logging activity in the Lake Superior Watershed is reducing biodiversity and removing important food sources for the millions of birds that live there. Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake on earth and drains over 49,000 square miles, much of which lies in the boreal forest. Bird species that breed in this watershed include several that depend on spruce budworm outbreaks, which are reduced when timber companies spray with pesticides.

The boreal forest provides habitat for threatened species such as the Rusty Blackbird, Yellow Rail, and Whooping Crane. Conserving those and other species will require maintaining human activities in the forests at a sustainable level.

Late Season Pollinators

2011-10-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

As long as there are flowers blooming and the temperature is above freezing, there will be pollinators active. I have been seeing fewer larger bees, but there are still a lot of small bees and syrphid flies. The hoverfly above was busy sipping nectar while it got pollen stuck to its feet.

This small black bee was busy working the same flower head, but it picked up much more pollen on its hairy body.

These photos were my first attempts at photography using a film canister as a flash diffuser. You can read more about the technique at the link. I like the results so far. Using the film canister allowed for a brighter image, with a sharper look because of the faster shutter speed, and very few harsh reflections from the flash.

Injured Hawk Rescued and in Treatment

2011-10-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last week, observers in San Francisco Botanical Gardens spotted a Red-tailed Hawk that had a nail stuck through its head. It seems that the nail must have been fired from a nail gun. For most of the last week, the hawk eluded rescuers, but last week, it was finally caught.

The juvenile bird was trapped Saturday evening at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens. It was immediately transported to the wildlife center where specialists stayed late to receive it, Dmytryk said.

WildRescue had been notified of the injured bird nearly a week ago and had tried to trap it several times last week without success.

But observers got close enough to the bird to see the nail extending from its cheek through the front of its head. They said the hawk appeared to be in pain.

Dmytryk's group had been using a trap called a bal-chatri, a trap made of wire mesh, to try to catch the injured hawk.

According to the report, the nail dropped out while the hawk was being taken to the wildlife center. The bird is currently alive and recovering.

There is a reward for information about the shooting since it is a federal crime to kill or injure birds without a take permit (or a hunting license in the case of game birds). I think it is terrible that someone would injure the hawk (deliberately or not) and then leave it without trying to get help for it. Fortunately, the hawk appeared to be able to hunt and eat, but it could easily have been otherwise. These are wild birds and deserve to be treated humanely and with respect.

Autumn at Fairview Farm

2011-10-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

Throughout the spring and summer, Fairview Farm Wildlife Preserve is a great place to observe insects, particularly butterflies and dragonflies. It has two small, fenced-in butterfly gardens, one full of wildflowers and the other sown with a mix of wildflowers and ornamental flowers. The rest of the property has a small pond and a variety of open and wooded habitats that contain foodplants for a variety of insects. The meadows seemed like they might be attractive to sparrows during migration, so that is where I birded yesterday.

As it turned out, I ended up not seeing that many sparrows yesterday. I saw a small flock of crisp-looking Savannah Sparrows in one of the butterfly gardens. Plus there were some Song Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows around. But the fields seemed to have very little sparrow activity at all.

There was a bit more activity in the wooded and edge areas, where I saw a lot of Yellow-rumped Warblers. I saw my first Yellow-bellied Sapsucker of the fall, as well as a Blue-headed Vireo, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and some Palm Warblers. Towards the end of the morning, I heard and then saw two Ring-necked Pheasants along the entrance road into the preserve.

Fallen Leaves

2011-10-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

Autumn foliage is not at its peak quite yet in central New Jersey, but already quite a lot of leaves are blanketing the ground. Here are some photographs of fallen leaves that I took this week.

Loose Feathers #313

2011-10-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Rufous Hummingbird / Photo by Dave Menke (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

A genetic study has resolved the evolutionary relationships of the entire family of Hawaiian honeycreepers. There were originally more than 55 species of honeycreepers, some of which were from widely different lineages. Honeycreepers evolved from Eurasian rosefinches, which arrived in the Hawaiian Islands from Asia, whereas most Hawaiian birds evolved from North American ancestors.
Peru is issuing stamps featuring the country's endangered birds.
A recent study found that birds that follow army ant colonies can remember information about the ants' location and activity from one day to the next. This helps them follow colonies with high levels of activity while avoiding less active colonies.
A video crew recorded an Adelie Penguin stealing stones from its neighbor's nest. You can see the full video here.
A captive breeding program is being undertaken to increase the numbers of Spoon-billed Sandpipers in the wild.

Nature blogging

10,000 Birds: Slowing down Chimney Swifts
The Nemesis Bird: Tennessee Warbler vs. Orange-crowned Warbler
The Drinking Bird: The Big Year and birder affirmation
Birding New Jersey and the World: Cento: What Hollywood Tells Us
ABA Blog: Telephoto-Macro?!?
Round Robin: 10 Great Books on Birds: A Big Year Reading List
Urban Dragon Hunters: Aeshna ID: Canada versus Green-striped
Bug Girl's Blog: Lost Bumblebees of Denmark
Myrmecos: Portrait of a jumping spider
Net Results: Poison ivy: Breakfast of champions

Environment and biodiversity

An entomologist at Rutgers University is studying the shapes and functions of dragonfly genitals, particularly in family Libellulidae (skimmers).
A study of co-evolution found that orchids need orchid bees more than the bees need the orchids since orchid bees gather pollen from multiple sources.
Scientists in Bolivia are monitoring jaguars via camera traps.
Wolves may be gradually returning to the Northeast, so environmentalists hope to maintain federal endangered species protections for the eastern population to assist the recovery. (via 10,000 Birds)
Scientists have been tracking narwhals by satellite. The tracking program is designed to discover how these unusual whales are responding to changes in their environment.
Some male spiders are able to avoid being eaten during courtship by massaging the back of the female with their palps and a special thread.
A writer for The Guardian wonders what makes autumn feel special.
Yet another independent evaluation of the evidence concluded that the climate is warming.
The drought across the southern U.S. is expected to continue this winter thanks to La Niña.
A recent study found more humpback whales in the North Pacific than at any time in the recent past.

Oiled Pelicans Honored with a Photography Prize

2011-10-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last summer saw the publication of multiple portfolios of images documenting the wildlife harmed by BP's months-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Subsequent to their publication, I saw some suggestions that the photographers deserved journalism prizes for their powerful depictions of the suffering inflicted by the sticky oil slick. One of those photographers, Daniel Beltrá, has now been awarded the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2011. The photo that won him the prize is at right.

Here is a bit more about the winning photograph:

Daniel Beltra, who hails from Spain, entered an exceptional portfolio of pictures entitled The Price of Oil into the WPY's photojournalist category, which he also won. Most were aerial shots of the Gulf of Mexico slick and the desperate efforts made following the blow-out to clean up the mess; but it is the pelican portrait that stands out.

The birds are seen clustered in a box at a rescue facility in Fort Jackson, Louisiana. At that moment, the animals had just gone through the first stage of cleaning, which involved spraying them with a light oil to break up the heavy crude trapped in their feathers. The resulting smelly, mucky residue dripped from the birds' plumage on to a white sheet.

"The problem with birds is that as soon as they get dirty, they try to clean themselves, which means they swallow a lot of oil. By November 2010, I think they had recovered over 6,000 dead birds," Daniel said.

"There was a closed door on the box. Every so often it would be opened and a bird would be taken out to be cleaned properly. I had a 35mm lens and when that door was opened, I would look in and grab three or four shots. The intent was not to disturb them any more than was necessary."

Here is the website for the competition and gallery of winners, including a collection of images by Daniel Beltrá.