It is time for another edition of I and the Bird, postponed a week for Thanksgiving festivities. Visit Five Wells for I and the Bird #37.The linked article from the Post included several paragraphs on the economic implications, in this case ski resorts and power companies. I imagine that they are not the only industries facing challenges."Wild species don't care who is in the White House," Parmesan said. "It is very obvious they are desperately trying to move to respond to the changing climate. Some are succeeding. But for the ones that are already at the mountaintop or at the poles, there is no place for them to go. They are the ones that are going extinct."
Among the most affected species, Parmesan said, are highland amphibians in the tropics. She said more than two-thirds of 110 species of harlequin frogs, which occupy mountain cloud forests in Central America, have become extinct in the past 35 years.
Meanwhile, many pest species -- including roaches, fleas, ticks and tree-killing beetles -- are surviving warming winters in increasing numbers. "We are seeing throughout the Northern Hemisphere that pests are able to have more generations per year, which allows them to increase their numbers without being killed off by cold winter temperatures," said Parmesan.
"There has been a change in the trend regarding fossil fuel intensity, which is basically the amount of carbon you need to burn for a given unit of wealth," explained Corinne Le Quere, a Global Carbon Project member who holds posts at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey."From about 1970 the intensity decreased - we became more efficient at using energy - but we've been getting slightly worse since the year 2000," she told the BBC News website.
"The other trend is that as oil becomes more expensive, we're seeing a switch from oil burning to charcoal which is more polluting in terms of carbon."
Last week I reviewed Club George, a book that narrates one season of watching birds in Central Park. This week the seasonal theme continues with Letters from Eden: A Year at Home, in the Woods, by Julie Zickefoose. Unlike Club George, this book is not a birding journal. Letters from Eden consists of 31 essays that were published in Bird Watcher's Digest over an eight-year period in a feature called "Watcher at the Window." Each essay is illustrated with paintings and sketches by the author.
Letters from Eden was a fun read made better by the lovely illustrations. While the book is clearly not a nature journal, the chapters have the feel of journal entries, and the book as a whole has the feel of a yearly journey. The anecdotal style makes the serious themes raised in several essays approachable.
A wild turkey has been hanging around Battery Park in New York City. Now Battery Park is not the ideal place for a turkey to roam. Green space in the park is rather cramped, and there is not much place to hide. However, like the local pigeons, it can get by based on food offerings from humans. The bird has been named "Zelda" by the local birders.I saw this turkey last year and again yesterday.Under usual circumstances, Ms. Hobel frowns on anyone feeding wild animals. Even the most well-intentioned offering can do a bird like Zelda harm. People have tossed peanuts, which are bad for a turkey’s digestion, or — horror of horrors — bread. “It’s like feeding somebody Styrofoam,” Ms. Hobel said.
But yesterday found two seasoned bird men in Battery Park, both well aware of Zelda’s gastronomical needs. One, Phil Lombardi, a park supervisor, supplies Zelda with chicken feed just about every day. The other, Peter May, said he was tossing seeds to other park birds one day when Zelda muscled in, driving her lesser competitors away. He has been feeding her since.
Photo by Marek Szczepanek (via Wikipedia)
Wild Turkey / Photo by Gary M. Stolz (USFWS)
From the article:"For a moment, it looked like the turkeys were waiting for the next outbound train," said Dan Stessel, a spokesman for NJ Transit. "Clearly, they're trying to catch a train and escape their fate."
Transit workers followed the bird's movements on surveillance cameras. "I have no idea how they got there," Stessel said....
"From time to time, I've heard calls that there are turkeys on the loose," said Erik Endress, president of the Ramsey Rescue Squad, a volunteer group. "Maybe they're trying to make a break."
Red Knots / Photo by the Philadelphia Inquirer
Central Park in New York City has a unique mix of human use and avian diversity. Located in the middle of Manhattan, within easy reach of public transportation, it is heavily trafficked by residents and tourists alike. A portion of these visitors are active birdwatchers who monitor the park's bird population and report their sightings on sites like NYC Bird Report. The park is considered among the best places to observe migration on the east coast. Its popularity as a birding spot has led to unusual encounters between birds and their human admirers, some of which are recounted in Bob Levy's Club George. During a period of unemployment, Levy became acquainted with a self-confident red-winged blackbird, named George. This blackbird supplements his natural diet by begging and taking food from the humans that visit his pond. Levy's initial interaction with George led him to explore the world of birds and take up birdwatching. His journals of observations from his first year of birding are the basis for this book.Sea ducks depend on mussels and clams for food. Unfortunately the crash of the oyster population appears to affect the supply of other shellfish as well, since they thrive in the same oyster beds.He points to the canvasback and redhead ducks as a parallel. Before water pollution killed most of the bay's underwater grass beds in the 1950s and 1960s, as many as 1 million canvasbacks and redheads migrated to the bay. Now, with bay-grass acreage only a fraction of earlier levels, the number of canvasbacks found on the bay is about 50,000. Redhead numbers have dropped to a couple of thousand.
As for sea ducks, no one knows how many winter on the estuary. Perry estimates there might be 50,000 surf scoters, as many as 20,000 black scoters and probably 50,000 long-tailed ducks.
A biologist who flew a series of parallel flights up and down the length of the bay in 1994 in a search for sea ducks estimated from his findings that the number is more than 400,000.
Today I went out to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge with DC Audubon. Blackwater is a large tract of land that encompasses the marshes of the Little Blackwater River just south of Cambridge, Maryland. In addition to marshes and freshwater impoundments, the refuge includes managed agricultural fields and some of the largest stands of loblolly pine on the Eastern Shore. The Fish and Wildlife Service maintains a five-mile Wildlife Drive that winds through most of the habitat types that the refuge offers. Recently two new hiking trails opened, and roads around the outside of the refuge include good birding spots as well.The biggest parcel is Poplar Point, a 100-acre site on the eastern side of the Anacostia that is intended as the location of a stadium for the D.C. United soccer team. Also transferred to city control would be Reservation 13, a 66-acre site on the western edge of the river that houses the former D.C. General Hospital campus and is slated for mixed-use development and health-related facilities.The parcels are intended for development to add land into the District's tax base. Development will probably according to the plans of the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation, which expects big things along the river. At least one parcel will become a sports facility.
Plans for the Poplar Point site include a mix of high- and low-rise housing and retail, as well the eventual site of the soccer stadium. According to the land swap, 30 acres of the site would be developed, and the rest would be preserved as parkland.A large portion of Poplar Point is already parkland, or at least undeveloped enough to be treated as such. While it is not great bird habitat, several species do use it in all seasons. It has some large (for DC) overgrown fields, as well as some edge/riverine habitat. Hopefully at least some of this will be left in place or at least allowed to regenerate elsewhere.
Each January the DC Audubon Society coordinates a one-day bird survey along the length of the C&O Canal, which runs 184.5 miles from Washington, DC, to Cumberland, MD. Last winter, I counted birds along a small section in western Maryland. My post about that section is here.
Chesapeake Bay Wetland / USFWS"Maybe, just maybe, 2006 will be remembered as the turning point of the bay," said foundation president William C. Baker. "But this report isn't good news. Clearly a great deal more needs to be done. It's time to get serious about saving the bay."Here is the full State of the Bay report.
Baker said weather made the biggest difference in the bay's slight improvement; rain washes pollutants into the bay, so the dry weather helped.
Despite the generally gloomy assessment, Baker praised Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania for beginning to address the bay's two biggest pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorus, which come primarily from farm runoff and sewage treatment plants. In the past decade, the states have encouraged the planting of cover crops, restoring forest buffers and managing farm waste.
Improvements were seen in fecal coliform bacteria, suspended solids, dissolved oxygen, wetlands, and government action. The rising score is linked to early efforts to reduce sewage leaks and overflows and stream restoration efforts. Trash, toxics, and nitrogen pollution, largely a result of stormwater runoff, showed no improvement this year.Obviously the river still has a long way to go.
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard. | |
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Very few birds were in the vicinity of the reflecting pool this afternoon. No ring-billed gulls at all were present. They must have been taking cover from the wind and rain somewhere else.
Northern Goshawk / USFWS
Cambodia is working to preserve habitat for the endangered Bengal Florican, a type of bustard (pictured right).
The latest installment of I and the Bird can be found at Words and Pictures. I and the Bird is a long-running and popular carnival about birds and birding. Words and Pictures is a thoughtful British blog on nature. True to the blog's name, I and the Bird #36 is offered in words and pictures.Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. FeederWatchers periodically count the highest numbers of each species they see at their feeders from November through early April. FeederWatch helps scientists track broadscale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance.This winter, the project runs from November 11 (this Saturday) through April 6, 2007. Participants may join at any time of year and set their own level of commitment.
The Board of Public Works may not approve the sale, transfer, exchange, grant or other permanent disposition of any state-owned outdoor recreation, open space, conservation, preservation, forest, or park land without the express approval of the General Assembly or of a committee that the General Assembly designates by statute, resolution or rule.This amendment is intended to prevent sales of public lands without oversight, as was attempted in 2004.
Waterfowl at Blackwater (USFWS)The state will spend up to $10.4 million to buy 754 acres of about 1,080 acres of what is now mostly farmland. A developer, Duane Zentgraf, originally planned to build thousands of new homes plus a golf course and hotel on the land.The announcement represents a victory for conservation and smart growth advocates, and for the wildlife that depends upon the refuge and its surroundings for habitat.
Today's agreement, subject to an appraisal and final state approval, leaves room for 675 homes, most of them for older adults only. A golf course, hotel and conference center originally planned have been scrapped.
If you live or watch birds in New Jersey, you might be interested in a new guide to the New Jersey Meadowlands. The guide was published in August by the NJ Audubon Society, Hackensack Riverkeeper, and Meadowlands Regional Chamber of Commerce, and it is available for free. Most people experience the Meadowlands while passing through on the Turnpike or the Northeast Corridor trains. Dedicated birders know that there are many bird watching possibilities among its marshes.To obtain a copy, visit njwildlifetrails.org or email your.meadowlands@njmeadowlands.gov."The northeast corner of the state gets such short shrift. These places are gems of nature and quiet and solitude and habitat," said Hugh Carola, a conservationist with Hackensack Riverkeeper Inc., which helped write sections of the guide.
"But close to home there are these tremendous places of good woods and wetlands and older parks. You'll find what you wouldn't expect," Carola said.
Cartoon by Tom Toles of the Washington Post.Each bundle contains gas sensors along with a global positioning system (GPS) for tracking the birds and a stripped-down cell phone that automatically transmits the data they collect.The researchers working with these pigeons hope to create cheaper versions of the sensors that can be used more widely, including in homes and in Third World countries. Cheaper sensors could conceivably be carried by people as well as pigeons. More information about the project is available at PigeonBlog.
The parts for each pack cost about $250 (U.S.) and weigh just 1.3 ounces (37 grams), about a tenth of a pigeon's weight.
Then da Costa had to enlist some birds. Rather than plucking random pigeons off the street, she got in touch with pigeon fanciers who owned homing pigeons....
The volunteers strapped the packs onto their pigeons, then took the birds up to 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from their homes and released them.
As the birds flew home, the backpacks sampled the air. The data, combined with GPS coordinates for each reading, were sent to PigeonBlog, which then automatically generated a pollution map (click here and then on the "map" tab to see an example).
Some movement has already been made in this direction. Parts of the Mall are fenced during the winter to allow grass to recover. Congress has passed a Reserve Act to prevent further building in certain sections of the Mall to prevent them from being overcrowded. (Of course, it has not stopped several building projects since the law was passed.) The image below, from the Post article, shows the reserve area in yellow.In addition to attracting millions of tourists and demonstrators, the Mall is also the preferred address for dozens of monuments, memorials and museums. Federal officials have tried to encourage pocket parks and intersections throughout the city as future sites for dozens of projects waiting in the wings, but the quandary is that everyone wants to be on the Mall.
Architects, planners, historians and tourists will be among those asked to suggest a future look and feel for the Mall: Should it be about formal gardens and fountains, or baseball games, gift shops and hot dog stands?
The Mall serves many purposes: It is the equivalent of Paris's fabled gardens of the Tuileries, the political gathering space of Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the open space of London's Hyde Park, the sports haven of New York's Central Park and the museum row of any international city.
Trying to meet all these demands in one space can create a park that is frayed, unable to handle the crowds and not true to its iconic nature.
To comment on the Mall's future, you can visit the NPS website devoted to the project. Not all pages on that site are ready yet, so be patient with it.