I and the Bird

I and the Bird #87 is available for browsing at Ecobirder. Bring your (birdy) Halloween costumes.

Also, I will probably not be posting over the weekend, but I will resume regular updates on Monday or Tuesday.

Second-Year Sharpies

Most of the adult hawks banded at Cape May cannot be assigned a precise age. Instead, they get the designation "after hatch year" or (more rarely) "after second year." In a few cases, there is sufficient evidence to determine that a hawk is in its second year. In sharp-shinned hawks, a second-year bird will have mostly adult feathers with some hatch-year feathers remaining.

The sharp-shinned hawk below, banded last week, has some of its hatch-year feathers among its wing coverts.

This sharp-shinned hawk, banded yesterday, has several hatch-year feathers in its tail. In addition, it had a few older feathers in its secondaries.

Yesterday's sharpie also had the reddest eye and most orange neck I have seen so far.

Phillies Win!

Congratulations to the Phillies! I was alive for their first World Series win, but too young to remember it.

(Bird posts to return in the morning.)

Mute Swans Declining in New Jersey?

Apparently there are fewer mute swans in New Jersey this year.

Now, there is evidence mute swan populations in New Jersey may be on the decline for the first time since feral colonies took hold after captive birds were released on Long Island around 1912. Air and ground surveys from July to September revealed 34 percent fewer mute swans where previous surveys since 1986 showed large population increases.

Summer molting locations where 1,890 birds were counted in 2005, showed 1,253 birds this year. Deliberate eradication efforts to the south may be the reason.

"It's a lot easier to control something you don't see a lot and that is not as attractive," Nichols said. "But if you're interested in having an ecologically balanced community of waterfowl ... having fewer mute swans would be an ultimate goal."

Dozens of mute swans are killed in New Jersey annually to test for avian influenza, particularly the highly pathogenic, H5N1 strain linked to human illnesses abroad. But experts contend the swan's local decline is more likely linked to eradication efforts across the Delaware Bay in Maryland, specifically the ecologically sensitive Chesapeake Bay region.

While I can appreciate mute swans' beauty, we could stand to have fewer of them. The swans eat too much aquatic vegetation that native waterfowl need to survive. Many native species, such as black ducks and canvasbacks, have been in decline in their mid-Atlantic wintering areas for years due to a reduction in food sources. While there are clearly other factors at work as well, mute swans are a large part of the problem.

Cape May Notes

Today we were hit by a surprise storm, part of the same system that produced the fifth measurable October snowstorm since 1894 in central New Jersey. The heavy wind and rain shut down banding for the day. If anything, the wind today was stronger than on Saturday, with gusts up to 50 mph. Occasionally the house shakes and sways in the wind.

Out of curiosity, I walked outside once the rain had died down. The state park was deserted – counting both people and birds. (I hope that the counters did not have to go out there at all today.) Few birds were out on the beach, either. I saw two savannah sparrows sheltered in the dune line, a ring-billed gull that flew past sideways, and about thirty surf and black scoters huddled against the leeward side of a jetty. The sea was as roiled as I have seen it, with a high chop, globs of foam shooting over the jetty, and clouds of sand blowing down the beach. Since I was having trouble holding my binoculars steady, and sometimes even standing, I did not stay outside for long.