Red Knots Gaining More Weight in 2009

Red Knot, originally uploaded by Birdfreak

This report from the APP suggests that the Red Knot situation may be stabilizing.

At less than a quarter-pound, each sanderling could easily fit in a coffee cup. But for these shorebirds, it's good to be overweight; their May feast on Delaware Bay gave them enough fuel for the last leg of their annual, hemispheric flight.

"Hitting over 100 grams is very good. Some of these birds can barely fly. So they're in great condition," scientist Larry Niles told Rutgers University students Wednesday, after they helped weigh and tag one of the biggest captures this spring by the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project.

For the first time in a decade, red knots and other migrating shorebirds appear to be finding enough horseshoe crab eggs in Delaware to achieve critical weight gain, Niles said.

"We're extraordinarily pleased with what's happened," said Larry Niles, a biologist with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey and the former chief of New Jersey's endangered species program. "We've had unusually settled weather the last couple of weeks, low onshore winds. So it was a soup of crabs."

The birds have gained weight so fast that researchers anticipate they will lift off this week to head for their summer breeding grounds in the Canadian Arctic, said Amanda Dey, who heads the shorebird effort for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Weight gain is critical for shorebirds since they will need to excess fat for a nonstop flight to their Arctic breeding grounds. Without that fat, they may not be able to complete the journey or they may arrive too exhausted and famished to breed. The brevity of Arctic summer means that shorebirds must follow an even stricter schedule than other bird species. Those that cannot breed right away may not breed at all.

So this is very good news:

The birds have had a good time on their Delaware Bay stopover, according to weighing data compiled by the team. In past years many birds failed to reach what researchers considered minimum safe weights to survive the flight north.

But graphs showing this year's weights show many more birds hitting the optimums. Observers have seen much less activity at Stone Harbor on the ocean side of Cape May County, where large numbers of shorebirds congregated in recent springs, and researchers believed they were feeding on mussels to make up for shortfalls in crab eggs.

Of course, Red Knots are not out of the woods yet. One good spring eating season just gives them a better chance at preventing further losses. There is certainly a long way to go to recovery. But given the dire outlook for these birds just a few years ago, it is a hopeful sign that conservation measures are starting to have effect.

Reported any banded or color-tagged shorebirds to www.bandedbirds.org. The banding studies help scientists to understand more about the birds' movements and habitat needs.

Blue Whales in New York

Normally I post about birds here, but this is pretty cool. Blue whales have been heard singing in New York's coastal waters, apparently for the first time. A blue whale was recorded singing about 70 miles off Long Island on January 10-11 of this year, with a second responding farther away.

During 2008-2009, ten of Cornell’s acoustic recorders were deployed about 13 miles from the New York Harbor entrance and off the shores of Fire Island to study the acoustic environment of New York waters and examine whether noises, including shipping traffic, are affecting the whales. By knowing the whales’ seasonal presence, New York state policymakers can make critical conservation decisions to help protect blue whales by developing management plans to avoid ship collisions with whales and reduce noises that interfere with their communications.

The acoustic monitoring was initiated from March through mid-May of 2008 to record the northward migration of right whales from their calving grounds off the Florida eastern coast to their feeding grounds off Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Cornell scientists and DEC are able to monitor and provide specific data on the species that are detected, including when and where they occur in New York waters throughout the year.

Apparently the Natural History Whale has some real baleen-and-blubber company in the area.

It is not entirely clear from the link whether this represents a first state record or simply the first acoustic contact. I suspect the latter. It would surprise me if 19th-century whalers had not caught up with one at some point. Still, it is a reminder that a lot more things may lurk off the coasts about which we are only vaguely aware.

Speaking of things lurking off the coast, see this article on what lies at the bottom of New York Bay.

Back to birds in a bit...

Loose Feathers #189

Willow Ptarmigan / Photo by Tim Bowman (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

• Even though rooks do not use tools in the wild, tests on captive rooks has revealed that they can make and use tools to solve problems and retrieve food. The findings suggest that rooks have innate intelligence that they can employ only as necessary.
  
• The US Fish and Wildlife Service opposes Utah's selenium limits for the Great Salt Lake on the grounds that the state would allow a selenium level high enough to kill 10% of mallards. The EPA must approve the state's water regulations before they go into effect.
• The RSPB's new Red List of endangered species includes the common cuckoo. Overall, 21% of the U.K.'s birds are on the list.
• Young male canaries can develop a normal song even if they were only exposed to poor singers as chicks.
• The American Bird Conservancy has put out a video about the problems with trap, neuter, and release programs for feral cats.
  
• The migration paths of Sylvia warblers could increase by as much as 400 km.
• Taylor, Texas, is against egrets nesting in their neighborhood. The egrets in the video appeared to be all cattle egrets.
• The FAA is testing new bird radar systems for airports, but implementation is several years away. Some US Air Force bases already use the technology.
• Five peregrine chicks have hatched on top of New York City bridges this spring.
• A new guide to birding sites in Eastern Pennsylvania covers 89 sites in 13 counties, including all of the Lehigh, Schuykill, and Delaware valleys. See SchuykillRiver.org for information on obtaining a copy.
• Bird banding: videos show hummingbird banding in Idaho and peregrine banding in New York.
• It is possible to go birding by bicycle.
  

Birds in the blogosphere

• BES Group: Strange behaviour of a pair of Asian Glossy Starlings
• Birding in Maine: It’s a Gulls Life
• 10,000 Birds: Puerto Rican Vireo (I can see you…)
  

Environment and biodiversity

• The Obama administration is delaying implementation of a new policy for building roads in designated national forest roadless areas for a year. In the meantime, any new roads will need approval from the Secretary of Agriculture.
• A Canadian court ordered tar sand mines to report what toxins are present in tailings ponds.
• The melting of Greenland's ice sheets could cause the ocean to rise much faster in the northeastern United States and Canada than elsewhere. This region could have an extra 1-2 feet of seawater by 2100.
• New plant growth on a thawing tundra will not fix sufficient carbon to negate the release of gases from melting permafrost.
• Climate change and ocean acidification are disrupting the complex ecosystems that corals need to survive.
• A GAO report found that the US Fish and Wildlife Service lacks a system to follow monitoring reports and cumulative takes for endangered and threatened species.
  

Carnivals and newsletters

• I and the Bird #101
• Birds in the News #173
  

I and the Bird

I and the Bird #101 is now online at Living the Scientific Life.

Hawaiian Honeycreepers Losing Ground to Climate Change

The Hawaiian Islands are a fairly typical example of island biodiversity. Isolated from contact with mainland species, the islands' organisms evolved into unusual forms found nowhere else, and many species found elsewhere were not present. The rare organisms thrived, at least until humans arrived, making changes in the landscape and bringing invasive species. Many of Hawaii's endemic species are now endangered as a result.

For some of Hawaii's most iconic birds, the honeycreepers, there is a more insidious threat. Mosquitos – and mosquito-borne illnesses – are expanding their range on the islands thanks to climate change.

At one time, the Hawaiian Islands had no mosquitoes – and no mosquito-borne diseases. But, by the late 1800s, mosquitoes had set up permanent housekeeping, setting the stage for epidemic transmission of avian malaria and pox. Honeycreepers – just like people faced with novel viruses such as swine flu – had no natural resistance against these diseases.

Before long, Hawaii’s native honeycreepers significantly declined in numbers and geographic range. It was likely that malaria swept rapidly across all of the lower Hawaiian Islands after the disease was introduced, leaving few survivors. Today, native Hawaiian birds face one of the highest rates of extinction in the world. Of 41 honeycreeper species and subspecies known since historic times, 17 are probably extinct, 14 are endangered, and only 3 are in decent shape.

Since malaria transmission depends on a warmer climate, honeycreepers so far have been able to find refuge in high altitude regions. These offer suitable habitat for the birds but are inhospitably cool for mosquitos. But that may change:

Although most disease transmission now occurs in these mid-elevation forests, this will change if the projected 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Centigrade) raise in temperature occurs.

“With this kind of temperature change, about 60 to 96 percent of the high-elevation disease refuges would disappear,” said Atkinson. For example, available high-elevation forest habitat in the low-risk disease zone would likely decline by nearly 60 percent at Hanawi Natural Area Reserve on Maui to as much as 96 percent at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on Hawaii Island. On other islands, such as Kauai, with lower elevations and no low-risk zones even now, predicted temperature changes would likely be catastrophic for remaining honeycreeper species.

The extinction (or even decimation) or more honeycreepers would be a tremendous biodiversity loss for the world and perhaps an economic loss for Hawaii. Endemic species are a major draw, and for me at least, honeycreepers would be near the top of the list of species to see if I ever visit the state. I imagine other birders would feel likewise. So it is likely in the state's interest to manage habitats in such a way as to give these unique birds the best shot possible at survival. In the long run, however, only slowing or stopping climate change will put these and other rare species back into safe territory.