More Snow in New Jersey

Yesterday and today we have been getting more snow. It is not nearly as much as the last storm, but it is enough for some photo opportunities.

Loose Feathers #272

Yellow-shouldered Blackbird / Photo by Mike Morel (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

• The bird-related story of the week has been the mass deaths of birds at multiple locations. Aside from the deaths in Arkansas and Louisiana that I mentioned earlier in the week, flocks of dead birds were found in Sweden, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas. Here is more on the fireworks explanation for the Arkansas deaths. Wildlife biologists on the upper Mississippi River see such mass deaths regularly. Audubon is monitoring the situation. Several blog posts related to the bird death reports are linked below. These stories – especially if some of the events were caused by fireworks – ought to make us think more carefully about how our activities affect birds. As several bloggers pointed out, birds hit things like buildings, power lines, radio towers, etc. all the time, but their deaths usually go unnoticed because they happen one at a time instead of all at once.
• Discounts are available for eBird users who want to subscribe to Birds of North America, the CLO's comprehensive encyclopedia of North American birds.
• Harpy Eagles are nesting in Belize for the first time in 60 years. The species was mostly extirpated from Central America due to habitat degradation and hunting, but conservation efforts are bringing it back.
• Yellow-eared Parrots, once considered extinct, have reached their highest population level since the species was rediscovered in 1998. The parrots live in a mountainous area of Colombia.
• Black-legged Kittiwakes winter on the eastern side of the Atlantic if they have successful breeding seasons, but poor breeding seasons bring them to the western Atlantic.

Birds in the blogosphere

• Feathers and Flowers: Blackbirds in the Dead of Night [Mortality]
• Birdchick: Bird Die Offs
• Peregrine's Bird Blog: Dead Birds Falling from the Sky and Fireworks
• Round Robin: Radio Interview About Dead Blackbirds
• Laelaps: The Fightin' Ibis: Xenicibis and Evolution's Arrow
• 10,000 Birds: Dreaming of a White CBC
• View from the Cape: Le Conte's Sparrow I.D. (!)

Oil spills

• Most of the methane released during BP's gulf oil spill was eaten by bacteria.
• A report concludes that the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent spill could have been prevented, but that cost-cutting shortcuts used by the companies decreased the safety of the drilling operation. The safety problems are likely to recur without serious reform of the drilling industry.

Environment and biodiversity

• U.S. bumble bee populations have declined significantly in recent decades. The declines appear to be related to a pathogen transferred from captive to wild populations.
• Pennsylvania's fracking industry could threaten water supplies; the state allows the industry to dump its toxic wastewater into nearby streams and rivers that supply water to millions of people. Fracking is a method for extracting natural gas from shale.
• Very few coal mines are redeveloped or restored, contrary to the claims of mountaintop removal mining supporters.

Carnivals

• I and the Bird #141
• Carnival of the Blue #44 
• Festival of the Trees #55

I and the Bird

I and the Bird #141 is now online at Birding is Fun.

Unusual Mallards at Wreck Pond

Even common duck species may be interesting if you look at them closely. When Patrick and I were counting waterfowl at Wreck Pond as part of the Long Branch CBC on Saturday, we encountered a flock of about a hundred Mallards clustered together on the west side of the pond. Perhaps massing together like that helps keep them warm, or perhaps that side of the pond offered better protection from the wind. In the early morning sunlight, the Mallards looked especially pretty, especially when light caught the males' bright green heads at just the right angle. The females' brown streaking seemed a bit richer than normal as well. A wild male is pictured above, and a wild female is below.

Among the normal-looking wild Mallards were a few oddballs. First, two clearly domestic Mallards were standing in close proximity to each other. This type of domestic duck has the wild Mallard's green head, but has a white breast (instead of chestnut) and a browner back and flanks than the wild version. It also looks a little longer and seems to stand in a more upright position.

A third duck (pictured below) had the overall plumage pattern of a normal female, but the plumage was much lighter. I am not sure if this is a sign of leucism or another form of domestic duck. The relatively short bill makes me think it has a domestic origin, either as its own breed or perhaps a hybrid of domestic and wild ducks.

Mystery Bird Deaths, on a Massive Scale

New Year's Eve in one Arkansas town was the occasion for a mass die-off of Red-winged Blackbirds – about 5,000 by most accounts. Since then, another 500 blackbirds have died in Louisiana.

Today it emerged that about 500 red-winged blackbirds and starlings had been found dead in Louisiana. Their tiny corpses littered a short stretch of highway near the city of Labarre after apparently falling dead from the sky.

That would be spooky enough. But the Louisiana bird die-off came just a few days after up to 5,000 blackbirds fell to earth in neighbouring Arkansas in the small town of Beebe. Residents there had reported stumbling upon the bodies littering the ground and even being hit by them as they fell. One woman said she was struck while walking a dog. Another avian corpse bounced off a police car.

In even more grim news, anglers and other members of the public reported that more than 80,000 drum fish had suddenly died in the state's Arkansas river, about 100 miles west of Beebe. The silvery bodies of the fish floated in the river and washed up on its sides having died at roughly the same time. In another incident, hundreds of miles away on the Maryland coast of Chesapeake Bay, tens of thousands of dead fish also washed up on the shore.

Local biologists ascribe the deaths in Arkansas to shock, either from a storm or from fireworks.

The birds' deaths, however, are a deeper mystery. Officials were still collecting bodies in Louisiana but have already examined those from the incident in Arkansas.

They concluded that the birds had suffered internal trauma. That could have happened if a single flock had suddenly got caught in a violent and unusual storm. Or, it has been speculated, a local fireworks display could have startled the birds so badly that they were unable to prevent themselves from flying into trees, pylons and houses....

Louisiana's state wildlife veterinarian said yesterday at least some of an estimated 450 birds that died near Baton Rouge may have flown into a power line.

Jim LaCour said that the grackles, starlings, brown-headed cowbirds and red-winged blackbirds had broken beaks and backs.

These are all strange events, even if the explanations turn out to be correct. Mass bird deaths happen and are reported fairly regularly. In most of those cases, though, the reason turns out to be poisoning, through bait left out for other animals. If the Arkansas event was precipitated by the fireworks show, I wonder how many other times fireworks shock birds enough to kill them.