Loose Feathers #243

Least Sandpiper with chick / USFWS Photo

Birds and birding news

• Scientists have discovered the earliest known fossils of a pelican, which lived about 30 million years ago. Like its modern descendants, the bird had a large bill.
• Researchers from Hawk Mountain are studying the locally nesting American Kestrels to understand the causes behind the species's decline.
• The brightest male American Goldfinches also tend to be the poorest fliers, showing that attractive plumage comes at a cost of diverting resources from other needs.
• The larvae of many moth species are an important source of food for breeding birds and their nestlings.
• Bridget Stutchbury discusses 10 myths about birds.
• Ferruginous Hawks are declining in eastern Washington. The decline is attributed to loss of habitat and a reduction in prey animals, particularly ground squirrels and black-tailed jackrabbits.
• One of the Piping Plovers banded in the Bahamas this winter was found nesting on Martha's Vineyard. To date, 36 of the 57 banded birds have been re-sighted.
• A fledgling owl flew into the lion enclosure at Paignton Zoo, leading to a photo of the owlet and lion together.

Birds in the blogosphere

• Deep Sea News: Why Oil-Laden Prey is Bad for Sea Birds
• WildBird on the Fly: USFWS science journals now online
• Conservation Maven: Hiking quietly benefits birds... and birders
• Great Auk or Greatest Auk: Zootopia
• BES Group: Leaves, caterpillars and yellowness in birds
• Birder's Lounge: Hummingbird Hovercraft Steals Insects from Spider’s Web

Oil Spill

• So far 639 oiled birds have been captured live, 829 were collected dead and 42 have been released; IBRRC keeps a running total. Proctor & Gamble has donated 7,000 bottles of Dawn for cleaning the birds.
• In some cases, rescue crews have to leave oiled birds to fend for themselves because capturing them would cause too much stress or damage nests.
• Some cleanup crews have been careless around nests; both Brown Pelican nests and Least Tern nests have been destroyed by cleanup workers.
• Here are the steps in rehabilitating an oil-covered bird.
• In Nigeria, oil spills have been a recurring problem for the past fifty years, at a rate averaging 11 millions gallons per year.
• Twenty miles west of the Deepwater Horizon well is another, even deeper well that has been producing since 2008.
• An eleven-year-old is selling drawings to raise money for rehabilitating oiled birds. She has raised at least $96,000 so far.
• A juvenile sperm whale may be among the wildlife victims of the spill.

Environment and biodiversity

• SpiderIdentification.org is a new website to help people identify spiders. Users may submit questions with photos and get help from spider experts. You can read more about it at Eric Eaton's blog.
• Scientists studying mud cores have found a link between past climate changes and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
• Conservationists are trying to save Plum Island on Long Island, an Important Bird Area, from development and have launched a petition drive.
• Horseshoe crab numbers in the Delaware Bay appear to be rising thanks to harvest restrictions.

Cleaning a Sea Turtle

Checking a turtle's eye

The Deepwater Horizon Response Flickr site is one place to check if you want to see images from the oil spill. Since it is run by the government and BP, the images tend to put as positive of a spin as possible on the disaster. Despite that limitation, it sometimes has interesting photos, like this set showing the cleaning of a Kemp's Ridley Turtle (Lepidochelys kempii). All the photos in this post come from that set.

The Kemp's Ridley  Turtle is an endangered species. The main threat is from accidental capture by shrimp trawls or other types of fishing operations. Before beaches were protected, the turtles' eggs were vulnerable to harvesting. Unfortunately, the oil spill has added an extra threat to their survival.

Gulf Oil Spill Estimate Raised Again

Rehabilitators treat an oiled pelican / US Coast Guard photo

The official estimate for how much oil is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon's well continues to be revised upward. The current estimate is that 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil are leaking per day.

Chu said Tuesday's estimate was based on a variety of data, including new pressure readings taken within the last 24 hours from inside the "top hat" containment dome through which BP is now capturing crude.

The estimates include the crude BP is capturing.

Marcia McNutt, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey and the head of the Flow Rate Technical Group, said that the scientists would continue to revise the estimate as they get new data.

Remember that the initial estimate was 1,000 barrels per day, which was quickly revised to 5,000 barrels per day. Some independent estimates have put the leakage as high as 95,000 barrels per day, so it would not surprise me to see the official estimate rise as well. At least there is now a way to contain some of it until the relief well is completed:

BP has been capturing about 15,000 barrels a day for the past week aboard the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship, and hopes to expand that to 20,000 to 28,000 barrels a day this week. On Tuesday, a second vessel, the Q4000, with a capacity of 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day, began capturing and burning oil, the joint government and BP information center said in a statement.

A third ship will allow the capture of 40,000 to 53,000 barrels a day by the end of June, BP hopes, before the addition of a fourth ship in mid July will complete the containment plan.

The trouble with having ships capture the leaking oil is that the operation is subject to disruptive weather, like hurricanes or lightning.

BP temporarily suspended the collection of crude oil from the runaway Deepwater Horizon well for nearly five hours Tuesday after a small fire was spotted at the top of the derrick of the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship.

In a statement, BP said the fire, which was extinguished, preliminarily was attributed to lightning that struck the ship at about 9:30 a.m. Central time. No one was injured, and recovery operations were resumed, BP said, at 2:15 p.m.

As the oil slick expands towards Florida's panhandle, there is increasing concern that the ecological damage seen in Louisiana's marshes could be repeated.

If oil creeping toward Northwest Florida pushes beyond the barrier island beach in the same consistency of ooze that has tarred Louisiana's delta marsh, scientists fear the impact could be felt for years, maybe decades -- and not just here in this small pocket of wetlands. The effects could potentially ripple across a complex and interconnected Gulf ecosystem that stretches hundreds of miles south into the Florida Keys....

Though shrunken by rampant coastal development and compromised by urban pollution, salt marshes, sea-grass beds and mangrove forests still survive along much of Florida's Gulf Coast. They're critical to the health of commercial and sport fishing and at the top the state's priority list for protection.

With a massive floating island of oil looming off Florida's coast, the estuaries in Perdido and Pensacola bays are at imminent risk.

The American Bird Conservancy has provided this map of the Important Bird Areas that could be affected by the oil spill. Click through for a full sized version.

Finally, it is important to remember that the harm to wildlife comes not just from the initial contact with oil but also from lingering toxins in the food chain.

A Oil Spill in Utah

While most of the media attention has gone to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, there was another oil spill in Utah, this time caused by a ruptured Chevron pipeline.

The spill, first spotted on Saturday morning, poured 33,600 gallons of crude oil into a creek on the eastern edge of Salt Lake City, near the University of Utah campus. Emergency crews stopped the oil before it reached the lake, but not before the crude coated about 200 birds....

Investigators found a hole roughly the size of a quarter in the top of the pipeline, where it runs through Red Butte Canyon. The breached section of pipe lies underground, inches away from a metal fence post outside an electrical substation, and Chevron investigators believe that an electrical arc from the fence may have created the hole. The cause of the arc, however, remains under investigation.

Although it may have started Friday night, the spill came to light around 6:50 a.m. Saturday, after neighbors noticed the smell of petroleum in the air. Oil was found streaming through Red Butte Creek, which feeds into the Jordan River and, eventually, the Great Salt Lake.

Chevron shut off the pipeline east of the rupture, stanching the flow of crude. But by then, the oil had already contaminated the creek banks and some of the waterfowl living there. Oiled birds were taken to Hogle Zoo for cleaning.

The Salt Lake Tribune has a gallery of birds being cleaned. All of the photos show ducks or geese. The site also has a map showing where the spill occurred.

Update: Thanks to reader Elizabeth for pointing out that some oil has already been detected in Great Salt Lake wetlands.

Great Egret

A Great Egret fishing in the Raritan River.