Indian Coralberry

This plant is an Indian Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus). Indian Coralberry is native to North America, with its range covering most of the eastern United States, from Massachusetts to South Dakota and south to Florida and Texas. It is an understory plant common in post oak woodlands, but it is also grown as an ornamental (as is the case here). In autumn, the shrub sports distinctive pink berries along the branches.

Indian Coralberry is in the same genus as Common Snowberry and several other shrubs, most of which are called snowberry or waxberry. Like coralberry, Common Snowberry has distinctively colored berries in tight bunches close to the stems, but the berries are white instead of pink. Common Snowberry also has a somewhat more northerly range. The genus belongs to the Caprifoliaceae, the honeysuckle family.

Photographing this plant proved to be difficult since the branches are rather thin. While the center of the bush is stable enough to support a squirrel, the ends of the branches tend to bounce wildly in even a slight breeze. It made motion blur harder to avoid and also made it harder to know what I would get as a composition. I think it worked out, though.

Loose Feathers #267

Whooping Cranes at Patokah River NWR / Photo by Steve Gifford (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

• A group of American birders recently found and photographed a Long-whiskered Owlet in Peru; the species was first discovered in 1976 and has only been seen a few times since then.
• White Ibises in Florida are subjected to very high levels of mercury pollution in the state's lakes and rivers, which means that they ingest a lot of mercury in their diet. During the breeding season, male ibises with especially high mercury levels tended to pair with other males rather than females. This may partly explain why ibis reproductive success has been falling in recent decades.
• A rare Brown Shrike has appeared in Humboldt County, California. This species normally breeds in Central Asia and migrates to Southeast Asia; this bird must have migrated in the wrong direction.
• A study estimates that there are 60 million feral cats in the U.S. and that these cats cause $17 billion worth of damage to the bird population. The cost of $30 per bird killed is based on the economic contributions of bird-related activities: birders spend $0.40 per bird observed, hunters spend $216 per bird shot, and bird rehabilitators spend $800 per bird treated and released.
• A utility company on Kauai paid fines for harming or killing 14 Newell's Shearwaters with its power lines at one location (a violation of the Endangered Species Act) and killing 18 birds with its power lines at another location (a Migratory Bird Treaty Act violation).
• Avian botulism has been killing birds along Lake Michigan this year, including large numbers of Horned and Red-necked Grebes.
• The personalities of Great Tits depend on the amount of stress hormones (glucocorticoids) in their bloodstream.
• Resident British birds struggled during last winter's harsh weather.
• A photographer found a frog riding the back of a Downy Woodpecker.

Birds in the blogosphere

• Blue Marble: Seabirds Hopped Up on Summer
• Brewster's Linnet: Harry Day
• The Birder's Library: The Seasons of the Robin
• IBRRC: Every Bird Matters

Oil spill

• Nate Swick and David Ringer are trying to create a blogswarm to help get a bill passed to fund environmental restoration around the Gulf of Mexico. See here for their reasoning and here for how to participate. Even if you do not have a blog, you can still participate by contacting your Senators.
• The Delaware Bay is still recovering from an oil spill six years ago.
• The Obama administration decided to extend the drilling moratorium along the Atlantic coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Environment and biodiversity

• Mono Lake in California has bacteria that can survive by substituting arsenic for phosphorus since they have some way of coping with arsenic's toxic effects. See PZ Myers's and Ed Yong's commentaries on the arsenic-eating bacteria for antidotes to the media hype about the discovery. See also XKCD's interpretation of the media event.
• Methyl iodide was approved for use on California's strawberry crops despite concerns about its health effects.
• Some honey bees in Brooklyn produced red honey this year because the bees were drinking juice from a maraschino cherry factory. 
• The Mojave Desert Blog has an essay on the rush to build large solar energy facilities in California's deserts. 
• Too strict of a focus on conserving carbon-rich landscapes should not come at the cost of ignoring biodiversity. Many biodiversity hotspots occur in areas that are low in carbon storage.
• Climate change was linked to the deaths of 21,000 people in 2010, twice the number of deaths in 2009.
• The Center for Biological Diversity is calling for a boycott of bluefin tuna and the restaurants that serve it in the wake of the failure of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas to stop the overfishing of the species.
• 2010 is likely to be among the three warmest years on record, with some regions setting new temperature records. 2011 should be somewhat cooler.
• Meanwhile, more climate change negotiations began this week in Cancún.
• Reductions in biodiversity assist the spread of some diseases such as Lyme disease.

Blog carnivals

• Carnival of Evolution #30
• Festival of the Trees #54 
• Circus of the Spineless #57
• I and the Bird #139
• Scientia Pro Publica #46

Scientia Pro Publica is looking for submissions and hosts for 2011. If you write posts on science, environmental, nature, or medical topics, please consider submitting via the automated form or email.

Lichens and Raindrops

The last two days of rain were rather gloomy and cold, but they left some good photographic opportunities in their wake. I like the way that rain always makes mosses and lichens stand out more than usual, especially against darkened tree trunks. Lichens are a combination of a fungus, from which it derives its scientific name, and either a green alga or cyanobacterium. I am not sure what species this lichen is, but I think it is a foliose growth form.

Rainy days are, of course, also good for finding rain drops on the bottoms of branches, fruits, and other things. Eastern red cedars retain rain drops very well.

Red Oak Leaves

Insects chewed these Red Oak leaves before I had a chance to photograph them. There are a variety of moths, such as Copper Underwing, that use oaks as a larval hostplant. It may have been one of those caterpillars that dined on these leaves, or perhaps it was some other leaf-eating creature. In any case, the creature's work gives us a chance to appreciate the leaf's structure and resiliency in the face of damage.

Birds on South Jersey Jetties

A nature writer for Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle recently visited some jetties in southern New Jersey and described the experience of watching shorebirds there.

It was comical to watch.
A big ocean swell would surge toward the 8th Street jetty at Avalon, N.J., and then crash against the boulders, sending spray into the air.
And birds would come hurtling up from the side of the jetty to land out of harm’s way.
Purple Sandpipers and Sanderlings and Ruddy Turnstones.
When the water receded, these agile shorebirds would scramble back down the sides of the boulders until the next wave came crashing in, and again the birds would come flying through the air.

The post has some good photographs of the jetties and shorebirds, so it is worth a visit.