Oil Spill Updates

Alaska

Someone on BirdForum posted a link to the Coast Guard report on the Seabulk Pride spill in Alaska. The ship has been refloated. From the report:

The Seabulk Pride was loading refined product at the Tesoro dock in Nikiski when it was struck by an ice floe and broke away from the dock. Approximately five barrels (210 gallons) of heavy vacuum gas oil (HVGO) and unleaded gasoline were released – three barrels onto the vessel deck and approximately two barrels into the water. No further oil has been released.

So it looks like about 80 gallons made it into the water. That is still not good, but not as bad as it could have been. Dave wrote that the docks are closed while an investigation is underway.

Estonia

Meanwhile, the news from Estonia been getting worse. The new estimate is up to 35,000 dead birds. While only 3,000 dead birds have washed ashore, many more will not be recovered because of frozen seas and because the slick is spread over a large area. The source of the spill has yet to be determined.

Oil slicks are deadly for sea birds because the oil interferes with their ability to stay warm when wet. This disaster will almost certainly take a heavy toll on European populations of many vulnerable Arctic species. Long-tailed ducks are of particular concern, but the slick may also kill predators that eat oiled water birds.

Tags:

• Environment
• Oil Spill

Snowy Owl!

As I have mentioned on this blog before, there has been a snowy owl hanging around Dulles International Airport in Virginia. Yesterday afternoon I decided to go out and see it for myself. Now I do not have a car, so twitches like this can pose transportation challenges. In this case, there is a bus running from downtown out to the airport, so I was set. When I arrived at the airport, I immediately found about a dozen birders gathered on top of the parking garage that is at right angles with the main terminal.

I initially started scanning with my binoculars, but then a birding couple standing nearby suggested that I look through their scope, since they had already found it. I peered through the scope and saw the owl sitting on the grass far across the runway. Through the scope, it looked like a white sack of flour with a leak on one side. That distinctive silhouette, though, was enough to identify the lump as a snowy owl. I do not think there is anything else quite like it in North America; certainly nothing commonly found around here has that appearance. With a look through a different scope, I could see the black flecking on the wings and body. The distance was a bit too far to distinguish facial features. Once I knew where it was, I was able to watch it through the binoculars. The view through the binoculars was only enough to check up on its location. For the entire time I was there, the owl sat in the same spot. Using Google Earth, I later estimated the viewing distance to be a little over 2,000 yards (about 1.2 miles).

Unfortunately the owl never came anywhere near close enough for me to get a picture. On several occasions in the past week, it did fly in and perch on the light posts across the street from the parking garage, and on the tail of the UPS plane parked a little farther away. Several people who were there on those occasions were kind enough to share their pictures. Several photographs can be found here.

One birder thought he spotted a short-eared owl, an open-country bird that was reported at the airport last week. I did not get a look at it since it disappeared into the brush too quickly. Someone else saw a harrier cruising over the treeline, and I did spot that one before it was obscured by the sun.

While hardly idyllic, this was still a wonderful spot to watch a rare owl. Across the runways there was a treeline composed mainly of conifers; beyond the treeline I could see the distant Blue Ridge Mountains. The sky above glowed with the setting sun in a changing variety of golds, reds, and blues. To the left I could see the airport terminal, which was designed by Eero Saarinen, an important 20th century architect who also designed the TWA building at JFK Airport in New York. The swept-up roof looked weightless and the windows reflected the golden light of the sunset.

Finally, some credit is due to the security staff at the airport. For the past several years this country has been in a state of concern over fears of terrorism; in the Washington area, one of the two places hit on 9-11, the tension has run especially high at times. In many cases this has caused problems between birdwatchers and law enforcement. The Dulles staff, however, recognized that the birders coming to see the snowy owl were not a threat, and have not attempted to stop birders from visiting and watching the owl, despite the sensitive nature of the area and the curious sight of large numbers of people with spotting scopes and binoculars scanning the runways for hours at a time. While I was there, a few staffers stopped by to check up on us but stayed low-key; some even took a look through the scopes.

A recent article quoted one of the birders as describing the sighting as "a life bird for $5," the cost of parking in the garage. In my case, it was a lifer for $6, the cost of taking the express bus to the airport and back. Either way, the bird was a bargain.

Anyone from the area who is interested in looking for the snowy owl should check for updates on va-bird. See especially the original directions to the parking garage.

Tags:

• Birding
• Snowy Owl

Blogger Outages

Tonight there will be a scheduled outage of all Blog*Spot blogs while server hardware is being upgraded. This means that my blog will be unavailable between 10 and 11 PM. (Blogger gives times in PST.) You can find several notes about the slew of outages at the end of last week at the Blogger Status blog. Apparently there have been some major hardware issues that tonight's maintenance will fix. Hopefully this will be the last problem for a while.

Tags:

• Blogging

Blog Blogging

Today has been rather dreary here in Washington, with steady rain since this morning. A little while ago I even heard a few thunderclaps - unusual for February. So instead of posting about a birding adventure, I will offer some blogging notes.

Big Month

January was the first month since September that this blog has had over 1,000 visitors. In fact, it broke September's record, which until last month was a lonely spike on the graph.

Recent Search Referrals

At first my blog received very few referrals from search engines. But as it has grown and had time to be indexed by the search engines, it has been getting more and more hits from searches - not just from Google (and its blogsearch function), but also from Yahoo!, MSN, and others. Most are what one would expect; "birding" is probably the most common keyword to lead people here. But some are unexpected.

• show graph's on bald eagle's precipitation
• bird eating sardine
• minnesotan on the loose (Someone looking for PZ?)
• blog's
• wilma take swifts in florida

These do not quite compare with some of the searches leading people to Science & Sarcasm or especially bootstrap analysis, but are not quite what I would expect to bring people here.

Oddly enough, the most popular search term leading people to my other blog is "Senator Menendez." I suppose that information about him is in great demand right at the moment, but all that traffic is due to one short post.

Firefox Blogging

I have been experimenting a bit with some Firefox extensions I added recently, in particular Greasemonkey, which allows users to alter webpages with java script. (Many scripts can be found here.) I found one that may be useful for those of us who use the Blogger web interface to write and edit posts. One of the things that Blogger lacks is an automated way to add tags and categories to posts. This script adds Technorati tags - including multiword tags - as a bulleted list at the bottom of a post. Now if only I could find one that made trackbacking work properly....

Another extension that I have found useful recently is Performancing, a blog editor that sits inside the browser window but allows one to write posts offline. I have already noted that this is useful for writing link posts or comments about article or website. The one downside for Blogger residents is that any pictures have to be inserted through Blogger's web editor. (From what I understand, this is actually Blogger's fault.) But for people who write longer posts or write several drafts before publishing, using this or another offline editor is probably a good idea given Blogger's recent instability.

Tags:

• Blogging

Horseshoe Crab Moratorium Killed

A bill that would have imposed a moratorium on fishing horseshoe crabs in Virginia was killed in committee. Overfishing of horseshoe crabs, which are used as bait, has been linked to the steep decline of the red knot, a small sandpiper that migrates along the Atlantic seaboard. Despite much evidence linking the red knot crash to horseshoe crab decline, the committee decided to accept industry testimony instead. Eventually it came down to a common false dichotomy:

Rick Robins, a spokesman for the conch industry, said the bill would kill the industry in Virginia and put 180 people out of work.

"Those jobs are critically important" to the economically struggling Eastern Shore, he said....

The prospect of job losses resonated with Del. Daniel W. Marshall III, R-Danville. "I think we should put people before birds."

The trouble is that overfishing horseshoe crabs is not just a problem for red knots and other shorebirds that depend on their eggs for food. Without intervention, eventually the horseshoe crabs are not going to be there in sufficient numbers for people to use, either. So it is really in the long-term interests of the fishing industry to stabilize the populations to avoid wasting valuable resources, and destroying yet more species. Unfortunately short-term profits govern the debate on environmental issues.

Tags:

• News
• Environment
• Birds