Insects That Run the Planet

Speaking of insects, Edward O. Wilson was in town to give a lecture in honor of National Pollinator Week. His talk focused on human dependence on invertebrates, particularly the ones that pollinate our food sources and fertilize the soil where they grow. His talk focused on what life would be like without insects, which does not sound far-fetched in the light of colony collapse disorder among honey bees.

Wilson was focused on putting self-absorbed Homo sapiens in some ecological context. If humans were to disappear -- he doesn't advocate this, for the record -- the effects on the insect world would be minimal. "It's unlikely a single insect species would go extinct except three forms of body and head lice," he said. Close relatives of the parasites could still live on gorillas. The primal, complex web of life would continue "minus all the species we have pushed into extinction." Ouch.

But reverse the tables, remove the insects, and what would happen? Wilson paints a Mad Max scenario, in which not only do the bees, flies, beetles, moths and butterflies disappear, but all the plants that rely on them to set fruit, nuts and seed vanish as well. No worries, you say, because two-thirds of the crops we eat are wind-pollinated. But insects, not earthworms, are the principal tillers of the soil, and without them this secret microbial universe in the soil would decline, too. Dwindling food sources and plunging human populations would bring out the beast in people, who would do what humans always do -- kill each other. Wilson speaks of "an ecological dark age" where "the survivors would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs."

Read the rest.

Review: Lang Elliott on the Songs of Insects and Birds

One evening early last week I heard a cicada sing for the first time this summer. For several weeks already, the sounds of insects have been emanating - quietly - from the fields where I usually walk for my birding. These songs will intensify as the weeks roll on.

Like birds, insects produce distinctive sounds. I am not sure that the many insect species are as easily identifiable by song as birds. Insects do not have as great a range in quality; most songs are buzzy trills or chirps since insects detect intensity and rhythm better than pitch. Many insect songs are at a much higher pitch than bird songs; most range from 4 kHz to 20 kHz and are harder for humans to hear. One aid towards learning to identify different insects is The Songs of Insects, a new book by Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger.

The Songs of Insects introduces the songs of seventy-seven species, from four insect families. It includes many examples of crickets (Gryllidae and Gryllotalpidae) and katydids (Tettigoniidae). Two grasshoppers (Acrididae) are represented. Several cicadas (Cicadidae) round out the book. While some species may be found across the continent, most insects described in the book are from the eastern and central United States. A compact disk with multiple examples of each song accompanies the text.

Each species on the compact disk is given an entry in the book. The text describes identification points for each insect, including a description of the song. Most entries include notes on the species's preferred habitat and how to find them. I wish the text gave more detail about what time of year each species emerges and sings (e.g., late summer vs. early summer). Each entry includes a range map, a sonagram, and high-quality photographs of the species.

The species accounts comprise the bulk of the book. In addition, The Songs of Insects includes introductory material on the production and structure of insect songs. The authors also give advice for appreciating insect songs and collecting insects. Additional supporting materials are provided at the website insectsongs.org.

The Songs of Insects is a companion to The Songs of Wild Birds, also by Lang Elliott. Like The Songs of Insects, The Songs of Wild Birds combines a lively text with high-quality color photographs and a compact disk. In the course of fifty short essays, Elliott introduces the vocalizations of fifty-nine bird species. As with The Songs of Insects, bird species are selected from the eastern and central United States.

The compact disk for The Songs of Wild Birds has a more didactic tone than that of The Songs of Insects. While the latter's compact disk simply introduces each species by name, the narration for The Songs of Wild Birds introduces each species and describes the songs and their functions. I was gratified to hear Elliott clarify the difference between the calls of red-tailed hawks and bald eagles - a common mistake. The disk includes some unusual sounds, such as the nocturnal flight calls of a flock of migrating hermit and Swainson's thrushes.

While I enjoyed reading The Songs of Wild Birds and listening to the compact disk, I am not sure that it fills a unique niche among books about bird songs. (I prefer the Birding by Ear series for learning to identify songs and The Singing Life of Birds for how bird songs function.) The Songs of Insects does fill a real need, since the resources for identifying insect songs are few. It is especially unusual to find insect song resources that are aimed at the general public. The Songs of Insects might not be appealing to someone who is squeamish about the sight of larger-than-life photographs of insects. Anyone else, though, should enjoy this book and learn from it.

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Full citations:

Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger, The Songs of Insects. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Pp. 228; sonagrams, color photographs, index, and compact disk. $19.95 paper. ISBN: 0618663975 (insectsongs.org)

Amazon

Lang Elliott, The Songs of Wild Birds. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Pp. 128; sonagrams, color photographs, index, and compact disk. $19.95 paper. ISBN: 0618663983

Amazon

Other reviews:

• bootstrap analysis
• 10,000 Birds (Charlie)
  

Question from a Reader

A reader, Laura in NWDC, left the following question in an earlier comment thread:

I bought a double compartment tube feeder and filled one side with nyger and one side with safflower. I had read that a lot of songbirds like safflower, finches and chickadees like thistle, and house sparrows and starlings don't like either one. That is true.

But the house sparrows have overrun the feeder, PULLING OUT every seed and throwing it on the ground trying to find something they like. In two days they've emptied it, dumping all that expensive seed on the ground to rot, uneaten.

I want to keep feeding the other birds, and I don't want to buy a feeder that limits feeding to JUST finches. Is there anything I can do to deter the house sparrows from trashing the place while making other birds feel welcome?

I am not sure how to answer this myself since I do not have much experience with bird feeders. (I live downtown and lack a backyard.) Could any reader suggest a solution?

Update: A reader wrote to suggest something like a Magic Halo. It looks like you could make it yourself.

Loose Feathers #105

Common Yellowthroat / Photo by Dave Menke (USFWS)

News and links about birds, birding, and the environment

• A biologist in Canada is using museum specimens to study changes in the marbled murrelet's diet. By analyzing the carbon and nitrogen isotopes in birds' feathers, he determined that they are mostly fish around 1900, but now mostly eat marine invertebrates.
• Kirtland's warbler has been found breeding in Wisconsin.
• Wildlife officials in Florida are still investigating the deaths of hundreds of seabirds on its Atlantic coast. Starvation seems the most likely culprit at present.
• The bald eagle has been removed from the Endangered Species List. Eagles have rebounded since reaching a low of 417 breeding pairs in 1963. Officials in Arizona have petitioned the federal government to maintain a local population of desert-breeding eagles on the list due to their special needs. The news was announced at a special ceremony on Thursday in front of the Jefferson Memorial.
• Giant penguin fossils have been found in Peru.
• While bald eagles have recovered, northern spotted owls are still in decline. The Fish and Wildlife Service is preparing a new recovery plan for the species.
• The photo to the right is not a photoshopped crow. It is a recurve-billed bushbird, a rare bird found in northeastern Colombia and Venezuela. (Click the photo at right for a larger image.)
• The fairy pitta is threatened by the Hushan Dam Project in Taiwan, which threatens to destroy much of its habitat on that island.
  
• Seabirds face a continuing threat from abandoned fishing gear, which ensnares the birds.
• Osprey and trumpeter swans are both in decline in Yellowstone National Park. Osprey have suffered from a reduction in cutthroat trout.
• The Nature Conservancy will transfer its 1,500-acre preserve on South Padre Island (Texas) to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
  
• Piping plovers are making a slow recovery, but remain endangered because of their specialized habitat requirements.
• A new set of postal stamps honoring natural pollinators features a calliope hummingbird. The stamps are for sale here.
• Residents of Jamestown, Rhode Island, are paying farmers to mow hay later in the summer to protect nesting grassland birds. The project is testing the performance of ecological investment markets.
• The EU Court of Justice ruled that Spain has not designated sufficient conservation areas to comply with the EU's Birds Directive.
  
• The Galápagos Islands have been added to the UN's list of World Heritage sites and faces threats from tourism and invasive species.
• A company called "Planktos, Inc." wants to dump fine iron dust in the Pacific Ocean near the Galápagos Islands to spur a carbon-dioxide-eating phytoplankton bloom. Conservationists are dubious about the value and consequences of this plan.
• Alaska can expect a 20% increase in infrastructure costs due to climate change since roads and other systems will wear out more quickly.
• Invasive plants have choked out native species in many areas, but education and eradication campaigns are starting to deal with the problems they cause.
  
• Birders should be aware that cases of Lyme disease have doubled since 1991. Reports are concentrated in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and North Central regions.
  

Birds in the blogosphere

• Reactions to delisting the bald eagle: my take, Plutonium Page, NWF view, Wildbird, Birdchick, BirdCouple, Cute Overload, Treehugger, Field of View, mon@rch
  
• More on the Klamath incident: my take, Sir Oolius (and here), Wampum
  
• Mon@rch: Bird "Parts"
• Fairfax Birding: Grasshopper Sparrows
• Rigor Vitae: A Pelican Brief
• bird QUIZ: brown birdQUIZ
• NaturalVisions: Friday Quiz #53
• Trevor's Birding: Bird Word: Lifer
• Bug Girl: DDT and Attacks on Rachel Carson: The CliffsNote Version
  

Carnivals and newsletters

• Friday Ark #145
• I and the Bird #52
  
• Birds in the News #89
• Festival of Good Books #4
• Weekend Bird Blogging #7
  

Northern Spotted Owl Still In Decline

The northern spotted owl was first designated as a threatened species in 1990, during the first Bush administration. At the time, the owl became a symbol of a conflict between people and wild animals and between the economy and the environment. Almost two decades later, the timber wars have quieted, but the owl is still in decline.

Currently there are between 3,000 and 5,000 northern spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest, and the population continues to fall about 3.7 percent each year. The owls face threats from various sources, mostly connected with habitat destruction. They prefer old growth forests, which were logged extensively in the 1980s and 1990s. A secondary threat comes from the westward spread of the barred owl. Barred owls are larger and can thrive in a broader array of habitats.

The timber industry has seized upon evidence that the northern spotted owl may not always need old growth forest to push for a less restrictive recovery plan that emphasizes competition with the barred owl.

Timber industry officials say this is a good first step. They also applaud new elements in the proposed plan: emphasizing that the barred owl, not habitat loss from logging, is the prime threat to the spotted owl, and giving local and regional US Forest Service and US Bureau of Land Management officials more say about where habitat should be protected.

Because of lingering concerns over political interference from the White House, conservationists outside the government remain skeptical of the new approach.

"This plan misses the mark in many respects, and it needs to be redone," Dr. DellaSala writes in his critique of the proposed recovery options. "Implementation of the plan is likely to increase extinction risks for the owl."

DellaSala, who was on the team developing a recovery plan, recently told Congress that "what was supposed to be a science-based plan was derailed by a pattern of political interference" by political appointees in the Bush administration.

"The unfortunate part of this thing is that this administration has chosen to reignite the timber wars, and the next administration that comes in is going to be inheriting a train wreck," he says in an interview. "In a nutshell, this is the key domino for toppling the protections in the Northwest Forest Plan, the old-growth protections."

A new recovery plan and a new designation of critical habitat have been proposed, but so far have not been approved. Among other things, the administration seeks to reduce the amount of critical habitat from 6.9 million acres to 5.3 million acres, reduce restrictions on logging and other activities, and introduce methods for managing the threat posed by barred owls. A draft of the plan is available for comment online.