This week in birds - #72

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

After the bath, a Northern Mockingbird ruffles its feathers in the late afternoon breeze.

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Hummingbird wings are one of the marvels of Nature that are able flex and bend, allowing the little critters to hover as they feed from blossoms.

My resident female Ruby-throated Hummingbird demonstrated that bending and flexing yesterday as she sipped from a flame acanthus blossom in my backyard.

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I realize this is considered unpatriotic but I confess I hate fireworks! My reaction may have something to do with my empathy for animals, including birds. Did you ever wonder how these creatures react to fireworks? There have actually been studies of that. 

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The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in New York is in the flight path of busy area airports, consequently, every year the National Park Service oversees the removal of several hundred Canada Geese from the refuge as a safety measure for human flight. Remember the plane that Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed on the Hudson River a few years ago after striking a flock of birds? Those were Canada Geese from the refuge. Some of the birds that are removed are relocated by Friends of Animals. They are able to be relocated successfully at this time of year because they are molting and cannot fly. The less fortunate ones are slaughtered.    

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The great periodical cicada invasion in the eastern United States is winding down for 2013, and it will not be back for another 17 years. Meantime, our local cicadas that are with us every summer are just getting tuned up.

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released its annual report called "State of the Birds." This year's report emphasizes the importance of private lands to bird conservation. At least 100 species have more than 50% of their breeding areas located on private lands. 

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A Japanese racing pigeon made an unscheduled trans-Pacific flight from the island of Hokkaido to  British Columbia's Vancouver Island last week.

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I love photographing butterflies, or at least trying to photograph them. In fact, I've been trying to photograph and document the butterflies in my garden this week. I should have read this post listing seven tips for photographing the flighty critters before I made my attempt. 

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A rare nocturnal parrot in Australia has been seen and photographed by a naturalist. The species had not been seen live in over 100 years. In order to protect the bird, the naturalist refuses to disclose publicly where he saw it.

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Some 50,000 bumblebees were recently killed by a pesticide in an Oregon parking lot. About 60 people later showed up to mourn the slaughter of the bees and to draw attention to the misuse and abuse of pesticides. 

Bumblebees, like this one that I photographed yesterday, are always welcome in my garden. They are among the most useful of all the many species of North American native bees.

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The Common Nightingale is declining in the UK. Researchers have attached geolocaters to some of the birds in order to track their migration and try to determine what is contributing to their decline.

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The Tricolored Blackbird was once one of the most common birds in California but now it is disappearing from the state. The entire population dropped from an estimated 400,000 birds in 2008 to roughly 258,000 in 2011. Scientists are attempting to find a solution to the problem.

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Hawkmoths have a unique way of disrupting the echolocation signals of bats which hunt the night-flying critters. They emit sonic pulses from their genitals! This apparently works to jam the bats' sensors.

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Around the backyard:

Still no rain here and things are very, very parched. The birds are hitting the birdbaths and enjoying the sprinklers when I run them. They are also still hitting the feeders very hard. I don't know if it is a lack of food in the wild or if it is simply a matter of not wanting to expend the energy to look for such food in this heat. If it is the latter, I can't say that I blame them.

Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Downy Woodpeckers visit the feeders many times during the day, usually to take suet as this female RBW is doing.

Her mate was exploring a utility pole at the back of the yard, but he soon joined her at the feeders.

The bluebird watch continues. The new brood of Eastern Bluebirds should be hatching any day now.

I witnessed an interesting bit of behavior by the bluebird pair this week. Every day, late in the afternoon  just after sunset they fly to the utility wire that runs along the back of our yard and they sit there and preen and "chat" in the dying light. They usually sit a few feet apart.  One afternoon this week, as I was watching them, a female Brown-headed Cowbird perched on the wire between the two. The male became quite agitated and started to sing loudly - well, loud for a bluebird. When the cowbird continued to sit there, he attacked her and drove her away!

Did he perceive this nest parasite as a threat to his family, even though the eggs are already laid and almost ready to hatch? Or was he just irritated that she was interrupting his "family time" with his mate? Who knows what a bluebird thinks!