This week in birds - #76

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

This Red-tailed Hawk (Krider's color variation) was photographed in Big Bend National Park last fall, but a bird of very similar coloration has been hunting over my yard all summer. Red-tailed Hawks have many color variations from very dark to very light, but the one thing that they will all have in common is that red tail which makes them perhaps one of the easiest of hawks to recognize. They are also one of the most widespread of hawk species on the North American continent and can be found virtually anywhere on the continent even among the high rise buildings of cities.

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Trees in drought-ridden parts of the country, including the part where I live, have had a tough time of it these last few dry years. We know that the drought makes them more susceptible to disease and insects. Now scientists have found that the drought-weakened trees are more susceptible to death by wildfire.

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This month's National Geographic had an article about the slaughter of songbirds on migration through the Mediterranean area. Now they have listed online several organizations that are trying to stop that slaughter and have suggested ways that we all can aid the effort.

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The Veery is a small thrush similar to the Wood Thrush and Hermit Thrush and the this smart bird knows who its enemies are. Like many birds, the Veery sings at twilight, but it will stop singing instantly if it hears an owl calling so that it does not give away its position to its mortal enemy.

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It is a sad and all too familiar story. An oil company despoils the land where it has operations and then pulls out, leaving a mess behind. It has happened again in a subdivision in Carson, California, where Shell Oil once operated. The land is contaminated with various toxic substances and an emergency has been declared while the city tries to force Shell to foot the bill for the clean-up.

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The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Scotland has a project under way to restore vast tracts of peat bogs in the country, thereby improving habitat for the birds that rely on such places.

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I find box turtles to be fascinating critters so I was interested to see this article about them in The New York Times today. The article points out that the Eastern Box Turtle can live up to 100 years in its shell and that they are highly territorial, generally spending their entire life in an area smaller than a football field. We had experience with one box turtle that we named Sam Box who lived in our yard for more than twenty years and probably long before that before we moved here. She disappeared a couple of years ago, but now another small turtle has taken her place. We assume he is her son and we named him Sammy.

Like his mother, this turtle has a kibble habit. He comes to the back porch every day for his fix. His shell shows several areas of damage. Obviously, it is a tough world out there for box turtles.

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Here's another example of how restoring a vital part of an ecosystem can have unforeseen consequences. The return of gray wolves to Yellowstone has impacted the hoofed residents of the park as expected, but the decrease in that population has been fortuitous for grizzly bears. There are now more berries left for the bears to eat which helps immensely with adding the fat they need to get through the winter.

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An oil spill in the port of Brisbane, Australia, has left pelicans covered in the sticky stuff. It is expected that the spill will take at least a week to clean up.

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Bald Eagles are doing very, very well in this country. The banning of the use of DDT and the protection of the Endangered Species Act has given them a new lease on life and they have flown with it. A recent survey of the birds along the James River in Virginia found more than 200 pairs there, the most that had been seen in the area since 1930.

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We tend to think of moths as sort of the ugly stepsister of the Lepidoptera clan, while the Cinderella butterflies get all of our attention and love. But here are seven beautiful and interesting moths that might make you change your mind.

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New Jersey is not all concrete. It is after all called the Garden State. It also has wild areas and some of those wild areas have bobcats! A woman in northern New Jersey was about to let her cat outside earlier this week when she noticed a large cat in her front yard. Turned out it was a bobcat and he was having his breakfast of rabbit. The woman took pictures to document her sighting.

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Around the backyard:

House Finch

I've been enjoying the presence of melodious House Finches in my yard this summer. They haven't always been a presence here. For years I would grumble when I heard others in the area bragging about their House Finches. The birds almost never showed up in my yard and when they did, they were just passing through. That has changed in the last couple of years. They have finally become a regular and dependable presence here, and, now, as I work in my garden or have a refreshing cold beverage on my patio, I am able to enjoy that lovely song. And as an added bonus I can annoy others with my bragging about my House Finches!