Wordless Wednesday: Great Blue Heron

This week in birds - #22

Female Orchard Oriole among the reeds at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge last week.

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Cattle Egrets are very common here in summer and their appearance is very familiar to anyone who takes time to notice birds, but a very unusual egret has turned up in Florida. It is buff-colored rather than white and is almost orange in spots.  

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In the New York Times this week, a scientist wrote about his research on the effects on its birds of forest fragmentation in Hawaii.

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Also in Hawaii, an introduced bird, the Japanese White-Eye, is expanding its range and driving native birds out of conservation areas that were set aside for them. 

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A new survey of the population of pygmy three-toed sloths found less than 100 surviving in the wild.

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Great Egrets, a very common bird to us, is very rare in the United Kingdom. It has caused a great deal of excitement among birders there to learn that these birds are nesting in their country for the first time. Volunteers are protecting the nests to see that no harm comes to them.

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And also in the UK, their oldest Osprey, a 26-year-old bird, has just hatched her 48 chick. She's been nesting in the same spot for 22 consecutive years.

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In more unusual news of nesting birds, Black-crowned Night Herons are nesting in downtown Oakland!

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The brown argus butterfly of the UK is expanding its range farther northward, apparently in response to hotter summers. It may be one of the species that actually will benefit from global warming.

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Though it is still seriously endangered, the California Condor population now stands at 405 birds, a remarkable increase over the 22 birds that were alive just twenty-five years ago.

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A new study shows that, for Song Sparrows anyway, promiscuity doesn't pay. Mating with birds outside the pair bond had less successful results than mating within the pair.

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The color of a bird's bill can often indicate its health. The brighter the bill, the healthier the bird, and thus the bill can be an signal of the bird's ability to successfully breed.  A new study of storks confirms this.   

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Around the backyard:

My little family of bluebirds fledged successfully on Thursday. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, but I was happy to see them around the yard today. My yard can't have too many bluebirds.

I heard a Baltimore Oriole calling from my magnolia tree today but it was well-hidden among the dense leaves and I could never get a look at it.

I continued to hear my "rain crow," the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, around the neighborhood this week. Now, if only he would bring me some rain!

Here are a few more pictures from my trip to Anahuac last week.

A young Little Blue Heron, still mostly white.

Lesser Yellowlegs (I think).

Black-necked Stilt - lots of those around.

Double-crested Cormorant.

Blue-winged Teal pair.

An "authorized" Laughing Gull. Wonder what an unauthorized gull would look like?

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend and never forget what we commemorate with this holiday

Barn Swallows

It was always fun to visit Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge in summer to see the swallows. The refuge was famous in former years for the Barn Swallows which nested in the eaves of the visitors' center that stood at its entrance. The visitors' center is gone now, destroyed as so much else was by Hurricane Ike, and it has recently been replaced by a state-of-the-art new center that is actually several miles away from the refuge, two miles off Highway 10E at the 810 exit. It is a beautiful center and serves not only Anahuac but other wildlife refuges in the area.  

Where the old visitors' center used to stand, a new gazebo has been constructed, and the Barn Swallows have returned and now nest in the gazebo. When we were there last week, it seemed to me that there were not as many nests as in previous years, but still there were plenty of the beautiful fast-fliers around.

Some of the nests appeared to have young in them, but most still had brooding parents sitting on the eggs.

As I walked around the pond next to the gazebo, I saw evidence that some of the pairs of birds had already raised their young.

I came upon this dead limb which stretched out over the pond and it had five fledgling chicks lined up in a row on it. They had obviously just left the nest within the last day or so.

At first I had thought there were only four babies, but when I looked at them from another angle I could see that there were five.

While I watched, the parents would fly by every few minutes and bring food for the hungry chicks. They fed them literally on the fly, only hovering briefly to deliver the meal.

One of the parents decided to take a rest on the limb. It's hard to tell if this is Mama or Papa since they essentially look the same, but the female is slightly lighter on the belly, so I think this is probably Mama.

The babies seemed in no hurry to stretch their wings and sat tight with their parent, while the other parent continued to deliver food.

Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge is still recovering from the devastation caused by Ike, but the swallows are back in good numbers, and that is a very good sign.

Wordless Wednesday: It's good to be king(bird)

Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge: Common Nighthawk

I have mentioned here on different occasions in recent years about how I have missed the sight and sound of the Common Nighthawk over my yard in spring and summer. They used to be quite common - as their name implies - but in the last two or three years, they just haven't been around. I'm happy to say that has changed this year. Any late afternoon, they can be heard as they wheel around the sky searching for flying insects. I saw three in the skies over my backyard just this past weekend. All of which leads me to the conclusion that these birds are more plentiful in the area than they have been in recent years. I didn't realize just how plentiful though until we went to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge last Friday.

As soon as I got out of the car, I heard the sound of nighthawks hunting overhead, even though it was well up into daylight hours. These birds are usually at their most active at dawn and dusk, and they can sometimes be seen and heard hunting at night on moonlit nights or around lights in urban areas. But it's not totally unheard of for them to be flying during the middle of the day and they certainly were on this day. Everywhere we went their voices could be heard.

More typically though, the birds settle down during daylight hours and they are so cryptically colored that they often go unnoticed even when they are right out in plain sight. It was really a matter of chance that, on Friday, I started noticing the birds everywhere I looked!

This was the first one that I saw on a fence post next to the road. These posts are convenient places for many types of birds to perch and rest, or perch and sing as the various members of the blackbird family often do.

After I noticed the first one, I began seeing that every fourth or fifth post along the way seemed to have a nighthawk sitting atop it!

One even perched on the barbed wire. This is an unusual pose because the bird's legs are short and its feet small in relation to body size. It's not really made for perching. When it perches in a tree, often it will sit lengthwise on the limb rather than across the limb as most birds do.

You can see that lengthwise-perching behavior in this bird that was sitting in a tree. You can also see how very well camouflaged the bird is. If its eye is closed and its head is down, it just looks like a bump on the limb and you wouldn't give it a second glance.

The nighthawk is a member of the nightjar (Caprimulgidae) family which is characterized by short bills that open up to very wide mouths. When the mouth is open, it gapes nearly as wide as the bird's head and it uses this big mouth to scoop up insects as it flies about erratically.

This wide open mouth and the fact that the bird often flies over pastures in the late afternoon gave rise to a myth and a nickname, "Goatsucker". The myth goes back at least as far as the third century B.C.E. in Greece where country people claimed that these birds milked goats!

The bird had another nickname in the area where I grew up. We called it "Bullbat." I'm not really sure why but I assume it had to do with the fact that the bird does fly erratically like a bat and it's normally in the sky at the same time as bats, plus it is bigger than the other bats that were around at that time. There is also a sound that the males make during courtship, a kind of basso profundo booming that might recall the voice of a bull. They make the sound by flying high into the air and then going into a steep dive. As the wind rushes through the wing feathers, it causes a distinct "boom" which, if you have heard it, is not easily forgettable. It was part of the background music to the late spring and summer afternoons of my childhood.

The helter-skelter flight of the nighthawk is not so easy to catch on camera, but on Friday, I got lucky.

Two (I assume male) nighthawks were flying low over a meadow and seemed to be engaged in a territorial dispute. I tried to capture the two together but those pictures were just a blur

.Note the very long, narrow wings which give these birds excellent control in the air. The white spot on each wing supposedly can serve to startle insects and perhaps make them easier to catch.

I must have seen a score or more of Common Nighthawks at the wildlife refuge. I don't think I've ever seen so many at one time and place. I assume they must have just arrived on migration and perhaps were hungry which may explain why so many were hunting during the day. Whatever the reason, I was delighted with their presence on this day and delighted with the chance to say hello to a friend from my long-ago childhood.

Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge: Least Bittern

On our trip to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge last Friday, there were three birds in particular that I had hoped to see: Least Bittern, Roseate Spoonbill, and Purple Gallinule. Well, I didn't completely strike out, but I did go one for three. I couldn't find a gallinule or spoonbill, but the most difficult of the three, the bittern, proved unusually cooperative.

As we headed around the loop that would take us to Shovelers' Pond, we stopped briefly at The Willows. It really should have another name now. The willows that gave it its name were drowned by Hurricane Ike four years ago. Vegetation has grown back but it's quite a different habitat from what it used to be. On this day, I found Orchard Orioles, Northern Mockingbirds, Mourning Doves, Red-winged Blackbirds, Great-tailed Grackles, and plentiful butterflies working the Joe Pye weed.

Just a bit farther along the loop, I caught a glimpse of a big bird flying into the weeds on the right hand side of the road. We stopped and I focused my binoculars to get a better look. I was delighted to find that it was, in fact, one of my target birds, the Least Bittern.

The bird was looking back and forth among the weeds.

Was it actually looking for something, I wondered, or was this part of a display?

Then there was a blur of movement among the weeds and a fuzzy chick appeared. The adult began to feed it. I realize you can't really tell much about this picture, but that is what is happening here. As soon as the baby finished feeding, the adult flew away.

  The chick stood looking in the direction where its parent had flown.

It continued to stand there for a minute, maybe hoping Mama or Papa would return with a second course. Then it dropped into the weeds and completely disappeared! If I hadn't seen it, I would never have known there was a chick there.

One almost has to be lucky to see a Least Bittern, because it lives in dense, tangled vegetation where its narrow body allows it to move about with ease. It is one of the smallest herons in the world and it is well-adapted for life in dense marshes. Its diet is mostly fish and insects and it would certainly find plenty of both at ANWR.

The nests of bitterns are usually widely scattered but they do sometimes nest, as many herons and egrets do, in colonies. In one study in South Carolina, these bitterns nested in close association with Boat-tailed Grackles. It is possible that they have the same association with Great-tailed Grackles at ANWR. There are plenty of those big grackles around.

Their clutch of eggs may number from 2 - 7, but most often are 4 - 5; however, I only saw one chick on this day, although there could easily have been others among the reeds. Both of the parents feed the young through regurgitation. A pair may produce as many as two broods of chicks per year.

Seeing the bittern was really the high point of my day of birding and it happened very early, but there were some other nice moments and nice birds seen. I'll share more of them with you over the next couple of days.

This week in birds - #21

We spent a wonderful day at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge yesterday. It's one of my favorite day trips and I always look forward to the birds that I know I'm going to find there. My target birds for yesterday's trip were Roseate Spoonbill, Purple Gallinule, and Least Bittern. Almost immediately, I got very lucky with the bittern. I saw this bird fly into the spot where it is standing in the vegetation and trained my binoculars on it. Sure enough - Least Bittern! Not only did I see this bird but a few seconds later its fuzzy chick showed up wanting to be fed. I got a few pictures of the chick, too, as well as a lot of other birds. I'll post some more as soon as I've had a chance to go through the 200 or so and pick out the best.

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And in news of birds, birding, and the environment this week:  

A new scientific paper just published describes the discovery of a large quantity of bones and eggshells of birds from the Late Cretaceous period that were apparently drowned and then preserved by mud and silt. The deposits indicate that even in that early time seabirds were coming together in colonies to breed and nest.

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Male robins seem to discriminate among their offspring when it comes to feeding. Researchers found that the robins fed chicks that came from more brightly colored eggs more often. The speculation is that the color of the egg indicates health and likelihood of survival so the males are hedging their bets. But if a chick is fed more often, common sense tells me that like its likelihood of survival would be greater!

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The organization American Rivers has released its list of America's most endangered rivers and topping the list is the Potomac. The threat to the river - and many others - is Congress which keeps trying to roll back the regulations of  the Clean Water Act.  For this particular Congress, any regulation at all is considered bad. Who needs clean water anyway? 

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The Cliff Swallows no longer breed and nest at San Juan Capistrano Mission in California. A few years ago, the mission undertook a restoration project which drove the swallows away and they have refused to return. The mission has tried everything it could think of  to lure them back. Now they are playing recordings of swallow calls to try to bring the birds in.  Will this prove any more successful than their other efforts or are the birds gone for good?

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Hen Harriers, a European species related to our own Northern Harrier, are in danger of being wiped out as a breeding bird in England because of persecution. As far as is known, only one pair shows signs of breeding this year. The harrier has had its nests destroyed, been poisoned and shot almost to extinction for one simple reason: It is a natural predator of the Red Grouse, and humans, surely one of Nature's more selfish creatures, don't want any competition in their quest to kill the grouse. 

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Bug Girl, this week, had an interesting post about "The Coming Beepocalypse."  

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As the climate warms up, especially at the poles, Arctic seabirds like Dovekies, or Little Auks, have adjusted their fishing habits to the warmer waters.

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An Earbirding.com post talks about Canyon Wren females as well as the males singing and says that among most North American wrens only the males sing. That may be true but, having spent my life listening to the vociferous Carolina Wren (male and female) perform their "call and response" duets, I have to wonder.

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It's a pretty well-established scientific principle that crossbreeding can confer many advantages on the results of the breeding. The crossbred offspring often combines the best of both parents' genes and is better able to survive. A new study shows that crossbreeding happens among Heliconian butterflies and for much the same reason.

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Those clever crows are confounding scientists again with their abilities. It seems that they are able to recognize different human voices as well as different voices among other species. Just one more strategy for being able to distinguish friend from foe it seems.

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Around the backyard: While we were at Anahuac yesterday, I heard a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, the beloved "rain crow" of my youth, calling. I was glad to hear him but also somewhat sad to hear him because it reminded me that I have not heard one in my own yard this year and that I didn't hear or see one here at all last year. Imagine my delight then, when, while working on a pruning project in my garden today, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo called from one of the trees in my front yard! I heard the bird several more times as he moved around the yard. It made my day.

I was certain that my family of Eastern Bluebirds would have fledged by today. Wrong again.

The babies are still tucked up in the box and the parents are still flying themselves ragged to keep them fed. Here, the female exits after delivering a fat caterpillar.