Wordless Wednesday: American Coot

Hummingbird wars, phase 3

The backyard hummingbird wars have heated up again as a new wave of the cantankerous little birds has swept in with the latest cool front. Working in the garden this morning, I was constantly buzzed by the combatants as they chased each other around. I couldn't tell you how many were involved in the battles, but I know for sure there were Ruby-throated adult males and females and at least one juvenile male and there were at least a couple of Rufous females. I went and grabbed my camera and tried to document some of the visitors.

 An adult Ruby-throated female held sway at one of the feeders. She guarded it against visits by any of the other birds. Of course, occasionally when she was chasing one bird off, another would slip in for a sip!

Meanwhile, at one of the other feeders, an adult male was guarding his prize.

A juvenile male RTH, identifiable by the spot on his throat sat on a bare twig over a hamelia bush the blossoms of which he considered his personal feeding ground.

I didn't see any male Rufous hummers today but there seemed to be several of the females - and maybe a juvenile - around. I was able to capture images of two of the females.

This bird often chose the same perches and vantage points as one of the birds which spent last winter with me, which made me think perhaps it was the same bird. Or maybe not - who knows? They don't wear name tags.

This female showed a preference for crape myrtles and often perched in the tangle of branches of a couple of neighboring trees.

The cast of characters changes almost daily now and I don't know if any of these birds will still be here tomorrow, but so far it has been a very active migration season. It started early and now it is in full swing and the show - and the war - goes on.

This week in birds - #36

A roundup of news of the week from the world of birds and the environment:

A bird of open fields and shores - the ubiquitous Killdeer.

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The political conventions are over and now it's onward to the election in less than two months. The two major candidates recently answered fourteen questions on science and technology policy from the magazine Scientific American. You can read their answers here.

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Western Scrub Jays have been observed to gather around the body of one of their comrades who has died and to vocalize in a way that has led observers to compare it to human funerals. We know that some animals, such as elephants, do seem to mourn a death in their group, but, in truth, we know very little about animal emotions and just how cognizant they may be regarding death.

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The autumn raptor migration has begun. Stokes Birding Blog this week had some information about the migration and tips on how to identify some of the common hawks that may be seen in flight. 

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The recent passage of Hurricane Isaac through the Gulf stirred up old oil and tar balls from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. Several miles of beach along the Louisiana coast had to be closed until the mess could be cleaned up. Also, oil-coated pelicans are again being found along the coast.

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Wind energy is certainly one of the most promising sources of  a sustainable and renewable supply of energy needed by modern society, but the turbines continue to be a concern to conservationists because of the potential harm they can do to birds and bats. Engineers continue to try to build turbines that will pose less danger to the critters and they seem to be making significant progress. 

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A plant that had been thought to be extinct in the wild, Franciscan manzanita, has been found growing in the middle of a busy traffic island in California. The plant was moved to a safer place and has now been placed on the endangered species list. This one plant is the only one known to exist in the wild, but surely there must be others.

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The huge Wandering Albatross can soar over the ocean for unbelievably long distances without ever having to flap its wings. Researchers are trying to learn how the bird is able to do that with the use of tiny GPS transmitters which they have taped between the wings of some of the birds in a breeding colony in the southern Indian Ocean. They are now receiving data and attempting to analyze it.

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Gardeners and birders in the UK are being asked by the British Trust for Ornithology to observe and report what kinds of berries the birds eat in their yard. It would be easy to answer that question for my yard: (1.) Elderberries, (2.) Pokeweed berries, (3.) Beautyberries.

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Wildlife advocates and employees of government agencies that are trying to protect shorebirds in the Outer Banks of North Carolina are being threatened, intimidated and sometimes even assaulted by private property rights types who resent their trying to control the use of off-road vehicles on the beaches. These vehicles do incalculable damage to nests of shorebirds and to the actual birds themselves, some of them endangered or threatened species.   

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In another environmental battleground, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has authorized the clear-cutting of a section of Bull Island along the Delaware River. Some local conservationists are up in arms about the plan because they feel it will do irreparable harm to the sensitive ecological balance of the area.

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I've written often here about the perilous state of many native Hawaiian birds. Recently, scientists have attempted to reintroduce the rare Millerbird to a northwestern island in the chain, Laysan, from which it had been extirpated. This week twenty-eight birds were successfully released on the island. 

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Around the backyard:

Well, that didn't take long. I told you last week about installing new bird and squirrel feeders in my front yard. Now, birds are notoriously leery of any change in their surroundings. Such skittishness is important to their survival. For the first couple of days, they wouldn't go near the new feeder, but in the late afternoon of the second day, I noticed one brave Northern Cardinal was actually eating sunflower seeds from the feeder. The next day, all the usual suspects were back and were feeding normally.

Doves always feel more comfortable when they travel in groups and these two White-wings landed in unison on top of the feeder. You can see that the one on the right is still in the middle of his molt and looks pretty disheveled. One of the nice things about this new feeder is that the feeding trays are narrower than the old feeder and are just about too narrow for big birds like the doves to feed there. Of course, there is still plenty of fallen seed on the ground for them to eat.

As I've noted before, the House Finches - a female here - much prefer to feed in the front yard rather than out back. They seem especially happy with the new feeder.

Meanwhile, a male cardinal decided to try out the new squirrel feeder. Well, turn about is fair play after all. The squirrels have been eating from his feeder for years.

That looked so good to the House Finch that she decided to try it, too!

There are still lots of juvenile cardinals, identified by their dark rather than red bills, in the yard. I caught this one as she (I think) landed on the front yard bird bath. You can see that this bird, too, is still in the middle of its molt and is having an especially bad hair day!

 One of the big Eurasian Collared-doves joins three White-wings under the feeder for a late afternoon snack.   

So, things are back to normal in the front yard with one big change: The squirrels can no longer access the bird feeder with the result that I have not had to refill it all week. Ah, progress!

"Everybody likes chicken."

There was an interesting article on the front page of the Houston Chronicle yesterday about the last-ditch efforts to save the Attwater Prairie Chicken from extinction. The football-sized bird has been in serious trouble for years. Though it once numbered in the hundreds of thousands along vast regions of the Texas and Louisiana coasts, by 1919 the bird had completely vanished from Louisiana and in 1937 Texas could count only 8,700 of them. Its population has been on a downward trajectory since then, but the devastating drought which afflicted its primary remaining range over the last couple of years may have rung the final death knell for the bird. This year, the wild population stood at a minuscule 46 birds.

Photo by Cody Duty for the Houston Chronicle

The Attwater Prairie Chicken was designated as an endangered species in 1967, a billing it shares with the Houston toad, as the Chronicle's article points out, as a "local species driven from its home range and to the brink of extinction by urban sprawl." The concerted effort under way to try to rescue the chicken has included an intensive captive breeding program, much of which has been undertaken by zoos like the Houston Zoo. Every year, eggs are hatched and chicks raised in captivity until they are ready to be released into the wild. On Wednesday, 20 of the birds raised at the Houston Zoo were released at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge.

Unfortunately, the problems for the Prairie Chicken do not end when they are released. In fact, you could say they only begin, because as the manager of the wildlife refuge told the Chronicle reporter, "Everybody likes chicken."  They face predation from hawks, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, snakes, raccoons, even fire ants. Truly, everybody, it seems, does like to snack on chicken, and that makes survival extremely iffy for them. In the wild, the luckiest of the birds might live for four years.

In order to have a sustainable population of Prairie Chickens, there needs to be a statewide population of at least 3,000 birds that is stable over a five year period, according to wildlife experts. Obviously, we are a long, long way from achieving that, but dedicated scientists and wildlife conservationists doggedly carry on, hatching the eggs, raising the chicks, releasing them, and hoping for the best.  

If they need encouragement, they might look to the west where a long-term captive-breeding program has managed to bring the California Condor back from the brink of extinction.  Although the huge vultures still face many dangers in the wild, mostly from human activities related to hunting (e.g., lead shot left in animals killed by hunters that the birds then feed on and occasionally being shot by hunters themselves), they do seem on the road to recovery. Let us hope that, within our lifetime, we will be able to say the same for the little Prairie Chicken.    

Vladimir Putin, bird conservationist?

I've written here many times about the project to help save the endangered Whooping Crane by developing an eastern migratory flock that flies between Wisconsin and Florida twice each year. Young birds are taught the route by training them to fly with an ultralight aircraft. The project has had some success - and some tragedies - and the flock is slowly growing.

Of course, Whooping Cranes are not the only members of that long-legged family that are endangered. In fact, many cranes right around the world are seriously endangered. Our own Sandhill Crane is a notable exception, probably because of that bird's adaptability and willingness to utilize a variety of foods in its diet.

Another critically endangered bird is the Siberian Crane, part of whose range extends into Russia, and it turns out that Russian conservationists also have a program based on use of the ultralight to escort the young birds on their first flight. Recently, that program got a big boost in publicity around the world when they had a celebrity pilot for a portion of the ultralight's flight. President Vladimir Putin donned the crane costume and took the helm to lead the birds on their way.

Photo by Alexey Druzhinin courtesy of The New York Times

Vladimir Putin, alpha bird in crane costume, leads his flock. 

Mr. Putin is famous for his efforts to present himself as a formidable athlete, a caring outdoorsman, and "macho man of adventure," not unlike a certain blue-eyed, chisel-framed candidate for vice-president in this country.  As The New York Times points out in its article about his flight:

Mr. Putin on past expeditions has tranquilized a tiger, used a crossbow to extract tissue from a whale and put a tracking collar on a polar bear. News of his latest plan rippled over the Internet all day Wednesday, to great merriment. Some wondered just how far he would go. Would he try to imitate the gasping-shrieking cry of the cranes, to instill more faith in his leadership?

He has also appeared shirtless riding a horse in Siberia and flown on a fighter jet, a bomber and an amphibious firefighting airplane. Last summer, he dived into the Kerch Strait in the Black Sea and, remarkably, quickly discovered fragments of two ancient Greek urns. 

So it seems that Mr. Putin's exploits are sometimes prone to exaggeration, not unlike Mr. Ryan's. But really, if he wants to be involved in "The Flight of Hope," which is what the Russian conservationists call their  crane project, then I say "good on him." If Vladimir Putin has a stake in seeing that the Siberian Crane survives as a species, then that probably increases their chances of avoiding extinction in a very substantial way. These days, cranes need all the friends they can get.

Wordless Wednesday: Black-crowned Night Heron

This week in birds - #35

A roundup of the news of birds and the environment this week:

Eastern Kingbird - always on the alert.

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Nature photographers can easily get carried away in the excitement or the beauty of the moment that they are trying to photograph. Unfortunately, when you are trying to photograph a grizzly bear, that could easily cost you your life, as it did a hiker in Alaska this week. Best to always remember where you are and that they are called WILD animals for a reason.

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The Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than any other place on the planet and this, scientists believe, is the main cause of a significant decline in the breeding population of Chinstrap Penguins.

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Amber has proved to be an amazing preservative for prehistoric life forms. The latest to be found encased in amber are two species of tiny arthropods called gall mites. The creatures lived 230 million years ago. 

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Green Herons may be the brainiest member of the heron and egret clan. They have been documented to use tools in their fishing techniques. Here's a link to a video showing one of the clever birds using a piece of bread to entice fish.

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The great web of life on Earth is inextricably linked and the extinction of one species can have a domino effect, leading to the extinction of others. 

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The horse chestnut leaf mine moth, an alien species, arrived in the UK in 2002 and has proceeded to cause significant damage to trees there. But there may be hope in combating the invasive species in the form of a tiny bird, the Blue Tit, a relative of our chickadees and titmice. Apparently, the tits relish a snack of moths. 

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Sea ice in the Arctic is at the lowest level on record and there are still three more weeks of warming left before the temperature should begin to moderate and get cooler. This is likely a harbinger of more drastic changes to come as the planet continues to heat up.

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Fossils of dinosaurs in China have been found with the bones of birds and small dinosaurs in their stomachs, indicating that the creatures may have been very adept and agile hunters.

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The National Park System along the east coast of the country is at risk from rising seawater. As Arctic ice continues to melt and the seas continue to rise, the coastline of the area could be significantly changed.

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A mystery marine larva called Cerataspis monstrosa kept scientists guessing for some 200 years but they've finally figured it out. The little critter turns into a shrimp.

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The heating up of the planet is causing a new concern among scientists. It is feared that it may lead to a greater incidence of avian influenza among wild birds because it is significantly disrupting the migration patterns of many species, causing them to come in contact with other species with whom they may not have shared space in the past.

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Around the backyard:

Well, actually this is the front yard where we have installed my new bird feeder along with its squirrel baffle. Unfortunately, it seems to have also baffled the birds, too. I haven't seen a single feathered visitor on the feeder since it was put up and filled with their favorite black oil sunflower seed. Normally, the old feeder would have had a constant stream of visitors throughout the day. I have witnessed a couple of squirrels trying to climb the post and being thwarted, so that at least is working as it is supposed to. Maybe in a couple of days when the wary birds get used to the appearance of the new feeder, they will begin to visit it.

Meanwhile, the furry ones have their own designated feeders on a nearby live oak tree.

Once the squirrels start utilizing their feeders, that, too, may help to reassure the birds.

There is certainly no lack of visitors to the backyard feeders as this smallest and cutest of the native woodpeckers, the Downy,  proves. This is a male, as shown by the spot of red on his nape.

Landing gear down! Coming in for a landing, this male Ruby-throated Hummingbird is one of the many of his kind that showed up in my yard this week. There was a new wave of the migrants, most likely pushed this way by Hurricane Isaac as it rolled through the Gulf. It was nothing like September 2005, when I had literally hundreds of the hungry birds in my yard after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This time there were more like ten or fifteen of the birds, both Ruby-throats and Rufous, but it was a noticeable increase over the previous week.

I hope you'll find time to enjoy the birds in your yard this Labor Day weekend. Have a safe and happy holiday.