Random bits

Tragedy:

I've been keeping you up to date throughout the summer on my nesting pair of Eastern Bluebirds. This week, I'm sorry to report, tragedy struck.

The female had been brooding their latest clutch of four eggs for more than a couple of weeks and it was past time for them to hatch. Early in the week, I noticed the pair was acting strangely, i.e., they were not following their normal routine. Birds are creatures of habit so I knew something was wrong.

I started watching the box more carefully. Obviously, the female was still brooding, but she would leave the nest often and, when she did, frequently the male would fly to the box and look in. At first I thought maybe the eggs had hatched and he was delivering food, but I noticed he wasn't actually going into the box as he would have had to to deliver food to newly hatched nestlings. He was just perching at the hole and looking in and then flying to the nearby fence. Then, on Tuesday, I noticed the birds were not going to the box. In fact, they had disappeared from the yard. Later, I checked the box and found that the eggs had not hatched.

I think I know what happened. The first week after all the eggs were laid was our hottest week of the summer. Several days had temperatures of more than 100 degrees. The bluebird box is in full sun all day and the temperature inside the box must have been like an oven. I noticed the female was often sitting with her head sticking out the door, beak open, trying to get some air. I even trained my sprinkler so that it would spray the back of the box on a couple of occasions to try to give her some relief. But I'm sure the high heat must have killed the tiny embryos inside the eggs. (No, I didn't have the heart to open one up and examine it. I'm just not that good a scientist, I guess.)

I take comfort in the knowledge that this pair had already successfully raised and fledged two broods of five chicks each this year. They did their best for the third brood, but the weather defeated them. Maybe Mother Nature decided they needed a rest.

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Surprise guest:

I thought I had just the one female Ruby-throated Hummingbird in my yard. This week I found out there were two. I discovered the second one when I saw the two of them tussling over the flame acanthus blossoms that are such a favorite with hummers.

Then, another surprise. There was an adult male here, too! He seemed to prefer the cannas and the hamelia blossoms like the ones in the picture I showed you on Wordless Wednesday.

All three of the birds visit the blossoms around the yard, but I haven't seen any of them at the one feeder I've left up for them this week. Obviously, they prefer natural nectar to my homemade kind.

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Predator alert:    

The Cooper's Hawk has continued to be active around the yard this summer. Just about every week I see him at least a couple of times chasing the birds from the feeder, but I've never seen him catch one. Until this week. Well, actually, I still can't really say that I saw him catch that dove. It happened so fast...

I was watching the birds at the backyard feeders late one afternoon when this brown bullet crossed my field of vision and about fifty or so birds, most of them White-winged Doves, exploded into the air in panic. The bullet, which turned out to be the hawk, made a seemingly impossible hard right turn to chase several of the birds into my neighbor's yard. It was all a blur - I couldn't really tell what was happening. Then I saw a puff of pale feathers floating toward the ground and I knew the hawk had made a strike.

I peered over the fence at the neighbor's yard to try to see where the hawk had gone with his prize, but I never located him. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure he ate well that night.

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Molting time:

It's that time of year when all of the birds start looking raggedy and threadbare. It's molting time again. The adults have mostly finished their nesting duties and now they are dropping their feathers to get ready for shiny new ones. Over the next several weeks, we'll be seeing birds in various stages of undress as they begin to grow new feathers to get ready for the coming seasons, and, as a side benefit, as they drop some of their insulation, they'll be able to handle the heat better.

This Tufted Titmouse taking a sip from my little backyard fountain shows the typically disheveled appearance of the molting songbird.

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Birds love sprinklers and no birds love them more than Blue Jays. Late this afternoon I started a sprinkler on a section of my side yard and as I was adjusting it I heard a noise to my right and looked to find a Blue Jay there, practically sitting on my shoulder, with his beak open and his beady eye on me! "Hurry up!" he seemed to be saying. "It's hot out here!"

It is, indeed, hot out there and there's not much relief for the birds, but I'm happy to turn on those sprinklers when I can, as well as keeping the birdbaths and the fountain filled. It's the least I can do to repay them for all the entertainment they provide.  

Wordless Wednesday: July hummer

The invasion of the decimators

There are many challenges facing the environment around the country, indeed around the world, these days, but among the most deadly and seemingly intractable of these are the invasives.

Invasives are plants or animals from someplace else in the world that have been brought to our shores, sometimes deliberately, sometimes by accident, and released or escaped here. Often these plants or animals find a hospitable habitat with none of the natural enemies or controls which they encountered in their native land. The predictable result is that their population explodes. They compete with native species and sometimes overcome them, even wiping them out.

In the island nation of New Zealand, for example, where non-native rats and stoats have become entrenched, they have exterminated at least 19 bird species.    

In the United States, one of the most famous invasives is the House Sparrow, which was deliberately introduced in New York in the 19th century. It quickly spread and began to compete with native hole-nesting birds like Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Sparrows, contributing to a decline in these as well as other species before human intervention began to give the natives a fighting chance.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, with the globalization of the economy and the ease of tourism between countries, the rate of introduction of invasives exploded. No state in the country has suffered more from this phenomenon than Florida.

From walking catfish, Asian swamp eels, Cuban tree frogs, monkeys, iguanas, and, most famously, Burmese pythons, the state's ecology  is overrun by invasives. Indeed, the pythons have been so successful in the Everglades that they have virtually wiped out the small mammal population there. This, of course, has disastrous and long-term effects on the other predators in the area that normally depend on these mammals for food.

Even the alligators there have had trouble holding their own against the pythons. Bodies of the native reptiles have been found in the stomachs of big pythons that have been captured and killed.

As if all of this were not enough, Florida is now battling another invasive - giant African land snails, sometimes called GALS. These snails can get up to 8 inches long. Each snail contains both male and female reproductive organs and every mated snail lays about 1200 eggs a year. As of June 22, Florida state officials reported that they had captured and killed more than 124,000 of the snails in the area around Miami.

These snails pose a major threat to gardens and to farmers' crops because they will feed on and destroy at least 500 different types of plants. But it's not just plants that they gobble. They will also chew on plaster and stucco, thus causing damage to homes. And, one other thing: They also carry a parasitic nematode that can lead to meningitis in humans. Unbelievably, these critters were deliberately smuggled into the country by a religious cult which uses them in their "healing ritual."

Florida is battling its invasives with all available resources, but in all too many instances it seems to be losing the battle. There is always the chance that many of these species will be able to spread to other hospitable habitats, especially in adjoining states along the Gulf of Mexico. As the climate changes, becoming warmer, the possibility of some of the species being able to move into even more areas of  the country only increases, all of which could prove to be devastating for our native plants and animals. The decimation of species which Florida has experienced could become more widespread.

It is a nightmare scenario, one that desperately needs a solution but for which no real workable solution seems in sight.

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!

Young cardinals

My garden is full of juvenile Northern Cardinals just now and most of them show up at the feeders late in the day to have a snack before settling down for the night. I sat and watched my backyard feeders just after the sun went down today and I counted at least six juveniles among the several cardinals that gathered there.

Although the light was fading fast, I decided to try to record some of them with the camera.

Several of the birds gathered on the ground under the feeders to look for fallen seeds, but this little lady chose to take an easier route and settled on one the feeders.

Meanwhile, a young male perched on top of the feeder.

This young male surveyed the scene from a perch in a nearby crape myrtle tree.

In a few weeks, all of these birds will have completed their first molt and will be sleek and beautiful in the colors of their adulthood. I look forward to watching them make that transition.

Independence Day!

Happy Fourth of July! 

Celebrate safely.

Crested Caracaras in nesting season

Headed into Houston today, I glanced at an open field off of Telge Road near Tomball and sitting in the middle of that field, enjoying a meal of something, was a Crested Caracara. We're well into the nesting season and so the clear implication is that the Caracaras are nesting here.

We never used to see these large, strikingly patterned relatives of falcons in this area, but in the last five or six years they have become more and more common. I still see them most frequently in winter, but apparently they are here all year round. Indeed, the adults are considered permanent residents on their territories, although young birds may wander considerable distances.

"Caracara" is a South American Indian name that is based on the bird's call. These birds generally feed on carrion and they can be aggressive at a kill, chasing Turkey and Black Vultures away. But they are not just carrion feeders. They are also known to hunt small animals, often flying low and taking the animals by surprise. They also scratch on the ground for insects or sometimes dig up turtle eggs. However, their main source of food is probably carrion, of which much is road kills. They can often be seen early in the morning at such kills.

This interesting bird has been under pressure and seems to have declined in some parts of its range possibly due to shooting and habitat loss. But here in this part of Texas, it seems stable and increasing and appears to be expanding its range.

 Crested Caracara photographed on Katy Prairie in winter.