How are birds related to dinosaurs, crocodiles, and pterosaurs? Where do birds live, and not live? How many bird species are there, and how many actual birds, and how does this vary across the glob? What about endemics?; Where ate the most local species found? Mike Unwin’s The Atlas of Birds: Diversity, Behavior, and Conservation
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Tag Archives: Birds
It is time to start thinking about nesting
Birds don’t live in nests. They make nests for specific purposes, use them for that purpose, then abandon them. Or, sometimes they don’t abandon them, but rather add on and use them again and again, but in between they don’t live in or on them. Well, sometimes they hang out on them a lot. And not all nests are for putting their eggs in. In fact, sometimes a nest is more of a symbol of quality and overall bird sexiness than it is a place to keep the chicks. As it were. Oh, and sometimes they live in the nests, now that I think about it … It’s complicated.
But there is a book that can help you keep it all straight: Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build
Birders Need to More Actively Embrace Evolution
People who watch birds identify them, and that process is integral to what makes birding interesting. But the best practices for identifying birds appear on the face of it to conflict with evolutionary concepts of birds, and this can lead to both sloppy thinking and missed opportunities
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The first crane and the last crane
The first crane I ever saw is a bird burned permanently in my memory. It came out of nowhere and flew close by, staying in view lit by a nearly setting sun for about five wing beats. A gun was raised to shoot it but the trigger was not pulled.
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The Marvelous Migrating Whooping Crane
They used to hunt whooping cranes. Between that and habitat loss, the number dropped from nearly 20,0000 to a mere 1,400 during the first half of the 19th century, and continued to drop to an all time low of 15 birds in 1941.
Fifteen birds, in 1941, represented the entire species.
All those birds were members of a single flock that migrated between the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, USA and Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada.
Most people know the story, or at least, the vague outlines of the story. Much has been written about them, including several books such as Cranes: A Natural History of a Bird in Crisis
With considerable effort from numerous private and government agencies, in both Canada and the US, the whooping crane population has soared, bird-like, from about one tenth of one percent of their normal population to almost 2 percent of their normal population (from 15 or so, depending on which source you like1, to between 300 and 400, of which only half live in the wild) over a period of about 60 years.
One of the things that had to happen to save the cranes was teaching new chicks where to go, and this was accomplished by getting them to imprint on humans. Then, the specific human to which the bird had imprinted was attached to a lawnmower engine with a propeller on it and flown along the migration route. More or less.
As it turns out, the future of the whooping cranes was tied to a small plane. Creating a new migratory flock of whooping cranes required teaching young chicks how to migrate without the assistance of adult birds. The International Whooping Crane Recovery Team decided to use an ultralight aircraft as a teaching tool to show the young whooping cranes how to fly from western Florida to Wisconsin. The program has proven very successful and as of October 2009, there are 77 whooping cranes that follow a plane from Florida to Wisconsin and back each year.
Once the cranes were imprinted on humans they needed to undergo the crane version of dating, which involved an elaborate mating dance, with human rather than crane partners. Or at least, that’s what the crazy scientists such as Dr. George Archibald, who engaged in this … activity, insisted to be necessary.
Saving the whooping crane from extinction certainly required a great deal of effort. And dancing and flying.
You will see, occasionally, verbiage such as “whooping cranes have come back from the brink of extinction.” That’s not true. They are still very much on the brink of extinction. Although there have been efforts to split the slowly growing flock into different geographical distributions, it is still the case that the wintering grounds could all be affected by a single bad hurricane year (and we do have them now and then). And, with several states attempting to bring back crane hunting, some will surely be shot while migrating. (I assume there is no effort to bring back hunting of this species, but given the way things operate there will be collateral damages if Jeeter and Bubba are in fact allowed to legally shoot at crane-like birds).
Internet resources and photo sources:
Cornell Lab of Ornithology Whooping Crane Page
National Wildlife Federation Whooping Crane Page
Wikipedia
Journey North
Operation Migration
National Geographic Animals Whooping Crane Page
1National Geographic says 16; Wikipedia says 21; The National Wildlife Federation says 15.
Three Academic Books on Bird Migration
These are the kinds of books you get if you are either a scientists studying bird migration and related issues, or a very serious bird geek. The first two can be obtained at very low prices used, but the third will set you back at least 50 bucks US$ if you want a used copy. Note the spread of publication dates. It is not the case that the oldest book is out of date in all respects: Quite the contrary. Alerstam reviews theory and ideas that have not been revisited or revised to any great degree. Also, it is interesting to see how changes in the field develop over a decade or so. In any event, I’ve labeled the books by year of publication to make it very clear that I’m not showing you hot off the press items here.
1993: Bird Migration by Thomas Alerstam
2001: Bird Migration: A General Survey by Peter Berthold
2005: Birds of Two Worlds: The Ecology and Evolution of Migration, Edited by Russell Greenberg and Peter P. Marra
When is a bird a real turkey?
This post at 10,000 Birds, an item I accidentally bumped into on the Internet while looking for something else, and an unusual sighting moments ago, converge. And, its a nice distracting convergence which I need right now because as I sit here one week before fishing opener, looking at the glassy surface of Hunters Bay, I see fish jumping everywhere. Not only that, but a 54 inch muskie was found dead a few days ago 25 feet from where I’m sitting now. And, the Department of Natural Resources put up a fish weir just across the bay, and they’ve been coming by every morning and pulling out SCADS of keepers (mostly northern pike). I’m not even going to look for my fishing gear, even though I can feel it in my hands and I can hear the plop of a bushy yellow spinner with clipped-off barbs dropping into the water inches form a rise spotted only second earlier…
OK, OK, back to the birds.
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Why are all the birds dying?
Over the last few days, there have been several reports of mass die-offs of birds, and one report of a fish die-off. These events have been linked, via suggestion but not evidence, to hail, lightning, fireworks, aircraft, aliens, each other, poison gases, and even pockets of oxygen free air. Many have suggested that there may be a cover up. What is the explanation for so many highly unlikely events happening in such a short time period?
The answer may astound you:
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Dead Birds
In the renowned yet obscure documentary, “Dead Birds,” watchful men in a traditional community in Highland Papua New Guinea use the sudden flight of birds as a clue to the possible encroachment of a hidden enemy bent on blood revenge. In mines, canaries signal air too poisoned to breath by dying faster than affected humans. And in Arkansas, apparently, the sudden death of thousands of blackbirds are used to indicate the nefarious activities of aliens from another planet.
Ducks blowing in the wind
One day, about ten years ago, we were having a strong southerly fetch with small tornadoes popping out of the stormy front, so Julia and I were keeping an eye out the windows, watching wall clouds form and unform over our heads. Then, suddenly, there were these two ducks flying south, coming up over the houses across the street. They flew up into the air and beat their wings against the strong wind, not making any ground at all, and then finally, fell back out of our view. I’d seen these ducks before. By day they foraged to the north on the Metronics property, but roosted to the south, behind our house, on Rice Creek. Well, maybe not these exact ducks but the ducks in general that lived in these parts. So I didn’t think much of it.
But then, suddenly, the ducks appeared again in our view, rising above the rooftops from the back yards across the street, plowing into the wind, trying hard to drive forward with their wings beating, but making no ground whatsoever, but rather hovering in place with the strength and speed of the wind perfectly matching their flying effort. And, once again, they dropped out of sight.
This happened a total of about four or five times, then stopped, and Julia and I continued to marvel at the near-tornadoes forming constantly over head. Then we heard the quacking. Tired of flying nowhere, the ducks were now coming out of the neighbors yard on foot, they crossed the street on foot, passed by our house, and followed the lawn down to the play ground then into the treeline where they disappeared into the woods.
Which is better than I can say for these ducks:
One could say that bats evolved twice
Much in the same way that “woodpeckers” have evolved several times (most are birds that look like each other, but then there is the aye-aye and Darwin’s finch), one can say that the nightjars are birds poking around in the insect-eating bat niche.
We Walk Among Ducks in Wolves Clothing. And Wolves.
This is the most challenging time of year for duck watching. But it may be easier than one thinks to bump into a wolf in the forest.
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Parasite threatens many of Britain’s best-loved birds
Emerging infectious diseases do not only affect humans. Wildlife is threatened as well, and an alarming report from Britain documents an avian tragedy of great proportions.
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The Science of Birdwatching
Birdwatching might be a casual activity, a hobby, an avocation, or even a profession (often, perhaps, an obsession) depending on the bird watcher, but there is always a science to it, in at least two ways. First, there is the science of how to do it. In this sense, the term “science” means something vernacular. We as easily say “birdwatching is an art” as we could say “there is a science to it” and here we are using both terms( “art” and “science”) in their older sense where science is how we approach things with our minds, and art is how we approach things with our hands.
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Rheas and the Birth of Evolutionary Theory
Everyone knows about Darwin’s Finches, of the Galapagos Islands. But of course, Darwin made observations of birds throughout his travels on The Beagle. Here, I present a number of passages from The Voyage that include some of these observations.