KVARESTO8
Walking Projects
Fairfax Cross County Trail, 41 miles: completed 2 July 2010.
(more…)Meta
More Me
-
- Pinboard bookmarks
- All-purpose profile
-
Category Archives: Birds and Birding
Close enough
When reality gives way to art: somewhat fanciful behavior is pictured in a splendid poster (ca. 1926) by Oscar Rabe Hanson promoting commuter rail service in Chicago, part of a long article by J. J. Sedelmaier. The ducklings following the adult Wood Duck would more likely be single file, and more closely bunched. More critically, the little ones would be following a hen, not a drake.
There’s a hole in that
Laura A. Tyson et al. report an artificial nest cavity design that European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) don’t seem to like, or at least the starlings at their northern Ohio field test site. The team tested PVC tubes with a diameter of 10 cm, mounted horizontally and capped at each end, the opening restricted to 5 cm. Bluebirds, swallows, and wrens like the plastic boxes just fine, but no starlings used any of the 100 structures in two years of testing.
Gwynne decoded
As far I can tell, Charles Goodnight is the only writer to use the name “Dirt Dauber” to refer to birds in the swallow family (Hirundinidae). Everyone else reserves that name for various species of wasp. From his The Making of a Scout, some frontier navigation wisdom:
‘The scout had to be familiar with the birds of the region,’ continued the plainsman, ‘to know those that watered each day, like the dove, and those that lived long without watering, like the Mexican quail. On the Plains, of an evening, he could take the course of the doves as they went off into the breaks to water. But the easiest of all birds to judge from was that known on the Plains as the dirt-dauber or swallow. He flew low, and if his mouth was empty he was going to water. He went straight too. If his mouth had mud in it, he was coming straight from water.’ (pp. 42-43)
Goodnight is cited in S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, p. 198. David Sibley writes that American swallows of the genera Hirundo and Petrochelidon use mud to build nests. All are permanent Texas residents, at least by today’s distribution maps.
Some links: 57
Making connections: a roundup of nature stories that have caught my eye recently:
- GrrlScientist recaps a recent paper by Dan Strickland et al. that looks at the dependency between Gray Jays (Perisoreus canadensis) and conifers like Black Spruce (Picea mariana). The jays cache perishable food items like berries and mealworms, wedging the morsels into cracks in the bark of trees. Spruces supply a natural preservative, retaining the moisture of the stored snacks, that other northern tree species (birches, maples) don’t provide.
- Rick Wright rereads Ludlow Griscom’s (1890-1959) master’s thesis, revised and enlarged for publication in The Auk in 1922-23 (part 1, part 2). The paper presents a field identification key to ducks of the east coast. In his emphasis on flight characteristics for distinguishing birds at middle- to long-distance, Griscom anticipates the current emphasis on jizz.
- Sharon Levy summarizes recent research on the relationships between crop-pollinating bees like Apis mellifera and flowering plants in proximity to crop land: hedgerows of trees, introduced weeds, what have you. What may be the key to the bees’ success is the degree of plant diversity, be it native or alien.
- Maria Dolan reports on the habitat threat to of Vaux’s Swifts (Chaetura vauxi). These west coast birds, like their eastern congeners, Chimney Swifts (C. pelagica), are dependent on old brick chimneys for roosting (historically, they used hollow trees, which have also become scarce as old-growth forest declines). But rickety brick piles, especially those in earthquake zones, are prime candidates for demolition.
Birding haiku
From one of the Vardaman chapters, a wonderful evocation of kettling vultures, rising on a thermal:
Now there are seven of them, in little tall black circles.
“Look, Darl,” I say; “see?”
He looks up. We watch them in little tall black circles of not-moving.
—William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Merriam to Robbins to Kaufman
Laura Erickson surveys more than a century’s worth of North American birding field guides.
A quantum leap in field guide quality took place in 1966, when the Golden guide to field identification Birds of North America was published by Western Publishing.
This was co-authored by Chandler Robbins and Bertel Bruun, illustrated by Arthur Singer, and edited by Herbert Zim. The “Golden Guide” made a great many innovations—in fact, I’d argue that this guide included more valuable innovations than any field guide before or since.
Bank on it
Catherine A. Lindell, Ryan S. O’Connor, and Emily B. Cohen make a contribution to what we know about songbirds’ nesting success in active and abandoned coffee plantations and active pasture. Specifically, they studied White-throated Thrushes (Turdus assimlis) and Clay-colored Thrushes (T. grayi) in Las Alturas reserve (for four breeding seasons) and Rio Negro, an active coffee farm (unfortunately, only for one season).
These two species of birds, congeners of our American Robin, do not migrate north to the U.S. to breed (there are some records in south Texas for Clay-colored Thrush), in contrast to the charismatic migratory wood warblers (used to promote shade-grown coffee) that feed in forests and plantation overstories in the winter months. The thrushes of the research prefer to nest on the ground or low in a tree. The slightly surprising results of the paper are that nesting success is only indirectly affected by type of land cover, and the effect is through how well the terrain provides concealment from predators. In particular, nesting in a steep bank in pastureland provides the greatest protection (the nest can’t be detected from below, and cattle can’t trample it).
There is a scintilla of a hint that the birds can be more successful in an active coffee plantation—more humans means fewer predators—but keep in mind that only one year of data is available.
I’ll let the authors summarize the research’s conservation implications:
Conservation recommendations based on land-cover type would be relatively easy if we could rank land-covers as to the quality of habitat they provide for target species and if rankings were consistent across species. Our results indicate these conditions are not met for these species.
Smith decoded
So. So the fact is, at the end of the 4th century Greenwich was covered in the kind of plant life and so on that grows over the places no one goes to or uses. Probably there was a lot of ancient wildlife which came when that happened, the equivalents of frogs and hedgehogs and the kinds of things that come and inhabit places like on Springwatch on TV. On that programme they tell you how to make a wilderness in your garden so that live things will come and visit it or even decide to make their homes there. Some of them can be quite rare like the bird that is called a willow warbler which used to be widespread but now there are hardly any. But the point is, places that right now right this minute are places people go to in London and do not think twice about being in, can seriously just disappear. (There but for the, p. 286)
Ali Smith’s ten-year-old narrator Brooke has the gist of the conservation argument, but her facts regarding the status of Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) are not quite there. Across Europe, the bird is not listed as a species of concern; it’s only in Britain that populations have fallen off, placing it on Amber conservation status.
Good for something
Dr. Caren Cooper is collecting data on variation in House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) eggs.
Because House Sparrows are a nonnative species, they are undesirable inhabitants of nest boxes in North America, but they are an easily accessible study species that can be used to address ecological questions without disturbing native birds.
Researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are studying this species to help better understand the enormous variation in eggshell patterns and color. House Sparrow eggs exhibit an extraordinary amount of variation. Eggshell coloration and pattern may vary with available calcium, sunlight patterns, or habitat quality, and are expected to differ seasonally and geographically as well.
NestWatch participants are encouraged to submit digital photographs of eggs to Dr. Cooper, together with sufficient information to make scientific comparisons. Follow the link for more details.
Better view desired
Dale Tucker goes birding in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as part of the museum’s Connections series of narrated slideshows.
Some lists: 10
Five (and five more) obsolete common names for birds, taken from the index to Richard H. Pough, Audubon Bird Guide: Small Land Birds of Eastern & Central North America from Southern Texas to Central Greenland, 1946 and 1949, and their modern synonyms.
- Lichtenstein’s Oriole
- Altamira Oriole (Icterus gularis). M. Heinrich Lichtenstein (1780-1857) was honored by Johann Wagler by naming the oriole for him.
- Bandit Warbler
- Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas). The old name has a lot more mojo.
- Batchelder’s Woodpecker
- Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens). Another eponym that perhaps was a casualty of lumping species together, in this case Gairdner’s Woodpecker, Nelson’s, and Willow.
- Cham-chack
- Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). I’d say, “like it sounds,” but the bird doesn’t sound like that at all.
- Forest Chippy
- Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivora). Described in the field guides as having voice like a Chipping Sparrow.
- Grease Bird
- Gray Jay (Perisoreus canadensis). Along with several other equally uncomplimentary names.
- Huckleberry Bird
- Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla). Apparently a preferred nesting substrate.
- John-chew-it
- Black-whiskered Vireo (Vireo altiloquus). This name-sayer name actually works. It’s also known as Whip-Tom-Kelly. Poor Tom.
- Pork and Beans
- Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor). Yet again, supposedly onomatopoetic. I don’t hear it.
- Flame-crest
- Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa). Another case where the old name is short, descriptive, and to the point, while the new one reads like a committee report. Sort of like the difference between the original Metro station names and the hyphenated jawbreakers we have today.
In wolf’s clothing
Nick Davies and Justin Welbergen report a novel form of Batesian mimicry: in this case the breast barring that is shared by Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) and Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). Rather than an harmless species mimicking a harmful one, here the indirectly harmful species (the brood parasite cuckoo) gains easier access to host Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) nests by resembling the more direct threat, the predatory raptor.
(Summary by The Economist.)
Spenser decoded
So I’m working my way through the evening’s ten pages of Spenser and I come to a passage in Book II, Canto XII of The Faerie Queene where he apparently feels the need to demonize certain species of birds and flying mammals:
Even all the Nation of unfortunate
And fatal Birds about them flocked were,
Such as by nature Men abhor and hate;
The ill-fac’d Owl, Death’s dreadful Messenger,
The hoarse Night-Raven, Trump of doleful Drere,
The Leather-winged Bat, Day’s Enemy,
The rueful Strich, still waiting on the Bier,
The Whistler shrill, that whoso hears, doth die;
The hellish Harpies, Prophets of sad Destiny.
Whistler is glossed by the edition that I am recording as plover, and I don’t know where that disrespect is coming from.
But it was Strich that caught my eye. The word, perhaps already obsolete when Spenser used it at the end of the 16th century, refers to the various petite screech-owls, and was formed through some sort of collision between the sound the bird makes and the ominous, bloodthirsty Strix of classical mythology—or at least so Oxford reasons. To add to the confusion, nowadays Strix names a genus of much larger owls, among them the Great Gray Owl and Barred Owl, and it is the nominate genus of the True Owls family, the Strigidae.
But it’s high-quality glass
Laura Kammermeier makes the case, wryly, for bird-friendly coffee.
(Link via Paul Baicich.)
Under escort
Gary Stix profiles Omar Fadhil, ornithologist and researcher with the University of Baghdad. Field work in Iraq presents special challenges.
Whenever I go out, villagers always ask, “What the hell are you doing here?” I never engage them directly. Instead I get out my binoculars, set up the camera tripod and take out my bird books. I show them pictures of the birds I’m looking for and, when possible, let them look through the binoculars at the birds themselves.
After a time, they often warm to me. They point to a bird in the book and say, “We’ve seen this one but not that one.” They become my scouts. Despite the war, I have found six new species that had never been seen before in Iraq.
