Distraction Displays: Mass Breeding Bird Atlas 2

Adult Merlin Greeting a Fledgeling

From The Department of Immigration

 

This deserves a full screen. Merlin was one of those species which, 20 years ago, was a real pie-in-the-sky as a breeding bird in Massachusetts. During the Atlas we confirmed 3, and have another 2 probables. One of those probables, in Williamstown, was likely a nesting bird too. My money says in 10 years we will have many more, and welcome to them!

Photo: Great Barrington, Merlin adult feeding a fledgling. From Rene Laubach, photo by James Schumacher, sometime in July 2011.

Cats and Birds

From the Department of Baby Steps

Unless you were under a very large rock this week you have already gotten the news that cats eat a lot of birds, and they are very good at taking fledgeling birds.

 Being outside is bad for the cats, they get preyed upon by all manner of other beasties, get hit by cars, get parasites. Cat owners know this. Having cats outside is also bad for the birds, small mammals, and (as the cat I grew up with taught me) even fish. For those folks who can't take the plunge and retrain Fluffy to stay indoors there are incrimental steps you could take to make a dent in the number of cat kills you suffer through.

I'd like to offer the following solution to cat owners who let their cats outside.

 Don't laugh, it is called the Cat Bib. Have a look at it at

http://www.catgoods.com/field-trial-results.php

Dialogues about cats and birds don't have to be polarized and nasty. It is fair to say that most folks don't like it when fluffy comes home with a "gift", or leaves evidence of his murderous ways in their slippers. Most folks want to do the right thing, and while we may not all agree exactly on what the right thing is, we can agree that reducing cat kills is the first step on what is sure to be a long road

If letting Fluffy roam is something you can't give up consider some other ideas.

•     Don't get another cat unless you are sure you will make it an indoor cat. Just say no.
•     Do build Fluffy a play yard that is screened in (like http://www.amazon.com/Hideaway-Outdoor-Cat-Enclosure-Color/dp/B00135YQBA only cheaper).
•     Do get Fluffy a bib.
•     Do keep Fluffy inside during June and July when the breeding birds are fledging their young.
•     Don't feed or encourage feeding of strays - soon you will have way more cats than you'll ever want.

Being a responsible pet owner means spaying and neutering, protecting your pet from hazards, and being a good neighbor to the human and non-humans with whom you share your world. Cats are great companions, and as their gardians we have a real responsibility to do what we can to protect them from harm, and to protect others from the harm a cat may do.

Cats kill from 500 million to 1 billion birds in the US alone - reducing those numbers is critical to successful bird conservation.

 

Japan Quake Tsunami Kills 1,000s of Birds

From The Department of No Humor Here

The species who call the Pacific Isalands "Home" have it pretty tough. Many are pelagic, and require long periods of maturation for their young and seemingly endless foraging flights. Add to this the insults of living in a modern world (rats that eat your eggs and young, mountains of floating plastic that looks just like food, longline fishing, poisons leftover from WW2, etc) and it can be tough to stay alive.

Well, how about if you add on a tsunami.

Clearly the loss of human life and attending disasters far outweigh our concerns for nesting albatross, but this story is none-the-less heartbreaking.

Read about it here:

Japan quake tsunami kills 1 000s of birds.

(Photo Wiki Commons, James Lloyd)

SBDS: Sudden Blackbird Death Syndrome

Blackbird dying in the dead of night...

Making headlines this week is the sudden and hitherto unexplained deaths of thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds in the town of Beebe, AR.  Various reports agree that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission began receiving calls around 11:30 pm on New Year's Eve that birds had rained from the sky like hail.  AGFC officials soon found dead or dying birds littering the streets and yards of Beebe.  The birds have been collected and initial tests have been performed to try to shed some light on this unusual situation.  What killed all these blackbirds?  There are plenty of theories, but some of them may be more plausible than others.  Follow the cut to learn more...

Species At Risk: More Sausage-Making

Notes From The End of the Line

Well, time for your Friday feature, Table of Major Bummers (c'mon, we gave you the Happy Hummingbird table mid-week, it ain't all free candy and costumes y'know.) As a special Bonus If you click on the tiny sub-title you'll get to watch a music video with George Harrison in it.

Today we present the Top 20 retracting species. These are the species which, if you could sit down and have a nice cuppa with them, would tell you, in their best teenage angst-ridden voice, that all their compatriots are either gone from or leaving Massachusetts during the breeding season.

Sadly, unlike the angst-ridden teenager you faced this morning across the breakfast table (But Mom, nobody wears brown Uggs anymore!!!), the birds would be right.

Ready for the kicker? Only a few of the 20 critters following are on any sort of watch list or state list.

Ah righty, lets get started....

As you glance at the table note that:

• Only Golden-winged Warbler, Arctic Tern, Short-eared Owl, Vesper Sparrow, Henslow's Sparrow and Long-eared Owl have any special state protection. 
• Golden-winged is likely extirpated as a breeder from Massachusetts.
• None of these species have any extra Federal Protection.
• Four species are hunted.
• One species is introduced.
• Nine use some type of grassland or scrub-shrub habitats. 
• Three are dependent on undisturbed freshwater wetlands.
• 11 of these species are very rare - they occupy fewer than 1% (7) of the blocks we surveyed.
• 3 of these species are still fairly broadly distributed, and occupied 10+% (70+) of the blocks we surveyed

Ruby-throated Hummingbird Map

From The Department of Nectivory

Jackie Gleason used to end his show by saying "How sweeet it is...." - how 'bout this critter!

Trees get bigger - good for hummingbirds to nest in. Hummingbird feeders proliferate - good for hummingbirds to get spotted by Atlasers. Only one question....What's wrong with Nantucket?

(As always, click on the map to open a LARGER version.)

Poleward Shifts of Breeding Birds in New York

Other Uses for BBA Data

One of the benefits of completing a BBA 2 is that the data can be used by other researchers for lots of other projects like to evaluate range change, breeding habitat use, recovery projects for declining birds etc.

It was great to see the data used for the timely article below. It looks like during the 20-year inter-atlas interval northerly species expanded northward, and retracted from the south end of their range in measuarable amounts.

Mind you - this retraction/expansion took place in  only 20 years, and having only read the abstact I am not sure what the range of values was for all the northerly species. One could imagine though that if this rate of retraction from the southern edge of their range (11km/20 years) was applied consistently, some of the Adirondack specialists could be in very short supply in 150 years.

If there are other factors at work that exacerbate the effects of the retraction (like local extinctions due to isolated breeding populations winking out), this retraction may move more quickly.

Looks like this is a good one to send for a reprint.

(The BBA 2 for New York was published in 2009 by Cornell University Press, and is available at any number of booksellers - there is a reduced price at Amazon).

Red-tailed Sox at Fenway

From The Department of Deja Vu

See http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/06/teddys_take_ret.html

What is that bird trailing? Monofilament?

Beetles in Holden

From The Department of Bummers

USDA folk are reporting ALBs in Holden, MA. See the article here, and here is a link to Download New ALB location in Holden as a .kmz file file of the location for Google Earth.

It would be great if the USDA had a coverage for Google Earth with the containment area outlined, but I bet they are busy.

If you live anywhere nearby, spending a little time looking for ALBs slightly beyond the known infestation zone would be great. There are more than 400 atlasers in the field this year, and we are pretty good at finding things in trees.

Not a great way to spend an afternoon, but helpful in the long run. Ugh.

Proposal To Change The Name To Bisonbirds

From The Department of Nomenclature and Bummers

Oh well, seems time to remind everyone that if you find cowbird eggs or young it confirms both the cowbird and the host species. In this case George McLean gives us some graphics to remind us.

There is a story I tell myself when I see this, a story told to me by one of the wizened and  grizzled old timers. It gives me cold comfort - but at least I don't dislike cowbirds like I used to. I propose we begin by changing the name to Bisonbirds.

The story goes like this: in the pre-Columbian US, cowbirds made their living following bison herds - this meant that they moved with the herds, the herds made seeds and arthropds available to the bisonbirds by their "delicate" traipsing and chowing.

In order for bisonbirds to reproduce, the bisonbirds had to adapt to the movable feast. They needed to eat but they still needed to mate, lay eggs somewhere, have the eggs incubated, and the young raised - and it is tough to tend a nest when the herd, and your food,  has moved on.

You can imagine that this could lead to some strong selection toward putting your eggs in someone else's nest, so you can move on with the herd. If you are able to lay eggs over a long period of time each year (which the female bisonbirds can do), you could slip an egg into another bird's nest, then another, then another and parasitize a bunch of nests as you follow the bison. Maybe, just maybe, if the eggs develop quickly (which they do), and the young can kick out the host species' young (which they do) one of your young might make it.

So, enter the most efficient land-clearing animals in history (Us), and bisonbirds, being opportunists (to say the least) are able to take advantage of Us as a pretty good surrogate for bison - heck, we did a great job of clearing land for crops and cows and homesteads and cities, and, and, and. This opens up deep forest (which bison never did) and allowed the bisonbirds to take advantage of new, evolutionarily naive, hosts, along with a bunch of other grassland/early sucessional birds that moved in with human-bison-surrogates.

So, bisonbirds are really good at what they do. It is worth remembering that they are native birds - just native birds gone wild with our help. They are clearly an unwanted addition to the eastern forests, but their story should be known.

 

Photo from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21725009.