Planning a trip to Hawk Mountain this weekend? Arrive early to enjoy great views of low-hanging fog and to see the sun peek out over the valley. It’s a great way to start any day. — with Quelia Paulino at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association.
Our move to Texas in 1987 offered as one amenity, local roadrunners.
Camp Wisdom road was mostly two lanes then — it’s six, now. Clark Road was two lanes. It’s expanded to six, with a direct link to the freeway Spur 408. Wheatland Road was two lanes. You guessed it: Six now.
Not sure about baseball fields any more, but with roads, if you build ’em, people will come. The empty prairie and cedar forests favored by golden-cheeked warblers, and favorable to lizard-eating roadrunners, gave way to bulldozers putting up apartment complexes, strip shopping centers (still mostly vacant), self-storage businesses, and more roads. Roads bring automobiles, and autos provide collision courses for roadrunners.
In the summer, I used to see a roadrunner at least weekly at the intersection of Camp Wisdom and Clark; once watched one hunt down a very large Texas fence lizard and dash off with the lizard dangling from either side of its beak. In the era before electronic cameras.
All that development takes the habitat of roadrunners, and that is the slow death of much wildlife. Roadrunners dwindled down. About 2009 we discussed how rare they were. In 2011 Kathryn and I saw one lone roadrunner along Old Clark Road in Cedar Hill, precariously living in a 50-yard swath between two roads (which are slated to be widened), sharing a railroad track. Nothing since.
Mama roadrunner gives me the eyeball from the safety of the cedar tree, while the chick grooms. Is it safe to go out into the sun?
Until two weeks ago. Kathryn called me, excited that she’d seen a roadrunner crossing Mountain Creek Parkway, where Wheatland Road dead-ends into it. It’s good roadrunner weather. We were happy to know at least one survived.
Then, last Thursday I was driving along Old Clark Road. I brought along the Pentax K10D because I was hopeful of catching the hawk family living a block off of Wheatland and Cedar Ridge Roads. A roadrunner dashed across the road from a small ranchette into a “vacant” field of wild prairie grasses dotted with Ashe cedars. My experience is they are reclusive, and don’t like to be watched. I grabbed the camera and got a couple of shots of the bird, running under a tree and meeting up with another, smaller one — a chick!
I doubled back and u-turned, hoping they might at least dash. The larger one danced on the edge of the shadow of the tree for a minute, then uncharacteristically strutted out, hunting something to eat. She got something that looked like a lizard, or a fantastically large grasshopper, and a few other tidbits from the grass. She strutted around, and headed back to the shade, and to the younger one.
Mama Roadrunner flaps happily after ingesting a large something.
Roadrunners, the greater roadrunner, Geococcyx californianus (which means “Californian Earth-cuckoo,” a description of many politicians in the Golden State, perhaps).
I shot stills, with a 50-200 mm telephoto zoom, and I got a bunch of shots. I strung them together in Windows Moviemaker.
Are the roadrunners doing okay? Not really. They’re not gone, but much of their old habitat disappeared from this hill, the highest point in Texas between the Louisiana border and the Rockies — swallowed by human development, homes, suburban shopping, and the roads that go with that development.
Amanda Holland with one of her research subjects, in South Carolina
Kathryn’s cousin, Amanda Holland, moved from researching condors in California, to buzzards in Georgia and South Carolina (for the University of Georgia, I think).
Here she is with one of her research subjects. Much lore is out there about handling carrion-eating birds for research — they vomit on you only if they like you, for example — but wholly apart from that, how great is this photo of a scientist at work?
I told her to copyright the photo (it is), and to hand on to the meme. Can’t you see a character in Game of Thrones, or some other fantasy, who carries her own vultures to clean up after she devastates some other army in battle?
Eagles and falcons and owls are okay, but what other bird could conceal the results of the battle, so the warrior princess could move on in stealth?
Science field work looks like great stuff. My experience is that it’s tiring, and sometimes lonely (though in very beautiful locations) — but the psychic rewards of actually increasing knowledge keep a lot of scientists going. There’s not a lot of money in it.
Look at the friends you could make!
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From Canyonlands NP Facebook page: “View from the Maze: A pair of Bewick’s Wrens makes a nest in the brain cavity of an old bull’s skull. Where bovine ruminations once roamed a quick feathered flickering now prevails. If your skull ended up in a tree what species of bird would you like your brain cavity to host? (GC)”
Years ago in the Salt Lake Valley my sister Annette had a home on Wren Road.
One day she and a friend watched birds scurrying all over the property, plucking nesting materials. “I wonder what kind of birds those are,” my sister said.
“Did you ever wonder why they named it ‘Wren Road?'” her friend replied.
If you want your bird watching friends to think you’re experienced at it, remember Bewick’s, as in “Bewick’s wren,” is pronounced like the automobile, “Buick’s.”
Our goldfinches left several weeks ago. The cedar waxwings came through in at least three big waves, starting in February (and the last just over a week ago). House finches moulted, and the breeding males have bright red heads. Migrating robins left us by the end of January, but a lot more residents stayed with us.
We have at least one, and maybe three cardinal families. A black-capped chickadee family stuck around. Haven’t seen a titmouse in a month, but I think they’re still in the neighborhood. The black-chinned hummingbird family is back, and maybe a few other hummers. The resident blue jays and white-winged doves duke it out every day. Carolina wren stayed, and may have already fledged; but there are too many wrens for one family — is that a Bewick’s wren?
What’s THAT?
White-winged dove, left, can’t scare away the rose-breasted grosbeak from the songbird feeder. Photo by Ed Darrell
Look closer. Photo by Ed Darrell
It’s a rose-breasted grosbeak, Pheucticus ludovicianus. It seems late for migrating birds, but only because so many migratory species migrate earlier these days.
Haunts of the rose-breasted grosbeak, from Cornell University’s ornithological laboratory.
Would love to have a grosbeak family, but the Cornell ornithologists say this is fly-through territory. Maybe that explains why it won’t scare by the white-winged dove,Zenaida asiatica. Dallas is the western edge of the grosbeaks’ migratory path, but the eastern edge of the dove’s territory. They probably don’t see much of each other.
No, he’s not particularly gold — but this is winter, and if he’s going to get his breeding plumage, it will come in a couple of weeks.
We’ve had Niger thistle seed feeders out for years; this year one goldfinch (Spinus tristis) finally started to visit. We’ve had as many as four at a time — but they’re probably headed north soon.
Here’s a shot of our first guest, from a couple of weeks ago.
A goldfinch male, checking out the feeder before bringing in his buddies — we hope.
If you’re north of Dallas, and you see this guy at your feeder this summer, tell him “hello” from us.
The non-breeding plumage isn’t so flashy as the bright yellow of the breeding males. Some of the finches settle in to a beautiful, smooth olive-drab livery for much of the winter. Close up, they look like good pen-ink-drawings by a master artist.
The white dove was a short-lived interlude; the white-winged doves seem to be with us constantly.
One family in 2011; two families in 2012 — and our yard isn’t that big.
A very early version of the birds who visited, befriended, and plagued Snoopy — this drawing, while faithful to Shultz’s work, was done by another artist.
Earlier this week I looked out, and it looked like the early “Peanuts” comic strip when Snoopy opened his dog house to a group of pigeon-like birds for their poker game. The birds took advantage of Snoopy’s largesse, and nearly over-ran him. (Woodstock was a product of that flock of birds, the last remaining vestige by Charles Shultz‘s death.)
At least they didn’t drink our beer and try to make off with the Picasso.
White-winged doves are really too big for any of our feeders — but what are you going to tell a rampaging herd of them? Photos by Ed Darrell – use encouraged with attribution.
Enough doves to frighten Alfred Hitchcock — Two of these birds is too many for either side of this feeding station. How many do you see here?
Not enough room for all, and so they jostle and push each other off the feeders. See the display of the white stripe on the wings of one of our subjects here, from which the species gets its name.
Blue jays enforce the “too-long-or-too-many-at-the-feeder” rules here, but they can be distracted by peanuts put out by neighbors. In any case, they were absent when we needed them.
We used to have mourning doves, but at some point in the last five years this bunch pushed them out. We may be the only ones on the block who noticed. (Yes, it’s “mourning” dove; Duncanville’s having misspelled it on “Morning Dove Lane” is their error.)
It was last April. Kathryn’s garden near the patio needed some work, and of course there are all the plants in pots, including the orange tree (which has since been joined by a pomegranate).
Birds visit often — we hang three or four birdfeeders. Cardinals, house finches, the Carolina wren and her family, and a lot of white-winged doves commonly hang around.
Of a sudden a flutter of wings — and there he was:
Where did this dove come from? For a few weeks in the spring, it haunted our yard.
We assumed it was male, but we have no way of knowing for sure. At one point it seemed to make mating advances on some of the white-winged doves — but who knows.
The bird followed Kathryn around. It ignored the feeders farther out in the yard, and concentrated on the feeders on the patio. Then it would land on our patio table and watch.
Sometimes it splashed in the birdbaths.
The bird appeared at ease around people. It would watch us work or play in the back yard.
Difficult to miss — the white was positively glowing. When it flew in, it’s path suggested it came from a house up the alley a ways. Was it a refugee from some cote, an escapee? Or was it a trained bird just out for exercise?
A few times it arrived in the morning, and hung around for an hour or two. Its usual pattern was to arrive in the early evening, grab a few seeds, do a lot of watching, and disappear.
With its color, we feared it would be a target for hawks.
Where it flew to roost, we couldn’t determine.
One day it flew off, and didn’t return.
The mystery dove. Where did it come from, was it tame? Why was it here? Where did it go?
I’ve been calling these guys Bewick’s wrens (Thryomanes bewickii) for a couple of years, based on an identification I made a couple of years ago — but checking today to be sure, I’m thinking this is a Carolina wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) instead.
In any case, a couple of days ago it paused for a few minutes in our backyard rose arbor, long enough I could try to get a good shot with just a 200mm telephoto, and with colors dulled by the window.
Wren in the rose arbor — ruddy color suggests it’s a Carolina wren, but I’ve been calling it a Bewick’s wren; pausing for its photo on Inauguration Day – Photo by Ed Darrell
Bewick’s wrens probably have more grey on their bellies; this one looks ruddy enough to be a Carolina wren. (I just learned “Bewick’s” is pronounced like “Buicks.”)
Wrens stick around all winter now; they didn’t just over a decade ago. This family has been with us for at least three years — two young this year successfully fledged. By now it’s almost impossible to tell which are the young, which the parents.
Gulf fritillary butterfly on blue porterweed — a few feet from the rose arbor where the wren posed, but months apart. Photo: Ed Darrell
On our patio we have a saga continuing with Gulf fritillary butterflies (Agraulis vanillae), their larva, and passion vine. It seems our neighbors eradicated passion vine, so when the frits start moving north in the spring, they find our passion vines as the only ones in town. The females go nuts laying eggs, and at some point we have a surplus of larva who denude the vines in a week. Late hatching larva probably die off.
The butterfly books suggest that we cull the larva, but we don’t have the heart. At some point in the spring the wrens wake up to the issue, and they cull the larva for us. The vines recover, a new wave of frits hatch out, and the cycle begins again. From June through September, the passion vine loses any leaves it puts out within 48 hours, usually. But the wrens probably eat well.
The wrens seem never to perch where we can see them when they sing. I suspect these little guys of having a much better voice than most wrens, but the great arpeggios I hear may be another bird, perhaps a warbler, that I just don’t know (good reason to go spend time at the local DogwoodCanyon Audubon Center, yes?).
Understanding the physics of the Earth’s atmosphere poses great problems — it is an astonishingly dynamic, fluid environment. Understanding the relationships between species in ecosystems is no less complex, and no less vexing.
Wise followers of science recognize that when findings in biology, chemistry and physics, point the same direction, something powerful creates the convergence, and is not to be ignored.
So it is with these findings from the University of Montana and the U.S. Geological Survey, demonstrating clear links between climate change and the changing life patterns of large animals like elk, small animals like birds, and the plants the animals live in and consume. This study is so complex that climate denialists haven’t figured out which part to deny, yet. (This press release came out in January.)
From the USGS, with no adornment from the Bathtub, a press release on a letter in Nature Climate Change:
Dramatic Links Found Between Climate Change, Elk, Plants, and Birds
Released: 1/9/2012 11:30:00 AM
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communications and Publishing
In partnership with the University of Montana
Missoula, MT – Climate change in the form of reduced snowfall in mountains is causing powerful and cascading shifts in mountainous plant and bird communities through the increased ability of elk to stay at high elevations over winter and consume plants, according to a groundbreaking study in Nature Climate Change.
Red-faced warblers are one of the species affected by climate change in the form of reduced snowpack in the Arizona Mountains, according to a USGS Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit study. Photo by Tom Martin, USGS, May 1998, in the Coconino National Forest
The U.S. Geological Survey and University of Montana study not only showed that the abundance of deciduous trees and their associated songbirds in mountainous Arizona have declined over the last 22 years as snowpack has declined, but it also experimentally demonstrated that declining snowfall indirectly affects plants and birds by enabling more winter browsing by elk. Increased winter browsing by elk results in trickle-down ecological effects such as lowering the quality of habitat for songbirds.
The authors, USGS Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit scientist Thomas Martin and University of Montana scientist John Maron, mimicked the effects of more snow on limiting the ability of elk to browse on plants by excluding the animals from large, fenced areas. They compared bird and plant communities in these exclusion areas with nearby similar areas where elk had access, and found that, over the six years of the study, multi-decadal declines in plant and songbird populations were reversed in the areas where elk were prohibited from browsing.
Hermit thrushes are a songbird species that was strongly affected by plant community changes in mountains because of reduced snowpack and cascading ecological effects, according to a USGS Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit study. 2005 photo by Tom Martin, USGS, in the Coconino National Forest
“This study illustrates that profound impacts of climate change on ecosystems arise over a time span of but two decades through unexplored feedbacks,” explained USGS director Marcia McNutt. “The significance lies in the fact that humans and our economy are at the end of the same chain of cascading consequences.”
The study demonstrates a classic ecological cascade, added Martin. For example, he said, from an elk’s perspective, less snow means an increased ability to freely browse on woody plants in winter in areas where they would not be inclined to forage in previous times due to high snowpack. Increased overwinter browsing led to a decline in deciduous trees, which reduced the number of birds that chose the habitat and increased predation on nests of those birds that did choose the habitat.
When elk are excluded, aspen growth dramatically increases - Climate change in the form of reduced snowfall in mountains is causing powerful and cascading shifts in montane plant and bird communities through the increased ability of elk to stay at high elevations over winter and consume plants. Here, you can see an example of the difference in aspen growth inside versus outside a fence that excludes elk. Photo by Tom Martin, USGS, in Coconino National Forest
“This study demonstrates that the indirect effects of climate on plant communities may be just as important as the effects of climate-change-induced mismatches between migrating birds and food abundance because plants, including trees, provide the habitat birds need to survive,” Martin said.
The study, Climate impacts on bird and plant communities from altered animal-plant interactions, was published online on Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Elk in winter at Camp Creek Feed Ground, Northwestern Wyoming - USGS photo
Imagine for a moment that you are a wee little mousie, sitting on a tuft of grass nibbling on a seed. You think you feel a breath of a breeze from in back of you and you turn around to see this beautiful thing
Owls fly silently. Their feathers have evolved to move without rustles, to let the wind slip through them without making a whish. Owls demonstrate evolution at its mightiest, and nature, as the poets note, “red in tooth and claw.”
I’d like to know more about this film. Trained owl? Wild owl enticed by what kind of bait? Longer movie about eagle owls? I’m not familiar with them. So many little mysteries on the internet.
New Photron SA-2 High Definition High Speed Camera. Shot of ‘Checkers’ the eagle owl, 1000fps 1920×1080 resolution. Shot by SlowMo (www.slowmo.co.uk). See the owl and other birds of prey at www.turbarywoods.co.uk.
From Wikipedia
The Eurasian Eagle-owl (Bubo bubo) is a species of eagle owl resident in much of Europe and Asia. It is also one of the largest types of owls.
* * * * * *
The Eagle Owl is a large and powerful bird, smaller than the Golden Eagle but larger than the Snowy Owl. It is sometimes referred to as the world’s largest owl, but this is actually the Blakiston’s Fish Owl, which is slightly bigger on average.[2][3] The Eagle Owl has a wingspan of 138–200 cm (55–79 in) and measures 58–75 cm (23–30 in) long. Females weigh 1.75-4.5 kg (3.9-10 lbs) and males weigh 1.5-3.2 kg (3.3-7 lbs).[4][5][6] In comparison, the Barn Owl weighs about 500 grams (1.1 lbs).
Tip of the old scrub brush to Kathryn.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
One of the most frequent hoax charges against Rachel Carson claims that she didn’t base Silent Spring on research. Greater hoaxers claim that there is little or no evidence of harm to birds from DDT.
Rachel Carson’s book stirred controversy, as shown in newspaper headlines
These critics forget history, or they try to cover it up so you won’t know any better. Carson provided more than 50 pages of citations to peer-reviewed research and communications with leading scientists in ornithology and chemistry about DDT and the damage it does.
Paul told the birders that Interior was proud of the fact that so much of the research in the book relied on Interior’s research, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:
In addition, we are proud that so much of ‘Silent Spring“ is based on Fish and Wildlife Service research. And, with no modesty at all, we like to point out that Miss Carson is nobly carrying on a tradition that employees of the Department of the Interior, beginning with Walt Whitman nearly a century ago, have written some of the Nation’s most important books.
That’s quite the compliment to Carson, being compared even distantly to Walt Whitman. It’s also a helluva brag for USFWS.
It’s also a 30-second response to the false charge that Carson’s work was not research based, or that research did not show DDT damage to wildlife.
Paul spoke to the Audubon Society about work to set up and operate the Federal Pest Control Board.
Terri Potts Smith showed up bright and early for work — was it in the spring? — and we talked in our first floor Dirksen Senate Office Building office about the grind we faced ahead with the hearing schedule for the Senate Labor Committee and subcommittees. Suddenly she was transfixed by something out the window.
Having just recently learned that terrorists favored that particular corner for planting bombs under cars, I started a bit. Terri explained, astonished, that a red bird flew into the tree out the window.
It was a cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), a common bird, but not one common to Utah, where both of us had grown up.
I think of that often these days, and am still constantly startled, to see green birds flit across the streets of Duncanville, Texas.
Monk parakeets. Myiopsitta monachus. Also known as the Quaker parrot.
Monk parakeets profiled in the Chinese pistache, Duncanville, Texas, August 10, 2010 - photo by Ed Darrell; more than a dozen birds are hidden deeper in the tree.
Monk parakeets are invasive in Texas — it is thought the wild flocks developed from a few dozen escapees in the past three decades. They favor nesting on tall electrical poles — the stadium lights of the high school and college football stadia host a lot, as do electrical transmission lines. At Verizon Wireless we had at least one occasion when one of our cell tower climbers was attacked by one of the birds, apparently a mother just after the chicks had hatched. Cell towers provide excellent habitat for the birds.
At the best sitings I’ve had, previously I lacked a camera. Today I happened to have the small Pentax Optio V20. 20 to 30 of the birds roosted along an electrical wire. They were happy to see me until I pulled out the camera. (Pure conjecture: They’re smart. They’ve seen people with cameras before — and frequently, shortly after that some crew appears with a cherry-picker to destroy their nests. Camera-shyness is a survival function for the birds.)
All I observed was social activity and some preening, except for the one bird flitting around with a stick in its bill.
And the two who were trying to pull tape off of electrical transmission wires.
Monk parakeets working to get a charge out of life, picking at insulation on an electrical wire.
Troublemakers.
Truth be told, I’ll take the monk parakeets in greater profusion, if we can reduce the populations of starlings, grackles and cowbirds.
Is there any evidence of the parakeets preying on songbirds?
Monk parakeet in the Chinese pistache tree. All photos by Ed Darrell, use with attribution encouraged.
[Update: Oops. Looked like a locust tree on a quick look. A longer look, I wasn’t so sure. Kathryn confirmed that it’s really a Chinese pistache, Pistacia chinensis.]
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We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
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Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
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