You don't have to look too hard to find my book, right here on the shelves of the Nature Store at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge! Tragically, they haven't been "stickered" with the "Nominee for the Stephen T. Colbert Award for the Literary Excellence" stickers.
Western?
Western sleeping
Western adult and young
The whole issue seems to bore this one--Western?
Clark's?
Clark's?
Clark's adult giving fish to immature while a Western (?) looks on.
Remember the commercials wherein various animals said, "I wanna Clark Bar!"? This bird wouldn't be interested! But it is a Clark's (I think!).
Through the window at the conference center in Las Cruces Sunday morning. Then s/he jumped down and this one was taken through the window, too.
Not the best photo, and not at Bosque del Apache--I took this one at the conference Saturday.
Pintails are inescapable at Bosque!Oh, man--I was in Western Grebe heaven!
Photon and I spent the morning at Arches National Park. She wasn't allowed to hike on any trails, but she was a good sport about waiting in the car while I was gone on a couple of short hikes. It was nice and cool this morning, so it was perfect for her.
Oregon Juncoes were all over the place.
This is a cool arch! "Delicate Arch" it's called.
Doesn't this look like a hawk looking up?
White-crowned Sparrows were all over, too--this immature one was singing.
Autumn colors!
We got to the I-94 rest stop at Theodore Roosevelt National Park just after it got light Sunday.
Gorgeous badlands, but the low light didn't do them justice.
This Sharp-tailed Grouse was curious about Photon.
Photon approves of this park!
Photon made friends with a trucker's dog--Buddy!
The sun came out in Montana.
One of Jeff Pentel's robins.
My only photo of a magpie so far--through the window, but hey--it's a magpie. I'll settle for anything.
A perfect cup of coffee.
Wish we could have spent more time here!
Idaho is beautiful!
Townsend's Solitaire at the Idaho rest stop (near mileage marker 101 on I-15)
Oh, my. Like I said, Idaho is beautiful!
So far, this is the only photo of a Utah bird I've taken. I should improve on this today!
13) Conserve water.
Water is a truly renewable resource, evaporating and returning to the air and forming clouds, then raining down on us, with the cycle repeating over and over. The amount of water on the planet remains constant. What changes is the amount of clean, drinkable freshwater for humans and wildlife.
Humans need only 1 to 2 quarts of water per day to stay alive, but we use much more. According to Cornell University’s Science News (January 20, 1997), Americans use about 100 gallons of water per person per day for drinking, cooking, washing, disposing of wastes, and other personal purposes—much higher than the world average of about 22 gallons per person per day. Not only do we use a lot of water in our homes, but agricultural and industrial water use is even more intensive. Farm policies in the United States subsidize the costs of irrigation, exacerbating the problem. As our population increases, the amount of clean water available in lakes, rivers, streams, and our uncontaminated groundwater supply is becoming depleted. Much of the groundwater that provides water used by agriculture, industry, and municipalities is being depleted far more rapidly than it’s being recharged.
How critical is water conservation for birds? Let’s consider just one situation: that of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, along the Gulf of Mexico on the Texas coast. People have known for a long time that the fresh water flowing into the refuge is critical for Whooping Cranes and other species that live in the estuary. Cranes, like humans living in San Antonio and other Texas cities, depend on water from the Edwards Aquifer, a source of spring water that feeds the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers. Of course, rainwater and runoff also provide fresh water for the rivers, but during dry spells, aquifer springs may contribute more than 80 percent of the fresh water entering the bay. When people remove this water from the aquifer for drinking, bathing, irrigation, feeding livestock, manufacturing, and other uses, the fresh water entering the estuary from the rivers declines, salinity goes up, and the ecosystem changes.
During years when not enough fresh water flows from the rivers into the estuary, marsh salinities increase and blue crab populations decline. Blue crabs are the primary food source for wintering Whooping Cranes, so a scarcity of crabs in the marshes hurts the cranes. In years when salinities are high and blue crabs are few in number, more Whooping Cranes die over the winter. “We found when salinity in the marshes reaches 23 parts per 1,000 (sea water is 35 parts per 1,000), the Whooping Cranes have to fly to fresh water to drink at least twice a day. This forces the cranes to use up more energy reserves, and increases the risk of predation whenever the birds leave the marsh,” Tom Stehn, Whooping Crane coordinator at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, told me. The cranes that survive have less to eat and are forced to use up fat reserves rather than putting on fat. Fat reserves are necessary for the cranes to survive their 2,400 mile migration in the spring with enough energy left over to nest successfully. Stehn notes that there is a direct correlation between Whooping Crane breeding success in summer and the population level of blue crabs they fed on the previous winter.
It’s not only Whooping Cranes that depend on fresh water inflows to the estuary. Other endangered or threatened species that live in the bay include Brown Pelicans, Reddish Egrets, and Piping Plovers. The human population of Texas is expected to double in the next 50 years. How will it be possible for us to meet our own needs and those of Whooping Cranes and other birds, especially as changing weather patterns exacerbate the degree and duration of droughts?
The heavy needs of water for the burgeoning development of central Florida have put Everglades National Park in jeopardy, the flow of the Platte River through Nebraska, where migrating Sandhill Cranes stop over every spring, is a fraction of its historical level; and much of the arid West is becoming ever more arid.
In the Southwest, the exploding human population has depleted already limited freshwater supplies, with international implications. Millions of acres of jungle-like wilderness in northern Mexico are now sterile salt flats because of heavy water use in the United States. In the days before the Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, Aldo Leopold recorded clouds of waterfowl in the Sonoran Desert’s largest wetland, the Cienega de Santa Clara. Leopold traveled the Cienega by canoe with his brother in 1922, calling it a “milk and honey wilderness.” “The river was nowhere and everywhere, for he could not decide which of a hundred green lagoons offered the most pleasant and least speedy path to the Gulf,” Leopold wrote. "So he traveled them all, and so did we.” The Cienega is but a shadow of what it once was, and is under threat of more damage from the Yuma desalting plant which, if it goes into production, will feed its toxic saline dregs directly into the Cienega.
The ever-increasing voraciousness for fresh water ensures that problems such as this become more and more prevalent, as we lose more and more of the freshwater reserves we should be protecting for our children and grandchildren as well as for birds and other wildlife.
The worst water use problems in the nation are centered in the West, where water conservation is urgent for humans as well as birds, yet flying over major cities, one can’t help but notice swimming pools sparkling in the sun. Squandering limited water supplies in arid areas increases the likelihood of wildfires and concentrates toxins that run off into rivers and ground water supplies. And even in areas of the country that have much more fresh water, such as the Great Lakes region, ground water and drinking water supplies are becoming more and more contaminated due to intensive agricultural practices and toxins from industry and people. When sewage plants carry too heavy a burden, managers sometimes hasten the treatment process by releasing blended contaminated and cleaned water together, which increases the dangers of disease for both humans and birds. One dangerous organism, Cryptosporidia, got into Milwaukee's drinking water in 1993, causing illness in about 400,000 people and killing more than 100. In the face of that, little attention was paid to the loss of birds and other wildlife.
Chemicals are so pervasive in the environment that one study found 287 different contaminants in human umbilical cord blood. These contaminants included pesticides, fire retardants, and mercury. And a June, 2005 Washington Post article reports on the alarming amount of pharmaceuticals in our nation's waterways, the result of drugs being tossed down the drain and flushed down the toilet. These chemicals, including hormones found in birth control pills, may have human health risks, since water treatment plants only remove a fraction of pharmaceutically-active compounds. Nobody is sure what the effects are, how these substances interact, or the full seriousness of their impacts on wildlife. Nonetheless, most government officials don't seem particularly interested in the issue.
When I was in graduate school, one of my friends who became a biologist for Exxon liked to say, “Dilution is the solution to pollution.” This may be true to a point, but year after year as our freshwater supplies stay constant or even dwindle, the amount of toxins we release steadily increases, making them ever more concentrated rather than diluted. On the shores of the largest, and ostensibly one of the cleanest, lakes in the world, in Duluth where I live, a series of storms in September, 1990, caused storm sewers to overflow and led to a sanitary sewage spill, washing raw sewage and even some medical wastes into Lake Superior. Birders and Duluthians found sick and dead birds all along the shore. One birder brought me three sick Sanderlings, little shorebirds that she found, weak and emaciated, along a popular beach. Parasites multiply rapidly on birds too sick to preen, and these birds were covered with lice and mites. I dusted them with a mild insecticide, but meanwhile, when I first examined the birds, a louse on the sickest bird bit me, apparently transferring to me whatever pathogens were in the bird. A couple of days later I became seriously ill, with a high fever, hallucinations, and difficulty breathing. My symptoms were similar to psittacosis (parrot fever), but blood samples proved negative for that and every other disease the blood was tested for. Meanwhile, my doctor laced me with a broad-spectrum antibiotic and I recovered. But the Sanderling died, and a Common Nighthawk I was caring for at the same time also succumbed. We Duluthians swim and boat in Lake Superior, and draw our drinking water from it, all the while leaking our wastes into the water and trusting that human beings will prove a bit sturdier than little sandpipers.
As public utilities become increasingly burdened with our growing population, and as the anti-tax movement makes it harder to maintain them, we can expect this kind of dangerous situation to happen with increasing frequency, hurting all of us. Even simple sewage backups and overflows can contaminate lakes and rivers. Conserving and using our precious water resources responsibly helps birds and humans both.
How can we make a difference? First and foremost, don’t waste water. The Environmental Protection Agency and many municipal water providers suggest on their websites a great many simple ways we can save water at home. And don’t place extra burdens on your sewer system and wastewater treatment plant. Remember, anything that goes into the sewer system is flushed with water which must be cleaned and the debris removed before it can be returned to open water. In addition, hazardous materials and medicines may not be removed and will increase water pollution. Try not to wash down drains or flush any of the following items:
- Paper products. These do not dissolve, and add to the burden of sludge.
- Lint and hair. These may clog your drain or the sewer system.
- Condoms, underwear, and other non-biodegradable solids.
- Oil, paint, and other toxins. Know where your local toxic waste disposal site is, and use it.
- Cat litter. The sand and gravel can block a sewer line.
A tiny, pale warbler, a female common yellowthroat, had been caught in mid-May while she was nest building and was fitted with a tiny backpack that held a radiotransmitter. Over the next week researchers followed her movements for a few hours every day as she finished her nest, laid eggs, and began incubating her clutch of four eggs. One day, she was gone and her eggs were stone cold.
Scott Tarof, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin, went out that afternoon to help a graduate student find out what had happened to their female. The bird's radio signal was coming from the pasture across the road from the study site. The two walked into the pasture thinking they would find the radio tag lying on the ground, but were puzzled when the signal suddenly started coming from the far end of the pasture. As they walked in that direction, the signal moved again; this time it was several hundred yards away in the opposite direction. There was no common yellowthroat to be seen or heard, so they thought they were going crazy or maybe the equipment was not working properly.
After a few hours of frustrating false leads looking for the radio tag in the hot sun, they finally got a steady signal from a clump of grass in the corner of the pasture. They zeroed in on the signal only to find a chewed-up transmitter in a pile of cat poop. The female warbler had been eaten by someone's cat, and Tarof had unknowingly been following the cat that still had the bird, and its radio tag, inside it.
...
To estimate the numbers of birds killed, homeowners in Michigan were asked to count up the dead animals their cats brought home. On average, each cat killed about one bird a week, and though this may not sound like much, the damage adds up because there are so many free-ranging cats near homes and farms. The six hundred cats in this study would have killed more than six thousand birds during a typical ten-week breeding season alone. A similar study in Wichita, Kansas, asked homeowners to bag the contents of the litter box so researchers could later search through the feces looking for feathers. They found bird remains in about 10 percent of the samples, even though the homeowners had not reported seeing their cat bring back a bird in recent days. This suggests that kitty is not as innocent as owners think and that surveys of cat predation underestimate the true scale of the problem. When the Wichita study ended, the homeowners were asked if, given the results of the study, they would now keep their cats indoors; 73 percent said no.
...
Cats are not to blame for the songbird decline, but keeping cats indoors will mean that birds nesint in woodlots near farms and homes will have a better chance of staying alive and producing a healthy number of offspring.
St. Francis of
I personally love cats. When an abandoned cat, part of a similar spay and release program in
There really are no win-win solutions for some horrible dilemmas. And when there are two sides, each gets stuck looking at the side of the tragedy they see clearly, and minimizing the tragedy the other side sees clearly.
But I’ve also held my cat Sasha in my arms as she died from a stroke, after dragging herself with paralyzed rear legs into my bedroom desperately searching for me. She was another stray I took in—she’d been eating redpolls and other birds at my own feeder. I loved that cat very deeply, and was heartbroken when she died.
Individual life—cat and bird—is beautiful, meaningful, and irreplaceable. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put a mangled dead Piping Plover back together again, and they can’t bring back to life a dead cat. But saying that birds killed by cats aren’t our responsibility or our fault is simply untrue. Cats are not native to
I’ve done my part—in my lifetime I’ve taken in five stray cats and given them a loving home. If feral cat colonies really are necessary, they should be entirely fenced with cat-proof fencing, located in habitat that is already degraded so as not to attract native birds, and situated far, far away from migratory bird pathways. But far, far more work needs to be done to find INDOOR homes for cats. And if we're going to err on the side of compassion, make it not by choosing individual life over individual life, but by giving preference to the most vulnerable populations over the tragically too-abundant species.
This is Cat, the cat I rescued from Stoney Point, up the shore from Duluth.
My family subscribes to Entertainment Weekly, since we're all fascinated with movies. This week's online issue includes a quiz to identify movie props that includes a stuffed bird. In the paper copy of the magazine, it tells something about this cool artifact:Arsenic was often used for preserving birds that are now in museum drawers. This screech-owl looks pretty ragged, but really is in pretty good condition, considering it was supposedly stuffed by an aspiring taxidermist who was getting practice before stuffing his raison d'être. Can anyone tell which species it is?PsychoAs if the Bates Motel weren't creepy enough, director Alfred Hitchcock posed this stuffed owl among other mounted animals in Norman Bates' parlor to amplify the sense of menace. Universal Studios archivist Jeff Pirtle, who now tends to the creature along with a stuffed seagull [sic] from The Birds, says it's in surprisingly good condition, given that the film debuted in 1960. "It was preserved using arsenic," Pirtle explains. Somehow, when you're talking about a Hitchcock prop, a dose of arsenic seems fitting.
Stuffed Owl
Heroes, by buying and reading this book, you've proven you get it--and are therefore now members of the nominating committee for The Stephen T. Colbert Award for The Literary Excellence." Use the medallions below to nominate any book that you feel embodies the values of the Colbert Nation.There are 12 medallions. So the next 11 people who email me requesting a copy of 101 Ways to Help Birds ($22 including shipping) will get their copy officially "stickered."
Would this be the last thing a fish ever sees?
Great Egrets are all over the place.
House Sparrow
Not a bird--but dragonflies were everywhere.
Garden spiders are gorgeous.
White Ibises are abundant.
First time I ever saw a Limpkin right in Disney World!
I don't know which lizard this is.
Black Vulture.
Great Blue Heron
Let sleeping ducks lie.
My Joey in front of the Animal Kingdom's joeys.
Wood Stork flying overhead.
Lousy picture of a gorgeous bird.
Mourning Dove
Is this a frittilary? (See comments for answer)
Anhinga
Another Mallard
Despite The Odometer Game, watching what few birds I could find, listening to and singing along with my iPod, and whatever else occupied my mind yesterday, it seemed to take forever to arrive in Orlando. The drive took almost exactly 8 hours. The weather was weird--I was going through some strange front system, and it would be sunny and 91, and then drop to 82 or 79 or some other huge drop as I went through a downpour or a drizzle, and then the clouds would go away, the temperature would rise, and then the whole cycle would repeat. I didn't see many birds--it's not like the days in the 70s or early 80s when you drove through the south and all the ditches were filled with egrets and Purple Gallinules. But there was one Black Vulture sitting on a guardrail as traffic crawled through a construction zone.
No sun here in Georgia or in Duluth today--it's supposed to be rainy and blustery on Hawk Ridge, at least this morning. But those lovely people brought plenty of sunshine to me by taking their photos with my book! Really famous people! Above are this year's counters, Karl Bardon (the one who called out my first Boreal Chickadees of the season, putting his sharp ears as well as eyes to the task!) and Eileen Muller, literally a migrant worker from Mexico, who's seen and tallied some of the amazing hawk counts in Veracruz! I was in Veracruz a year ago at the Ornithological Conference, and got to see some of that amazing spectacle. As soon as I heard Eileen was going to be on the job this year, I knew it would be in good hands--or, should I say?, eyes. Below is the effervescent Volunteer Coordinator and Naturalist Julie O'Connor, who doesn't know how NOT to smile and who spends her summers showing everyone who passes by Duluth's downtown Peregrine Falcons; Hawk Ridge's brand new Executive Director Janelle Long (who I haven't had much chance to get to know, but she's got a smile in her voice as well as on her face and has the knowledge, experience, and ability to work with people to get the job done); and the ever-wise, warm and wonderful Education Director Debbie Waters. Thanks SO much, everyone!
It's not too late for YOU to send in a photo showing you and/or Stephen Colbert reading my book!
Wow I'm tired. I left Chicago at 7 am CDT, and got to Cartersville, Georgia at 9 EDT. I'd have gotten past Atlanta except for two accidents that put traffic at a standstill for quite a while--they both looked really bad. Plus there was a horrific accident going the opposite way outside Chicago. I've reached a point where I don't even mind going at a snail's pace in these situations--it hardly seems an inconvenience in light of what the poor people IN the accident are going through.
I'm headed to Florida today--well, I'll only get as far as Chicago, then will go another 800 miles or so tomorrow, and make it to Orlando on Saturday. I'm bringing our lovely "old" Prius to our son Joe, and flying home on Tuesday. Joe doesn't have any time off from his job at Disney World on Sunday and Monday, the two days I'll be there all day. I'll spend one of them at Disney World, working on my Checklist of (Wild) Birds of Walt Disney World (which used to be on my old blog--I have to figure out how to get it back because it was a pretty useful thing for birders who were stuck going to Disney World with their families but wanted to see real birds), and the other day I'll probably drive off to Merritt Island by myself to see what I can see. I'll post whenever I get Internet.
He missed his wife. It was a year ago exactly that she had collapsed, dead, in the snow. Those damned bird feeders! He shouldn’t have gone to work that morning, not when she was so sick, the cancer eating away at her breasts and bones and lungs. It wasn’t the cancer that killed her, though. The doctor said it was her heart. He came home to find her lying there, spilled sunflower seeds scattered around her, the bucket on its side, one of those stupid birds actually sitting on her face, not flying off until he stooped to pick her up. She was dead, of course, stiff and cold as ice. She must have been there the entire day.
It was all his fault. Why hadn’t he filled the feeders himself? Of course, it was her fault, too. Why was it so important to keep those damned feeders filled? He never filled them again, and every time the chickadees came to the window, staring at him, he stared back emptily. So the hell what if you’re hungry? My wife is dead.
The chickadees should have disappeared as soon as they’d finished the seeds. But a year later, they were still coming. Damn them! Every time he looked at one, its eyes sparkling with life, he thought of his wife’s dead eyes, open and glazed, staring out. She had a smile on her lips but her eyes were dead.
This morning when the chickadees came, they seemed especially annoying. One actually tapped on the window, staring him down insistently. He wanted to grab it and crush it and throw it in the snow. And suddenly he stood up and headed down into the basement and grabbed a fistful of seeds and was standing on the porch before he knew what was happening. And without a moment’s hesitation, in flew that windowsill chickadee, straight to his hand. As if in slow motion he watched his fingers curl as the chickadee looked up at him. His fingertips touched the chickadee’s wings, and still it gazed up at him. And a spark flew from the chickadee’s eyes and pierced his heart and there she was, smiling at him, telling him in all but words that she was okay. The cancer didn’t kill her. She had triumphed over it, dying in a burst of joy, diamonds of snow sparkling all around her, chickadees filling her eyes and ears and fingertips with happiness that infused every cell of her body.
He loosened his fingers. The chickadee looked into his weary eyes, and in the chickadee’s eye sparkle he saw his wife. She was in heaven, right here on earth.
She sat in the marsh at dawn, gazing at delicate tendrils of fog rising from the water or, maybe, descending from the heavens. A large raft of Wood Ducks materialized in the growing light, swimming peaceably. Suddenly the rising sun's brilliant beams caught an old, spent shotgun shell on the ground beside her. She idly picked it up, and at that moment an icy gust--the wind?--passed through her. And in that instant she felt her brother’s presence beside her. Or, rather, within her. In this marsh, one year ago today, he and his dog had disappeared on opening day of duck season, never to be found.
She sat shivering in the Just as the last match’s flame shrunk and died out, along with all hope, the earth itself grew bright. And emerging not so much from the glowing forest as from the sky itself, in flew the specter she had been longing to see, on ethereal wingbeats, black and white and red, substantial yet somehow... She pulled her stiff and heavy arms up and followed the bird with her camera, clicking over and over and over. Photo after photo, until as the bird winged past her with a soft breath of feathers against her face, everything disappeared in a strange burst of brilliant white and red.
The Forest Service helicopter pilot was jolted to see white and red sparks flying above the trees over the wilderness. Fire! But the red sparks looked more crimson than orange, and he’d never seen a forest fire spurt white sparks. And there was no smoke. The response team was shocked—despite the fading but still unearthly glow, the forest was quiet and empty. All they found was a pile of burnt-out matches and a digital camera which was never claimed at the Forest Service office. Months later, in
My fantasy photo
