Mobbing & Molting.
Bird News Items
1. Let’s start in New Orleans - Turing the Lower Ninth Ward into a haven for birds: For Rashida Ferdinand, stepping into Sankofa Wetland Park is like walking back in time. Growing up in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Ferdinand and other neighborhood children spent their days exploring the wetland. But slowly, over time, the land fell into disrepair due to decades of state neglect, which only worsened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now, thanks to a collaboration between local residents and the Sankofa Community Development Corporation (CDC), which Ferdinand founded in 2008, the area has been restored to its previous natural glory and is officially known as the Sankofa Wetland Park and Nature Trail. (via Audubon)
2. We’ve mentioned the MOTUS Wildlife Tracking System over the years – critical technology for understanding migration. Here’s another good piece from Smithsonian Magazine: Well before ornithologist Lucas Berrigan embraced technology to find out where birds travel around the world, he started bird-watching around his home. At around 10 years old, anytime he heard a new call in Nova Scotia, he’d search out the bird. At 14, he went to a remote station on Bon Portage Island, just off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, to learn how to band birds. At 15, he was hired for a seasonal job on the island conducting a bird census route each morning and banding the animals. For college, he stayed close to home and attended Acadia University, where he majored in biology. He remained there for a master’s in 2016 and studied the behavior of Swainson’s thrushes, using a wildlife tracking system calledMotus, which launched in 2014. He found that the birds often made short flights close to sunset, possibly to calibrate their celestial compass, and credits that discovery to Motus. (via Smithsonian Magazine)
By Hap Ellis, Red-tailed Hawk – Wells Reserve at Laudholm, Wells, ME.
3. No surprise! City birds just aren’t as colorful as their country cousins: Some popular city dwellers appear to be losing their colorful allure, and not just the dirty birds. According to a study published this summer in the journal Landscape and Planning that looked at 547 bird species in China, birds that live in cities are duller and darker on average than their rural counterparts. A similar conclusion emerged from an analysis of 59 studies published in March in Biological Reviews: Urban feathers are not as bright, with yellow, orange and red feathers affected most. Often, city birds are covered in grime. But even if you could give them all a good bird bath, chances are their brightness still wouldn’t match that of their country cousins. That’s because of the way pollution, and heavy metals in particular, can interact with melanin, a pigment that makes feathers black, brown and gray. (via The New York Times)
4. All about “Mobbing”: When a flock of crows began antagonizing an owl in my neighborhood, we could hear the commotion from blocks away. It was late morning, a time when owls typically sleep. Dozens of crows swarmed the owl as it moved from a tree branch to a rooftop to a fence post. The owl seemed old and was missing an eye, and at times it seemed as though it was bracing itself when the crows darted close. The crows antagonizing the owl were exhibiting mobbing behavior. In the past 50 years, more scientists have become interested in researching mobbing behavior, and they say it can be an important defense against predators. (via Discover Magazine)
5. Molting – “it’s foundational to what a bird is”: Feathers define birds as we know them. Whether fanned in courtship display, slicing the air, or gliding through water, birds’ plumage makes them unique among living animals. But as fascinating and glorious as feathers may be, they are merely dead tissue, and any damage to them is permanent. Too many impaired feathers spells disaster for a bird. Luckily, birds can replace their mangled plumes—and they do so at least once a year in a process called molting, often right under the noses of birders. Some species take the opportunity to sport seasonal looks, like the nearly radioactive red of a male Scarlet Tanager in spring. But most importantly, molt is a survival tactic, necessary to keep feathers in peak condition. Simply put: If a bird doesn’t molt, it will die. (via Audubon)
6. A “lost” bird and a “forgotten” Nature Reserve – An endemic owl at risk in the DRC: Everything we know for certain about the Itombwe owl comes from just two individuals: one dead for more than 70 years, and the other also most likely dead by now. The second, a small, chestnut-colored owl, was netted by Tom Butynski’s team in 1996; a wild owl can expect to live 10 years. Butynski tells Mongabay they held onto the bird for just about an hour, releasing it after measuring, weighing and tagging it. Little did they realize back then the significance of this fleeting encounter: It was the last confirmed sighting of the species to date. Yet experts say they’re hopeful the Itombwe owl (scientific name Tyto prigoginei, but also commonly referred to as Phodilus prigoginei) flies on quietly — beyond researchers’ radar — in the face of possible extinction. (via Mongabay)
By Hap Ellis, Cory’s Shearwater - Gulf of Maine, Off Kennebunkport, ME.
7. A matter of survival: It seems like common sense that being smart should increase the chances of survival in wild animals. Yet for a long time, scientists couldn’t demonstrate that because it was unclear how to tell exactly if a lion or a crocodile or a mountain chickadee was actually smart or not. Our best shots, so far, were looking at indirect metrics like brain size or doing lab tests of various cognitive skills such as reversal learning, an ability that can help an animal adapt to a changing environment. But a new, large-scale study on wild mountain chickadees, led by Joseph Welklin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nevada, showed that neither brain size nor reversal learning skills were correlated with survival. What mattered most for chickadees, small birds that save stashes of food, was simply remembering where they cached all their food. A chickadee didn’t need to be a genius to survive; it just needed to be good at its job. (via Ars Technica)
8. “Birds that live together also build together” says this study on social learning: Birdsong can have “accents,” and crows can teach one another to use tools. Now there’s another reason to suspect the creatures have their own distinct cultures: nest-building practices unique to different groups of birds. A recent analysis in the journal Science suggests the design of some birds’ nests varies because of social learning, rather than genetic relatedness or environmental conditions. To determine whether different groups of birds have different architectural styles, researchers observed white-browed sparrow weavers — small birds that live, and build their nests, cooperatively. They studied 43 groups of the birds living in a nature preserve in South Africa, looking at 397 roosts and 47 nests in all. (via The Washington Post)
9. Listening to the nighttime sky: Walking into the living room one March morning to see my daughter thoughtfully stroking a furry microphone as though it was a kitten was one of the highlights of the spring. The shotgun microphone had sat outside overnight peaceably recording away, noting everything from the rowdy pub-goers to the whistle of a train a mile away. The East Midlands flightpath was crossing overhead for the first hour or two, sending the lower frequencies of the sonogram into a frenzy. This was my first foray into the mythical world of noc-mig (recording nocturnal sounds, particularly bird migration). I recently moved house and this was the first time I'd set up my own feeders, or started a garden bird list. (via BirdGuides)
10. Her avian enthusiasm turned into a full-time career: In 2016, Angela Co ’05GSAPP was living in Brooklyn and working as an architecture professor when she had a life-changing experience involving a set of binoculars. Her husband’s aunt, a bird-watcher, “took us birding in New Jersey, and it really grabbed hold of me,” she recalls. “I had no idea so many birds could be seen here. Looking at a field guide and getting a sense of what might arrive was thrilling.” Since catching the birding bug, Co has managed to turn that avian enthusiasm into a full-time career. The New Jersey trip inspired her to join a local bird-watching group, where she met graphic designer Tina Alleva. In 2019, they cofounded Bird Collective, a brand of apparel and accessories featuring original artwork of birds found in the region — owls, loons, warblers, and more. (via Colombia University)
By Hap Ellis, Common Yellowthroat - Timber Point Trail, Kennebunkport, ME.
11. An avian seedeater120 million years ago?: For paleontologists who study animals that lived long ago, fossilized remains tell only part of the story of an animal's life. While a well-preserved skeleton can provide hints at what an ancient animal ate or how it moved, irrefutable proof of these behaviors is hard to come by. But sometimes, scientists luck out with extraordinary fossils that preserve something beyond the animal's body. Case in point: in a study published in the journal Current Biology, researchers found fossilized seeds in the stomachs of one of the earliest birds. This discovery shows that these birds were eating fruits, despite a long-standing hypothesis that this species of bird feasted on fish (and more recent hypotheses it ate insects) with its incredibly strong teeth. Longipteryx chaoyangensis lived 120 million years ago in what's now northeastern China. It's among the earliest known birds, and one of the strangest. (via Phys Org)
12. The plight of the Chimney Swift: The chimney swift may not readily come to mind when you think of birds in need of conservation. Walk along a riverbank or through a field in the eastern half of the country on a summer evening and there’s a good chance you’ll spot a few zooming after insects in the sky above. But, like countless other species of birds in North America, their numbers are dropping fast. Over the last six decades, the chimney swift has lost two-thirds of its population, due at least in part to a decline in access to its preferred nesting sites inside chimneys. (via Providence Journal)
13. That time of the year – Lights Out, Texas is back in the news: For Texans, saving millions of migratory birds could be as simple as flipping a switch. Each year, nearly 2 billion birds migrate through the Lone Star State. Many of the migratory species use the night sky as a tool to navigate through the state and back to their homes and breeding grounds. However, nighttime light pollution has become a growing challenge for many birds, leading to high rates of building strikes and migratory bird deaths. Lights Out, Texas! is an initiative focused on reducing bird losses to building strikes by enlisting the help of Texans. Heather Prestridge, a curator in the Texas A&M Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology at the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections, BRTC, shared three key ways you can help birds during the southern migration window this fall. (via Agrilife Today)
By Hap Ellis, Great Blue Heron – Cape Porpoise Harbor, Kennebunkport, ME.
14. Ha! This would be annoying: A passenger wants to know what sort of compensation they should receive after buying a full fare business class ticket to travel Qatar Airways from Miami to Doha, experiencing a lovely flight in most ways, but finding their rest disturbed by “exotic birds being transported in cargo directed below us.” They booked an American Airlines codeshare for travel on Qatar. They wondered what American would give them. It was a Qatar-operated flight, even though they bought the ticket from American and it had an American flight number. Codeshares are confusing! Qatar is the responsible party. They are great in the air, but terrible when things do not go well. (via View from the Wing)
15. Finally, a useful “How To” if you are interested in photographing birds: You have to get up pretty early in the morning to photograph the early bird getting the worm. That’s how I discovered bird photography to be one of the most rewarding types of image making I’ve tried—even if I’d usually rather sleep in. When you have a good day, you can enter a state of zen-like efficiency that lets the horrors of modern life melt away into snippets of photons that trigger the receptors in your eyes to perceive visions of ecstatic natural beauty. On a bad day, you curse the forces of the universe that have aligned against you, but still come away with a day of communion with nature and hope for something better next time. I interviewed three professional bird photographers to find out how to get started. (via New York Times Wirecutter)
Bird Videos of the Week
Cornell Live Bird Cam — Breezy Albatross.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Black-chested Jays.