Down at the bridge

I went down the Grand St bridge to check out if the black-crowned night herons were there. The last time I went, I didn't see them, so I wondered if they were heading away for the fall.

I saw three juvenile black crowned night-herons, but no mom or dad. There had been at least 2 adults I had seen this summer. I had only ever seen one juvenile at a time this summer, so I wondered if the young ones had been in the nest all summer and are just now going out on their own.

Also, something which I hadn't seen before was several gulls sitting out on the dock alongside the herons. There were 2 laughing gulls and 2 herring gulls just chilling out with them. On the other side of the bridge, there was a lone hering gull, which seemed to spook away one of the juvenile herons when he attempted to land on the brigde.

It was so nice to see my little friends again. I hope to see the adults again, or I might start to worry...

National Aviary

My trip to the National Aviary was a success. And not just because I got some flashy great blue heron earrings at the gift shop (thank you, Eric). The keepers do little informational presentations when its feeding time, and they encourage the patrons to help feed the birds. I held up a fish and an Inca Tern flew by and snatched it out of my hand. It was pretty sweet. Eric held up a grape that was picked out by a fairy bluebird. The little kids on the tour really loved it. For a zoo experience, it was really pretty sweet to have birds eat things out of your hands.

Feeding the Inca Terns

City of Champions

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Sophy Naess's father, a fellow birdwatcher. He told me he's seen screech owls in Central Park, and I told him about the herons in Newtown Creek.

Tonight I leave for Pittsburgh with Eric, Josh, and Laura for Rosh Hashana. I've never been to Pittsburgh, and I'm most excited about being promised a trip to the National Aviary. Looks like Xanadu.

National Aviary

I can't believe people actually paint this stuff

So I was really excited when I heard that Brody Railton had found some really nice pictures while google image searching "pipe". I tried image searching "pile", and came up with a sweet fantasty drawing of Chevy Chase with rippling muscles. Pretty messed up.
Anyway, I started searching for more fantasy drawings, and I found this super sweet gem:



Now that's a fantasy....

New Bird Species

An amateur birdwatcher in India discovered a new species - New Bird Discovered In India. Nice work!

Bugun liocichla

Not-so Secret Cattle

New info on kouprey, the extremely rare wild cattle in Cambodia. According to a new study of DNA, kouprey might not be a real species at all. Instead, it's a feral population of a cross-breed of two domesticated Asian cattle species, the bateng and the zebu. At least some of the DNA of the kouprey and the bateng match through the maternal side of DNA. But if what this means isn't' exactly clear, and it's still being debated.

I am definitely pretty excited about this.

NY Times: A Celebrity Among Ungulates May Soon Be Dismissed as a Poseur

Condors Eat Lead

There's an article in National Geographic online about how California condors have been getting lead poinsoning. The condors eat dead animals that were shot with lead bullets, and ingest some of the lead.

When I was 3 years old, I went to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, where they have tons of stuffed animals. When I saw the California condor, which was nearly the same size as a tiny Katie, I burst into tears and made my father carry me on his shoulders for the rest of the day. For a few years, I still had trouble looking at it, and would be very scared when visiting the museum that I would accidentally turn a corner and be face to face with this horrible beast.

So imagine my relief when I learned a few years later that the condor was near extinction. I was pretty perplexed that people actually wanted to save this miserable beast, and I hope they would die out.

I suppose now that I am a little older, wiser, and considerably taller than a condor, I can reluctantly say that the species should be preserved.

I've been thinking about condors a lot recently after finishing Mark A. Hall's Thunderbirds. He dismisses the notion that condor could be responsible for some of the thunderbird sightings, but I'm not totally convinced. It seems like it could be just as possible that a condor could be sighted outside of its normal range as it could that there's an entirely new species.

Missing Night Herons

Eric Emm and I went to the Grand St bridge last night to look for the black-crowned night herons that have been nesting there all summer. We found none. Perhaps they were just out fishin' for a few minutes, or perhaps they have migrated on for the winter.

I miss them terribly.

Monk Parrot Researcher

There was an article in the New York Times on Tuesday about a parrot researcher who is interviewed about monk parrots and conservation. There's a bit on the monk parakeets in Greenwood cemetery. Mostly it's about why people like parrots as pets.

The video clips offered are kind of funny if you're into, you know, older women who look like a beat up Blythe Danner.

Wacky Warblers

Micky Hervitz and I went to the Prospect Park Zoo this weekend. The zoo isn't great; the best animals are the kangaroos and sea lions. It's has a large collection of indoor cage animals - tropical frogs and lizards. I always thought those were the boring stuff, but Micky loved those most of all. This was almost as surprising as discovering that Paul Manley's favorite section at the Natural History museum is the gems and minerals. It's like finding out someone you know likes the yellow Starburst best.

In the public restrooms, we saw two blue and yellow birds flying back and forth through the vaulted ceiling of the pavilion. They would stop and rest for a few seconds at the lamp that hung down, then fly around the ceiling. I couldn't figure if this was a mating ritual or if the birds just couldn't figure out how to get out of the pavilion. The bizarre behavior caught the eyes of more than a few other restroom patrons.

I made a quick call to Amy Hunt, who I described the blue and yellow markings of the birds, so she could look through the New York state birds guide book and identify them. We were pretty sure it was a type of warbler, and after consulting a second book, I am pretty sure that they were Canada warblers. More like Totally Mental warblers.

Canada Warbler

secret cattle

According to a Thai newspaper, there was a possible sighting of a highly endangered animal called a Kouprey in a Cambodian forest. I never even heard of this animal, but it's a huge wild cattle species, and hasn't been seen since 1957. Apparently, since there are so many landmines in Cambodia, no one can go look around the jungle for them.

The fact that such a large animal species can go unseen for so long gives some hope that maybe other animals that haven't been seen in over 50 years might still be around - thyaccines, ivory-billed woodpeckers...



I am totally scared of the Cambodian jungle.

Mourning doves

Yesterday was the third time in as many weeks I've seen a mourning dove in Manhattan. Twice I saw one walking on the scaffolding outide my window in midtown, and once in on a sidewalk in the east village. I can't think of the last time before that I've seen a mourning dove around here. I wonder if the NYC population is growing, or if these were just isolated sightings. Perhaps this is the time of year the mourning dove migrates through, though I assumed that mourning doves do not migrate, like pigeons.

I will certainly have to investigate this.

Thunderbirds love babies

I've been reading Mark A Hall's book on Thunderbirds about the possibility that today there exist giant eagles mentioned in Native American lore, big enough to carry off a child (as allegedly happened in 1977 in Illinois). Many bird experts refute the possibility that a bird or eagle would attack a human, or have the ability to actually kill or pick up a child.

Just yesterday, StrangeArk.com had a link to a new article about how anthropologists have just said that there is strong evidence that eagles killed and attacked early human ancestors. The scars on the skull of an Australopithecus africanus toddler are more in line with the marks of an eagle attack than a saber tooth tiger, as was originally thought to be the culprit. Also, it was recently discovered from investigating the discarded bones in eagle nests, that these African crowned hawk eagles have been eating mangabey monkeys on a regular basis.

Just saying...

Supply and demand in Miami

I was very excited to learn that Micky's father had seen this site. In honor of my favorite new reader, I'd like to talk about some of the birds of Professor H's hometown - Miami.

SouthFloridaBirding.com seems to be a helpful site for tips on places to birdwatch, as well as Birding.com/wheretobird/Florida. The SouthFloridaBirding site has a nice photo gallery, and I found myself stuck in a little quandary while looking at the images. Because of Miami's warm climate, it allows for some of the more colorful, almost tropical looking birds to live there. So I assumed that there would be some weird, unusual looking birds, such as the roseate spoonbill. But some of the birds in the pictures were birds that I really didn't think were at all native to Florida, not even North America.

Roseate Spoonbill:


My first tip was that several parrots photos were on the site. The only parrot species to be native to North America was the Carolina parakeet, which has been extinct for over 100 years. However, there are plenty of parrots that have escaped from captivity and have bred in the wild. There's even a flock of monk (also known as quaker) parrots living in the gate of the cemetery here in Brooklyn - BrooklynParrots.com.

One of the pictures of the hill myrna really caught my eye - the birds seemed familiar to me from guide books, but yet I really didn't think it could actually be native to Florida.

Hill Mynas in Miami:


Turns out it is actually a native of southeast Asia and India. It is popular as a pet bird, because it can talk. This couple set up a whole website dedicated to pet mynas, and warning other owners of the "iron storage disease" that claimed their own beloved pet - Mynahbird.com.

Here's a little more info on escaped pet birds:

"The Monk Parakeet is considered a major agricultural pest in its native Argentina. That reputation, coupled with reports in the popular press putting the U. S. feral population at 4,000 to 5,000 birds, led to a coordinated eradication program, especially in New York, New Jersey, California, and Virginia. The program was highly successful, and small feral populations now persist only in a few Florida locations and in Chicago. In retrospect, the fears may have been groundless. The actual number of feral birds probably was overestimated considerably, and population expansion was mostly confined to the metropolitan New York area, with lesser numbers in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Nonetheless, it has been estimated that the Monk Parakeet could cause millions of dollars in agricultural losses should it become abundant.

Members of the parrot family are not the only cage birds to have gone feral in the mainland United States. Red-whiskered Bulbuls (passerines related to kinglets), from southeast Asia, escaped from a bird farm near Miami around 1960. The species, at last report, occupied about three square miles and was slowly spreading. Escaped bulbuls also established feral populations in the Los Angeles area, where attempts have been made to eliminate them by shooting. The Java Finch and Indian Hill Myna, both popular as pets, are also feral in the Miami area. The Spot-breasted Oriole from Central America is also well established in southeastern Florida following escapes from captivity. The most spectacular feral bird in the United States, however, is the Greater Flamingo. This Caribbean species has repeatedly escaped from captive flocks in Florida, and a free-flying colony lives around Hialeah Race Track in Miami."

from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Feral_Birds.html

A veterinarian I met at a party once explained to me about how the monk parakeets living in the Brooklyn cemetery are an example of the ecological "niche theory". The idea is that North America as an ecosystem is capable of sustaining one species of parrot. Until recently, that was the carolina parakeet, and after that species became extinct, this opened up a niche for a different parrot species, this time non-native, to fit in. Since monk parakeets come from a similar latitude in the southern hemisphere, they were able to fill this niche and thrive.

This seems related to economic markets, which Mr. Hervitz is an expert on. If there is sustainable niche in a market for something, if one company folds for some reason, there's room for another company to come in and fills that place in the market. Though in the case of parrots in North America, the marketplace has changed, and now there less demand for parrots, and more demand not having eating all our crops eaten by pesky parrots.

Thankfully, Prof. Hervitz is a much more welcome transplant from Argentina to Miami.

Monk Parakeets in the Brooklyn cemetary:

Mystery bustards

I recalled on recent trip the American Museum of Natural History that in the hall of birds, in the display window for birds of the African Savannah, there was some strange looking bird that was listed as extinct on the label card, and I had tried to make a note to look into it. I thought that it was some kind of bustard, but when I tried to do some internet searching for a type of extinct bustard, I came up with nothing. It seems that all species of bustard are alive and (relativelty) well.
The most interesting thing I came across was a site all about a program to re-introduce the Great Bustard to England where it once lived. The website greatbustard.com, which has some pertty hilariously bad web design, tells how the bird became excinct in Britain by 1832, but thrived elsewhere. Apparently, bustard eggs are being taken from Russia and transported over to Salsibury Plain to hatch.

Great Bustard:


I'm wondering what examples of re-introduced species have been successful. California condors in Arizona is probably the best example I can think of. Grey wolves? That actually seems more like a failure story, with people hating having more wolves around.

Anyway, back to the mystery at the Natural History Museum. I emailed Marylou Murrillo, who works in the textiles department of the AMNH. I asked her if she could take a look at the African birds case adn check it out for me. What she found was that there is a Denham's Bustard in the case, and it is listed as critically endangered.

I had some trouble finding information about Denham's Bustard (formerly known as Stanley's bustard) on the internet, but I did find that 13 different stamps depicting the Denham's bustard from 5 African countries have been issued since 1951.

Angolan stamp:

Sad Tale of the Stephen's Island Wren

Probably my favorite story of the extinction of a species is the Stephens Island Wren. Stephen's Island is a tiny uninhabited island off of New Zealand until a lighthouse was built there in the 1894, and a single lighthouse keeper and his cat, Tibbles, lived there. A few months after the lighthouse opens, the lighthouse keeper, David Lyall, sound a small, flightless, bird that Tibbles had caught and killed. It was unlike any bird he had seen before, so he sent it to a scientist friend to look at. The scientist determines that it is a new species, and sends it off to London to be examined and a lithograph to be drawn. Meanwhile, Tibbles keeps on killing more of these little birds - 15 in total. A few months later, Tibbles stops bringing the birds home, and that's the end of that.



No one ever saw the bird alive in the wild. There were probably more than just the 11 that Tibbles nabbed, but Tibbles and his friends have been breeding, and by then there are lots of feral cats running around the island that probably ate up the other few wrens. Before cats came to the island, there were no predators, and the birds had evolved to loose the ability to fly, and took up more of the niche that mice or small rodents would have filled. Living without predators probably also meant they had lost their fear of potential predators. What a sad fate for a tiny creature - to die of being too trusting and having became too slow and comfortable in their prelapsairan secluded life.
When I went with Josh Stein on a trip to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology for an appointment with someone in the orinthology department for some research on dalmatian pelicans, I asked if they had a specimen of the Stephen's Island Wren. The idea of seeing something so rare that there were only ever 15 specimens ever felt exciting. After opening a few drawers of tanengers, the ornitholgist remember that the bird had recently been moved to another draw, but he couldn't remember exactly where. Not wanting to be a pest, I dropped it.
This photo is of the specimen in a New Zealand museum:

Tears in Heaven

So the short version is that i came into posession of a parakeet this weekend that died the next day.

in the living years:


RIP, Josh.

The long version is that Eric's brother, Josh, found a parakeet sitting under his parked car in Greenpoint. He called Eric, who was with me, to have me come pick the bird up, because he knew I happened to have a spare bird cage (a decorative antique one - a birthday gift from Eric). It was assumed that the parakeet escaped from the apartment building on his block, and he and his grilfriend Laura planned on putting up "found pet" signs in the builing.
I was thrilled. I took the lil fella home and fed him some of Amy's hamster's food, which he hungrily ate and some water. At night, I put a blanket over his cage to put him to sleep. In the morning, I woke him up, and he adorably had groggy sleepy eyes he kept half-closing. Even though I knew I might have to return him to his rightful owner, I named him Josh after the man who found him. I was in love.
The day was spent out at Coney Island, and when I returned in the evening, Josh was face-down in the cage, competely still.

Insert Monty Python dead parrot joke here.

DODOS

There was an exciting article on tuesday's science section about researchers finding new dodo remains, as well as more information on how the dodo might have lived before it became extict sometime in the mid 1600's. Boy, was I excited about this. I've really had dodos on the mind recently. A few weeks ago, I was riding with Amy and Micky along the bike path near the south street seaport on an ill-fated plan to visit Govenor's Island, and I was thinknig about dodos, since I had just gotten a new book about excinct birds that morning. Then, all of a sudden, I see this tiny resturant called The Dodo.
Clearly, this is going to be my favorite resturant EVER. Dodo Cafe
Anyway, in the NY Times article, it mentions how dodos are part of the pigeon family, and how their closest relative was the solitaire bird, which is also excinct and lived on a nearby island.

I had never heard about the solitaire bird before. a little internet research led me to some information about the closest living relative of the dodo and the soliatire was the Nicobar pigeon:


That bird is fantastic!!!!

Jamaican'-Me-Crazy Bay

As summer has rolled around, I'm not the only one to feel the itch to get out of the city for a day trip on the weekends. Amy, Micky, Paul, and Eric agreed to join me on a birding trip to the Jamaica Bay wildlife refuge in Queens. I think I was most thrilled about the sweet bastketball jersey that Paul was sporting with his cutoff jeans shorts. He was going on a date later that night, and I really wanted him to wear that outfit to impress the lady.
Jamacia Bay is all the way past JFK airport, in the middle of the bay between JFK and the Rockaways. It's a huge refuge and apparently one of the big spots in New York state for shore birds. Paul and Eric were very worried about the sign that advised to watch for ticks. I warned them that ticks smell fear. Also wusses.
One of the first things we saw was an osprey nest on a man-made pole specifially for osprey nests. I recognised these poles from the Felix Neck refuge in Martha's Vineyard, though I don't think I ever actually saw any ospreys at their nests there. But at this best, there were two adults flyign to and from the nest, and as we saw through our binoculars, at least two little baby ospreys. It was pretty far inthe distance, and even with the binoculars, it was hard to see, but the telltale white marks on the head were visible. Paul wasn't convinced that it was realyl an osprey, and suggested it was instead a loon after conferring the guide book.
Thankfully, just then a parks service ranger walked up to us with a giant scope and tripod, and asked, "looking at the ospreys?" He told us that the ospreys were rebounding in population from a few decades ago, and they nested here for a while on their trek up and down the Altantic coast. For some reason, I had thought ospreys were a little more rare, and felt slightly disappointed to know they weren't such a big deal to see.



We saw several sandpipers, which I was unable to idenify, as well as a seagull which gave me some confusion. It looked like a little gull or a bonaparte's gull becuase of its black beak and black feet, but mostly white body. I ended up decided that it was an immature Laughing gull, but to be honest, I'm not erally sure. I couldn't get all its features to match up to any of the images in my guide book, but since gulls look different at different times of year and at different ages, it's hard to tell. I need a better guide.

Paul on the hunt for ospreys, looking fly in his jersey:


I was pleased to see some american oystercatchers, black skimmers, a great blue heron, snowy egrets, gret egrets, and cormorants. I was especially happy to get a good look at some glossy ibises. We left tick-free and satisfied. Paul was abel to make it home in time to change for his date.

Bald Eagles in Connecticut

Driving with Eric on I-95 somewherein the middle of Connecticut, I saw a bald eagle nest in a cell phone tower on the side of the highway. Bald eagles build the biggest, messiest nests, so they're easy to identify. What was really exciting was that I could see an eagle flyign up to the nest. Bald eagles are fairly common again around here, but I haven't actually seen one in the wild since I was 13 on a family vacation to Yellowstone.

Bald eagle nest: