Yearly Archives: 2010

Anatomy: Beaks

Bird Anatomy

The shape of a bird’s beak matches its lifestyle.

  • Raptors have sharp, hooked beaks for tearing meat.
  • Crossbill beaks have crossed tips so they can pull seeds easily out of pine cones.
  • Avocets have long, thin, upturned bills because they skim the water with their lower mandibles to capture aquatic food.
  • Conversely, flamingos have wide downturned bills because they sweep the water with their upper mandibles.  They turn their heads upside down to eat.

Why do ducks have long bills with serrated edges?  Why do woodpeckers have pointy beaks?  Why do pelicans have pouches?

The answers are easy if you know something about their lifestyles and what they eat. 

See if you can figure out the reasons for the rest of the beak shapes shown above. 

Keep in mind the illlustration is fanciful.  Our spoonbills don’t have orange-brown heads and our buntings don’t have yellow eyes and bills. 

(Frankly I couldn’t refrain from changing the title of the bunting picture.  It was originally labeled “night hawk” but the beak shape is so unlike a common nighthawk’s that I couldn’t stand it.)

(image from www.infovisual.info. The name “night hawk” was altered to “bunting.”  Click on the image to see the original.)

The Tyrant

Songbirds


The king of the Tyrant flycatchers, Tyrannus tyrannus, has earned his name for his fierce attacks on predators that are many times his size.

Otherwise called the eastern kingbird, he lives in open areas, eats flying insects and is very aggressive.  Not only does he defend his nest from other kingbirds but he relentlessly attacks blue jays, crows and hawks who wander into his territory — even to the point of riding on the back of a hawk so he can peck its head. 

Don’t believe it?  Check out this story and photo from Illinois and this photo sequence on Flickr by Arlene Koziol.

After you’ve seen the Illinois photo you might wonder why the top of the kingbird’s head looks orange-red.  Well, he’s excited.  Eastern kingbirds have a splash of orange-red feathers on the crown of their heads that’s normally hidden.  When they’re excited they raise their head feathers and we all see red.

Woe be to the red-tailed hawk who gets in the tyrant’s way!

(photo by Steve Gosser)

Yellow and White Peregrine News

Peregrines


Last Thursday I received word that the two juvenile peregrines in rehab had fully recovered and were ready for release.  Both were injured on June 24.  “Yellow,” from the University of Pittsburgh, was found trapped in a chimney and dehydrated.  “White,” born at the Gulf Tower, banged her head and was unable to fly well. 

By last Thursday both birds proved they could fly and hunt on their own — very important because their siblings have left home and their parents are no longer offering training.  The two were slated for release somewhere near Pittsburgh within sight of their home nest buildings.  If they chose to fly home they could, but chances were just as good they’d take the opportunity to leave town on their life’s adventures.

Not knowing when they’d fly free, I’ve watched and waited to see if there were any changes at Pitt.   No.  Every day Karen and I see only one peregrine and it’s normally roosting — probably Dorothy.

Meanwhile in Lancaster County, Meredith Lombard reported that both fledgling peregrines at the Route 462 bridge had an exciting and nearly fatal first flight.  Last week they fledged into the river where they paddled and flapped to keep afloat for hours.  Fortunately the Susquehanna River is shallow and slow in July and many people were checking on the birds.  Both fledglings were rescued and delivered to an island where their parents fed them immediately.  Read more about their adventures here.  And check for photo updates from Meredith Lombard here.

Peregrine activity is really winding down.  Let me know if you see any of them.

(photo of Yellow at the University of Pittsburgh, June 4, 2010, by Kimberly Thomas)

Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink

Musings & News


(Indulge me for a moment.  Any opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of WQED.)

Yesterday I wrote about orange water.  If you live in Pennsylvania you’ve seen creeks like this one.  If you haven’t, keep in mind this photo is not retouched.  The water is indeed bright orange.

Welcome to Blacklick Creek, the Stonycreek River, the upper reaches of Slippery Rock Creek and tributaries of the Conemaugh, the Casselman, the Youghiogheny and the Monongahela.

The list goes on and on.  Our water is damaged across the state.  It’s the legacy of coal.

During the coal rush Pennsylvania didn’t have strict mining laws and enforcement.  There were no rules about tailings and water and the coal companies never had to put up any money or pay a severance tax to clean up future problems.  They made a lot of money and coal was cheap because the long term cost was passed on to us.  A hundred years later we have water we can’t drink and creeks with no fish and none of the wildlife and birds that depend on them.

Pennsylvania has learned from this history, right?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Our state is now in the midst of the Marcellus Shale gas rush that’s been going on a couple of years.  Before we knew this might hurt something, and before our laws could catch up, our water told the tale.

Marcellus Shale drilling is extremely water intensive, consuming 40 to 50 million gallons of water per well pad.  (Each well pad has 8 to 10 wells.)  The water is pumped from our creeks, rivers and lakes, lowering the water levels.  For example, a million gallons a day can be pulled from Cross Creek and Cross Creek Lake.

70% of the water is lost underground during high pressure hydraulic fracturing that mixes water, sand and over 200,000 gallons of toxic chemicals per well pad.  The rest returns to the surface extremely polluted, salty and more or less radioactive.

What happens then?  For those with water wells the drilling is a roll of the dice.  Many wells are OK but some become so dangerous you can’t even bathe in the water, let alone drink it.  People don’t find out until they get sick.

The rest of us are not exempt.  Right now there are no facilities that can remove the salts and radioactivity but municipal water treatment plants are allowed to accept the flowback water up to 1% of their output.  They dilute the flowback and we drink the results.

Tomorrow night on WQED you can learn more about Marcellus drilling’s effects on water when we rebroadcast “What’s in the Water? — An OnQ Special Series: Marcellus Shale Drilling,” hosted by Chris Moore.  Tune in on Wed, August 4 at 7:30pm or watch the segment online here.

Learn even more from the movie Gasland at a screening on Thursday, August 5 at 6:00pm, at Artists Image Resource (AIR), 518 Foreland Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.   Gasland is not on DVD yet but you can see the trailer online here and watch an interview with the movie maker, Josh Fox, on PBS Now.

It breaks my heart to see bad water.  My heart breaks even more when good water turns bad.

Thanks for listening.

(photo by Caitlin Mirra via Shutterstock)

p.s. There will be another screening of Gasland, Aug 27 at Frick Park.  For information see: http://www.marcellusprotest.org/aug27gasland

Waxwings Show The Way

Songbirds


On my hike yesterday in Butler County I walked through gamelands near Slippery Rock Creek.

Years ago the area had deep coal mines, then strip mines, but the coal companies never had to clean up or pay for the mess they made.  There are tailings piles everywhere and severe acid mine drainage, a big problem that’s hard to fix.  The water seeping from underground is bright orange and sometimes has an oily sheen.

At the lake I found mud flats that could have attracted shorebirds but the water and land are bright orange.  Nonetheless two juvenile birds — a killdeer and a spotted sandpiper — were working the mudflats looking for food.

I felt bad to see them there.  Was the water going to hurt them?  And what could they possibly be eating?

A flock of cedar waxwings gave me a hint on the shorebirds’ food source.

At this time of year waxwings supplement their all-fruit diet with insects they catch on the wing.  The flock was flitting low over the orange water and hawking insects out of the air.  I couldn’t see the insects but swarms were courting above the water, unaware that it was not a suitable place to lay their eggs.  The swarms made a bonanza for the waxwings and explained what the killdeer and sandpiper may have been eating.

Thanks to the waxwings for showing the way, I didn’t feel so bad for the shorebirds.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

p.s. I love how waxwings feed berries to each other during courtship.  Steve Gosser snapped this photo at just the right moment.

Oh No!!

Insects, Schenley Park, Trees
Emerald ash borer beetle with its galleries under the bark (photo from Florida Dept of Agriculture and Consumer Services)

1 August 2010

I often walk to work through Schenley Park to get my morning dose of birds.  As always I take notes on what I see — long lists of birds with asterisks for new arrivals.

On May 6 my notebook has nine short words with a circle around them, “Found nearly dead ash tree.  Possible EAB.  Oh no!”

“EAB” is shorthand for emerald ash borer, a deadly bug that has wiped out North American ash trees since it arrived in Michigan in 2002.  Other than treating single trees with systemic pesticide there is nothing that can stop this bug.  It spells doom for parks and forests.

I learned the signs of EAB from April Claus on a January walk through Sewickley Heights Park, so I was pretty sure of my diagnosis.  But someone more skilled than me needed to investigate.

It took me a week to tell an expert because I left town on a five-day birding trip.  When I returned I kept an eye out for people working in the park.  As it turns out the first person I found was one of the two best people to tell:  Phil Gruszka, Director of Park Management and Maintenance for the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy and a certified arborist.

He teamed up with City Forester David Jahn (the other best person to tell) and they looked through the park and took bark samples from several trees.  News of their efforts appeared here under “Eagle Eyes in Schenley Park” on the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy blog.

Months passed.  I didn’t think about emerald ash borers.  Then last weekend I found another tree with even more striking symptoms and emailed Phil with the location of this new tree.  He wrote back, “We are confirming it in many locations now.  Schenley Park is hard hit, Riverview Park is not far behind.”

Oh no!  Schenley Park’s ash trees are doomed.  Oh so sad!

(photo of an Emerald Ash Borer, with size reference and trunk damage, from the Florida Dept of Agriculture and Consumer Services.  Click the photo to see its original in context.)

Summer Beauty: Dense Blazing Star

Phenology, Plants & Fungi


If you weren’t able to join the Wissahickon Nature Club on their walk at Jennings Prairie last Tuesday, here’s one flower you missed.

Dense Blazing Star (Liatris spicata) is a tall spike of fuzzy-looking purple blossoms so pretty that it’s become a popular garden flower.  Unlike most plants this one starts blooming at the top first, then works its way down, attracting butterflies as it goes.

Right now the flowers are carpeting the fields at Jennings Prairie.  It’s worth a visit if you haven’t been there yet this year.  Click here for information on how to get there.

(photo by Dianne Machesney, taken during the Wissahickon Nature Walk on July 27)

Anatomy: Auriculars

Bird Anatomy


Now that we know where the birds’ ears are positioned, today’s lesson is easy to understand.

Auriculars is another name for cheek feathers (indicated by the red arrow), so-called because they cover the bird’s ears.

According to the Sibley Guide to Birds, auriculars are a “complex set of feathers that channel sound into the ear.  Feathers at the rear border are short, sturdy, and densely colored.  Feathers over the ear opening are lacy and unpatterned.”

On owls, these feathers create a pronounced facial disk that funnels the faint sounds of their prey into their ears.

Click here to see the facial disk — including the auriculars — on a great-horned owl.

(photos by Chuck Tague)

House?

Quiz, Songbirds


I know of four birds whose name begins with “house.”  This house finch is one of them.

Common at backyard bird feeders, the house finch didn’t live east of the Rockies until the illegal pet trade tried to sell them as “Hollywood finches” in 1940 in New York.  Just as the law was about to catch up with them, the traders released the birds on Long Island.  The “evidence” was gone but not forgotten.  The house finches set up housekeeping in the east and slowly expanded north, south and west.  They’ve now met their western relatives mid-continent and are found across the U.S.

House finches prefer edges, not too open, not too forested.  In the east they live in cities and suburbs and since they’re one of the few birds who feed their young only vegetables — not even insects — bird feeders are important to them. 

House finches resemble purple finches but are easy to tell apart if you know two things.  First, house finches are far more common near houses and feeders than the purple finch and, second, house finches have brown stripes on their flanks where purple finches have rosy stripes.  See how the stripes on this bird’s flanks are brown?  That’s how you know.  (Click here for an illustration that shows both birds; it’s a big photo so you’ll have to scroll.)

When a bird has “house” in its name that usually means it nests in a hole but house finches don’t always do that.  Their main site criteria is that the nest have an overhang.  It may be they got the name “house” because the other finches won’t use holes at all.

Can you name three more birds whose names begin with “house?”  Here are some hints:

  1. Two of them are common in North America and are well known for building their nests in holes.
  2. The third is a European bird.
  3. The European bird has a cousin with the same last name and the first name “purple,”  similar to “house finch” / “purple finch.”
  4. There was a 1980’s indie pop band with the same name as the European bird.

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Downpour!

Songbirds, Weather & Sky

Rose-breasted Grosbeak in the rain (photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

July 28, 2010:

What do birds do when it rains?

If it’s storming they take shelter but during showers — even heavy ones — they’re willing to get wet.

In the National Aviary’s Wetlands Room there are sprinklers near the roof that turn on to simulate a tropical downpour.  Have you ever been there when it “rains?”  The birds react instantly.  Most of them sing or shout, some fly through the water, others bathe.  The room is filled with sound while the birds obviously enjoy themselves.

This month we’ve had some weather that’s felt mighty tropical, complete with brief downpours.  During one of them Marcy Cunkelman photographed this rose-breasted grosbeak in her yard.

He doesn’t seem to mind the rain, does he?  That’s probably because he lives in the tropics most of the year.

My goodness it was pouring!

 

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)