UPDATE ON 6 JULY 2017:  When I wrote this article in 2015 I thought the merger was imminent but as of 6 July 2017 the American Ornithological Union has still not accepted it.  I still need to see a hoary redpoll for my Life List.

UPDATE ON 21 JUNE 2019:  I saw hoary redpolls on the Teller Hwy near Nome, Alaska.  Life Bird!

In Cornell Lab of Ornithology‘s eNews I encountered the only case of species “lumping” I’ve ever been glad to see.

Researchers from Cornell Lab’s Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program tested the DNA of 77 hoary and common redpolls and found that hoary redpolls and common redpolls have no differences at all across much of their genomes.  Just to make sure, Nicholas Mason and Scott Taylor examined 235,000 regions of the genome, not just 11, and they tested DNA of the lesser redpoll of Eurasia.  The lesser redpoll is the same as well.

What we’ve been calling three species are merely variations in color and size.  Other species vary, too.  Humans, for instance.

Now that the weight of DNA evidence merges hoary, common and lesser redpolls into one species it’s only a matter of paperwork, review, and voting at the American Ornithologists’ Union to make this official.

I’ll be happy when its done.  I’ve seen common redpolls but not hoary ones, and now I won’t have to go out of my way to find a hoary redpoll unless I’d like to see his beautiful pale feathers.  This simplifies my winter travel plans considerably.

Read more here about the only redpoll in Cornell Lab’s All About Birds blog.

(photo of a (formerly) hoary redpoll at left and common redpoll at right by dfaulder via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

Most birds in the rail family (Rallidae) are extremely elusive.  They make noise during the breeding season but, except for coots and gallinules, they hide while they’re doing it. Two of the rails on my Life List are birds I heard but didn’t see.

So when I visited Wikipedia‘s website on April Fools Day I thought they were joking by featuring an article on the Invisible rail.  Really?  Aren’t all rails invisible?

However the invisible rail is real. Also called Wallace’s or the drummer rail (Habroptila wallacii) it cannot fly and lives in only one place on Earth — the impenetrable, thorny, sago swamps on the Indonesian island of Halmahera.  This quote from the Wikipedia article describes its habitat:

German ornithologist Gerd Heinrich, who prepared for his Halmahera trip by rolling in stinging nettles, wrote of the sago swamp habitat in the 1930s:

I am solidly confident no European has ever seen this rail alive, for that requires such a degree of toughening and such demands on oneself as I cannot so easily attribute to others. Habroptila is shielded by the awful thorns of the sago swamps… In this thorn wilderness, I walked barefoot and half-naked for weeks.

The invisible rail is so rarely seen that most of its online photos are of a single, recently dead bird.  The easiest way to get close to one is to buy its Indonesian commemorative postage stamp for 2,500 rupiah or about 19 cents.

Despite its protective habitat the rail is listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because it’s a flightless island species, its only habitat is being harvested and converted to farming, and the locals eat the rail if they can trap it.

No one’s sure how many invisible rails exist.  If they go extinct they will be truly invisible.

(image of an Indonesian postage stamp featuring Habroptila wallacii, the Invisible Rail. Click on the image to see the original)

Backyard birds need high-calorie food when the weather is harsh.  Did you know you can “cook” for the birds?

Marcy Cunkelman has a favorite No-melt Peanut Butter Suet recipe that’s a real bird-pleaser and well worth trying.

The recipe has a long and famous history in our area.  Scott Shalaway calls it The Best Suet recipe and has been telling folks about it on his radio show since 2005.  He credits Martha Sargent in Alabama for passing it along to him.  Julie Zickefoose, from southern Ohio, has a similar recipe called “Zick Dough” that omits the sugar and adds chick starter.

Marcy makes Scott’s version and loads it into holes drilled in old logs.  (The blue jays, above, are waiting for her to reload the holes.)  You can also offer it on trays or in suet cages. The secret is real lard — not substitutes.

No-melt Peanut Butter Suet Recipe (from Martha Sargent in Alabama)
Melt 1 cup of lard and 1 cup of crunchy peanut butter in microwave or over low heat in a kettle. Stir, then add:
2 cups of quick cook oats
2 cups yellow cornmeal
1 cup of flour
1/3 cup of sugar

Pour into square containers and freeze for your suet holders or load into a suet log or even spread on a tree trunk.

We’re heading into a warming trend but winter is still with us so there’s plenty of time to “get cooking.”

Note this caveat from Julie Zickefoose:  Julie used to feed her birds Zick Dough all year long but the bluebirds got gout from it!  (Yes, even birds can get gout from a rich diet.)  The bluebirds recovered when she stopped feeding them suet in the non-winter months.  Here’s her recipe and warning at Birdwatcher’s Digest.

(photos by Marcy Cunkelman)

9 January 2015

To a novice like me, this rock is interesting because of its shape and color, but I would never have found its photo if it hadn’t had pizzazz.

It’s a rare and valuable specimen of Willemite, Franklinite and Rhodonite. Mineralogists can tell you that Franklinite pinpoints its origin right down to a single county — Sussex County, New Jersey — the only place on earth where Franklinite is found. This rock came from the Sterling Mine at Ogdensburg.

But that’s not what I mean about pizzazz.

Back in October at the Wissahickon Nature Club we learned about fluorescent minerals from Harlan Clare who showed us many samples under normal and “black” light.  What really impressed me is that a boring rock can display amazing colors if the mineral is fluorescent.

Expose this rock to ultraviolet light and it bursts into glowing green and orange!

Most rocks look boring in normal light so how did people figure out that some of them glow?

At a rock mine the ore sits out in the sun for a while after it’s pulled from underground. If you take a fluorescent rock back into the dark mine, it glows because it was exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet light.  Sir George Gabriel Stokes named this fluorescence in 1852 when he described why fluorite glows.

So now when you see a basket of boring rocks for sale, think of the possibilities.  When you know what you’re looking at you can find one with a hidden punch.  Harlan Clare carries a small UV flashlight so he can preview the rocks before he buys.

Some rocks are like willets.  They are boring until they open their wings.

(Two photos of Willemite, Franklinite, Rhodonite from the Sterling Mine, Sterling Hill, Ogdensburg, New Jersey (George Elling Collection) by Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)

31 December 2014

Champagne and rain have something in common and it isn’t that they’re both wet.

While toasting the holiday with a glass of champagne I wondered, Why do champagne bubbles rise from discrete points inside the glass?

Champagne is carefully fermented under pressure so that carbon dioxide is absorbed into the liquid.  When you open a bottle of champagne the CO2 is released.   This can be beautiful or boring depending on the glass you use.

The bubbles perform badly in a plastic ‘glass’ (they won’t rise off the sides) and perform best in a tall thin champagne flute because it concentrates them into less surface area.  They will rise from a single point where there’s a dust mote in the liquid or a tiny nick inside the glass.  For this reason some glass makers purposely put tiny scratches, called artificial nucleation sites, in the bottoms of their champagne glasses to make bubble patterns.

What do champagne and rain have in common?

Champagne bubbles form around dust motes or nicks in the glass.  Raindrops form when water vapor condenses around tiny dust motes in the cloud. They both use a tiny “flaw” to get them going.

Learn more at:

• Deutsch Welle: The science of champagne and 
• American Physical Society: How Raindrops Form.

(photo in the public domain from Wikimedia Commons, enhanced to highlight the bubbles.)