For those of you following the budgie saga, here’s a new development.

The blue budgie who’s been visiting my backyard feeder since last Monday has shown improvement in the past week.  She’s gotten better at flying and is well fed enough that she doesn’t spend all day with her beak in the trough. 

She’s expanding her range (I saw her foraging at the end of my street) and she feels good enough to be bossy about my feeder (it’s hers now). 

Budgie is still less attuned to danger than the wild birds and tends to hang out with their fledglings.  They ask each other if there’s any reason to be worried about danger.  None of them can think of a reason so they sit and wonder why all the other birds have left.

Under the circumstances Budgie’s life is likely to be pretty short in the wild, so many of you posted suggestions on how to capture her.  I liked the idea of hanging a bird cage in place of the feeder.  Voila!   Veronica Snyder loaned me a bird cage and offered to take Budgie if I can capture her.

When I brought the bird cage home, Budgie was perched on a branch above the feeder.  I talked to her as I brought the cage to the base of the tree and she watched with interest as I prepared to hang it.  I had to take the feeder down and it involved some banging – so she flew – but I was encouraged that she was trusting enough to stay and watch as long as she did.

Now that the cage has replaced the feeder I’ve seen several birds fly by wondering how to get to the seed inside.  I think budgie will be the first to figure it out.  Will I be there to see it?  Will she let me close the door?  Stay tuned for details.

(photo of “the Budgie trap” by Kate St. John)

21 May 2009

For the past three days – maybe longer – there’s been a blue budgie at my backyard bird feeder.  She has a small blue/gray band on her left leg and looks like the bird in this Wikimedia picture except she has pale skin above her beak.  I’ve read that males have blue ceres and females have pale ones, so I am guessing she’s a female.

Budgerigars – nicknamed budgies – are originally from Australia but have been bred in the U.S. as pets for many years.  My backyard budgie is obviously an escapee so I can’t count her on my Life List.  Alas.

Her pet-store origins show.  She is not particularly wary.  Unlike wild birds who constantly watch for predators, she feeds with her head down and barely looks up.  Fortunately she hangs out with a family of mourning doves so someone is always watching, but mourning doves fly faster and wait longer to flush than she should.  Sometimes the doves are frightened of things she doesn’t care about – like grackles – so she ignores them.  Sadly she’ll probably become hawk food unless she’s lucky.

I thought of trying to rescue her but she won’t let me come within six feet before she flies into the trees.  Her owner – if I could find him – might be able to pick her up, but not me.

How do I find out who lost her?  I am writing & calling as many places as I can think of.

In the meantime I’m keeping my feeders filled and hoping the mourning doves warn her of danger.  With a flock to keep her company she’ll enjoy her freedom for a while.

(photo of a male budgie from Wikimedia Commons)

Everything is connected to everything else. What happens when one part gets damaged?

When this spring-fed fountain was built years ago at Jennings in Butler County the water was clear and clean. Now, like many waterways in southwestern Pennsylvania, the water is orange and smells like sulfur, a victim of acid mine drainage.

Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a coal country problem that’s especially acute in southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia and southeastern Ohio. It comes from primarily two sources: abandoned coal mines and mine tailing piles. While a coal mine is active, the mine operator pumps water away from the coal but after the mine closes or the mining company goes defunct the mine fills with water and the chemical reactions begin. Nearby, coal waste piles are left exposed to rain and runoff. Soon the water supply is orange and the streams go dead.

In both cases the water is reacting with pyrite, a ferrous mineral found with our coal, that forms sulfuric acid and dissolved iron. The process is exacerbated if the pyrite was crushed, as it is during mining, and if the water contains an iron-oxidizing bacteria called thiobacillus ferrooxidans.

As the water becomes more acidic it dissolves heavy metals including lead and mercury. These precipitate out on stream bottoms when cleaner water joins the flow.

It’s a nasty brew. Aquatic insects and invertebrates die, fish disappear and the birds who depend on both abandon the waterway.

Even warblers are affected by dead water. The Louisiana waterthrush eats aquatic macroinvertebrates (clams, snails, worms and nymphs) and cannot thrive in the presence of acid mine drainage. Powdermill Nature Reserve conducted a study in the late 1990s which showed a dramatic difference in Louisiana waterthrush nesting success on two adjacent streams: Powdermill Run, a clean stream, and Laurel Run, polluted with acid mine drainage. The clean stream hosted nearly three times the number of nesting pairs.

Throughout our area many AMD sites are being cleaned up using passive treatment with constructed ponds and wetlands. Some of these sites are visitor-oriented where you can learn how it works. There is one such site at Jennings Environmental Education Center and another at the Art and AMD project in Vintondale. Unfortunately AMD treatment costs money to construct and maintain so many waterways continue to suffer.

I hope that money will become available in the future to clean up more AMD sites.  Not only will we benefit from it but the herons, kingfishers and Louisiana waterthrushes will thank us.

(photo by Kate St. John)

Today at sunset the houses on my street will signal the equinox as they do every spring and fall.  If I’m at home I will pop out the back door to have a look.  It’s quite impressive.  Our houses are like Stonehenge.

At the real Stonehenge built in approximately 2500 BC in Wiltshire, England, the monoliths are positioned so that the rays of the setting sun at the winter solstice perfectly align with the entrance alley.  Archaeo-astronomers have even found alignments there for the equinox.

At home, I am impressed by a similar effect.  The houses on my block face west and are closely spaced – about five feet apart – and they line up so that the rays of sunset at the equinox fall directly between the buildings without touching the side walls of either house.  At all other times of year sunset touches the buildings.  In winter it lights my home’s south wall. In summer it lights the north wall.  At the equinox, the perfect alignment reminds me of Stonehenge.

I’m not sure the real estate developer intended this astronomical result when he laid out my street in 1905.  It’s probably just a coincidence and there are probably many places where this sort of thing occurs, but no one notices.

Check around.  Maybe there’s a Stonehenge in your neighborhood.

(photo of Stonehenge from Wikipedia, photo is in the public domain)

On Sunday I went to Lawrence County to see the horned larks and snow buntings reported on PABIRDS.  The clue I received was to go to the Volant Strips and look for the grain silos near the intersection of US Route 19 and Black Road. 

Here they are.  Big.  Full of corn.  With lots of spilled grain on the ground around them. 

A flock of 100 snow buntings fed on the driveway at the back of the silos, house sparrows fed at the front, and horned larks walked through the parking lot. 

Between feeding sessions the snow buntings perched and preened on the horizontal bar on top of the silos.  The house sparrows perched on the building next door.

Birds attract birds.  Six male bluebirds fluttered from bush to bush in the adjacent grassland.  A sharp-shinned hawk raised the house sparrows in a dense frightened flock – but didn’t catch any of them.  A rough-legged hawk patrolled the area looking for rodents and unsuspecting birds.

Just like a giant bird feeder, all the action in the neighborhood was right here.  It was cold(!) but easy to find. 

(photo of the Deerfield grain silos by Kate St. John.    Steve Gosser took pictures here on Saturday.  Click on the grain silos and these links for his photos of snow buntings, a horned lark and a rough-legged hawk.)

When I mentioned gulls and Fritos yesterday I remembered a story that has nothing to do with birds but a lot to do with hiking.

Several years ago I attended the Keystone Trails Association spring meeting in Renovo, PA.  KTA is an association of hikers dedicated to promoting hiking and preserving trails in Pennsylvania.  If you’ve hiked in this state, chances are you’ve used a trail maintained by KTA volunteers.

KTA’s biannual meetings are held in different regions throughout the state and always include a selection of hikes in the local area so you can learn new trails and get to know other members. 

That Saturday I chose a day-long hike on the Donut Hole Trail with twenty others.  As we hiked through the beautiful forest we chatted and swapped stories.  Then we stopped for a break and someone pulled out a bag of Fritos.

“Did you know Fritos are the perfect hiking accessory?” said one of the seasoned hikers.  “Not only do they maintain their shape in your backpack and give you energy on the trail, but if you’re cold you can burn them.  They’re excellent tinder for a campfire.”

When I got home I couldn’t resist lighting one.  He was right; it burned like a candle.  The fat is the wax, the corn is the wick.  

Dinner or tinder.  Eat or heat.

(photo from Frito-Lay)