Category Archives: Beyond Bounds

Hard And Easy

Beyond Bounds, Water and Shore
Surfbird and black turnstone (photo by Dick Daniels via Wikimedia Commons)

6 March 2013

Here are two Life Birds that were hardest and easiest to see when I was in San Diego.

The surfbird, on the left, was hard!  He walks on seaside rocks and lets the surf break over him.  The best place to find him is on the breakwater at Mission Bay’s entrance but the day we were there the bird was way down the jetty out of sight.

A few intrepid birders walked the jetty and pointed to the bird.  For this particular Life Bird I was willing to walk the jetty but I didn’t count on how hard it would be.  Without my walking stick I literally crawled over the uneven rocks.   Not fun!  I turned back without seeing the bird and waited onshore for him to pop into someone’s scope.  Fortunately he appeared at a distance.  Even through the scope I felt like I earned him.

The black turnstone was easy.  He also lives on rocky shores but there were many more black turnstones and they were easy to see at La Jolla while walking the beautiful seaside path.

For some reason the surfbird feels more valuable.  😉

(photo by Dick Daniels on Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the caption to see the original.)

Target Bird

Beyond Bounds, Birds of Prey

White-tailed Kite (photo by William Parker)

When I registered at the San Diego Bird Festival I asked to exchange one of my pre-scheduled bird tours because I was desperate to see this Life Bird, the white-tailed kite.

The trip I wanted was full but David Kimball introduced me to local bird leader Susan Breisch who knows the county well.

Susan was so helpful!   She asked to see both my target bird list and my tour schedule, told me the likelihood of seeing my target birds, and suggested places to find them during my unscheduled time.

As usual some species are a challenge, others are surprisingly easy.  For instance…

I would love to see a mountain bluebird but they travel in flocks that move around a lot.  Their reported location one day may be different the next.  This behavior reminds me of the white-winged crossbills visiting Pittsburgh this winter whom I’ve been unable to find.  Hmmmm!

The ferruginous hawk is on my wish list, too, but it only visits the grasslands in winter and even then it’s not plentiful.  Again, you have to be at the right place at the right time and you have to get lucky.

However, white-tailed kites are easy!   They hang out in river valleys and can be found year-round in Rose Canyon where they nest.  In fact, I might even see one on a walk from my hotel.

Oh boy!

 

p.s.  The San Diego Bird Festival is great!  Excellent tours, helpful friendly people, unbeatable weather.  I highly recommend it!

 

(photo by William Parker)

The Size Of An Owl

Beyond Bounds, Birds of Prey

Speaking of owls, as I did on Thursday, here’s a portrait of one of the world’s largest owls, the Eurasian eagle-owl.

Bigger than a snowy owl he is slightly outweighed by the endangered Blakiston’s fish-owl of Asia and has a slightly shorter wing span than the great gray owl.

Despite these technicalities he is virtually the world’s largest owl.  With females weighing up to 9.3 pounds they are bigger than our great horned owl (up to 5.7 pounds), the eastern screech-owl (weighing up to 1/2 pound), and the northern saw-whet owl (weighing only as much as 1/3 pound).  The two smaller owls are dinner for the great horned owl.  Imagine what a Eurasian eagle-owl eats!

To get an idea of owl sizes, visit the National Aviary to see the eagle-owl and others up close.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the image to see the original)

The Undertaker

Beyond Bounds
Maribou stork (photo by Muhammad Mahdi Karim via Wikimedia Commons)

Except for the beak this bird looks like a scruffy character from a Dickens novel.

The Marabou stork is not improved by close approach.  I’ve seen one at a zoo:  five feet tall and surprisingly ugly with rusty feathers, skinny legs, fuzzy bare head, and a dirty-looking bill.

His bill doesn’t just look dirty.  It is dirty because he eats carrion and garbage.

And though he’s gregarious and nests in colonies, he’s known to be “quite ill-tempered” in the breeding season.

In Africa this stork follows vultures to dead animals and stands hunched waiting for the vultures to rip open the carcass and make an opening so the stork can dine.

He’s aptly named the Undertaker Bird.

(photo by Muhammad Mahdi Karim via Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)

Rare Pattern

Beyond Bounds, Water and Shore

Black-legged Kittiwake at Tampa Bay (photo by Dan Irizarry)

Something strange happened in the North Atlantic this fall that prompted thousands of seabirds to migrate much further south than normal.

This juvenile black-legged kittiwake is one of them, photographed by Dan Irizarry on February 6 in Manatee County, Florida.

Hatched somewhere in Canada or Greenland, this bird normally would have spent the winter offshore between Newfoundland and North Carolina.  Instead he’s foraging at Tampa Bay.

His bold black M pattern shouts out that he’s a kittiwake.

Not only is he rare, but he really stands out.

(photo by Dan Irizarry)

Extinction By Rabbit

Beyond Bounds, Tenth Page

Laysan Rail (drawing by Walter Rothschild from Wikimedia Commons)

On Monday I wrote about cats and windmills as threats to bird life but neither of them are the leading reason why birds die.  The number one cause of bird death worldwide is habitat loss.

The Laysan rail (Porzana palmeri), pictured above, went extinct in the 20th century because of habitat loss with a bizarre twist.

Laysan is a small, isolated island in the middle of the Northwestern Hawaiian Island chain.  Only 1 by 1.5 miles across its land area is 1,016 acres, about twice the size of Schenley Park.

Laysan is famous for its bird life, a nesting island for many Pacific seabirds and home of the rare Laysan albatross and even rarer Laysan duck.  It was also the home of the Laysan rail, a fearless, flightless bird less than 6 inches long.

Unfortunately, in 1903 Max Schlemmer released rabbits on the island as a money-making venture.  Instead of making money it was the beginning of the end.  The rabbits on Laysan had no predators and in short order they overran the island.  (Keep in mind that a rabbit can bear 35 young per year.)  The rabbits ate everything.  Everything.

By 1918 Laysan was a barren dustbowl on which only 100 rabbits survived.  With little to eat and no cover the Laysan rail population was hanging on by a thread.  Meanwhile a few rails had been introduced to other islands in the northwestern Hawaiian chain in hopes they could survive elsewhere.

In 1923 the Tanager Expedition eradicated Laysan’s rabbits but it was too late for the rail.  The last two on the island died that year.  A few hung on at other islands in the chain but the final blow fell in 1944 when a World War II ship drifted to shore on Eastern Island, Midway and the ship’s rats swam ashore.  The rats ate the last Laysan rails on earth. That was that.  Extinction.

In the broadest sense, loss of habitat killed the Laysan rail.  In a narrow sense it was a case of extinction by rabbit.

(drawing by Walter Rothschild from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original.  Today’s Tenth Page is inspired by page 640 of Ornithology by Frank B. Gill.)

Heart Of Ice

Beyond Bounds, Water and Shore

An iceberg's heart, black ice growler, Greenland (photo by Kim Hansen on Wikimedia Commons)

Ice is on my mind this morning because of the freezing rain that began last night, so I couldn’t resist writing about this iceberg series by Kim Hansen on Wikimedia Commons.

The photo above shows a black ice growler (tiny iceberg) found at Upernavik, Greenland on Baffin Bay.  It’s one of the last intact pieces of a larger iceberg that broke apart while melting.

Black ice forms in a glacier when melt water refreezes in a crevasse without incorporating any air bubbles.  This ice is so clear that it takes on the color of its background.  Here it’s dark because of the sea.

Hansen and her friends retrieved the growler from the water.  Its surface was quite beautiful.
Surface of black ice growler (photo by Kim Hansen on Wikimedia Commons)

 

At first it was completely transparent but as it sat on the ground, exposed to sun and heat, it developed hairline cracks and began to turn white.  Click here and scroll down to see the experiment they tried on it.

This solid transparent ball, only two feet across, was hidden inside the iceberg until its last days on earth. It could have been the iceberg’s heart.

(photos by Kim Hansen on Wikimedia Commons)

Family Resemblance

Beyond Bounds

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Doesn’t this bird look a lot like a red-bellied woodpecker?

This is a red-crowned woodpecker (Melanerpes rubricapillus), photographed by Charlie Hickey in Costa Rica.

There are nine Melanerpes woodpeckers that look very similar.  Most of them live in the tropics; some are island species.  I’ve noted below where you can see three species in the U.S.

Biologically speaking, this is more than a “family” resemblance  It’s at the genus level.

(photo by Charlie Hickey)

The Peacock’s Whoop

Beyond Bounds, Bird Behavior

Peacocks are very noisy during the breeding season, especially when they call with repeated penetrating screams.

Not only do they scream but the male makes a unique call just before he mates with a female.  As he dashes toward her he lets out a bell-like whoop.

This call intrigued Duke University biologist Jessica Yorzinski.  Why do male peacocks do this?  The sound gives away their location and could tell predators, “Hey! There are two very distracted peacocks over here.”

She studied the whoop by playing back recorded bird sounds, including crow caws and the whoop, to wild peacocks in India.  The peahens ignored the other sounds but when they heard the whoop they actually walked toward the audio speakers.  Yorzinski also tried the playback with captive peafowl at Duke.  The result was the same.  The ladies approached the sound as if they were thinking, “There’s a really hot guy over there.  I think I’ll go see.”

In the video above a lone male makes two kinds of calls.  He repeats the scream interspersed with a sound like the “whoop”  at time codes 0:22, 0:39, 0:56, 1:08, and 1:44.   Yes, I think he’s faking it.  He seems to be pretending he’s mating with a peahen and hoping the other peahens come to see.

When he mates with a female in this video he makes a softer whoop, the real one.

Click here for more information on this study in Science Daily.

(video from peacocklover27 on You Tube)