Category Archives: Beyond Bounds

Extreme Builder

Beyond Bounds, Nesting & Courtship
Hamerkops (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Most birds build nests but this one takes construction to an extreme.

The hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) is a heron-like bird native to Africa that builds a domed nest so large a man can stand on it.

When they begin a new nest, the hamerkops find a suitable tree and spend six to eight weeks collecting 10,000 sticks and cementing them with mud to create a dome with a hidden entrance.  They finish it off with thatch and decorations… er, rather, their idea of decorations which are sometimes colorful bits of trash.

A new nest is approximately three by five feet, perhaps not sturdy enough to support a man.  But don’t worry, the hamerkops aren’t going anywhere (they’re non-migratory) and they’re not going to abandon their investment.  Year after year they add more sticks and mud and the nest grows, sometimes to 6.5 feet in diameter.  Now you can stand on it.

Hamerkop nest (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Click here to see another example.

What a big pile of sticks! And a remarkable feat for a dull brown bird just slightly larger than a green heron.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons)

p.s. If you want to see a hamerkop in Pittsburgh there’s one in the Wetlands Room at the National Aviary.  Until I learned about his nest, I never noticed him there because he’s dull brown and stays in the background.

Cool Facts About Black Kites

Beyond Bounds, Birds of Prey
Black kite (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

22 May 2012

Did you know these facts about black kites (Milvus migrans)?

  • They live on four continents — Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia — but not in North or South America.
  • Black kites are probably the most numerous raptor in the world.  Wikipedia says there are 6.7 million of them!
  • They eat almost anything: lizards, birds, small mammals and insects.  They even scavenge at garbage dumps.
  • Unlike most raptors black kites form huge flocks, especially in winter.
  • In Australia black kites flock to eat grasshoppers when there’s a grasshopper plague.  Gulls did this in Utah.
  • Black kites are also attracted to smoke and fires because they catch prey escaping the fire.

If you want to see black kites in Pittsburgh, your opportunity is coming soon. The National Aviary’s Sky Deck show features trained black kites who swoop and wheel to catch food in the air.

Sky Deck opens Memorial Day weekend and runs through Labor Day, weather permitting.

(photo of a black kite from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original)

Eye Ring

Beyond Bounds
Silvereye in Tasmania (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s a very small bird with a very large eye ring.

Native to Australia and New Zealand, he’s a migratory bird called a silvereye (Zosterops lateralis).   He’s only the size of a kinglet.

This month in the southern hemisphere silvereyes are gathering in flocks because winter is coming.  They’ll fly north to warmer climates eating fruit along the way.

Here’s a video of them preening after a bath.

The eye ring is amazing…

(This photo by JJ Harrison was Picture of the Day on Wikimedia Commons 23 March 2009)

March Madness

Beyond Bounds, Mammals

I thought March Madness was all about basketball until I stumbled on a recent RSPB headline, The Gloves Are Off at RSPB Reserves:

“With spring approaching, the brown hares of the UK are starting to ‘box’, and we’re encouraging people to head to our nature reserves to see the opening bouts of these amazing seasonal matches.

Unlike the male parties of the well-publicised recent heavyweight fracas, the dramatic sight of hares ‘boxing’ is actually the females fighting off the unwanted attention of overly amorous males.

The males gather together vying for the female’s attention and if not impressed, she uses fisticuffs to fend them off.”

The article was accompanied by a photograph but that was tame compared to this video from Scotland.

He chases, she boxes, they tumble, the fur flies.  She’s really letting him have it!

Clearly he doesn’t get it that when she says no she means no!

Mad as a March hare, no doubt.

(video by LuckyGavia from YouTube)

 

Walking on Air

Beyond Bounds, Bird Behavior

This is what love does for a great egret.

In February the great egrets come back to the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine, Florida and begin a frenzy of spring cleaning.

Like all the males, this bird chose a nest platform and collected some sticks.  Then for a couple of days he stood on the platform and bowed and croaked and displayed his beautiful feathers to attract an unattached female.

Finally she landed but it took another couple of days for them to confirm, “You’re the one!  Let’s finish the nest.”

Now he collects sticks and brings them back with a flourish, “For you, my dear.”

He’s found his mate and he’s walking on air.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Unusual Time And Place

Beyond Bounds, Water and Shore

Here’s a bird that surprised everyone.

White ibises usually live along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts from North Carolina through Florida, south to Central and South America.  They also breed in Louisiana and southern Arkansas but in winter they move further south.

Not all of them do.  This immature white ibis showed up at Kaercher Lake in Hamburg, Pennsylvania on November 11 and has spent the early winter there.

Though surprising, this out of range behavior is not unheard of.  Cornell’s Birds of North American Online says that white ibises are highly nomadic.  Their “postbreeding dispersals often take individuals outside normal nonbreeding range” as far north as New York, Vermont and Quebec, as far west as Wyoming, Colorado and North Dakota.

Young birds are more likely to go north and inland.  Banded individuals have been found as much as 1,540 miles from home.  That’s the distance from Altoona, PA to Denver, CO.  These birds really travel!

Interestingly, white ibises don’t nest until they’re three years old so immature birds have a couple of years in which to wander.

Who knows where this ibis came from or where he’ll end up?  For now he’s unusual.  As of Tuesday (Dec 27) he’s still at Kaercher Creek Park.

(photo by Charlie Hickey)