He’s related to our wood ducks. Can you see the resemblance?
Mandarins are originally from Asia but so beautiful that they’re often raised in captivity. Escapees sometimes form a wild population, as they have in Britain, Ireland and a few places in the U.S.
This one is swimming through the reflection of the Jungle Place at the Hanover Zoo, Hanover, Germany.
(photo by Michael Gäbler on Wikimedia Commons, selected as picture of the day for 3 September 2010. Click on the image to see the original.)
Its leaves are arrow-shaped, dark green, and very shiny with prominent pale green veins. The leaf edges are so amazingly wavy that in English it’s called the kris plant, named for the kalis (or kris) daggers of its homeland.
Here’s what the whole leaf looks like:
Alocasia sanderiana is native to the Philippines but is critically endangered in the wild. It grows in only two locations, both legally protected, but the protection is not enforced. Its existence is threatened by logging and by being collected as a house plant.
Ironically, if the kris plant disappears from the wild, its beauty will save it from extinction because it’s been propagated “in captivity” for many, many years.
(close-up of an Alocasia leaf by Joan Guerin; whole-leaf photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Coming next Wednesday on PBS Nature is a raptor story nest-watchers can relate to.
Jungle Eagle follows filmmaker Fergus Beeley as he monitors a harpy eagle nest in Venezuela’s Orinoco River valley. Over a period of nine months he shows us the life of an eaglet and his family, from newly hatched chick to young adulthood. The story is dramatic. The lifestyle of these eagles makes it dangerous.
Harpy eagles live in the South American rainforest and are the largest eagle in the western hemisphere. They dwell at the top of the canopy and eat monkeys and sloths from the trees. They kill by surprise.
The adults are top predators but the young are vulnerable. When the chick is small his mother must guard him. Even the monkeys that become his food could eat him.
Fergus Beeley shows this by filming from a tree stand and using a nestcam. Peregrine nest watchers will see parallels between the harpy eagles and our favorite raptor:
The mother bird guards the chick and won’t leave him while he’s small.
She calls her mate to bring food. “Come NOW!”
When he delivers a meal, she snatches it and barely says thank you.
Though a powerful raptor, she is very tender with her chick.
The baby grows into a fully feathered teenager who begs from his parents.
Inevitably there are nestcam problems, but they’re more dangerous to fix than anything we ever encounter. Peregrines fiercely defend their nests and harpy eagles do, too. But harpy eagles are huge and they’re skilled at killing primates. And what are humans? Large primates!
In the end the eaglet reaches adulthood and starts to hunt on his own. As adults, harpy eagles are powerful, self sufficient birds. The real danger they face is extinction because people cut down the rainforest these birds require for life.
Watch Jungle Eagle on PBS Nature on Wednesday, November 9 to see beautiful footage of our hemisphere’s most powerful bird. On WQED the show is at 8:00pm EST.
After Scott Kinsey reported an American white pelican at Pymatuning last Monday, curious birders have made the trip to see it.
If you who live in Florida or west of the Mississippi this may seem strange. What’s the big deal about a pelican? To Pittsburghers, pelicans are rare.
American white pelicans are inland birds who breed at brackish or freshwater lakes in western North America and winter on the Gulf and Pacific coasts. Even in winter they avoid the open ocean. Their migration route takes them through the Great Plains and intermountain West but their range map indicates no overland path to Florida.
How do they get there?
On very rare occasions they fly over southwestern Pennsylvania.
My only sighting in Pittsburgh occurred in June 2003. While looking for the Pitt peregrines I saw a dot in the sky heading south. It was a very large white bird with black primaries and a pale point where its head should be. PABIRDS helped me with the identification: American white pelican.
What was that pale point where its head should have been? Pelicans fly with their heads tucked in (shown above). All I could see from the ground was its beak!
Ten of the most endangered birds in North America are making their first migration now.
Whooping cranes are so rare that there are less than 600 of them on earth: 162 are in captivity, 44 are non-migratory and approximately 278 nest in Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada and migrate to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Texas. The rest spend the summer in Wisconsin and migrate to Florida on a route they learned from ultralite aircraft.
Back in 1941 whooping cranes nearly went extinct. In the wild their population had dwindled to only 15 migratory birds (21 total) so scientists and crane lovers began a captive breeding program to bring them back. The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP) works to reintroduce them to their eastern range.
Like many animals, whooping cranes imprint on the creature that raises them from babyhood. In the wild that would be their parents, but in a captive breeding program where adult birds are unavailable humans must dress in crane costumes and use mute gestures so the young birds learn to be cranes.
Thankfully the program increased the eastern whooping crane population but the new birds were non-migratory. Since cranes learn to migrate from their parents who would teach them? Enter the ultralite.
Ultralite aircraft are like kites with motors, just a little larger than the humans who fly them. The first ever whooper-ultralite migration occurred in Idaho in 1997. Before leading endangered eastern whoopers, pilots Bill Lishman and Joe Duff practiced by leading young Canada geese and sandhill cranes. In 2001 Operation Migration they led the first group of young whoopers from Necedah NWR, Wisconsin to Chassahowitza NWR, Florida.
The young cranes memorize the route on their way south and fly back to Wisconsin on their own in the spring. By now there are adult cranes who know the route so WCEP has a Direct Autumn Release project which releases some of each year’s young with the Wisconsin adults so they learn to migrate by following them.
The video above from the mid-2000’s tells the whoopers’ migration story. Shortly after this video was made, 17 of the 18 whoopers from the 2006 fall migration were killed by violent storms that hit the wildlife refuge one night in February 2007. The 18th died three months later. Fortunately this was the only tragedy of its kind but it underscores how vulnerable small populations can be.
This year’s cohort of 10 young cranes began their journey on October 9 at White River Marsh Wildlife Area, Wisconsin and are headed for St. Marks National Wildlife Reserve, Florida. So far they’ve made little progress because strong gusty winds have kept them grounded for days. This week they were still at stopover #1!
Today we travel with the BBC to Indonesia where we find a drab bird with an unusual skill: interior decoration.
Male Volgelkop bowerbirds don’t have beautiful plumes to attract the ladies so they compensate by building and maintaining beautifully decorated bowers where they ultimately mate with the females.
The bower is no nest. It’s a work of art which requires constant maintenance over a period of years. Each feature must be placed to its best advantage, then replaced when it fades or goes out of fashion.
To make his bower easy to find, the male announces it using his amazing voice which can mimic almost any sound. The birds in this video seem to prefer Star Wars’ sounds.
If everything works as planned the male attracts a mate.
Watch the video to see how it’s done and learn a valuable lesson: It pays to decorate with flowers.
Though this looks like artistic velvet flocking, it’s actually a closeup of a flower.
Persian carpet flower (Edithcolea grandis) is a desert plant from East Africa named for Miss Edith Cole (1859-1940) who found it in British Somaliland during a plant collecting expedition in 1895. It’s the only plant in its genus.
When you step back from the flocking, it looks like this:
Very beautiful. No wonder people plant it in desert gardens.
(both photos by Frank Vincenz from Wikimedia Commons. Click on each photo to see its original.)
Our robin was named by British immigrants for this bird they remembered from home. Though our American robin has a gray-brown back and rusty breast the resemblance is only superficial. Our robin is a thrush twice his size.
The European robin (Erithacus rubecula) is a perky little bird whose behavior is more like a wren than a thrush. Centuries ago he was considered a thrush but has long since been reclassed as an Old World flycatcher.
This robin is especially loved in Britain where he’s relatively unafraid of people. He’s known to frequent gardens and hop down next to the gardeners when they dig the soil so he can look for newly exposed insects. Some robins will even feed from a person’s hand like our black-capped chickadees.
I’ve noticed American robins take an interest in overturned soil but they won’t come close to us. I wonder if their wary attitude was a disappointment to those who knew the original “robin redbreast.”
(This is a featured photo on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
Peregrine fans know the excitement of waiting and watching for a nestling to make its first flight. In Helsinki, Finland last April fans of the Eurasian eagle owl experienced the same excitement and a successful rescue.
The Eurasian eagle owl (Bubo bubo or Huuhkaja in Finnish), ranges from Norway to China and is similar to our great horned owl though much larger. The eagle owl’s wingspan is 4.5 to 6.5 feet and it weighs 3.3 to 10 pounds (females are largest) compared to a 5 ft wingspan and average 3.1-pound weight for our great horned owl. These birds are huge!
Until recently eagle owls lived only in the countryside in Finland but in 2005 the burgeoning rabbit population attracted them to Helsinki. Slowly their numbers increased but there was no nest in the city until a pair chose the roof of the Forum Shopping center this spring, a site easily monitored from the building across the street. Everyone was excited to see the Helsinki city nest because the eagle owl is a national sports symbol in Finland(*).
By the 20th of April the nestlings were roaming the roof and ready to fledge. One of them attempted a short airborne hop but he miscalculated and it became his first city tour, complete with a rescue by the fire department from the top of the “Southern Fried Chicken” sign where you see him perched above.
The video is a compilation of his adventure from the roof to the rescue net. I love how the fireman waves at him and points to the sky as if to say, “Look up there. Don’t look at my net.”
The owlet was returned to his nest and later fledged successfully.
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(*) National sports symbol: Finland’s soccer team has been nicknamed the “Eurasian Eagle Owls” ever since 6 June 2007 when an eagle owl landed on the field during a Euro 2008 Finland-vs-Belgium qualifying match at Helsinki Olympic Stadium. The game was suspended during the eagle owl’s visit and the crowd cheered “Huuhkaja!” Finland won the game 2-0. The owl was nicknamed Bubi and “Helsinki Citizen of the Year.” See a video of his game-time visit here. (Bubi is not one of the parents of this owlet; Bubi’s territory is at the stadium.)
(video of Eurasian eagle-owl fledging from YouTube)
_facing_left,_front_view.jpg "Forest Canary, South Africa (photo by Alan Manson from Wikimedia Commons)")
