About the size of a pigeon, this northern alcid comes south to Maine for the winter.
I’ve seen black guillemots fishing close to rocky shores. Some are still in their black-and-white breeding plumage (above). Most have changed to mottled white for winter.
In either case they have bright red legs that match the insides of their mouths.
I can see their red legs through the water.
(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
Early this month Cornell Lab of Ornithology featured this gorgeous video in their eNewsletter.
The Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge is the breeding ground for birds from every continent on earth and the only place where four threatened/endangered species breed.
Learn about the delta and see its beautiful birds in just eight minutes.
(video by Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
Some raptors have special techniques for finding food. This one has used trains and motorcycles.
Aplomado falcons (Falco femoralis) are native to grassland and marshland from Mexico to South America where they eat birds, insects and small vertebrates. Sometimes they hunt while soaring or from a perch but when hunting birds they prefer to fly fast through thickets to flush them from cover. This technique is similar to a Coopers hawk.
Mated pairs like to hunt cooperatively. The male makes a distinctive “chip” sound to call his mate to a hunt. Sometimes the female will even come off the nest to participate. The male corners the prey by hovering above the thicket. The female flies through and flushes it.
When his mate can’t come out to hunt, what’s a guy to do? Borrow a motorcycle.
Aplomados have figured out that our large, loud vehicles scare small birds into flight. According to Birds of North America online, one researcher reported an aplomado following a motorcycle to pick off small birds flushed from the side of the road. Another reported a falcon flying with a train and switching sides to check out the ditches.
These falcons were extirpated from the U.S. in the 1950’s and only recently made a comeback in New Mexico and south Texas, partly on their own and partly thanks to reintroduction programs.
When I travel southwest to find an aplomado I wonder … will it help to watch for motorcycles?
(photo from Shutterstock.com)
Beautiful and blue, a male indigo bunting poses for a photograph.
Gorgeous!
(photo by Shawn Collins)
16 July 2013
Though the solstice was three weeks ago, the sun still hasn’t set in the Arctic. Some arctic mammals have no sleep/wake circadian rhythm because there’s no light/dark cycle. What do arctic birds do?
In 2012 the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology studied four species that nest near Barrow, Alaska. They found that some species stayed on a 24-hour clock while others had no daily pattern.
The birds’ circadian rhythms varied based on species, lifestyle, sex and breeding stage. Here are the four studied species and their lifestyles:
The simplest birds were the lapland longspurs. They never gave up their 24-hour clock. They stayed awake during the “day” and slept when it should have been night, even though it wasn’t.
Red phalaropes, pectoral sandpipers and semi-palmated sandpipers varied their rhythms depending on breeding stage. During courtship they showed no daily pattern at all but during incubation they kept to a clock. Oddly enough it had to do with ground temperature.
Arctic birds nest on the ground and that poses a challenge for keeping eggs warm when the ground is cold. In summertime the ground temperature in Barrow varies from near freezing when the sun is low in the sky (11:00pm to 7:00am) to 60 degrees F when the sun is high (noon to 6:00pm).
The incubating parents — female pectoral sandpipers and male red phalaropes — followed a daily clock so they’d be on the nest when the ground was cold. The non-incubators — male pectoral sandpipers and female red phalaropes — never stopped courting and never developed a daily rhythm.
The exception were the semi-palmated sandpipers. Because they completely share parental duties the pairs threw out the clock during incubation and synched as a couple. “Who cares what time it is? We have each other.”
In the end the study shows that arctic-nesting birds are very flexible. They can be active regardless of time of day, then alter their circadian clocks when their needs change.
Those needs will change soon. The sun will set for the first time on August 1 and the birds will prepare to leave. For some shorebirds, migration has already begun.
For more information read the study at the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
(photo of a female red phalarope in Barrow, Alaska from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the to see the original)
Browsing through photos on Wikimedia Commons, this portrait of a falcon caught my eye. He’s one of six species of falcons found in Australia, new to me because he doesn’t occur in North America. The only falcon we all have in common is the peregrine.
The brown falcon (Falco berigora) is slightly smaller than a peregrine and has a different lifestyle. Rather than capture prey in the air he uses a perch-and-pounce method to capture small mammals, lizards and snakes, small birds, and insects. This is similar to the red-tailed hawk’s hunting technique.
Brown falcons don’t need to fly fast. Their wing beats are slow and they glide in a shallow V the way northern harriers do.
Though they share characteristics with hawks, Perth Raptor Care says they have a lot of personality. Click here for a video at Arkive.org that gives you a window on the lives of brown falcons: contending with crows, sharing with a mate, feeding the “kids.”
I love their brown pantaloons.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
8 July 2013
African starlings evolve color faster than any other bird — 10 times faster than their ancestors and modern relatives according to a new study from the University of Akron.
Like other Sturnidae these birds had iridescent qualities, but after they made it to sub-Saharan Africa 17 million years ago their colors went wild. The cells that give their feathers iridescence are called melanosomes. Instead of the usual simple rod-like forms, glossy starlings (Lamprotornis) developed hollow rods, solid flattened rods, and hollow flattened rods. Though these divergent melanosomes are sometimes found in other birds, glossy starlings can have all the variations in one species. This produced an explosion of new colors.
At the University of Akron Rafael Maia studied microscopic feather structures and used spectral color analysis and evolutionary modelling to figure out how these starlings evolved four types of melanosomes and 19+ species. It happened very fast.
Their social structure helped. For glossy starlings, color confers high rank in both sexes so the most colorful birds are the most successful breeders. Intense social pressure selected for better and better colors.
The results are gorgeous. Above, a greater blue-eared starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) shows off his teal and blue back. Below, a lesser blue-eared starling (Lamprotornis chloropterus) displays five colors even though he’s molting.
Read more about the study here in Science Daily.
(photos of a greater blue-eared and lesser blue-eared starling from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)
3 April 2013
Imagine seeing this outside your window!
On June 12, 2009 the International Space Station was flying over the Kuril Island chain in the northwestern Pacific when they witnessed the eruption of Sarychev peak, an active volcano on Russia’s Matua Island.
Because the eruption had just begun, brown ash and steam was still rising in a mushroom cloud that had punched a hole in the cloud cover above it. Meanwhile, dark brown ash rolled low to the ground, probably a pyroclastic flow of hot gas and rock up to 1,850oF (1000oC) and traveling at 450 mph!
The ash had just begun to spread out in the sky (light brown at top left and right). Soon commercial air traffic was diverted to avoid engine failure from this abrasive particulate in the upper atmosphere.
The astronauts were lucky to see this eruption as it began.
Nature makes an impressive mushroom cloud.
(photo from the International Space Station, NASA)
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26 March 2013
This beautiful small goose is heading toward extinction.
The red-breasted goose (Branta ruficollis) breeds in arctic Russia and winters at only five sites along the Black Sea in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. Though protected by law it faces many challenges, from land use changes to illegal hunting.
It was already listed as threatened when suddenly, 10 years ago, half the population simply disappeared. 50,000 birds. Gone. No one knows what happened. Did they forsake the Black Sea for a new winter home? Did something go radically wrong where they breed?
Now listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, the red-breasted goose population continues to decline. Another such disappearance would mean the end so researchers from Britain’s Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds have fitted 11 red-breasted geese with tags to track their movements.
Nine geese received GPS data packs that will log their winter locations at the Black Sea. Two received satellite tags that will track their migration from Bulgaria to the breeding grounds in Siberia.
Perhaps the data will reveal the mystery.
Read more about the study here.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
13 March 2013
We’ve all heard the story that storks bring babies. It was Grandma’s easy to answer to “Where do babies come from?”
The legend began where white storks nest in northern Europe, often in close proximity to humans. Their care for their young made them symbols of parental devotion. Slavic folklore held that storks brought unborn souls from paradise to earth in the spring and summer. That’s when the storks returned to northern Europe from their long migration to Africa.
But in the past 30 years many of them have stopped migrating. Large numbers are hanging out in Spain and Portugal. In 1995 there were 1,108 winter storks in Portugal. By 2008 there were 10,000. The number keeps growing and some of them never leave. Many stay year-round to raise their families.
The obvious attraction is Portugal’s landfills. Though white storks are carnivores, they love hanging out at the dump for an easy meal. Do the landfill storks merely visit for the winter? Do they move to other places in Portugal for the breeding season? And where would that be?
Researchers from the University of East Anglia have begun a one year study of stork migration. They’ve captured and tagged 15 adult white storks with satellite monitors to transmit each stork’s location and activity five times per day. The tags are smart enough to record whether the stork’s head is down in a feeding position.
The study is coming at a good time for the birds. In the 20th century white storks declined so badly that they had to be reintroduced in some countries. Now they’ve made a comeback at the dumps but Portugal is slowly replacing its open landfills with covered facilities to process waste food. Where will the storks go?
The study is important for Grandma, too. If the storks don’t leave Portugal, they won’t be bringing babies to Northern Europe anymore. Uh oh!
Read more about the stork study in this Science Daily article.
(image of a stork carrying baby from Shutterstock. Photo of a white stork by Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.de. Click on the photo to see the original on Wikimedia Commons)