WildwingsBirds and Outdoor Issues as I see them

Last summer there seemed to be rash of drivers speeding along various beaches and killing birds. We mentioned three of them I believe in June and July. One has finally gotten his comeupance, according to AP, reported by KGW (Portland, Ore.):

SOUTH BEND, Wash. (AP) — A young man who pleaded guilty to a felony count of animal cruelty in the slaughter of nearly 50 protected seabirds at Long Beach has been sentenced to 45 days in jail.

Last June, 21-year-old Charles Belgard of Longview drove a Jeep at about 70 miles per hour on the ocean beach, plowing through several flocks of birds.

The casualties were mostly Heermann’s gulls and Caspian terns, which are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

Federal law provides for punishment as a misdemeanor. But the district attorney in Pacific County charged Belgard under Washington state law. Belgard has also been ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.

Suppose Mr. Belgard will think twice next time?

Last year a high school teacher of mine handed over a manila folder full of brochures he had collected then bragged about the spectacle to no end. He was talking about the sandhill crane migration he had witnessed along Nebraska’s Platte River. Now I see a local story (from Nebraska TV dateline Grand Island) talking about the preparations being made for the coming wave of tourists.

(photo courtesy Fermilab)

Volunteers at the Nebraska Nature & Visitor Center finished two new blinds on Tuesday. The bird watchers are already booking tours, all that’s missing are the cranes.

My teacher isn’t the only person I know who has been down there for the annual event. Others have mentioned similar stories, all are uberimpressed. And it certainly doesn’t hurt the local Nebraskans either:

A University of Nebraska study issued recently estimated the cranes have a $10 million impact, while a previous study done locally put the number closer to $20 million.

One of these springs I must make the pilgrimage and see it for myself.

Here’s a great link to Nebraska’s crane viewing sites. Check it out.

Early yesterday–midnight actually–the temperature in Fargo was +18 degrees. By 6 AM it was zero and going south, the cold air mass hustling in on a stiff north wind making it a rather ugly day despite the sunshine. There are rumors this may be the last gasp of arctic air we experience this winter. Let’s hope so.

I am consistently amazed at the resiliency of the little winter-visiting arctic birds in the face of such conditions. I’m not talking about the ones which huddle in the trees but the ones that stand up to the wind with pride–snow buntings, lapland longspurs, and to a certain extent horned larks.

With the wind gasping unabated across the fields these birds were seemingly oblivious yesterday near the airport. Here’s one snow bunting in a healthy flock of a couple hundred individuals:

You may recall these high arctic nesting birds don’t molt into their white breeding plumage, relying instead on nothing more than feather wear so that the bland edges eventually turn white.

Here’s one of a snow bunting (left) and a lapland longspur (right) from the same flock. You get a feel for the wind in this shot:

Finally, a couple of longspurs are bracing against the sandblasting snow:

I only spent about two hours, all told, strapped into the trusty showshoes. The location I choose to traverse is very near a trailhead of the North Country Scenic Trail which cuts a meandering swath through the Sheyenne National Grasslands in this section.

This part of the grasslands is anything but grassy. It’s river bottom with a mix of eastern hardwood trees in the low areas with oak/aspen savanna occupying the upper portions so it’s not as if a person is crossing an ocean of grass. To the contrary, this is a zone which is quite scenic and satifying, shattering as it does, the mind-numbing sameness of snow-covere prairie.

Additionally–and this is a major league draw for me–there is silence. I don’t mean the quiet which normally accompanies an early Sunday morning in town. No, I’m talking about an utterly complete lack of any sound whatsoever. A person’s own heartbeat, blood rushing through ears, and breathing are the only sounds. It’s the sort of tranquility unnerving to some. Not me.

Birds were scant as expected but I was treated to a couple nice sightings: an adult red-tailed hawk and an immature bald eagle in the same tree. Then in the middle of the woods I happened upon the largest single flock of purple finches I’ve ever encountered in North Dakota, maybe anywhere. They were quietly working the upper reaches of a mature green ash tree scattering seeds to the deep snow below. Every so often one would call. In all I counted 27 individuals.

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers are gone this time of year. But their handiwork remains. These woodpeckers drill a series of holes in bark in order to feed on the nutrient-rich sap flowing down the bark from the leaves. I assume the bugs attracted to the sapwells are also a target.

In this case the target is an American linden, basswood to the lumber folks.

Sunday afternoon I went down to a certain area of the Sheyenne National Grasslands to do a little snowshoeing and see if there were any birds around. During the drive I happened to notice something I rarely, if ever, see. It was a person walking. But not just walking in town or down the street or even down the road. No, this guy was walking across a rural field. No skis, no shoeshoes, just plodding along on foot.

Normally this would be cause for concern and prompt a call to authorities. This behavior, after all, risks death from exposure or hypothermia and is usually associated with a hefty intake of alcohol. But the temps were in the 20s, the sun was shining, and he was making to the southeast with a purpose not apparent in persons of need. No, this guy was enjoying himself.

I don’t mind a workout nor walking in the snow. But without snowshoes or skis in this deep snow, this is utter drudgery. I applaud his drive whoever he is.

I’m not privy to what motivated this guy–Freddy P. Jordan–to carry out his underhanded deeds, but whatever it was, it was dead wrong. It comes to us from the Lexington (Kent.) Herald-Leader:

A Logan County man was fined $5,000 this week after he pleaded guilty to poisoning migratory birds, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service news release.

Officials said Freddy P. Jordon of Auburn admitted to placing Furadan, what they called a widely misused legal pesticide, on bait and distributing it on his property to kill predators. In doing so, Jordon inadvertently killed three red-tailed hawks and three vultures.

An investigation of Jordon’s property began in January 2009 after hunters noticed several dead animals on his property. Officials recovered 22 animal carcasses that ranged from the six migratory birds to several coyotes and foxes, U.S. Fish and Wildlife said.

Well, that was just the recovered animals. You can bet there were significantly more not found or carried away by predators; which subsequently died I’m sure.

According to the release, Jordon admitted to not following the directions on the pesticide’s label and laced it with turkey carcasses to poison coyotes.

"Not following the directions?" No kidding.

I’m not naive enough to think this doesn’t happen. And not just in Kentucky. But wow, poison? Such indiscriminate measures really have no redeeming justification whatsoever. It’s a scorched earth method without a doubt. I’ve got no sympathy for this guy or others who choose the same course.

I’m not sure if we are looking at a scientifically insignificant nugget or the tip of a potentially large iceberg of further discovery. But a recent study by a team at Duke U., suggests an intriguing dynamic occurring in the very young brains of little finches. (It’s reported here by the Sydney Morning Herald with a Paris dateline. Figure that one out). 

The experiment has been praised for unlocking insights into the learning process and proving that a single experience can rapidly shape a juvenile brain and alter the way it functions.

Professor Mooney and other researchers used a laser-powered microscope to peer directly into the brain of an anaesthetised immature bird.

As it heard the song of a mature male from the same species, they witnessed a dramatic transformation in connective tissue, called dendritic spines, that link nerve cells in the brain.

How cool is that? One exposure and the brain responds "dramatically." Is this telling us anything about our own child-rearing?

‘Many skills, including communication skills, require great precision if you want to stay in the gene pool,’ Richard Mooney, a professor at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, said.

‘A male songbird has to learn to sing precisely or he won’t attract a mate.’

The findings also suggest that the window of opportunity for picking up the all-important mating song slammed shut after a certain age.

‘Juveniles in which spines were already highly stable weren’t able to learn from their tutors,’ said the lead author, Todd Roberts, a neurobiologist at Duke.

The work could help efforts to restore plasticity to synapses after a stroke or other brain damage, he said.

This line of study might be instructive to look back on one day.

It’s become the de rigueur phrase mentioned alongside things like, ‘how are you?’, and ‘howzit goin?’, especially after the last couple of winters. You know what I’m talking about: 

Why in the world do we live here?

Yesterday afternoon I was able to provide one solid reason for being here. With a spectacularly brilliant sun overhead, my wife and I snuck away for an hour to what is likely Fargo’s best place to cross-country ski, Edgewood Golf Course. The best thing about it is it’s free. Not the ski rental, mind you, but the use of the trail. Courtesy Fargo Park District.

As luck would have it the groomer must have just gone over the trail making the snow crisp, the grooves firm and the skiing great. And with the temperature hovering right around 20 degrees, the conditions could not have been more perfect. Take a look:

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

In a previous iteration of my life I was a hard-core fly fisherman. I have made several rods by hand, I have tied a few thousand flies and I have fished some of the best rivers in the American west: the Madison, Deschutes, Snake, Gallatin, Arkansas, South Platte, Frying Pan, Dolores, etc. One of the magazine I read cover to cover was Fly Rod & Reel.

Yesterday on Ted Williams’ blog (their conservation writer) he wrote a teasing answer to the question, Which is the hardest bird to see? From the answer it is readily apparent the question is addressing the entire globe. Here’s his take:

This is a judgment call, but among the hardest are:

· The Junin Rail, a tiny, primarily nocturnal marshbird that only lives in the dense reeds of one high-altitude Peruvian lake.

· The Long-whiskered Owlet, only seen in the wild by very few people in history, despite many more having heard it at the one area it can be found in a dense Andean cloud forest.

· The Inaccessible Island Rail, another skulking bird of the dense grass found only on Inaccessible Island, one of Earth’s most remote spots.

Which makes me wonder which regularly occuring bird is the hardest to see in America? North Dakota? I would have to say either black rail or Swainson’s warbler for our country. Black rail because it is so limited in habitat and another skulker, and Swainson’s warbler because of its limited habitat in the Southeast.

For North Dakota probably yellow rail, again a skulker and a lover of night.

UPI had a story (which is probably a regurgitation of a press release) yesterday which described a new initiative spearheaded by the American Bird Conservancy along with a few South American partners "designed to help finance bird reserves across the Americas by developing them as birding tourism destinations with lodges, trails and other facilities for visitors, the conservancy said." They’re calling it Conservation Birding. This, by the way, is "aimed at saving endangered bird species." Really?

(screen capture from Conservation Birding)

When all is said and done I see nothing more here than a glorified travel agency. Seriously. The partnership will do nothing in the way of purchasing critical habitat or lobbying governmental bodies to set aside habitats or working to eliminate unethical environmental practices or financing research. All it really does is pad the pockets of the owners/operators of the lodges. At least that’s what it looks like to me. Anyone else see anything else here? What am I missing?

Here’s a quote from the Conservation Birding website:

When you visit, you know that the fees you pay contribute directly to the management of vital bird habitat. So please browse the reserves and routes featured on the top left menu, go birding, and save species!

I would actually love to visit some of these lodges if I had the resources to do so. They are in very cool locations and a person has a chance at seeing some very cool birds. But if I did I wouldn’t deceive myself with the notion I was financing some great conservation movement.