Category Archives: birds

3rd Draft for Prairie Chickens

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SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERAFive states submitted a plan for conserving lesser prairie chickens to the US Fish and Wildlife Service last week. It is the third draft for the plan, Lone Star Outdoor News reports. The five states are Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. The multi-state conservation plan is a bid to keep the bird of the federal endangered species list.

The planning process began a year ago, in April 2012. The USFWS will make its final ruling on September 30, 2013.

Read the press release from the Kansas Department of Parks, Tourism and Wildlife here.
Read the same press release from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department here.
Lone Star Outdoor News adds a headline that mentions the third draft, here.

Photo: © Gerard Bertrand, courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

Sage Grouse Under Fire

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Sage Grouse vs transmission linesA US Fish and Wildlife Service report says that sage grouse are threatened by the loss and fragmentation of their sagebrush habitat. The habitat is being lost most commonly to wildfires which burn hotter because of invasive species. Ironically, another cause of habitat loss in the invasion of conifers into the sagebrush ecosystem, which is caused when fires don’t occur frequently enough.

A Wyoming Public Media report says that the USFWS report doesn’t tell people what to do, it just explains the threats.

A press release from the American Bird Conservancy says that the Bureau of Land Management should pay attention to the report.

You can find the 115-page report here.

In related news, the Idaho Statesman reports on an effort by a Nevada county on a local ranch to kill ravens with poison eggs and to reduce wildfires by increasing livestock grazing. The goal is to increase the number of sage grouse and stave off an endangered species listing.

The county does not expect support from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the article reports, and has already drawn the ire of a regional environmental group. The article says:

“Their fixation on killing and poisoning native wildlife and turning lands back into a dustbowl is really twisted,” said Katie Fite, the biodiversity director for the Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project.

Photo: Greater sage grouse by Stephen Ting. Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

 

Peeps Not a Species of Concern

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marshmallow_peepsIn a press release issued this week, the American Bird Conservancy named Peeps its Easter bird of the week for the second straight year and declared that while the overall population is severely depleted each year at this time, “Populations appear to quickly rebound in subsequent years and therefore they are not a species of conservation concern.”

Further, the report says, there is reason to believe that each color morph is actually an individual species. “There simply isn’t any evidence that these forms interbreed,” said ABC senior scientist Dr. David Wiedenfeld in the release. “While they can often be found roosting in the same box, the fact is that nobody has ever seen an intermediate bird between the color morphs,” he added.

More fun can be found both in the ABC press release and its bird of the week profile (which are nearly identical).

This is what happens when Easter is the day before April Fool’s Day. However, you can expect all seriousness from us on Monday. (And personally, I have never found different color morphs nesting in the same box.)

Photo: Marshmallow Peeps, by Just Born

The Word on Birds

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ovenbirdThe recent issue of The Auk (subscription or fee required to read full articles) has several articles of interest to state wildlife biologists:

It has long been assumed that early successional forests are important habitat for young ovenbirds. A paper by Andrew Vitz, now with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, tested that hypothesis experimentally. He found that the density of understory vegetation was a factor in the birds’ survival, but that the birds could do well in smaller patches of early successional habitat, such as microhabitats within mature forests.

Read the ovenbird paper here.

A paper on California spotted owls found that two is the magic number for a number of offspring. Owls that were part of a pair of nestlings had higher survival rates that onlies or triplets. The research also found that the number of young produced is a good indicator of habitat quality.

Read the spotted owl paper here.

Piping plovers hatched earlier in the season in the Great Lakes region had a higher survival rate than those born later in the season, another paper reported. Nest sites that were closer to trees also had lower survival rates. The older the plover chicks were, the more likely they were to live another day. Because the Great Lakes population of piping plovers is federally endangered (with other populations being threatened), these factors can help inform management strategies.

Read the piping plover paper here.

Photo: ovenbird, courtesy Wisconsin Division of Natural Resources

 

Water Users v. Cranes in Texas

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whooping cranes at Aransas NWRIn 2009, 23 federally endangered whooping cranes died because of a drought. A recent court ruling says that this is an illegal take of a federally-endangered species, and that the federal law has precedence over Texas state law, which says that water is doled out on a first come, first served basis, says an article in Bloomberg.

The Texas state agencies will appeal the ruling, the article says.

The whooping crane flock in question is the world’s only self-sustaining wild flock, the article says, migrating from Canada to Texas. The article also implies that what was once “an isolated stretch of Texas coastal marsh,” where a tiny flock of whooping cranes survived unnoticed at a time when the species was thought to be extinct, is now home to the “world’s largest concentration of refineries and petrochemical plants.”

Read the Bloomberg article here.

Photo: Whooping cranes at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, by Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

The Crows Are Back

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m_crow_5An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says that recent Audubon Christmas Bird Count figures indicate that the American crow population in Illinois may be back to its pre-West Nile Virus level and is returning to normal in Missouri.

Crows were particularly susceptible to West Nile Virus and populations across the country dipped about 10 years ago as the virus swept across the country.

Read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article here.

If you are trying to sneak up on some crows to do research on them or near them, a recent paper in the journal Ethology has some tips: crows can tell where you are looking, but they can’t read your facial expression. So smiling as you approach isn’t going to help, but looking the other way just might.

Read the article in the journal of Ethology here. (Fee or subscription required.)

Photo by David Herr, courtesy of US Forest Service

Two Golden Eagles Killed; One Was In Study

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golden eagle usfwsThree golden eagles were recently caught in snare traps in Montana. Two of the eagles were killed, and one of the dead eagles was part of a research project by Craighead Beringia South, a wildlife research and education institute based in Kelly, Wyoming.

The Jackson Hole Daily reports that the dead eagle was one of six golden eagles wearing a GPS backpack since 2010 in a project designed to study golden eagle migration corridors.

An article in the Ravalli Republic says that one of the golden eagles was found dead, the other had to be euthanized and the third is being rehabilitated. The article also notes that golden eagles have been in sharp decline in the region.

Read the Jackson Hole Daily article here.
Read the Ravalli Republic article here.

Photo: Golden eagle in Alaska, by Donna Dewhurst, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Two Golden Eagles Killed; One Was In Study

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golden eagle usfwsThree golden eagles were recently caught in snare traps in Montana. Two of the eagles were killed, and one of the dead eagles was part of a research project by Craighead Beringia South, a wildlife research and education institute based in Kelly, Wyoming.

The Jackson Hole Daily reports that the dead eagle was one of six golden eagles wearing a GPS backpack since 2010 in a project designed to study golden eagle migration corridors.

An article in the Ravalli Republic says that one of the golden eagles was found dead, the other had to be euthanized and the third is being rehabilitated. The article also notes that golden eagles have been in sharp decline in the region.

Read the Jackson Hole Daily article here.
Read the Ravalli Republic article here.

Photo: Golden eagle in Alaska, by Donna Dewhurst, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Kansas Trumpets Swan Sightings

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MIGRATING-TRUMPETER-SWANS-IMPRESSIVE-SIGHT_frontimagecrop“These birds are an excellent conservation success story,” said Ed Miller, nongame biologist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism in a department press release trumpeting recent trumpeter swan sightings in the state. “They have rebounded from a population low of 73 birds in the U.S.”

Trumpeter swans are the largest members of the swan family, and can be up to sixty inches long with an eight-foot wingspan. They are one of two swan species native to North America, the release says. (The other, the tundra swan is similar looking, but has a yellow spot on its bill, the release notes. Also, tundra swans aren’t usually seen in Kansas.)

Read the press release here.Learn more about trumpeter swans at All About Birds, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
And see this year’s trumpeter swan reports on eBird, here.

Photo by Kali Kostelac, courtesy of the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism

Mass. Plans Spring Eagle Survey

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Bald_EagleMassachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife is changing the timing of its annual survey of eagles from mid-winter to spring, according to a division press release (which I could not find on-line). The change is to better track the state’s growing breeding eagle population, rather than its over-wintering population.

“This is a good time to shift our focus to our growing population of resident, nesting birds,” said Tom French, Assistant Director of Natural Heritage and Endangered Species in the release. “For several years, we have been aware of resident eagles in areas where no nest has ever been found. By shifting annual surveys from midwinter to early spring, we hope to have cooperators and MassWildlife staff locate active nests for all known pairs and visit other bodies of water across the state to look for additional breeding eagles.”

Massachusetts began participating in the national midwinter count in 1979 when only eight bald eagles were reported in Massachusetts, the release says. The new Breeding Eagle Count will be similar to the Midwinter Eagle Survey.

More information on the survey will be available in a future issue of the Division’s MassWildlife News.

Photo by Dave Menke, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service