Piping Plovers in peril

 Photo by Melissa Groo / Audubon Photo Awards

Yesterday, I responded to an appeal by the Audubon Society to forward a message to the US Army Corps of Engineers about protecting a rare nesting habitat for the threatened Piping Plover in New York.   Less than 3,600 Atlantic coast Piping Plovers exist today.   A temporary restraining order has been granted to protect the critical plover habitat.   There is apparently no good reason why the habitat, which is located in the same area as the Fire Island Lighthouse Beach and the Smith Point County Park stabilization project, can't be accommodated, preserved and protected.   If you share the concern for this charming little bird, go to the Audubon Society website to participate in the intervention: www.audubonaction.org or go to Google and type in audubon action fire island.

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BtheB 

WWF - Canon Pic of the Week

Photo by Fritz Polking / WWF

Emperor Penguins in Antarctica

A number of the photographs on the World Wildlife Fund/Canon Pic of the Week website feature birds or in some cases birds and animals together.   Go to Google and type in wwf- canon pic of the week 2014 to see them.

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BtheB

Slow-motion wildlife video

My wife Linda directed me to this charming and fascinating online video which a neighbour and friend sent to her.   It features several animals and interesting birds going about their normal routines.   The last part of the video however is in super-slow-motion.   I think anyone, not just birdwatchers and general animal-lovers will find this visual and musical presentation quite compelling and entertaining.   Highlight and click on the link immediately below to access the video. 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fdSVp9GFeS4

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BtheB

White-throated Sparrows are passing through

Photos by Barry Wallace

Every day for a week now there has been at least a half dozen White-throated Sparrows below the Niger seed feeder in the backyard. They are expected to migrate through at this time of year and they are right on schedule.   What is a little different is that instead of seeing mostly the white-striped form or morph, we are getting mostly the tan-striped form or morph. This has not happened before - never.   In the photo at top, there is a tan-striped type of the White-throated Sparrow in the rear, while the bird in front is a White-crowned Sparrow.   Below that photo is a photo of a white-striped type of the White-throated Sparrow.   Year after year I'm sure we always see more of the white-striped type during migrations and it seems the white form is generally dominate over the tan form.   A breeding pair usually contains one bird from each morph, either a white male and a tan female, or a tan male and a white female.   It matters not however how many there are of each type, as all sparrows are more than welcome in our backyard.

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BtheB  

Feathered food fight in Norway

Photo by Roy Mangersnes

Hawks against Jays

A sparrowhawk (left above) is seen harassing a Eurasian Jay in Dalen, Norway.   Photographer Roy Mangersnes captured this very dramatic image.   He said the sparrowhawks descend on the grounds where jays are fed by a friend every year.   He went on to say that as many 8 to 10 hawks charge the jays who dodge them as if dodging bullets, and that they seem to be very good at it.

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BtheB

Pity the poor cormorants

Photo by William Hall/AP

It seems the cormorant is disliked wherever it goes in the world.   It is routinely accused of over-populating any nesting ground it establishes, polluting soil and killing off vegetative matter, decimating fish stocks, displacing other bird species from habitats, and on and on and on.   It is quite true of several sites in my neck of the woods in southern Ontario, as well as many other places around the Great Lakes.   The cormorant pictured above was photographed by William Hall.   The bird is nesting under the old eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Baby Bridge in San Francisco.   Transportation officials are attempting to displace hundreds of Double-crested Cormorants, as well as other bird species that nest in the massive, 10,000 ft. long steel structure.   I've never heard of one of these ill-conceived plans being successful in the long run.   These unique and striking-looking birds have to live somewhere, unless there is an ultimate and final solution, that is being kept a secret, to totally exterminate the species.   Then, what or who is next?

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BtheB  

Male goldfinches lose their glitter

 Photos by BarrytheBirder

Breeding male American Goldfinch

Winter Male American Goldfinch

Winter Female American Goldfinch

It is now October and the male American Goldfinches in the backyard have undergone another seasonal change. They are no longer the shocking yellow, as seen in the top photo. The males have assumed the appearance of the females and they are offer difficult to distinguish from each other, particularly if there are many of them together or if they are at a fair distance.   But in the middle photo above there is one identifying mark of the winter male that is noteworthy.   It is the yellow patch on his shoulder, which winter females do not have. The bottom photo is a winter female and although they do not show in this particular picture, her wing and tail feathers are also black and white, but appear somewhat paler.   Surely, one the joys of a Canadian winter is having these lovely birds present each day.

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BtheB 

Turkey time

                                                                                                                                                                               Photo by BarrytheBirder

Our Thanksgiving holiday is just under 2 weeks away and many people will have begun to think of their turkey dinner.   Most of the turkeys consumed at the dinner tables will be of the domestic type.   However wild turkeys have become so numerous in southern Ontario that some of them will have been hunted, frozen and five months later headed for the serving platters.   The wild turkeys pictured above, near Kettleby, are wary creatures however and the dramatic increase in their numbers isn't because they are foolhardy.   Wild turkey hunting season this year included a week last spring and now a week in October.   The start of the fall season is October 14, the day after Thanksgiving.

Please comment if you wish.

BtheB

CWF Annual Photo Contest 2014 deadline nears

The Canadian Wildlife Federation Reflections of Nature Annual Photo Contest for 2014 has a deadline of 11.59 p.m., E.S.T. on October 31, 2014.   Entry details are available on the Canadian Wildlife Federation website.   Below are two winning bird photographs from the 2013 contest.

 2013 Professional Category ~ Grand Prize Winner

Mircea Costina

2013 Amateur Category ~ Runner-up

Serge Chenard

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Bthe

There is yet hope...

               Photo: blog.mallorcahiking.com                         

Egyptian Vulture

WildlifeExtra.com reported earlier this year, that the notorious power line from Port Sudan to the Red Sea coast, which was reported to have electrocuted hundreds, perhaps thousands, of migrating endangered Egyptian Vultures over the past 60 years, has been disconnected.   The action was taken by the Sudanese government and power company officials after many years of advocacy by many birding organizations.   A new fully-insulated distribution power line will provide safe perches for the migrating birds.   The multi-agency project will make migration by birds such as Egyptian Vultures and juvenile Eastern Imperial Eagles (see photo below) a huge conservation forward leap.

                                                                                                             Photo by Csaba Loki

Eastern Imperial Eagle (juvenile)

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BtheB

Vultures intruded upon

Photo: Nottingham Trent University

Vultures are seen feeding on a carcass in Manke Wildlife Reserve in South Africa.   The Black-backed Jackal intruding on the vulture feast appears to me to be a very pregnant and hungry female.   The carcass looks to be large, perhaps a water buffalo.

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BtheB

Gannets gorging in Scotland

Photo by Richard Shucksmith / Barcroft Media

Gannets dive into the sea to gorge themselves on fish in the Shetland Islands, Scotland, before returning to their nests on cliffs high above the water.   The photographer, Richard Shucksmith has been capturing gannet images for the past three years and judging by this photograph, he must be an intrepid fellow.

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BtheB

Bees and wasps displace hummers

Photos by Barry Wallace

Our Ruby-throated Hummingbirds appear to have left us and headed south.   The last two we saw were females on September 22 - the same exact date on which last year's hummers packed their bags and departed.   A couple of very chilly nights seemed to be the catalyst or maybe they were just fed up with fighting off the bees and wasps at the nectar feeders.   Below are some of the Bald-faced Hornets (Dalichovespula maculata) that seem to be the most troublesome for hummingbirds in September.

Bald-faced Hornets are also known as Bald Hornet, White-faced Hornet, White-tailed Hornet, Blackjacket or Bull Wasp, and actually belong to a genus of Yellowjackets, which are known elsewhere in the world as just plain wasps.   The White-faced Hornet is a little larger than other Yellowjackets, measuring 2 to 3 cms. or over 1" long.   I sat outside for an hour or so this afternoon, just to make sure there were, in fact, no more hummingbirds.   I had a glass of white wine beside me and during the course of the hour, about 10 wasps and four Bald-faced Hornets fell into my wineglass, something the hummingbirds have never done. 
BULLETIN: This just in...my wife has called out, while I was typing the last sentence above, that she has spotted a hummingbird in the backyard.
I am going to regard her sighting as that of a transient migrant passing through, as opposed to one of the resident hummers we had all summer in the yard.   So there.

 Please comment if you wish.
BtheB  
  

Largest flying bird ever?

Illustration by Liz Bradford/PA

I just came across an online article, by Nishad Karim at theguardian.com, that appeared almost three months ago, about fossilized bones discovered during an airport terminal expansion near Charleston, S.C. airport in 1983. The prehistoric bird had a wingspan between 6.1 and 7.4 metres which is double that of the Royal Albatross, the world's largest flying bird alive.   30 years passed before the full importance of the fossil remains were fully realized.   The name of the bird is Pelagornis sandersi.   

Illustration by Liz Bradford/PNAS

In the illustration above, the skeletal reconstruction of Pelagornis sandersi is compared with a California Condor (lower left) and Royal Albatross (lower right) for purposes of scale.   The remains of the bird included its skull, shoulder blade, hollow leg and wing bones.   Extrapolations of the mass, wingspan and wing shape from the fossilized bones were fed into a computer to estimate the size of the bird and how it may have flown.   The computer model showed the creature was an extremely efficient glider.   It was estimated to have lived 25 million years ago.

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BtheB

50 years of 'Wildlife Photographer of the Year' book

The National History Museum in London, England, has just published and released a new book that commemorates 50 years of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.   Below are two photos that feature birds, which are part of the collection of 160 photos in the book.

Photo by Cherry Alexander (UK) 1995

This magnificent blue iceberg was photographed from a ship off the South Sandwich Islands in Antarctica.   It's described as a cathedral of ancient ice, with a little group of Adelie Penguins and an Antarctic Prion perfectly poised overhead.   To catch the moment and frame it perfectly reveals the skill of a photographer (Cherry Alexander) in love with ice..

Photo by Danny Green (UK) 2009

One of the last great wildlife spectacles to be seen in northern Europe is the winter evening gathering of hundreds of thousands of starlings over their roost sites.   Here the stage is Gretna Green in Scotland with the swooping, swirling flock boosted by huge numbers of wintering starlings from Scandanavia.

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BtheB

Yes...it was a starling

Well, I have it on good authority that my mystery bird of the last several weeks was indeed a European Starling.   Two readers of this blogsite kindly suggested the bird in the photo was a juvenile starling.   Thank you to Lucy Robertson and Andrew S. for their directions to photos and indentifications of this common bird.   In fact, starlings are one of the most common and numerous birds in the world.   It is also a bird with a 'coat of many colours', based on its stages of early growth and thereafter the seasons of the year.   After hearing from Lucy and Andrew, I got word from my neighbour, here in the village of King City, Gerry Binsfeld, that my mystery bird was a young starling starting to molt out of its juvenile plumage.   Gerry, by the way, has a huge life list and is one of Canada's best birders.   Although I have been a birdwatcher for many years, I don't consider myself an expert.   Nevertheless, not identifying a starling in my own backyard is very humbling and a bit embarrasing.

    Photo by Barry Wallace

Please comment if you wish.

BtheB

Dramatic White-tailed Eagles photo

Photo by Kevin Morgans

Above is a recent Wildlife Extra.com 'Reader photo of the week'.   The image of sparring White Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) was captured by Kevin Morgans in Kutno, Poland. The encounter was watched by a group of young eagles plus a Hooded Crow and a magpie.   White-tailed Eagles are closely related to Bald Eagles and are also known as Sea Eagles or White-tailed Sea Eagles. 

Please comment if you wish.

BtheB 

Costello welcomes his sons to Pine Farms Orchard

Photos by BarrytheBirder

Pictured above are Elvis (front) and Costello (behind), longtime buddies at King Township's Pine Farms Orchard and ambassadors-at-large to thousands of apple-pickers over many years.   Sadly, many months ago, Elvis wandered off one day and never returned.   It was felt he was embroiled in a misadventure with a fox or coyote.   Costello missed him greatly over the past winter.   He was given a mirror to make him think he was not alone.   Later in the year he was taken away to mate with a lady friend, which apparently took all of 30 seconds and he was rewarded with two fine sons that were destined to join their father at Pine Farms, when they were big enough to hold their own with the old man.   The day has come.   The sons arrived on September 13 and were welcomed by their father, whose tail, it is said, wagged a mile-a-minute.   Today, everything seemed just ducky.

Costello spent time grooming himself prior to his sons' arrival and got his top-knot just right.

On arrival, Costello's sons took to the pool like 'ducks to water', while their father looked on.

It appears that Costello has welcomed his offspring with open arms.

Please comment if you wish.

BtheB

Small feeder ~ big appetites

Photo by BarrytheBirder

AAmerican Goldfinches ~ Niger SeedA

Now that the juvenile goldfinches have joined their parents at our backyard Niger Seed feeders, things are getting a little crowded and a bit frantic.   Amid the mayhem, however, there are some parents that are still feeding seeds to begging youngsters.   Whether it's their own offspring or those of some other parents, I have no idea.

Please comment if you wish.

BtheB

Pied Wagtail gets a reprieve

Photo: Wild About Britain

Rogue wagtail won't be shot

The Guardian newspaper in England reports that a Pied Wagtail that had taken up residence in a Tesco store in Great Yarmouth will continue to fly after a plan to shoot the bird ruffled shoppers' feathers.   The bird had avoided all attempts to trap it and shoo it outside over recent weeks, so using a marksman to shoot it (after store hours) was suggested.   Word got out and their was a public backlash.   On advice, Tesco called on the British Trust for Ornithology and has postponed the shooting.   Plans now are to net the bird which has become quite tame.   The pretty little bird has been sustaining itself by eating crumbs off the cafe floor.   This tale will likely have a merciful and happy ending.

Please comment if you wish.

BtheB