Debunking a myth

Photos by Dave Kemp

The Canadian Wildlife Federation's March Wildlife Update has reported that touching a baby bird will not cause the parents to abandon their young.   CWF declares the idea to be a myth.   Some say this is because birds have a poor sense of smell. However, research is starting to show otherwise.   We now know that Turkey Vultures and seabirds have excellent smelling senses.   Zebra Finch research show these songbirds can recognize relatives by smell.   Is this true of other species?   More research is needed on the olfactory capability of all birds.   Meanwhile, some birds, such as Turkey Vultures, have incredible senses of smell.

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BarrytheBirder

Owens Lake #3 ~ Owens Valley ~ Louisiana ~ 2016

Photo: James Porschen / Syngenta Photography Award

Visual signs are seen of the restorative actions at Owens Lake, Louisiana, taken by the Department of Water and Power to mitigate dust and pollen, and to protect birds' migratory patterns.   The issue was caused by draining Owens Lake and subsequent environmental degradation.

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BarrytheBirder

Splitting the Catch ~ by Auden Rikardsen

Photo: Auden Rickardsen / 2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Sometimes it's the fishing boats that look for the Killer Whales and Humpbacks, hoping to locate the shoals of herring that migrate to these Arctic Norwegian waters. But in recent winters, the whales have also started to follow the boats.   Pictured above, a large male Killer Whale feeds on herring that have been squeezed out of the boat's closing fishing net.   It has learned the sound that this boat makes when it hauls in gear and homed in on it.   The partnership would seem to be a win-win one, but not always.   Meanwhile above the waves, hundreds of gulls join in the banquet.

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BarrytheBirder   

Eagles among the egrets and herons

Photo: Imago / Barcroft Images

A White-tailed Sea Eagle is seen in shallow water with wading birds in Kiskunsag National Park, a Unesco biosphere reserve in Szabadszallas, Hungary.   The diet of White-tailed Sea Eagles is varied, opportunistic and seasonal.   They often prey on fish, birds and mammals but live largely as scavengers, regularly stealing food from otters and other birds including cormorants, gulls, ospreys and other raptors. Carrion is often a primary food source during winter months, with fish and various ungulates preferred, but anything from cetaceans to livestock to even dead humans.   Almost all fish found near the surface of water is a potential food source for White-tail Sea Eagles.   Commercial fisheries, sport fishing ponds and carp ponds are readily exploited when available.   Although they occasionally harass and kill some land birds, White-tails prefer targeting water-based birds as prey.   Other prey include terns, skuas, cormorants, fulmars, loons, grebes, ducks, coots, auks, gulls, geese, and even swans.   Adults, nestlings and eggs of other birds are regularly consumed. Live animals consumed have ranged in size from voles to lambs and deer calves.   White-tailed Sea Eagles seem to consider almost any creature moving or dead as a possible meal.
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BarrytheBirder

An ugly bird with a beautiful emerald eye...

Photo by Florence McGinn / Alamy Stock Photo

Neotropic Cormorant

Phalacrocorax brasilianus

An adult cormorant with beautiful green eyes is seen in Reid Park in Tucson, Arizona. The Neotropic Cormorant's normal range is the Gulf of Mexico to Argentina.   In the U.S.A., it usually reaches New Mexico in the west and Texas and sw. Louisiana in the east.   'Neotropics' are found on both fresh and ocean waters.

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BarrytheBirder

      

Eastern Screech Owl wintering in Florida

Photo by Bill Gozansky / Alamy Stock Photo

An Eastern Screech Owl (Otus asio) looks out from a palm tree cavity in Green Cay Wetlands at Boynton Beach, Florida, U.S.A.   Common in eastern North America from Mexico to Canada, and some will over-winter in Ontario.   They are small: 6 to 10".
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BarrytheBirder
    

Spot the seagull if you can...

Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst / AFP / Getty Images

A seagull swims across the reflection of a bridge on the rippled surface of the River Main, Frankfurt am Main, in central Germany.
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BarrytheBirder

Japanese White-eye is early sign of spring in Taiwan

Photo by Sam Yeh / AFP /Getty

Japanese White-eye sits in Kanzakura Tree in Taipei

Japanese White-eye (Zosterops japonicus)

There are approximately 100 to 125 species of White-eyes, depending on whose list you're reading, in the Old World tropics (including the South Pacific and Hawaiian Islands).   White-eyes are small passerines up to 6" in length, with white eye rings, that usually form large flocks looking for insects, fruit and nectar. Taiwan, which has a bird species list numbering 645, is located 120 kms. off the the south-east coast of mainland China, halfway between the East and South China Seas.   Its capital is a special municipality of mainland China known as Taipei.  Being an island, fully 1/3 of Taiwan's 645 birds species can be categorized as seabirds, shorebirds, marshland birds, and fish or crustacean-eating birds, etc.  White-eyes are the city bird of Kurayoshi City in Japan.
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BarrytheBirder  

Half of all species could be extinct by end of century

Photo: snowmanradio/Wikipedia

The Kirtland's Warbler, a rare 'Near Threatened' bird of the Michigan, U.S.A., Jack Pine forests, is dependent on fire to provide the small trees and open areas that meet its rigid requirements for nesting.

One in five species on Earth face extinction

One in five species on Earth now faces extinction, and that will rise to 50% by the end of the century unless urgent is taken now.   This prediction came from the Biological Extinction conference, held at the Vatican recently.   "Rich western countries are now siphoning up the world's resources and destroying its ecosystems at an unprecedented rate", said biologist Paul Ehrlich, of Stanford University in California.   "We want to build highways across the Serengeti to get more rare earth minerals for our cellphones.   We grab all the fish from the sea, wreck the coral reefs and put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.   We have triggered a major extinction event".   

"If you value people, you want to have the maximum number you can support sustainedly.   You do not want almost 12 billion living unsustainedly on Earth by the end of the century - with the result that civilization will collapse and there are only a few hundred survivors".   

UN statistics suggest the global human population will grow from the current 7.4 billion to 11.2 billion by 2100.   As Sir Partha Dasgupta, of Cambridge University put it; most of the extra billions will appear in Africa, where the fertility rate is still twice that of the rest of the world.   "Africa's population is likely to go from one billion to 4 billion", said Dasgupta.   "Can you imagine what tensions there are going to be there, especially with climate change coming and hitting the continent more than anywhere else?   What do you think is going to happen when the arid regions spread, and a hundred million Africans try to swim across the Mediterranean?   It's terrifying."

Ehrlich agreed: "If you look at the figures, it is clear that to support today's world population sustainedly - and I emphasize the word sustainedly - you would require another half a planet to provide us with those resources.   However, if everyone consumed resources at the U.S.A. level - which is what the world aspires to - you need another four or five Earths.   We are wrecking our planet's life support systems."   

I found this to be extremely sobering speculation.

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BarrytheBirder

    

Capture in the backyard...

Photo by Barry Wallace

Sharp-shinned Hawk mantling over its prey

A bird's back, scapulars and wing coverts, especially if of a distinctive colour (in this case, grayish-blue) is called a mantle.   Spreading of the wings and tail over its catch, by a bird of prey, is known as mantling, which amounts to hiding the prey from view until the bird believes it is safe to begin devouring its dinner, on the spot, otherwise it will fly off to what it feels is a safer, more secure place.

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BarrytheBirder

Snowy Owl near Ottawa, Ontario

Photo: Guoqiang Xue / Alamy Stock Photo

SNOWY OWL (Nyctea scandiaca)

The wide-winged Snowy Owl, seen above, was recently spotted in a rural area of Canada's national capital, Ottawa.   Snowy Owls have cyclic winter irruptions into southern Ontario. but I have not seen any this winter, especially in the nearby frozen, broad and flat, Holland Marsh, which is a favourite destination for this occasionally irruptive species from northern Canada.

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BarrytheBirder

Not uncommon scene in sub-Saharan Africa

Photo: Tony Karumba /AFP / Getty Images

"Excuse me, is this spot taken?"

A Red-billed Oxpecker (Buphagus erythrorhynchus) rests on the head of a female buffalo, at a waterhole at the Tsvao West National Park, near Voi in Nairobi, capital of Kenya.   There is also a Yellow-billed Oxpecker is the same part of Africa, and the two species make up the family Buphagiae   Recent studies have grouped the oxpeckers together with starlings, mockingbirds and thrashers.
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BarrytheBirder 

Black Swans originated in Australia

Photo by Marcin Bielecki / EPA

A Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) was seen recently on one of the beaches of Kolobrzeg, in northern Poland, on the coast of the Baltic Sea.   Black Swans are large birds with mostly black plumage and red bills.   They are very rarely seen in Poland and this part of Europe.   These dramatic-looking waterbirds originated in Australia, were moved to New Zealand and then many other countries of the world, where many feral populations exist today.

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BarrytheBirder  

GOTCHA!!!

Photo by Georges Gobot /AFP / Getty Images

A Golden Eagle catches a drone during a military exercise at the Mont-de-Marsan airbase, in southwestern France.   As malicious or poorly controlled drones become more of a security threat, the French army is exploring all options for defence.   They train eagles for six months at the airbase to chase drones.

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BarrytheBirder

66-year-old alabatross gives birth once again

Photo: Naomi Blinick / AP

Wisdom and her new chick are seen in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge at the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.   This famous Laysan Albatross is about 66 years old and is the world's oldest recorded breeding bird in the wild.

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BarrytheBirder

Women's group in India takes the Greater Adjutant under its wing

 Photos by Anupam Nath / AP

An endangered Greater Adjutant stork (above) with a baby in its nest is seen in Dadara Village, west of Gauhati, India.   For decades the big and awkward-looking scavenger-bird was reviled in its home territory of north-east India, until a group of women raised awareness of its plight.   They call themselves the Hargila Army, for the bird's name in the local Assamese language.

Above, Wildlife biologist Purnima Devi Barman, second from left, who works with a local conservation group called Aranyak, shows stork photos to a group of women from the 'Hargila Army', during an awareness meeting to save the bird, in Dadara Village.   Women pray, sing hymns, weave scarves and other items with motifs of the stork, to creare awareness about protecting the species.
Birdlife International states that the species was previously widespread across much of south and continental south-east Asia, but declined dramatically during the first half of the 20th century.   IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) has declared the bird's official status as 'Endangered' since the late 1990s.
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BarrytheBirder

World Wildlife Day 2017 young photographers competition

Pictured here are two of the top-10 photo finalists in the World Wildlife Day 2017 young photographers contest.   Final winners were announced yesterday, Friday. March 3.   The photo above, 'Kingfisher', was taken by Gabor Li, from Hungary.   The photo below shows a Wire-tailed Swallow and a youngster having an exchange in Pakistan, where Ali Java took the photo.  

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BarrytheBirder

Colombia ~ greatest diversity of bird species in the world

 Photo by Luis Robayo / AFP / Getty Images

Columbia has the greatest diversity of birds in the world.   Pictured above is one of them: a Red-headed Barbet (Eubucco bourcierii), photographed by Luis Robayo in a rural area of Cali, Columbia.   Columbia is home to 1,889 bird species, or 20% of all bird species on earth.   Pictured below is an Andean Condor, the national bird of Columbia.

Photo: Pedro Szekely

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BarrytheBirder

Over 1 million penguins gather...

Photos: Aquarium of the Pacific

Over a million penguins packed onto a beach at Punta Tombo Peninsula in Argentina's Patagonia, on Friday, February 17 of this year.   They were drawn here by an abundance of sardines and anchovies, prior to breeding in large colonies in southern Argentina and Chile and then migrating north as far as south-western Brazil between March and September.   The 2017 million-plus bird migration appears to be a record number according to local officials.   Drawn in by the unusually abundant haul of small fish, the world's largest colony of Magellanic Penguins offered up an even larger than normal spectacle.

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BarrytheBirder

Spotted Towhee and Eastern Towhee

SPOTTED TOWHEE ~ Richmond, B.C.

Photo by Dave Kemp

EASTERN TOWHEE ~ King City, Ont.

Photo by BarrytheBirder

My lucky friend Dave Kemp, from Richmond, B.C., gets to photograph Spotted Towhees year-around where he lives in the southern mainland of British Columbia.   I get to photograph Eastern Towhees in the summer where I live in King City, several kilometres north of Toronto and Lake Ontario.   Both species like to scratch about in dead leaves under dense brush, which often makes them difficult to see.

Please comment if you wish.

BarrytheBirder