BIRDS OF A FEATHER

              At last, each seasonal chore is done, right down to the turkey in the oven. Shopping, wrapping, mailing packages, cards—all completed. Yep, everything’s ready… except the blog post. I’m having a little trouble bringing that task to a successful conclusion.

            It’s not that I haven’t tried. The first of last week I started an entry entitled “Thanatos, Astronomy, and Fungus Gnats.” Before I could finish, however, the annual Geminid meteor shower peaked; death and gnats got shelved for the time being. Then there was “Solstice and Pansies.” Once again, the universe wouldn’t stop—or even slow down—for me: solstice came and went early Wednesday morning. The pansy-care section moved to the back burner.

           Today I’m hoping three’s the charm. (It certainly was in the husband department.) I've piled Beethoven’s 5^th, 7^th and 9^th Symphonies into the CD player, shoved all the Sudokus out of sight in a drawer, and turned on the computer.

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Christmas Bird Count participants

            The National Audubon Society’s 112th annual Christmas Bird Count runs from December 14 through January 5. This oldest continuing citizen-science project amasses the raw data scientists and statisticians use for assessing the health of avian populations and for suggesting conservation strategies. I went to the Audubon website to learn about the program, which is different from the Great Backyard Bird Count held in February (see my “For the Birds” post of February 2, 2011).

"...an ornithological impresario"

            The first Christmas Count took place back in 1900, as an alternative to the then-popular “side hunt.” This fun event involved lots of people with shotguns and pockets full of cartridges dividing into geographically based teams. The object: the indiscriminate killing of anything furred or feathered. At a set time, the happy hunters returned to base camp to compare carcasses. The team that slaughtered the most creatures won. (My source doesn’t specify the prize. Personally, I hope it was an extra six weeks in hell.) Appalled by the toll the side hunt exacted from bird populations, ornithologist and member of the nascent Audubon Society Frank Chapman suggested substituting a holiday bird census in place of the sanguinary free-for-all. By the turn of the 20^th century, conservation movements were beginning to take hold in the American consciousness: thanks to Chapman, concern for dwindling bird populations (can you say “passenger pigeon”? Can you say “annihilation”?) became a national cause célèbre.

            More strictly organized than the Backyard Count, the Christmas Count takes place in duly designated 15-mile-radius Count Circles on duly designated dates. On the day, volunteers follow specified routes through their Circles, recording every bird they spot. Tallies are handed in to the area’s Count Compiler. There are scads of Circles in all 50 states, so check out the Audubon website’s FAQ page for more information on joining in the fun.

Experienced a bad moment about the likelihood of successfully publishing this post in a timely manner when our local newspaper, the Wilmington StarNews, ran an article about the Pender County count that took place on Sunday the 18th in the Holly Shelter Game Land. Damn, I thought: skunked again. But then I checked the list of Circles and discovered Wilmington’s count is slated for Saturday, December 31^st, and Oak Island/Southport/Bald Head Island’s for New Year’s Day. If you’re interested in participating—solo or with a group of like-minded friends, no prior birding credits needed—contact the Circle's Count Compiler.

  

While navigating Audubon's time-sucking site, I clicked on a link for “Top 20 Common Birds in Decline.” Seems many common birds (“common” meaning species with over a half-million individuals and a range of 385,000 square miles or more) are becoming a lot less, well, common. Reasons include loss of habitat, pesticide issues and climate change. Here’s a representative sample:

No wonder you never see whip-poor-wills

Whip-poor-wills. A nocturnal woodland species, these loud and insistent little creatures’ numbers have declined by 57% since 1967. Human activities in the form of fire suppression in the eastern deciduous forests, along with road-building and development, have fractured the whip-poor-will’s habitat. Adding insult to injury, pesticide control of gypsy moths has reduced available food supply in some areas.

Can this bobwhite be saved?

 Northern bobwhites. Populations of these grasslands denizens have plummeted 80% over the past 40 years, their breeding-grounds decimated by the growth of large-scale agriculture, intensively managed pine plantations, and unrestrained development. Fortunately, an Audubon Society’s 2007 report on their plight led to conservation efforts that are beginning to bear fruit: the prognosis for bobwhite resurgence looks tentatively hopeful.

Which would you rather see:
another boat ramp
or a little blue heron?

Little blue heron. This one hit close to home. Dependent on marshlands for food and nesting sites, little blues are an object of ornithological concern, especially in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Since the 1970s, with farmland expansion and residential and recreational developments encroaching on coastal wetlands and riparian environments, degradation and outright loss of habitat caused a 54% population decline among these egret relatives.



 

A mama common tern & baby

 

Common tern. Long a favorite of beach-going birders, terns are being loved to death. Their numbers have decreased by over 70% since the 1930s. After surviving the millinery feather fashions of the early 1900s, they now face other dangers. Drawn by poorly placed landfills, gulls usurp tern breeding grounds at the same time overuse of pesticides increases reproductive failure rates. Silent Spring, anyone?

We, as individuals, can’t do much to mitigate the damage we, as a species, have wreaked on our planet. What we can do, as gardeners, is to maintain our properties as welcoming wildlife environments. As citizens, we can be aware of corporate and governmental plans to worsen birds' plights—I have in mind here the megaport North Carolina wants to cram into a wetlands situated between a nuclear power plant and the largest military weapons depot on the East Coast and just north of an infrastructure-lacking village—and follow where our hearts lead. One other thing you-the-individual can do is to participate in a bird count, contributing to the assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of species in your neighborhood, so remedial actions can be undertaken before it’s too late.

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From both of us to all of you—regardless of what holiday, if any, you celebrate—a peaceful and pleasant Christmas season, and our best wishes for a happy and healthy 2012. And thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy

FOR THE BIRDS

            In his poem “Alec,” John Ciardi remembers learning about birds from his Uncle Alec (né Alessio). “’God,’ he would say// ‘sends birds, not calendars.’”

            Anybody with a backyard birdfeeder knows Uncle Alec is right.

Kathy's workspace

            Because my actual desk is buried under piles of papers and the printer and partially completed projects and the books I need close at hand when I’m writing, the kitchen table is where I work. (Tim says I tend to take over every flat surface in the house, except his studio, where my stuff only consumes about 30% of the available space. Maybe 40%, if you count the closet. It’s why we moved my desk to the kitchen in the first place—painters need room.) Anyway, when not consumed by throes of creativity at the kitchen table, I look out the faux French doors across the screened porch to the back garden. The formal dwarf yaupon and the out-of-control eleagnus hedges, the Confederate-jasmine-covered arbor and parts of a Leyland cypress, a southern crabapple (Malus angustifolius, in case you were wondering) and the ‘Muskogee’ crape myrtle dominate the view. Those plants, and the birds.

The view from Kathy's workspace

            Families of northern cardinals, northern mockingbirds, Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, brown thrashers, mourning doves and blue jays give our yard—and the blessedly undeveloped lots next door—as their permanent addresses. It’s not unusual to spot downy, hairy, red-bellied and red-headed woodpeckers. Sometimes a pileated drops in to sample the suet as well. In the winter, they are joined by transient dark-eyed juncos, red-breasted nuthatches, and the occasional flash of goldfinch and cedar waxwing. Our neighborhood is too built up for eastern bluebirds’ taste, but where the land is open, they’re there. On the beach, seagulls, sandpipers, willets, pelicans and cormorants take in stride the annual winter invasion of royal terns at Blue Water Point. In the salt marshes, several species of herons and egrets poke about for frogs, fish and fiddler crabs. Grackles hover in mobs in McDonald’s parking lot, begging for scraps, and killdeer cheat death by nesting in graveled driveways and roads.

           

Red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks, northern harriers and the occasional bald eagle and osprey survey the scene from atop utility poles or glide in lazy circles through Carolina blue skies. I know screech, great horned and barred owls live here too, although I’ve only seen barred ones. (Those sightings were traumatic for all concerned. In two separate mid-afternoon highway incidents during one horrible week in the fall of 2007, our truck was dive-bombed by barred owls: the truck emerged victorious both times.) Homely but useful turkey buzzards clean up carcasses left by cats and cars.

Tufted titmouse in the
'Muskogee' crape mrytle

Twice a day—once as we leave the island and again on our way back home—Tim and I look for “our” kingfisher on the electrical, phone and cable wires strung across the Intracoastal Waterway parallel to the Oak Island Bridge. He and the wife arrive when temperatures start to cool in the fall. We know it’s January when the white ibises show up to peck away on local golf courses, hard on the heels of visiting northward-bound robins. In early February, the red-wing blackbirds arrive in flocks of thousands, filling swampy places with chittering gossip about which backyards have the fullest feeders. In late February, the Carolina wrens and house finches come back from wherever they disappeared to in November. By mid-April, the kingfishers have flown north, leaving the summertime wires bereft.





Northern mockingbird
defending his berries
in the weeping yaupon holly



I catalogued all our local avian friends for you because North America’s Great Backyard Bird Count is being held this year from Friday, February 18 through Monday, February 21. The purpose is to provide a continent-wide snapshot of just which birds are where and in what numbers. Participation requirements are fluid: the minimum is a single 15-minute stint of feeder-watching over the four-day period. Conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada, the family-friendly Count welcomes data from everyone—no birding chops necessary.

If you’ve got a birdfeeder in your yard, keep it filled that weekend and record who shows up to eat. I figure I might as well join in: I already spend a lot of time staring out at the backyard.

For more information about rules, data submission and bird-identification help, go to GBBC’s website at www.birdsource.org/gbbc. 

           

                                            * * *

            When I mentioned to Tim I planned to write about phenology projects, he looked puzzled. “Isn’t that the study of head bumps?” he asked.

            No, phenology is the study of plant and animal life-cycle events—first leaf, first flower, seed set, and so on. Scientists use phenologic observations to track global climate-change trends; to monitor drought and wildfire risks and the health of ecosystems; and to identify and keep tabs on invasive species, infectious diseases and pests. The task is enormous, and they need our help.

            In 2010, I signed up to participate in two citizen-scientist endeavors. One worked out, the other didn’t. Thumbnail sketches of these public-supported phenology projects reveal how you can add to databases vital to understanding climatological changes so that we may learn to adapt to them… before it’s too late.

National Phenology Network
Nature's Notebook
data collection sheet

      The USA National Phenology Network. A collaboration between federal agencies, environmental networks, universities and the public, NPN monitors the impact of climate change on plants and animals in the U.S. through compilation of widespread phenophase observations. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to choose one or more plants or animals for which you record and submit phenologic data. I chose the native maypop, Passiflora incarnata, because I had three large specimens close to hand (regular participation is enhanced if you make things convenient for yourself). The NPN’s Nature’s Notebook datasheet makes recording and submitting observations easy. The official website at www.usanpn.org tells you all you need to know to get started.

The Great Sunflower Project
data collection sheet

      The Great Sunflower Project. Here’s a chance to pay attention to the pollinators flitting around your yard. The mission of the Project is to create a map of which bees live where in rural, urban and suburban areas of the U.S. With the future of European honeybees in North America in some doubt, native pollinators like bumblebees and carpenter bees have suddenly come into the limelight. Participants grow bee-magnet ‘Lemon Queen’ sunflowers from seeds. Why only ‘Lemon Queen’? To ensure standardized results, of course. (“Bee” sure to order the annual species, please, not the perennial. Although marketed as easy to grow, mine never quite took off. I shall try again this year.) Take your morning coffee, datasheet, pencil and camera out to the sunflower patch, and settle in to observe any apians who visit your flowers during 15 consecutive minutes. Repeat two to four times a week. (Hint: plant the sunflowers where you’ll be reminded they’re there. Some of us aren’t at the top of our games at morning-coffee time.) The website helps you identify some of the more common native pollinators, and offers a great deal of information about phenology in general. Learn more at www.greatsunflower.org.

If these activities whet your appetite for involvement in backyard citizen-scientist projects, there are scads of others. Consider this partial list: eBird; Firefly Watch; Foliage Network; Frog Watch; Grunion Greeters; Hummingbird Monitoring Network; Jelly Watch (jellyfish, not jelly jars); Monarch Larva Monitoring Project; Project Budburst; Project Feeder Watch. It’s heart-warming and good for the old self-esteem to add to the sum of human knowledge about the natural world. And best of all, you needn’t even leave your property to take part.

Oh, yeah—the study of head bumps is phrenology. With an “r.”

Thanks for dropping by. See you next time.
                                                        
                                                                   Kathy