Feb 04 2012
While the warblers are gone in the winter, where do they live?
Black-throated blue warblers live in the Caribbean: Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. Some are at Trinidad. Some are on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan, Belize, and Honduras.
In three months, they’ll be back.
Think Spring.
(photo by Cris Hamilton)
Jan 05 2012
This week we threw away our old 2011 calendars and hung up new ones for 2012.
Here’s a calendar that’s good every year.
Chuck Tague published a bird migration slideshow for southwestern Pennsylvania on his Nature Observer website last April showing birds on the move every month of the year.
If you’re surprised that birds migrate in January, think back to the birds you saw last weekend when the weather was unseasonably warm. Are you seeing a different mix of birds now that we’ve had snow and bitter cold? I am. (Did your siskins arrive yet? Mine didn’t.)
Even if you saw Chuck’s calendar last April, now’s a good time for review. Click on the image to watch the slideshow.
I should put his migrating birds on my appointment calendar so I don’t miss them!
(cover slide from Chuck Tague‘s Migration Calendar slideshow. Click on the image to see the slideshow)
Nov 22 2011
American robins are amazingly hardy birds. They now breed north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska and are found year round in most of the U.S.
Since robins eat fruit and forage on the ground for invertebrates they can put up with chilly weather, but when snow covers their food they move south in large numbers.
Visiting robins are already here. Yesterday I saw some very pale birds among a flock eating porcelain berries. I’ve read that the pale ones are from the West. I wonder where…
Right now the robin flock is still building in Pittsburgh and will peak around Christmas before January’s snow. If you’re near their roost at dusk or dawn you’ll see them swirling, thousands upon thousands of birds.
This video shows what it’s like, filmed near Daytona Beach, Florida in December 2008.
Enjoy our visiting robins now. They’ll be heading south to visit Chuck Tague (near Daytona) in about six weeks.
Lots of robins!
(video posted by jayc28 on YouTube)
Nov 15 2011
Actually, she got home last Saturday.
Island Girl is an arctic peregrine who nests every summer on Baffin Island, Canada. Then at the autumn equinox, on almost exactly the same day in September every year, she leaves for her winter home at Putu on the Chilean coast.
We know she makes this journey because in 2009 the Falcon Research Group’s Southern Cross Peregrine Project outfitted her with a satellite transmitter. Since then they’ve followed her travels via satellite and plotted them on the web, a trip of 8,628 miles.
This year Island Girl changed her southbound route from an East Coast trajectory via Florida and the Yucatan to a slightly westward path over Lake Superior to the Gulf Coast at Mississippi. When she encountered headwinds over the Gulf of Mexico she roosted on offshore oil rigs, then flew west to Texas and continued south. Some days she rested, especially during bad weather. On other days she pressed homeward, covering more than 200 miles. From start to finish Island Girl traveled for 53 days — and this is considered a leisurely pace!
Now she’s back in Putu surveying her domain. Her favorite sandspit island is still gone, destroyed by the February 2010 tsunami, but she has many other options. Her satellite GPS unit is so accurate that SCPP is able to tell where she roosts.
Island Girl is the last peregrine in the project with a working transmitter. In February 2012 the Falcon Research Group will travel to Chile to capture two more arctic peregrines and outfit them with tracking devices.
You can read about their work and Island Girl’s journey on the Southern Cross Peregrine Project’s blog (click on her picture). See the map of her journey here.
I wish I’d remembered to check their website earlier so I could have followed her en route!
(photo of Island Girl from the Southern Cross Peregrine Project)
Nov 14 2011
Any hummingbird in November in Pittsburgh is highly unusual.
These aren’t the same birds we see all summer. Only one species of hummingbird breeds east of the Mississippi — the ruby-throated hummingbird – but they’ve all left for the tropics by late September.
November birds are Selasphorus hummers, so called because two species — the rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) and Allen’s hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin) — are so similar they can’t be identified except when held in the hand or by high-speed photography showing the tail in exactly the right fanned position.
When Selasphorus birds are found in Pennsylvania, ornithologists band them. That’s when we find out they’re almost always rufous.
Rufous hummingbirds breed in the Pacific Northwest as far north as Alaska. They’re used to cool temperatures and not bothered by our weather as long as they find enough to eat. During migration they range far and wide and often visit backyard feeders. Solo birds can show up anywhere in the U.S.
Knowing this, some people leave their hummingbird feeders filled in the fall.
And it works. This month Scott Kinzey and Peter Keyel both discovered rufous hummingbirds at their feeders in Allegheny County.
Scott’s visitor is pictured here sipping from late-blooming salvia. It had already traveled 2,000 miles from its birthplace and its journey wasn’t over yet. If this species wasn’t so prone to wandering we’d say this bird was off course.
Click here for more of Scott’s hummer photos, including the banding.
If you like hummingbirds, keep your feeder filled and ready — even in November. You never know who might show up.
(photo by Scott Kinzey)
Oct 20 2011
Ten of the most endangered birds in North America are making their first migration now.
Whooping cranes are so rare that there are less than 600 of them on earth: 162 are in captivity, 44 are non-migratory and approximately 278 nest in Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada and migrate to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Texas. The rest spend the summer in Wisconsin and migrate to Florida on a route they learned from ultralite aircraft.
Back in 1941 whooping cranes nearly went extinct. In the wild their population had dwindled to only 15 migratory birds (21 total) so scientists and crane lovers began a captive breeding program to bring them back. The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP) works to reintroduce them to their eastern range.
Like many animals, whooping cranes imprint on the creature that raises them from babyhood. In the wild that would be their parents, but in a captive breeding program where adult birds are unavailable humans must dress in crane costumes and use mute gestures so the young birds learn to be cranes.
Thankfully the program increased the eastern whooping crane population but the new birds were non-migratory. Since cranes learn to migrate from their parents who would teach them? Enter the ultralite.
Ultralite aircraft are like kites with motors, just a little larger than the humans who fly them. The first ever whooper-ultralite migration occurred in Idaho in 1997. Before leading endangered eastern whoopers, pilots Bill Lishman and Joe Duff practiced by leading young Canada geese and sandhill cranes. In 2001 Operation Migration they led the first group of young whoopers from Necedah NWR, Wisconsin to Chassahowitza NWR, Florida.
The young cranes memorize the route on their way south and fly back to Wisconsin on their own in the spring. By now there are adult cranes who know the route so WCEP has a Direct Autumn Release project which releases some of each year’s young with the Wisconsin adults so they learn to migrate by following them.
The video above from the mid-2000′s tells the whoopers’ migration story. Shortly after this video was made, 17 of the 18 whoopers from the 2006 fall migration were killed by violent storms that hit the wildlife refuge one night in February 2007. The 18th died three months later. Fortunately this was the only tragedy of its kind but it underscores how vulnerable small populations can be.
This year’s cohort of 10 young cranes began their journey on October 9 at White River Marsh Wildlife Area, Wisconsin and are headed for St. Marks National Wildlife Reserve, Florida. So far they’ve made little progress because strong gusty winds have kept them grounded for days. This week they were still at stopover #1!
Follow their journey here on the Operation Migration field journal. Click here for a video from the ultralite’s perspective. (You may want to turn the sound down; the ultralite motor is loud.)
Learn more at Journey North’s Whooper page.
(video from Assignment Earth via YouTube)
Oct 05 2011
As predicted, the cold, oppressive rain that lingered for four days finally moved east yesterday afternoon. The sun came out and so did all the migrants who’d been waylaid by the weather. The world was beautiful again.
On my walk home through Schenley Park I found many small flocks of warblers foraging in the trees. Best of all, the golden-crowned and ruby-crowned kinglets were with them.
Our kinglets are Old-World Warblers similar to the goldcrest of Eurasia. Their genus name, Regulus, and their English name, kinglet, refer to the crown of golden or ruby-colored feathers they raise when aroused or annoyed.
Neither bird breeds in Pittsburgh so their arrival marks a seasonal change.
The golden-crowned kinglet doesn’t travel far. He breeds in the southern tier of Canada, in northern New England, in Appalachia and in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania. He spends the winter in the continental U.S., including Pittsburgh, so he’s here to stay for a while.
The ruby-crowned kinglet is a twice-a-year treat. He breeds in the Rocky Mountains and in Canada all the way north to the edge of the Arctic and spends the winter in the southern U.S.
His winter range curls up the East Coast enough to include southeastern Pennsylvania. But here he visits for only a short time where I greet him with joy in April and October.
Welcome back, Little King.
(photo of a ruby-crowned kinglet by Steve Gosser)
Sep 30 2011
According to migration statistics from Hawkcount.org, the bulk of broad-winged hawk migration passed through Pennsylvania in mid-September with one last pulse last Tuesday.
Most of them followed Kittatinny Ridge, the easternmost spine of the Appalachian Mountains where Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is located. Here are the three highest broad-winged counts at Hawk Mountain this month:
You might think this means that hawks travel in flocks but they don’t. Instead they watch each other for flight cues. If one hawk finds a thermal with good lift, others fly over and rise on it as well. Soon they form a “kettle” of hawks stirring round and round in the rising air. As each one reaches sufficient altitude it sets its wings and glides southward to find the next thermal.
After the broad-wings leave Pennsylvania they make their way to the Texas Gulf Coast and follow the eastern edge of the Gulf of Mexico on their way to their wintering grounds in South America. By the time they pass Veracruz, Mexico, all the broad-wings of North America are concentrated in a narrow corridor. Their numbers at Veracruz are astonishing, as shown in their three highest counts this month and in the video above.
I tried to imagine 136,000 hawks in my Pittsburgh neighborhood and my first thought was, “There isn’t enough food here for 136,000 hawks!” But there is — for a short time — in Veracruz.
Broad-winged hawks eat small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, large insects and songbirds. Right now they’re traveling with millions of dragonflies and songbirds who are also on migration.
That’s why they migrate in September. That’s why there’s a spectacle of broad-winged hawks.
(video from Veracruz Hawkwatch on YouTube)
Sep 25 2011
Every year at this time I blog about monarch butterfly migration. I hope you don’t tire of it. It’s just so amazing to me that this butterfly migrates as much as 2,500 miles to spend the winter in Mexico — and we can see it happening.
Years ago people suspected the butterflies were migrating but didn’t know where they went. After 40 years of tagging and tracking monarchs, Dr. Fred Urquhart found their wintering site in 1976 in the mountains of Mexico. At first the locations were kept secret because there are so few of them, but nowadays they are eco-tourist destinations where visitors can observe millions of monarchs in the Oyamel fir trees.
Right now the butterflies are on their way. Yesterday afternoon at the Waterfront Shopping Center I was loading my car when I saw a monarch fly by. I paused and looked up and counted 10 monarch butterflies flying southwest over the parking lot. The wind was calm, the air was warm and all of them were fluttering in the exact same direction, each bug on its own long journey. Wow!
Monarchs are on the move across the country. You can watch their progress on the Journey North website or in your own neighborhood. In southwestern Pennsylvania you can know a monarch butterfly is migrating by these three things:
It’s easy to see them. Keep looking up.
(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)
p.s. This monarch is male. You can tell because he has dots on his hind wings. The females don’t have them.
Sep 12 2011
Last weekend was a great time to find migrating birds in Pennsylvania.
Reports from across the state on the PABIRDS listserve told of hawks, shorebirds and warblers. Hawk Mountain reported 1,120 broad-winged hawks on September 10, there were American golden plovers and buff-breasted sandpipers in Mercer County, and many of us found mixed flocks of warblers at our local hotspots.
My favorite find was a Cape May warbler yesterday at Moraine State Park. The Sibley Guide says they’re “uncommon and irregular in mature coniferous forests” so we see them only on migration in our deciduous state.
All of this activity is due to what I call “pent up desire.” For two weeks rain plagued Pennsylvania so the birds waited north of here for the weather to break. Day after day their desire to fly south increased. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s birders were cooped up indoors wanting to go out. When the rain ended, we had a flood of birds and birders.
I wouldn’t wish two weeks of rain on anyone — except perhaps Texas where they really need it — but it sure makes for good birding.
(Steve Gosser photographed this Cape May warbler in Harrison Hills Park yesterday.)
