Rusties

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on February 17, 2010

What happened to all the rusties?  I’m speaking of rusty blackbirds (Euphagus carolensis).  While no one was looking over the past 40 years, the entire population declined 85%-99% throughout North America.  That’s a catastrophic collapse.

Stop the NRA’s assault on condors

By Chris Clarke | Posted on November 10, 2009

Photo by Just Chaos

The National Rifle Association is gunning for America’s largest and most endangered bird—the condor.

Calling us “extremists” for trying to stop the poisoning of condors by lead bullets — inside a federal national monument, no less — the NRA is pitting its multimillion-dollar legal team against our lawyers in a showdown that will determine whether condors survive or disappear forever.

End of the Cerulean Warbler

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on September 10, 2009

The mountains are clearcut, then leveled, their tops removed, their innards dumped down into the valleys below, stopping up, burying the streams, choking off the life blood of the land. They are flattened, scraped away, every sign of life destroyed, turned to moonscape. The rich loam, tens of thousands of years in the making, is blown away, and with it the roots and seeds—the future—of every plant in the ecosystem.

Biodiversions: Great Horned Owl

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on August 26, 2009

I first heard the strange noises in late June: whistling squawks that sounded like sea gulls five hundred miles off course.  The calls began at sundown every evening and continued throughout the night.  I couldn’t imagine what besides an owl would make so much noise after dark.  But owls hoot.  Right?  Couldn’t possibly be owls, I thought.

Great Horned Owl Near Burns, Oregon (2006).  Photo: Jerry Gaffke

Funny how assumptions muddle perceptions.

Blog for Vultures Sept. 4

By Chris Clarke | Posted on August 7, 2009

[From our friends at International Vulture Awareness Day:]

International Vulture Awareness Day 2009 is hosting a blog festival on September 5. IVAD09 invites you to blog about vultures. Write, film, draw or photograph Old or New World vultures and share your post with the world.

Through the Lens - The Rookery - Part 3

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on July 15, 2009

Humans seem inclined to lens the world through vision focused on self.  Thus becomes the agony of aloneness, separation from the world that nurtures us despite our intent to destroy it and all it births.  Too long have people scampered about in hurried endeavors to own, to acquire, to master.  And in response to our anthropocentric ways, too many lives have been brushed from the face of the planet that will never again be seen.

Biodiversions: Chipping Sparrow

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on July 8, 2009

A number of small, brown songbirds have enlivened my spring and early summer on a daily basis.  One is the chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina).  It’s a fairly common bird throughout North America.  A pair nested in a ponderosa pine by my garden gate.  I passed them several times a day and grew used to their routines of nest-building, brooding, and feeding.  Now the young have fledged, and I miss them.

Chipping sparrow on deer fence.  Flora, Oregon

The Michael Jackson Bird

By Biodiversivist | Posted on June 30, 2009

Got a laugh when I saw this video over on Grist tonight. It was made in 2006 but is starting to draw a lot of hits lately. Just thought I’d share it.

Through the Lens - The Rookery - Part 2

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on June 22, 2009

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility. (Rachel Carson)

A torrid sun simmers from a cloudless sky.  Moist air rests on the skin like wet cotton.  Where the shade of trees gives respite from the heat, it likewise proffers habitat for a handful of mosquitoes looking to feast on unsuspecting people.

Hover flies dance in dappled sunlight filtering through the treetops.  Ants march one by one.  A robin flits to the ground to feed its squawking child as a squirrel nibbles on a newfound treat.  From somewhere deep within the motte a blue jay screeches.

A cacophony of alien voices fills the area, a menagerie of languages reminding me of the cantina scene in “Star Wars.”  Birds as large as space ships and as small as stones seem anchored to the ground by eerie shadows dragged beneath gossamer wings.

All the while, the sound of automobiles rumbles from every direction…

The Mysterious Minds of Urban-Adapted Birds

By pinguinus | Posted on May 20, 2009

A University of Florida study has demonstrated that Northern Mockingbirds can distinguish individual humans and respond to them based on whether they’ve previously been threatened by that specific human.

Biodiversions: Pygmy Nuthatch

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on May 19, 2009

I’ve been planting fruit trees, digging up sod, preparing vegetable beds, and planting seeds on our property in northeastern Oregon.  But especially on hot days, it’s tempting to wile away the hours in the shade of some old apple trees downhill from our yurt and watch the birds - yellow-bellied sapsuckers, bluebirds, sparrows, wrens.  Each of the ten or so trees has at least one cavity that contains an active nest.  I’m especially intrigued by the pygmy nuthatches (Sitta pygmaea).

Pygmy nuthatch in old apple tree near Flora, Oregon

Species of the Week - Elegant Crested Tinamou

By Rachel Shaw | Posted on May 13, 2009

The elegant crested tinamou is a handsome representative of a family of partridge-like birds related to moas, kiwis, and emus.

Source: Photographer Vince Smith

Through the Lens - The Rookery - Part 1

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on May 12, 2009

Farms and ranches. Urban and suburban sprawl. Highways and byways. Throughout the “civilized” world, these anthropogenic artifacts have gone to great lengths in reducing the availability of natural habitat for plants and animals. Traveling some distance from humanity seems a prerequisite just to see nature doing its thing in what little space we’ve left for it. This explains why most people in developed areas rarely see anything more than a handful of bird species, the occasional rat or mouse or ant or wasp, and almost no flora save that planted in manicured lawns and decorative gardens.

Conversely, nature has an interesting way of taking advantage of what few opportunities we provide it. These oft overlooked silos of life accommodate surprising diversity where it’s least expected. And that creates an opening for discovery, a chance a lot of people won’t otherwise have. Therein lies the seed of appreciation that can make a city dweller comprehend the beauty beyond—and the need to protect it.

Biodiversions: White-Rumped Vulture

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on May 5, 2009

This is first of an ongoing series: Biodiversions.

About a month ago, I wrote a post on California condors, birds that had been haunting my imagination for some time. While browsing information for that post, I learned about the plight of carrion-eaters once common in the plains of Nepal, Pakistan, and India.

Biodiversions Coming Soon

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on May 5, 2009

Thanks to all who left comments on my earlier post to help me decide on a new name for my species of the week postings on The Clade.  I liked so many of the suggestions that I had to toss them back and forth for a few days.  I finally settled on Rachel Shaw’s idea: Biodiversions.

California Windmill Melts Down

By Chris Clarke | Posted on May 3, 2009

Okay, not really. As long as no one gets hurt fixing the thing, this catastrophic failure of one of the wind turbines at the Tehachapi Pass wind generation field is a moderately amusing reminder — though certainly frustrating to those stuck in the traffic jam — of the far smaller magnitude of risk sustainable renewables pose compared to their combustion- and fission-based brethren.

Through the Lens - Whistling wings

By Jason M Hogle | Posted on May 3, 2009

Amongst the cypress and pecan, hidden between the oak and sweet gum, shadowed by the cottonwood and elm, there stands a place known only to me.  Within a refuge shared with none save the creatures of the forest and lake, the rightful inhabitants who bestow upon me special consideration, I take leave of the world as I enter this realm both magical and removed.  Stepping betwixt two trees appears a mundane event, but nothing could be further from the truth.  A world lies just beyond the one we know, a landscape shrouded by limbs both ancient and new that resists the commotion of progress.  And therein I find escape.

Questions About Birds

By Dave Bonta | Posted on May 1, 2009

What made the stork ancestor of New World vultures forsake its obstretrics practice for the morgue?

Where does the wood thrush store its silver bells when it flies south for the winter?

Did the old trout learn how to lurk from studying ospreys?

Is it the excess of sky following a clearcut that gives cerulean warblers the blues?