Archer visits briefly

Blackwater Osprey Chick. What a gorgeous bird.

[wnyfalconfan (Joyce):]

wnyfalconfan (Joyce): My heart thumped a beat thinkin B was going to take off. REAL EXCITING watching her sleep, preen, & on occasion stretch. Camera gettin heavy

Link:
http://twitter.com/wnyfalconfan/statuses/21266832550

LOL..Beauty almost moved! It's that kind of laid back, lazy day...even for Falcons.

[Cape May]

Piping plovers, horseshoe crabs, least terns, and red knots are among the rarities awaiting New Jersey ecotourists.

They might not know it, but New Jersey Shore-goers are naturalists at heart. To many, the call of the laughing gull is as familiar as the refrain of a Wildwood tram car. And what Shore house is complete without a jar of shells collected during early-morning walks? But what does the average beachcomber know about the creatures that inhabit these shells, or where gulls spend their winters?

Jersey Shore ecotourism can provide answers to these questions and more. Though most of the state’s beaches are heavily developed, large areas along the coast are protected and dedicated to the preservation of wildlife and habitats. From state parks to national refuges and recreation areas, the Shore is replete with opportunities for birding, hiking, fishing, kayaking, and discovering New Jersey’s natural world.

BIRDERS’ PARADISE
Birding aficionados flock from all over the country to watch hundreds of millions of birds pass through Cape May on their migrations. It’s one of the top three sites for birding in North America, says Pete Dunne, director of Cape May Bird Observatory, which is managed by the state Audubon Society.

Novice birders may feel overwhelmed by the variety of avian life at the Shore, but Audubon Society centers offer frequent tours that tell rookies exactly what they’re looking at. If you are lucky, you may catch a glimpse of the piping plover, a species that is endangered in New Jersey and nationally threatened. The birds come to the state to nest at the edge of the dunes.

“You can walk right by them and have no idea that they’re there,� says Scott Barnes, senior naturalist at the Sandy Hook Bird Observatory, which is also run by the state Audubon Society. The state has about 120 nesting pairs of plovers, and their chicks appear between July and August. By Labor Day, most have migrated with their parents back to Florida’s Gulf Coast. Some beaches even turn away human visitors to ensure the birds’ success, including Two-Mile Beach in Cape May, which is closed between April and September. However, binoculars are welcome at scattered observation platforms.

Shoregoers can also observe the least tern, which is on the national endangered list, and, the black skimmer, which is considered endangered in New Jersey, says Steve Atzert, refuge manager at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville. The refuge preserves more than 47,000 acres of coastal habitat for birds and has nesting platforms for ospreys. It’s even possible to catch a glimpse of bald eagles. An eight-mile drive starting in Oceanville winds through the wetlands, giving visitors ample opportunity for bird spotting and nature photography.

Birds are not the only migrating species observable at New Jersey’s beaches. Monarch butterflies can put on stunning displays. In early October, after the first cold front signals the start of migration, certain trees “just bloom orange in the morning,� says Dunne.

The Cape May Bird Observatory offers birding tours almost every summer day. They also have beginner birding classes. Sandy Hook Bird Observatory likewise has guided walks and workshops for beginning birders at Sandy Hook and other locations.

HABITAT EXPLORATION
New Jersey’s barrier islands form a variety of habitats that are home to fish, crustaceans, mollusks, reptiles, and other creatures. Several nature centers welcome visitors and will help you in all sorts of ways—like describing the difference between a blue crab and a fiddler crab. Among them is the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor. Its daily creature feature exposes ecotourists to all kinds of critters, plucked from the local habitat.

“We talk about what else you can find at the beach—what makes that hole in the sand, where does the shell come from,� says Phil Broder, education director for the Institute. “Most people don’t have any idea about what lives here.�

That includes the diamondback terrapin, which often falls victim to automobile traffic as it comes up on shore to lay eggs in early summer. There’s also the horseshoe crab, which experienced a population decline and is under a statewide harvesting moratorium. Broder tells visitors about its special relationship with the red knot, a bird that migrates about 9,300 miles from the southernmost tip of South America to breed in the Arctic. It stops along the Delaware Bay to refuel before making the final leg of its journey north.
Visitors can participate in a horseshoe-crab census on the evenings of June 24 through 28, around the time of the full moon, when the crabs come up on the shore to lay their eggs, Broder says.

The Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve in Tuckerton also offers a creature feature every Tuesday morning from June 29 through August 3, says education coordinator Melanie Reding. The reserve, a partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Rutgers University Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, conducts hikes and recruits volunteer assistants.
The Nature Center of Cape May focuses on wetland habitats, too, and has several aquariums in which visitors can view local marine and estuarine life. It’s also run by the state Audubon Society and boasts a three-story observation tower that looks over the entire Cape May Harbor. The center has plenty of exhibits and programs for children.

But it’s not all about the wetlands. There are pristine examples of coastal and uplands habitats, such as those at Island Beach State Park. Some say the barrier island is so well preserved that it doesn’t look much different from when Henry Hudson first saw it in 1609. The ten-mile stretch of beach has eight trails, as well as daily educational programs during the summer at its nature center.

Some of the park’s most famous inhabitants are red foxes, which live among the brush and feast on everything from mollusks to mice and even some shore plants. They try to remain out of the view of human visitors, so they’ll likely be hiding during this year’s Barnegat Bay Festival on June 6. The annual gathering is run by the Barnegat Bay National Estuary Program and includes scavenger hunts, seedling planting, pontoon boat tours, and hands-on demonstrations.

For fantastic examples of a maritime forest and coastal scrub-shrub habitat, naturalist Scott Barnes recommends taking the Old Dune Trail and its continuation, the South Beach Dune Trail, in Sandy Hook. The trails are home to a forest of American holly trees, “which are native and very slow-growing—about one inch in diameter every ten to twelve years,� Barnes says. National Park Service staff occasionally run guided tours of the forest, but Barnes warns that mosquitoes can be pesky in summer. Better to take the trail in spring or fall.

ON THE WATER
Dolphins have made waves in New Jersey over the last couple of years, uncharacteristically appearing in rivers like the Navesink and Hackensack. So it’s no surprise that they can easily be seen during a trip to the beach. Pete Dunne says Cape May is one of their prime breeding grounds. His advice: see them up close on a whale-watch cruise. There are quite a few to choose from, including those at the Cape May Whale Watch & Research Center, the Cape May Whale Watcher, and Atlantic City Cruises.

“Whales are far less common,� Dunne says, but seeing a dolphin is almost a guarantee in the summer months.

Harbor seals are more frequent visitors than whales, although they come south to New Jersey in winter in search of fish-bearing waters. The Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine often rehabilitates those that have been hit by propellers or incurred some other misfortune on their journey. The center’s intensive-care unit isn’t open to the public, but it has a museum—the Sea Life Educational Center—and an observation tank stocked with creatures from weekly seining trips that visitors can take part in during the summer.

The Alliance for a Living Ocean in Ship Bottom also runs seining trips on summer Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning July 6 at Bayview Park in Brant Beach. The organization’s Kellie Karolkiewicz says weekly guided nature walks and kayak ecotours of Barnegat Bay are held every Wednesday starting July 7.
To really stretch your sea legs, learn the basics of sailing on board the A. J. Meerwald, a restored 1928 tall ship that docks in Cape May for the month of August. Daily two-and-a-half-hour public sails teach about local marine habitats and environmental issues, says Janis Traas, outreach program coordinator of Bayshore Discovery Project, which operates the tour. During marine trawl sails, “we see what kind of creatures we can catch and identify,� Traas says, and Thursday afternoon sails feature special guest speakers. Day camps on Wednesdays for kids ages 10 to 16 discuss environmental issues while also teaching trawling and water sampling.

For more sea time, check out the Salt Marsh Safari aboard the Skimmer with Captain Ginny Powell. Passengers on the 40-foot pontoon boat, docked at Dolphin Cove Marina in Cape May, learn about the local salt-marsh ecology, bird watching, and natural history. An on-board touch tank acquaints visitors with the marine life of the Cape May wetlands. “They don’t realize it’s a nursery for the ocean,� Powell says. Reservations for the two-hour cruises are suggested.

Nearly every state park or national area is kayak-friendly, and new paddlers can hop on a guided tour at several locations. At Island Beach State Park, guided kayak tours are offered through Barnegat Bay and the nearby Sedge Islands, and the park offers limited kayak bird-watching tours. Aqua Trails, a company near the Nature Center of Cape May, rents kayaks and gives regular tours. Experts can bring their own boats and launch at any park or refuge.

For those who want to go beneath the surface, the state’s artificial reefs and natural shipwrecks are a haven for divers. If you’re scuba certified, hop a charter boat—there are several along the coast—to get close to some of the Atlantic’s most common inhabitants: jellyfish, flounder, tautog, bluefish, sea bass, skate, and sea robins. Artificial reefs and shipwrecks are a boon to anglers as well. Like dive boats, fishing charters are widespread.

While you’re on board, keep an eye out for leatherbacks and green sea turtles, who sometimes ride the warm Gulf Stream waters northward. At 6 feet long, you might mistake the carapace of a surfacing turtle for a whale. If it hangs around to observe you, don’t worry. Like you, it’s just taking in the scenery. For resources, see njmonthly.com/ecotours.

YARAK has over 1,000 posts. 

This week marks the 2nd anniversary of the removal of the nest box from the Kodak tower. I hadn't given it much thought until the Prayer of Adoration was read during this morning's church service. Here is an excerpt:

Lord God, we are part of the creation of You, the ultimate Creator. Your power is far beyond anything we could ever comprehend. With a Word, you spoke constellations, solar systems, falcons, and lilies into being...

Needless to say, it got my attention.

God is like that and those words should remind us all to remember that He is in charge, and what we do should honor Him. 

"One Nation under God" Thanks Shaky, that was beautiful. 2 years went fast and what a sad time it was.

See...all they need is  . Thanks jeanne, a very touching story.

Oh so sad to see that but all is well now. Thanks Kris.

 All 3 Young Seen..Doing Great
August 13, 2010 - Toronto - Uptown Yonge and Eglinton
Frank Butson Reports:

Lyn Reports:

August 13, Friday Yonge and Eglinton
Report for today primarily and for odd days over the past week working backwards.
I heard calling at around 6:30pm and went out to have a look. Searched the Heart and Stroke building found a *spot* at the top of the Northwest corner of the building and at the end of my search found a juvenile female sitting on one of the *walls* between the windows. She was responsible for the noise! So I came back inside to get my camera and the peregrine, low down, flew. However, I saw two, one of which was squawking, flying from north to south over the northeast corner of the H&S building! There was a size difference between the two! Then my little peregrine from the northwest corner flew and joined the others out of my sight. This was a larger bird. A short time later I saw two peregrines over the H&S building fluttering madly and again they disappeared from view. A minute later a small peregrine flew from somewhere southwest of the Riocan building, over the H&S at speed and was then followed by one squawking youngster which I believe to be a female. I am just a wee bit unsure whether I saw four peregrines in total or only three! I definitely saw two juvenile females - the smaller bird is the one in question - it flew like dad on a mission from the southwest but the earlier sighting of the smaller bird, when it disappeared from view on the H&S building, suggested the young male.
 
On Wednesday this week in the early afternoon I heard the peregrines calling for quite some time but did not investigate.
 
On Tuesday this week I was awoken to a real din at 6:00 AM!!!!! Wayyyyyyyyyy too early for me to get out of bed and have a look to see what was happening. I turned over and went back to sleep!
 
On Sunday I heard calling and went out to investigate. I saw one of the young females flying to and over the southwest corner of the H&S building. She seemed to be trying to entice someone off the corner and after her third or fourth try she was successful. First one youngster flew and then another joined them. The three young birds all flew together, in close proximity, and went over the apartment building on Orchardview, the Library building and continued north and then eventually northwest and out of sight.
 
They are all flying quite strongly, at times quite high and seem to have little problems landing anywhere, for example those thin walls which jut out between the windows!
 
Lyn

Absolutely, Annette! DO NOT OPEN THAT!!! Consign it to the Trash with all haste! It came in as Junk, right? Even things that look bona-fide are just plain rubbish. I think I have received this message recently too. And we keep getting some purportedly from our phone company - NOT! - telling us to update our data... I think I am right in saying that the true bank, phone company etc. would never send such an email. I am not savvy about much when it comes to the web, but I have learned to recognise this type of thing. So - better safe than sorry, Girlfriend! Dump it!!

(Also... check the English: Webmail is sometimes "webmail" and sometimes "Webmail". Also, it says "...your webmail will be disable" instead of "disabled". And "click the below link" - not "the link below". Dubious use of the language is always a giveaway!)

Very good Bobbie, well said. 

[(that's a new one to me)]

Of all the birds that fly and forage and creep and pounce and stoop from great height for a living, and those that peck and stab and crack and sip, of all of these birds, Phalaropes are just plain different. They don’t fit our fond stereotypes of what birds are. How they feed, or mate, or raise their young.

Phalaropes defy categorization, and give rise to contradictory phrases such as pelagic shorebirds. Shorebirds of the open ocean. Now does that sound plausible?

Phalaropes practice a rare form of breeding known as sequential polyandry. Male Phalaropes are small gray-on-white birds. It is the female Phalaropes that are big and strong and brightly colored with rich red and russet markings.
 On the breeding grounds, females fight each other while the males are busy building nests. The females choose mates, lay clutches of eggs, and as soon as those eggs hatch, they leave the family with father and move on to the next male to start the process again.

The word Phalarope is Greek for coot-footed, and theses birds do have partially webbed or flanged feet.

There are only three species of Phalaropes in the entire world. Two of these, the Red Phalarope and the Red-necked Phalarope truly fit the description of pelagic shorebirds. These birds are certainly recognizable as shorebirds, perhaps medium-sized sandpipers with short bills.

They are birds of brief Arctic summers that spend long winters floating on the great world ocean. For as much as 11 months out of 12, they bob on water far from land.

I’ve often encountered these birds on whale-watching trips looking fragile and clumsy in choppy seas like small scraps of flotsam awash in the realm of giants. This association with whales is so strong that many maritime communities call the Red Phalarope the Whale Bird.

There are a scant few records of both of these pelagic species on the Mississippi Coast, and there are persistent rumors of vast rafts of these Phalaropes floating out in the Gulf.

The third species is the Wilson’s Phalarope, named for the great ornithologist, Alexander Wilson. And this is the species that we can expect to find migrating through South Mississippi, starting right about now in early August.

Wilson’s are the largest of the Phalaropes, weighing in at a whopping two ounces. If the pelagic Phalaropes are birds apart, the Wilson’s is yet a differ critter. It is a graceful bird that carries a very long bill that narrows into a sharp point.

The Wilson’s only nest in the wetlands of the North American plains. They seem to prefer grassy edges of lakes for nesting. And during migration they flock to rich salt lakes like California’s Mono Lake where as many as 125,000 Wilson’s stuff themselves on the bounty of alkali flies and brine shrimp in the company of smaller numbers of pelagic Phalaropes.

But the Wilson’s do not follow their pelagic cousins out to sea for the winter. Instead they fly as far south as Argentina searching for more briny bodies of water.

But the one thing that sets all Phalaropes apart from other birds is the fact that they spin. They are the whirling dervishes of the avian world, spinning like waterborne tops to make their meat. And I’m not talking about just turning around while they feed. A female Wilson’s Phalarope spins at sixty revolutions per minute, and with every turn she stabs at the water, picking tiny tidbits churned up by her coot feet.

It’s a show well worth the price of admission, which is often a hot August hike into a still lake or sewage lagoon. But to see a western brine lake full of spinning Phalaropes can leave a birder in jaw-dropping wonder. A dangerous situation in a swam of alkali flies!

Phalaropes.. (that's a new one to me)

[Saskatchewan]

Saskatchewan

REGINA — Provincial environment officials suspect an outbreak of Newcastle disease is to blame for the deaths of hundreds of double-crested cormorants and gulls in the Meadow Lake Provincial Park and Jackfish Lake areas.

The Ministry of Environment said Friday that about 1,000 of the birds have been found dead and many more are sick.

"Just recently the necropsies were done and they found lesions that were consistent with Newcastle disease but right now we're still awaiting the tests that would confirm the presence of the Newcastle Disease Virus," said Yeen Ten Hwang, chief ecologist for the Ministry of Environment's fish and wildlife branch.

"The 1,000 birds have to be put into context of the actual population size. So we have a pretty healthy, an increasing, population of cormorants nesting in the area and we are looking at perhaps 1,000 out of tens of thousands of birds."

She said Newcastle disease has been documented in the Canadian prairies since the 1990s, so the discovery isn't a surprise. But the public is being alerted since the occurrence is in area with lots of public access.

"We want to make sure that people know about the disease outbreak as well as to remind them not to go and handle any dead birds. Although it does not have any health risks we still want to prevent people from contaminating themselves and the potentially bringing the virus to other areas of the province," she said.

In rare cases, the ministry said Newcastle disease has been known to cause conjunctivitis, or mild eye irritation, in people who have come into contact with many infected birds.

The strain of Newcastle disease is believed to be the kind that naturally circulates in wild cormorants, and not the virus strain that has caused problems for poultry farms in some countries, she said.

The ministry said affected birds show signs of partial paralysis of the wings and legs.

"Affected birds cannot fly or dive and some limp or fall over. Sick birds are often weak and unable to avoid approaching humans," the government said in a news release, which reminds people who come across sick or dead cormorants and gulls to report the finding to the nearest Ministry of Environment office.

It's suggested that anyone who has handled a sick or dead bird or visited a nesting colony in the affected areas should wash their hands and clothes immediately and disinfect any shoes and equipment with a five per cent bleach solution.

Today I got this message

"Due to the ongoing fund and unprotected security this is to inform you  that you
have exceeded your webmail quota limit of 325MB and you need to increase your
Webmail quota limit because in less than 48 hours your webmail will be  
disable.
Increase your email quota limit and continue to use your webmail account.

   To increase your webmail quota limit to 2.2GB, click the below link:

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Is this a fake?  ???

I believe it is spam Annette...Spikeflow flowlist is a lottery thing in the UK. Don't click on it.

Main Cam Wandering

We're doing a little experiment to see when the Main Cam freezes. It's hard to tell when pointed at an empty nest box, but it's easy to spot when pointed at a bridge with moving traffic.

Smart move, thought you were waiting for Callidora to roll in.

  I am so sorry to have not replied sooner to all your well wishes!  I have had a busy week!  It was a really good birthday, got in some pool time, and had dinner at Red Lobster and home to Turtle Cheesecake!    Won't be getting on the scales for a while!
Thank you again for the sweet wishes.

Never sorry, as long as you had a good time.

... Was that cheesecake made of real turtles??? 

Of course silly!