2 babies in Montreal this am. Heart pounding 

On a cool, sunny April morning, three robins hopped sprightly in the dewy grass, not far from the sidelines of a noisy soccer field where two youth teams were competing.

The birds all hopped like robins. They chirped like robins. They all had rusty breasts and their mannerisms were all robin-esque but one of them stood out against the bright green background.

Where two of the birds had the familiar slate brown feathers on head, back and tail, the third stood out like a phantom in silver-white shroud.

This robin was not albino -- its eye was dark, not pink, and its legs were normally colored. What could it be?

Abnormal paleness in birds' plumage is not uncommon, said Chuck Hagner, editor of "Birder's World" magazine. The term for this bird's plumage is leucism.

"We get reports of plumage abnormalities all the time, and they come from all over the place," Hagner said.

People don't know what to call these abnormally-colored birds, and the terms "partial albinism" or "imperfect albinism" have cropped up. But that term is inaccurate, according to Hagner.

"When you get to these birds that aren't entirely white and don't have a pink eye, you're into this in-between area, and people's vocabulary peters out," Hagner said.

Leucistic birds retain their characteristic pattern but appear slightly or extremely washed out, Hagner said, referring to information he found in "The Birdwatcher's Companion" by Christopher Leahy. These birds are abnormally

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pale in plumage resulting from a dilution of normal pigment.

Leucistic animals possess the pigment melanin -- the pigment that is absent in albinos -- so they retain dark eyes and some other normal body colors, according to Leahy, and may in some cases be related to an abnormal diet.

The Cornell Lab or Ornithology, Ithaca, N.Y., explains the difference in birds even further by quoting C.J.O. Harrison (1963): ... "leucistic individuals have melanin in the body, giving dark eyes and colored soft parts, but the melanin does not enter the feather structure ... ; albinistic individuals lack melanin in the body as well as the plumage."

This leucistic robin was noticed last month by Mark and Clara Schroeder, Shippensburg, on one of their daily walks in Southampton Township (Cumberland County) Municipal Park. Their grown daughter, Amanda, walking that day with her parents, saw it first and asked them, "What's that bird?"

The Schroeders recognized the familiar robin habits and saw that it was working the turf with other robins. Mark Schroeder, using the strongest telephoto lens he had, took several photographs of the bird in the grass and in branches of nearby trees.

Both retired educators -- he from Shippensburg University, she from Chambersburg Area School District -- the couple could make regular note of the bird's habits. Each day they saw it in the same general area of the park. It was seen carrying nesting material as it flew among leafing twigs and would rest particularly in the crook of one branch. There was no hiding its flashing white plumage as it darted in and out of the woods.

"There is a cost," said Hagner. "Those kinds of birds will stand out visually to predators, and they have a harder life for that reason. "A bird that relies on its plumage to hide or blend in (will) be seen by hawks and squirrels that like to raid nests."

That question answered, another remained: Was it a male or female?

Females are told from males by "that dark black cap that males wear," Hagner said. Because male robins occasionally help the females build nests, it could be either.

The Schroeders have not seen the robin since late April. They can only hope it's a female, sitting on her nest tucked away in the woods.

Note: A leucistic robin has been reported in the Fayetteville area as well.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Biloxi
Crews were expected to spend much of the weekend assembling a mile-long pipe system leading to an underwater containment dome that by Monday could start catching the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico in a swirl of contamination.

The metal containment device, which resembles a 4-story, boxy version of the "Wizard of Oz" Tin Man, was being lowered gently Friday into position over the main leak feeding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Placing the dome is the first step in a laborious process that could easily go awry. "This is going to take a few days … and it may or may not work," said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry.


If it does work, the dome won't shut down the fountain of crude spurting from a broken pipe on the muddy gulf floor. "This is not the final solution," Landry said. But it could capture most of the oil and funnel it 5,000 feet upward to a waiting ship.

While BP moves ahead with the containment strategy, the company is also plotting how to plug the blown-out wellhead that has spewed an estimated 3 million gallons of oil since a deadly April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig.

"We're going to continue to look for every option we can find," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said.

The company has flown in 20 experts from around the world and is even reviewing suggestions from a public call-in line.

Suttles said BP has discarded some ideas for stopping the oil gusher and is now evaluating two other options. One would involve installing a new blowout preventer device over the one that failed.

The other strategy would be as simple as stuffing the broken preventer with rubber cuttings, rather like stopping up a toilet.

A company spokesman declined to comment Friday night on an Associated Press report that said rig workers have told BP investigators that the blowout was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column.

According to the AP, company interviews with the rig crew indicate that as workers released pressure from the drilling column and introduced heat to set the cement seal around the wellhead, a chemical reaction created a gas bubble and the cement around the pipe destabilized.

Industry experts have said that natural gas mixed with oil may have leaked up the long drilling pipe, expanding as it rose and then exploding with a spark at the surface.

Good weather in recent days has allowed cleanup teams to continue to skim and burn oil on the water's surface. "We are very thankful for the weather," Landry said. Crews have conducted at least four separate burns, sending billowing black clouds of smoke toward the gulf sky and consuming more than 7,000 barrels of oil. Planes dropped more dispersants to break up floating oil.

With the amoeba-like oil slick hovering just off the Louisiana coast and washing up on some barrier islands, Louisiana politicians have complained that not enough booms have been laid to protect their shores. BP officials said more than 150 miles of booms have been deployed where oil is most likely to wash ashore.

"Everyone would like to be able to boom everything. That's not possible," Suttles said.

In other developments, a spokesman for the U.S. Minerals Management Service said 30 deep-water rigs in the gulf have been inspected since the Horizon explosion and the agency has found no cause for concern.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration enlarged the boundaries of its no-fishing zone in federal waters to reflect the growing spill and extended the restrictions to May 17. But the agency said the vast majority of gulf waters remain unaffected by the disaster.

The slick, at times eerily beautiful as it creeps across the gulf in a shifting pattern of mustard and rust, moved west Friday and continued to threaten the shores of the Mississippi Delta, Breton Sound and Chandeleur Sound, according to NOAA.

Three teams were sent to inspect the Chandeleur Islands, where a sheen of oil has washed up, potentially contaminating parts of the second-oldest wildlife refuge in the national system.

"It's breaking my heart, and the smell of this water is making me nauseous," said Linda St. Martin, a Sierra Club policy consultant, as she bobbed in a boat near the barrier chain, a nesting spot for thousands of brown pelicans.

Oil first made landfall on the crescent-shaped chain Wednesday. By Friday morning, the effects were evident in lapping oil and a distinct lack of birds, said Capt. Mark Stebly, a fishing guide who has lived on one of the islands for 25 years.

The refuge is a breeding ground for thousands of birds, including brown pelicans. Hundreds of frigate birds — large dark seabirds with the longest wingspan, in proportion to their weight, of all birds — roost in the mangroves .

"It's a terrible, disgusting reddish-brown scum floating around my boat," Stebly said in a telephone interview. "It's gathering in the shallows where horseshoe crabs are breeding."

"Almost all the birds got the hell out of there; the only birds left on the island have nests," he said. "It's like a damn Twilight Zone scene."

[Media helicopters force Gulf birds to abandon nests]

Media helicopters force Gulf birds to abandon nests

Birds in the Gulf of Mexico have a new enemy: the press. Media aircraft have been conducting illegal flights and disturbing birds over Breton National Wildlife Refuge, an Important Bird Area off the east coast of Louisiana where oil from the leaking BP wellhead has been washing ashore.
 
“We’ve done all this work to try and protect those islands with booms,� said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Chuck Underwood. “But in the end, folks flying in low and landing just to get their photographs has been disturbing the birds. In some cases, there has even been nest abandonment.�
 
Tens of thousands of birds are presently nesting and foraging on the sandy strips and marshy spits in Breton National Wildlife Refuge, making this an especially devastating time for an oil spill. Michael Seymour, an ornithologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries flew on a sanctioned flight over the refuge Thursday and noticed black skimmers, laughing gulls, sandwich terns and about a dozen brown pelicans, loafing in the sand, just paces from a slick of oil.

Brown pelicans, large graceful birds that can live for 40 years, were nearly driven extinct by the pesticide DDT in the 1960s. Just last year they were removed from the endangered species list. On Breton Island, there are presently more than 2,500 nesting brown pelicans. And if you have seen photos of them over the past few days, chances are the images were taken illegally, and put the birds in jeopardy.
 
Federal regulation prohibits “the unauthorized operation of aircraft...at altitudes resulting in harassment of wildlife, or the unauthorized landing or take-off on a national wildlife refuge.� On Friday, the refuge was closed because oil was found to be washing ashore, creating a health hazard for both animals and people. “Combine the health and human safety issues with the helicopters coming in and we have a serious problem,� said Underwood.
 
“We know it’s a great story,� added Underwood, specifically addressing journalists, “but back off a little bit here.�

Media helicopters are disturbing brown pelicans in the Gulf.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — He had the misfortune of being the first seabird found coated in toxic oil from the huge Gulf of Mexico spill, yet rescuers nicknamed him "Lucky."

On Monday, the male Northern Gannet will live up to his nickname, when wildlife officials who rehabilitated him release the young bird, along with a rescued brown pelican which had also been coated in a black sheen, back into the wild -- and out of reach of the unfolding disaster.

The gannet, a long-beaked bird known to dive from high altitude into the sea to catch its prey, was found in the gulf April 27 near the site where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank after a huge explosion and fire set off one of the worst oil spills in US history.

Lucky was about 80 percent covered in oil, giving an orange appearance to the normally white bird with a yellow crest. Experts at the Bird Rehabilitation Facility at Ft. Jackson, Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, gave him their full attention.

"He was thin and dehydrated, so wildlife veterinarian Dr. Erica Miller gave him intravenous fluids several times, as well as oral fluids and Pepto-Bismol for oil he may have ingested," officials coordinating the oil spill response said in a statement.

The pelican received similar treatment after he was found May 3 on Stone Island, a barrier island just off the Louisiana coast. After being shuttled to the Ft. Jackson facility by helicopter, he was treated with IV fluids, hand-fed fish, and scrubbed of the sheen covering his body, which allowed his natural water-proofing to return.

He was released to an outside pool where he has been gaining weight, the officials said in a statement.

With BP struggling to get the huge spill under control, leaving hundreds of species of animals threatened, the announcement of the bird releases came as one of the few pieces of good news in an environmental tragedy growing steadily worse, with an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude spewing into the gulf each day.

The brown pelicans are of particular concern because they were just removed from the endangered species list last year.

The two birds will be released Monday in Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, site of the Indian River Lagoon which is described as the most biologically diverse estuary in the United States.

Beauty out at 5:23
Archer in

[The ornithological society is working on a project to install a second webcam at Mispillion Harbor to watch the migration of red knots and other shorebirds, Stewart said. The plan is to have it up and running for next year's migration in May.]

The saga of Wilmington's peregrine falcon pair may be heading to a sad ending.

The male bird -- a six year veteran of the nest -- is missing.

And there is no sign that the four, molted brown eggs are ready to hatch, said Craig Koppie, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service endangered species/raptor biologist.

"I'm almost thinking these aren't going to work out this year," he said. "Unless it happens [by today], I don't give it much hope."

The mother bird still is coming and going from the nest but between hunting and eating, tending to the eggs and warding off any predators, she is so busy the eggs may not have had enough care, he said.

All this in a year when people in Delaware and throughout the world had a chance to watch the birds -- and the progress of the eggs -- thanks to a webcam installed by the Delmarva Ornithological Society with help from DuPont's Clear into the Future program, state and federal officials.

Even without baby chicks, the project has been an amazing success, said William Stewart, the ornithological society's conservation chair.

"It's been fabulous because of the huge audience that has watched and learned so much about the falcons," he said.

Peregrine falcons are one of the fastest birds in the world. The population plummeted from 1950 to 1970 because of exposure to the pesticide DDT. They were delisted as endangered species in 1999 and have been making a comeback along the East Coast, where they were nearly extirpated.

In Delaware, there are other nesting pairs -- including one couple under the Reedy Point Bridge, Stewart said.

But the most noticeable pair are in downtown Wilmington.

The plan is to go live again next January and capture the Wilmington falcons, up close and live, a second year.

The ornithological society is working on a project to install a second webcam at Mispillion Harbor to watch the migration of red knots and other shorebirds, Stewart said. The plan is to have it up and running for next year's migration in May.  For Mirta 

Oh well...just another bad news day for me! 

Happy Mom's Day to Rhea Mae!  Here's a picture that Linda Woods sent to me today of Rhea Mae feeding her 3 young eyases.  Such a beautiful picture Linda.  Thanks for sharing with us.   

She's so good that Rhea Mae. Great Mother's Day Pic. Thanks Carol & Linda. 

Paul, how far is local? Is it close enough for some frequent visits and more pics? Thanks.

I have a small flock that winters in my yard. I love to hear them sing. The first year it was just a couple birds and every year since its gotten just a little bigger. I'd say we have about 20 They are so cool.

Can you send some here please?  Lucky.

  Oh Bobbie, I'll miss ya but your going to see 2 families...yours and the falcons. How long are you staying in Rochester? Have a ball and enjoy both worlds. You will be there for the  ceremony. Safe flight my friend. 

in today's news, owlet #1 sits on owlet #2's head and then gets hollered at by mom.

I have so much to say about that pic, that I won't.     It's the best though. Thanks dale 

[Bobbie just does dogs!]

That's me, that's me! A Critter-Mom! I have found my calling...

The saying in our family is: Her sisters and brothers do kids... Bobbie just does dogs!!

I won't go there!  Bobbie, your so funny.

Beauty's back for the night: 7:49

wonderful video. what terrific owls. thanks!

I love the way they hop and flap like their flying