TIERRA VERDE - A floating, gravel-covered island hauled into a lagoon at Fort De Soto Park this morning looks like the perfect party spot.

Environmentalists, though, hope to attract a different kind of action – shorebirds that need a protected spot to nest.

"If this experiment works, it will make news all over the conservation world," said Lorraine Margeson, an environmental activist who helped coordinate the effort.

The premise is this: Creating a floating island will give least terns and black skimmers a chance to nest without the worry of storm surge washing away their eggs or drowning their chicks.

It has worked in England and parts of the Great Lakes region and just may work here, said Jim Wilson, the park's superintendent.

Volunteers shoveled gravel onto the former floating docks then set in place wooden decoys carved to resemble least terns – tiny shorebirds that need vast expanses of wide, white beach for nesting.

"It's like a floating rooftop," Margeson said.

For least terns, gravel rooftops have become prime nesting habitat. But the rooftops are disappearing and the birds are again dependent on the beach.

Laughing gulls screeched from nearby pilings as a dozen men hauled the island into the lagoon.

"If it fails, there is no loss," Wilson said. "This is all being done with recycled materials and volunteer labor."

Friends of Fort De Soto paid for the gravel, fencing and decoys.

For years, St. Petersburg Audubon Society members and other volunteers have worked at the park to create a bird sanctuary, one that is gaining national attention.

The payoff has come, Margeson said. Birds are attempting to nest there again and Pinellas County's tourism development council has begun promoting the beach to birders.

Bird enthusiasts from Pasco, Sarasota and Alachua counties stood along the beach this morning with long camera lenses and binoculars, watching the skimmers, terns, plovers and other shorebirds.

"They finally get that wildlife viewing and ecotourism is just as viable a way to attract tourists as beach bars and parasailing," Margeson said.

By creating the island, Wilson said, most of the beach stays open to the public and the birds get their own quiet spot.

Beth Forys, a professor of biology and environmental studies at Eckerd College, has monitored birds in Pinellas for more than a decade. She predicts at least 10 pairs of birds can use the island for nesting at any given time.

The island is named La Bateau D'Amour De Laridae, or Love Boat for the Laridae (a bird family that includes terns and gulls). It was placed near the birds' foraging grounds; several hovered overhead as Forys, Margeson and other volunteers readied the island for its anchorage.

"The birds may check it out and not nest," Margeson said. "We'll take it apart then put it back out next year. Sometimes, it takes a few years for this sort of thing to work."

[Pinnacles park officials discovered the couple's chick was dead in its egg, so they eventually replaced it with a viable egg from San Diego Wild Animal Park.]

Caption: Pinnacles park officials discovered the couple's chick was dead in its egg, so they eventually replaced it with a viable egg from San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Reporting from Pinnacles National Monument, Calif.
I'd never accuse the good rangers at Pinnacles National Monument of pulling a bait-and-switch, but they did have to recently perform some serious family counseling in order to keep a condor couple's maternity plans on track.

That the couple, Condor 317, the female, and Condor 318, the male, are the first nesting condors in the park in 100 years was inspiration enough for some ranger sleight-of-hand, but the fact that there are fewer than 350 California condors in the world gave special urgency to ensuring a productive roost.

Pinnacles, wedged between U.S. Highway 25 and Highway 101 near Soledad, Calif., is an otherworldly place of jutting rock spires and twisted towers that looks as though it was wrenched from dinosaur times. "Wrenched" is fitting: The park's craggy upthrusts are the partial remains of an ancient volcano. It's a landscape in which a pterodactyl might choose to make its home, and thus a bird almost as rare (and with an impressive 10-foot wingspan) would feel cozy here too.

When it was discovered that 317 and 318 — let's call them Esme and Gilbert — were in a family way, the park was abuzz. The pair had chosen a narrow cleft in a charmingly inaccessible crag to place the fruits of their labors, but because the release program at Pinnacles attaches tracking devices to the big birds, radio telemetry enabled the rangers to pinpoint the nest placement.

The dire state of the species required the stripping away of romantic privacy: When both birds were out of the nest, National Park Service biologists rappelled down the cliff to check the egg's viability. The chick was not alive — remediation tactics were immediately engaged.

A ‘Trojan Egg'?

Those tactics included substituting a synthetic egg, mimicking the size, color and weight of the condor egg, for the parents to tend while the bad egg was replaced. Yes, a synthetic egg. NPS biologist Jess Auer says, "Condors have a very poor sense of smell and weren't able to discern it wasn't their egg." Suffice it to say, the birds lovingly tended their artificial charge until those resourceful rappellers replaced the odd egg with a viable egg from the San Diego Wild Animal Park's captive condor-breeding program. Good parents that they are, Esme and Gilbert shared in the egg's incubation, and a new condor chick came into this world in late March, just a few days after the onset of spring.

The two days my sweetheart, Alice, and I spent chasing condors in the Pinnacles were ordered from a four-star menu of the outdoors. I've hiked in the park many times and have never seen it as lush. Great sprays of poppies, lupines, Indian paintbrush, shooting stars and all sorts of jewel-like wildflowers — more than 100 species — adorn the trails this time of year.

The viewing point for the condor nest is off the Juniper Canyon / High Peaks Trail, which from the park's west entrance is a trek with a 1,200-foot elevation gain over its 4.3-mile route. But the hike is well worth it, because you will be treated to a succession of vistas of those beguiling rock outcrops and monoliths. And the star nestling will be there for a while: A condor chick requires 30 days of constant nest sitting by its parents to regulate its temperature; both parents alternate the chick-warming chore. It will take up to six months for the fledgling to take to the air, and more than a full year of tutelage at the wings of Esme and Gilbert before the chick is fully integrated into the park's flock.

Pinnacles has a merry menu of hikes long and short. Having summited to the condor condo on our first hiking day, we on the next returned for a jaunt on the less populated North Wilderness Trail, which has a more gradual ascent past moss-draped oaks and flowery meadows. We went only a few miles, but if you go farther, it curves back into one of the cave-passage (bring a flashlight!) trails for a nice nine-mile loop.

[The fishermen, the bird-lovers and the oilmen all have an interest in the answers.]

As anyone who's ever dressed a salad in vinaigrette will testify, oil and water just don't mix.

That's especially true of crude oil and sea water that supports sea lifeforms from fish to birds to plankton to mammals.

So when we discover that 42,000 gallons of oil are leaking daily from a stricken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and that it could take months to stem the flow, a little concern is entirely natural.
If the pessimistic "several months" timeline turns out to be correct, and if the oil continues to gush at its current rate, we could be looking at an eventual volume of 4 million or so gallons - which puts it in the same league as the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 (11 million gallons) or the Hebei Spirit incident of 2007 (2.8 million).

However, past experiences may be a poor guide when it comes to projecting damage from the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Firstly, this is what you might term a slow, sustained release some 60km from the edge of land, whereas most recent spills have resulted from the sudden, catastrophic impacts of tankers close to the shore.

So whereas the oil from the Exxon Valdez, or the Prestige that impaled itself on Galician rocks in 2002, was virtually certain to come on shore, there's no guarantee the coasts around the Gulf of Mexico will be impacted this time. So far, weather conditions have confined the slick offshore.

The coast of Louisiana, seen from the air, is one of the planet's most extraordinary pieces of topography. (Have a look on the Google map satellite view).

Long tendrils of land curl out into the sea like some skeletal fern, encompassing channels that carry Mississippi water far out into the gulf.

The inaccessibility of these extremities and the fertile waters have created ideal nesting grounds for birds such as the locally endangered brown pelicans.

The unusual topography of land and water in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, about 100km to the north of the stricken oil well, supports an unusual mix of seabirds, wading birds, rabbits and loggerhead turtles in vegetation that includes mangroves.

Exxon_Valdez_spillIf the slick heads east, it will eventually encounter the equally ecological important Florida Keys - and beyond that, the Bahamas.

Whether it does end up in one of these important areas, or whether it disperses quickly and relatively innocuously in open water, is conjecture for the moment.

However, the possibility of environmental damage plus the loss of 11 lives during the rig fire is already prompting questions about the oil industry's place around US coasts.

Just three weeks ago, President Barack Obama outlined plans to relax bans on oil exploration along huge stretches of US coast.

Areas of the Gulf of Mexico just east of the Deepwater Horizon site are among those where rigs could be permitted in future.

The measure was, in large part, a concession aimed at securing wider support for the climate and energy bill being re-framed by the cross-party Senatorial triumvirate of Joe Lieberman, Lindsay Graham and John Kerry (co-incidentally, a process that appears in some disarray right now).

Key aims of the new bill are support for the US energy industry and a desire to reduce US dependence on oil imports.

But even as these measures promise to create employment along US shores, the risks attendant on oil exploration and production have the potential to take away livelihoods, such as those of fishermen who are already expressing concern about the leaking well.

So it's not a simplistic equation. It's about risks and uncertainties, including the vagaries of currents and tides. It's about political and economic trade-offs, and about balancing short-term and long-term risks and benefits.

The US authorities are deploying a battery of tools against the Deepwater Horizon slick - when weather permits - including booms and dispersants.

Will they prove effective? Will the submersibles now being deployed to block the well's flow be able to finish the exacting task?

The fishermen, the bird-lovers and the oilmen all have an interest in the answers.

BUFFALO, NY (WBFO) - While there are no tenants inside the Statler towers in downtown Buffalo, some outside dwellers remain.

Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife biologist Connie Adams says Peregrine Falcons have been nesting at the top of the Statler for many years now. And even though the future of the building remains uncertain, the Peregrines continue to make the structure their home.

Adams says there are seven known nesting pairs in the Buffalo area. She says Peregrines continue to return to the same nesting spot year after year.

Another set settled into a building on UB's South Campus. The falcons are waiting for three eggs to hatch. Adams has been working along with the UB staff and the Buffalo Audubon Society in keeping watch. UB gained approval to install a nesting box at MacKay Tower because it is a historic landmark. A web cam was also added.

But the Audubon Society had to remove its falcon web cam at the Statler. So anyone who wants to view their activity will have to revert to less modern means -- binoculars, telephoto camera lens or telescope.

(movie) Egg gone

It was the pale egg!

Do you think he noticed?

Wow, when I was posting the same time as Carol, I saw the wet spot under the cracked egg but didn't realize it was cracked at the time. Now I know why that egg was out of the loop. Beauty did the right thing for a first time mom. It's sad but it happens. 

OMG cracked egg and I think Beauty just took it out.
She did...how awful

one strayed again
Come on, you can do it
almost
there ya go
Perfecto
from cam 2
is that an indent in egg?

More astonishing photographs from Iceland:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html

Gayle

They were probably one of the best sets of pics yet. Thanks.

So glad she sleeps, usually every time I look, she's awake. Sleep Beauty sleep, you won't get much of that in a few weeks.

Mom and dad are both in the nest. It's 5:07am in the NL. Guess he likes hanging in there with the family.  Or he's looking for a take-over. 

Great job Dawn....I love the fact that you capture them doing like you said....a dog just being a dog. Very nice....Good luck. Fun site. 

Anne, I am so sorry. Thinking of you. We are here if you need us. (HUGS)