20-Apr-23, 08:07:41 AM
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23284
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Rochester Falcons / Rochester Falcons News / Re: Mariah at Kodak Park and Archer & Beauty at Times Square
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on: 08-Mar-10, 07:28:57 PM
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Well, I make no attempt to hide that Mariah is and always will be special to me. I also think she's ok - she is way too experienced to be otherwise.
I'm sure she's fine also but I would like to know where she is and what she's up to and if she found a mate....or if she's single..is she in the area. These tidbits go through my mind daily. It's not fun not knowing...as in  Kaver. I'll never get over his disappearance. That boy is and always will be in my thoughts.  |
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23290
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Misunderstood with a bad reputation: Jersey vultures are marvelous creatures
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on: 08-Mar-10, 08:05:16 AM
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NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM I live in the small southern New Jersey town of Wenonah. I've always known Wenonah as a nice, friendly city where the grass may have been greener on the other side, but the property taxes were still equally as high. But for the most part there isn't any kind of large turnover in the population. Except for the vultures. It seems that about two hundred vultures have come to roost in Wenonah over the past nine or 10 years. Upon hearing this, I realized that up till now my knowledge of vultures has been quite limited. Vultures have always had that kind of an image problem. The finest public relations firm in the country would have a hard time rebuilding the reputation of these birds. So a group of organizers in Wenonah have decided to do the job themselves. On March 6, Wenonah will host the East Coast Vulture Festival, running from 1 to 10 p.m. It opens with the Vulture Day Children's Fair in the afternoon, featuring live birds and other animals presented by the Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge. There will also be guided walks to the roost area, which give the humans a bird's-eye view of their vulture friends. I found more vulture information available at the Turkey Vulture Society. Ninety percent of Wenonah's birds are turkey vultures, and the Society informed me that these animals are very necessary, and they perform a vital function. They feed on roadkill or other decomposing animals. The Society also reports that turkey vultures are playful, gentle, and seem to enjoy living close to humans. But it is not recommended that anyone adopt a vulture as a pet. And vultures have a sense of humor. Before roosting at night they play tag, soar into the air and play follow the leader. You don't usually think of vultures as humorous. Of course, I remember when migration approached one year, and two elderly vultures doubted they could make the trip south. They decided to go by airplane.
When they checked their baggage, the attendant noticed that they were carrying two dead raccoons. "Do you want to check the raccoons through as luggage?" she asked.
"No thanks," replied the vultures. "They're carrion."  Further research tells us that the turkey vulture is able to locate this carrion by his acute sense of smell. They also possess superior intelligence and keen vision. The vulture has a body length of twenty-four to twenty-five inches, a wingspan of five to six feet, and weighs between three and a half to five pounds. He is recognized by his bald, red head and found across the United States and Canada. Turkey vultures have to eat dead animals because their talons are not strong enough to kill prey. But the Wenonah residents could tell you all of this. The nighttime portion of their program, the Evening Roost, begins at 6:30. It includes an Academy of Natural Sciences program titled "Animals with Bad Reputations." An alligator, snake, skunk, and turkey vulture are expected to appear. The evening will also include a performance by One Heart, featuring traditional American Indian Pow Wow songs, stories, and dances. Also, singer/songwriter Jim Six will appear with Greg Potter. And the Turkey Vulture Society wants you to know that the vulture plays a big part in helping to keep your community clean. That part would be their vulture droppings. Their uric acid is so strong (because of the nature of the vulture's diet ) that it kills bacteria. Now if that isn't a ringing endorsement for the value of vultures, then I don't know what is. But Wenonah would prefer that you were not fooled by a vulture's reputation. These birds play an important part in recycling of the environment. And these misunderstood creatures may need to work overtime this year to complete their mission. Hey, who knows what lies underneath all that snow? |
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23291
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / A man and his pelican...a love story
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on: 08-Mar-10, 07:57:51 AM
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FAIRHOPE, Ala. — “She’s been a big part of my life,” said James Blevins this week of his brown pelican buddy who goes by the name of Henry, but which he now thinks is a female bird. A girl pelican named Henry. If only Johnny Cash were still alive to write a song about it.
Here is the famous horn used by James Blevins, with its characteristic aoogha sound, he uses to call Henry from the sky for feeding. Staff photo by Mike Odom.
“You get attached to something like that,” Blevins said Thursday morning on the dock at the Pier Street boat launch park, looking frequently toward the heavens for the pelican he has come to know well since rescuing it on that very dock in the days following Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
“No, that’s not her,” he said, watching as a pelican approached several hundred yards away from the north. “She’s got a feather gone from just under the crook of her wing. I can spot her a mile away. She’s also got a knot on her shoulder I can see when she’s up close.”
The relationship between James and Henry has reached near mythic status, with many unbelievers, until they see man and bird together. Their story has even become memorialized in a children’s book published last year by a local author, who also had to shake her head in wonder when she saw Henry waddling along behind James on his motorized cart, right there along Mobile Bay on a sidewalk.
“She used to walk right behind or next to me,” Blevins said, of those early days when he was feeding Henry up near the Orange Street pier a few blocks to the south along the bay front park. “We had people stopping their cars right in the middle of traffic, and then getting out and taking pictures. I told Henry, ‘This is is not good idea.’”
So, these days, every morning in fact, Henry makes his daily trip to the Pier Street boat launch park in his motorized chair with a bagful of fish for Henry, or just to say hi. Henry’s almost always there. If not, it just takes a few aooghas on the classic horn just under his left armrest, to call Henry from the sky, circling down from amidst all the other pelicans, landing, and then miraculously, walking right up to Blevins, sometimes, it seems, almost getting right up in his lap.
But then, about several weeks ago, Henry disappeared. In the news, he said, was the story of how a more than 100 pelicans had died, all huddled together, probably starving to death because of the below-freezing temperatures at that time. That worried Blevins and his wife, Carmen.
“She was gone exactly 14 days,” Blevins said, still looking toward the sky for Henry, holding a bag of food at the ready, occasionally giving a honk on the horn with his left hand.
And then she showed back up on that 14th morning, he said.
“She was walking all around me,” he said. “I always used to pet her when she was younger, but lately she got to where she didn’t like it so much. But that day she was doing the same old thing. She kept going around and round, like she was trying to get close and show me something, or get me to pet her.”
What she was trying to show him, Blevins said, was a fish hook in her neck and fishing line that had bound her left wing to her side.
“She couldn’t fly, which meant she couldn’t fish,” he said. “I don’t know how she was staying alive, but she was hungry that day.”
Blevins got the hook out of her neck, and with the aid of another friend, while he held her beak, they got the fishing line off her wing. He said he was scared about how badly injured she might be.
“Then I saw her flying, and I knew then that she was going to be OK,” he said. “The next time I saw her up close, her left wing was hanging down. But some people say she’s just got me trained and does that on purpose.”
He smiles at that, thinking of Henry, with the wing hanging down, training him to bring her fish and to be there for her when she needs a fish hook taken out of her neck.
“She loves those big mullet heads,” he said of Henry, still looking in the sky for her. “She can eat like a horse.”
Though Henry didn’t appear in that brief 20 minutes Thursday morning, James said she’d probably show up later.
“She might be down at the big pier,” he said. “My wife saw her earlier right here this morning. And I saw her yesterday. She’s fine. She’s just fine.”
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23292
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Neighborhood's Vulture Problem May Be Solved (TN)
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on: 08-Mar-10, 07:50:51 AM
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Source: The Greeneville Sun
Police Finally Find
A Way To Chase Off
Persistent Flock, End
Health Concerns
An anonymous caller to The Greeneville Sun on Friday morning reported that someone had killed at least four vultures and had hung the dead birds in trees off Sunset Street near Fire Station No. 1.
The caller was correct.
It turns out that the Greeneville Police Department, working with a permit and some advice obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had suspended four dead vultures in trees off Sunset Street.
The police had killed the vultures in late December or early January and had, with the help of the Greeneville Public Works Department, hung them in trees in an effort to discourage the birds from roosting there.
GPD Chief Terry Cannon said his department had received complaints over at least the last three years from residents of Sunset Street, Cedar Street and the Greeneville Housing Authority about vultures posing health problems by vomiting on houses, cars, and playground equipment in the area.
Cannon said some residents of Cedar Street complained that vultures were roosting on the porch railings of their homes and that they were afraid to go outside as a result.
He also said vultures that roosted on playground equipment off Simpson Street made a playground there unusable by area children because the birds vomited remains of dead animals they had eaten all over the equipment.
"We've tried everything to scare them away for the last three years," Chief Cannon said of the vultures.
After artificial noise-makers of various types and blank gunshots failed to dislodge the estimated more than 150 vultures that were roosting in the Sunset and Cedar Street areas, Chief Cannon said, the GPD applied for a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service late last year to kill some of the vultures.
"We received a permit to kill up to 30 black vultures and 10 turkey vultures," Cannon said.
He noted that a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee recommended that some of the dead birds be placed in trees in the area in an effort to dissuade vultures from roosting there.
"It worked," Cannon said. "They may come back, but they're not there now."
Chief Cannon also said the GPD has applied for an extension for the permit that will allow officers to kill more vultures if they return to the Sunset Street and Cedar Street areas.
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