20-Apr-23, 07:28:11 AM
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24317
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Re: Hawk in my yard BUT...........
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on: 07-Dec-09, 09:33:25 AM
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 He will be back - free and easy meals! We don't know who, but we had a predator about yesterday morning - birds were "frozen" at the feeders and it was very quiet outside. Didn't see who, but we are watching!  There are no birds at my feeders. Oh I'm not sure I would want to witness a kill. I love hawks but I'll be crying if I see it.  |
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24318
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Hawk in my yard BUT...........
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on: 07-Dec-09, 09:28:03 AM
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OMG OMG.....I was sitting at my table reading forum...when suddenly I see a BIG bird sitting on a branch next to my suet feeder..(hmmm)...I screamed to Kara " OMG LOOK"...she turned and saw what I saw.....a huge Hawk!! We both screamed and as we did...it flew off. It was definitely a RTH, as it was 20 ft from my kitchen window. It was looking for a meal at my feeder. I went out with my camera but it was no where to be seen....I'm excited and mad at the same time because we screamed. If he comes back, I'll be ready. Figures, I just posted before that we have none here and look what happens!!!My  won't stop pounding.
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24319
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Re: Crow problem in Oneida NY ya gotta read the readers comments
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on: 07-Dec-09, 08:55:35 AM
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People are ignorant Donna, always have been ,always will be. It's a human thing, unfortunately nature suffers.  I live in the city of Rochester and every day at dawn and dusk I watch hundreds of crows grace the skys moving east to west in the morning and vice versa at night. I wish I knew where they went but at least now because of this article you posted I understand a bit more about them.  |
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24321
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Crow problem in Oneida NY ya gotta read the readers comments
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on: 07-Dec-09, 07:58:08 AM
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ONEIDA — Mayor Peter Hedglon is encouraging city residents to band together to show migratory crows they’re unwelcome in the city. “They roost in trees and make a mess,” he said in a statement issued Thursday. Hedglon says he’s contacted experts at Cornell University Lab of Ornithology and a citizen’s group in Pennsylvania. “It appears that the best way to deal with these migratory crows is to have a community-wide volunteer effort to encourage the crows to not roost around residences and/or commercial structures,” he says. The mayor’s holding a City Hall meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 13 at 7 p.m. to put together a group of volunteers to deal with the crows. He’s tapped Donald Kingsley to chair the group. “I anticipate that the committee will use noise and bright lights to encourage crows to move away from residences and commercial buildings,” Hedglon says. The mayor reminds residents it’s illegal to shoot a firearm within the city’s inside district. “No individuals should use any type of firearms, fireworks, or other potentially injury-producing device or tactics to harass the crows.” For those seeking information on crow strategies, he suggest visiting the website: www.lancastercrows.orghttp://www.oneidadispatch.com/articles/2009/12/03/news/doc4b18912740087492588032.txtComments..people are NUTS!!! (scroll to bottom for comments) |
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24322
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Pa:
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on: 07-Dec-09, 07:49:39 AM
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Geese and duck carcasses dumped; game commission seeks information Daily Record/Sunday News Updated: 12/05/2009 04:24:51 PM EST Geese lie dead along Buffalo Valley Road in Codorus Township. The State Game Commission is investigating the dumping of the carcasses of nine Canada geese and two ducks in Codorus Township. The waterfowl, believed to have been killed out of season, were found by a deer hunter Friday afternoon next to a creek off Buffalo Valley Road, said game commission wildlife conservation officer Chad Eyler. "We don't know why somebody would do that (dump the carcasses)," Eyler said. "It's a blatant, wanton waste of wildlife. You have to use what you shoot." And it's against the law. Illegally dumping deceased wildlife carries a fine of $100 to $300 for each carcass, Eyler said. Eyler also suspects that the geese had been poached. Canada geese are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty and killing them out of season is a federal offense, he said. The season for Canada geese ended Nov. 28 and forensic evidence suggests the birds were shot in the past two or three days, Eyler said. "A legally licensed, lawful hunter didn't do this," he said. Eyler said he has spoken to other duck hunters who believe this kind of illegal act gives hunters a bad name. "Legitimate sportsmen and women who are doing this right are very upset about this," he said. Anyone who may have information about the incident is asked to call the game commission at 610-926-3136. Here we go again... |
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24323
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Crows' winter home in city (Baltimore)
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on: 07-Dec-09, 07:43:57 AM
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Birds believed to feel safer around humans
Sure, it's a miracle of nature, an echo of a time in America, ornithologists say, when flocks of hundreds of millions of birds could darken the sky for hours as they passed over.
But when thousands of crows choose your trees and your neighborhood for a winter roost, the "miracle" can mean raucous evenings and a messy walk to the car the next morning.
"It's fascinating in a way, and problematic in another way," admitted Vicki Hoagland, of the Original Northwood section of Baltimore. A slice of her neighborhood, and of the adjacent Hillen and Ednor Gardens-Lakeside communities, have been a winter crow roost for as many years as residents can recall.
After sundown these days, they drape the tall trees like black tinsel on both sides of The Alameda, from just north of 33rd Street, past the Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Center and along Loch Raven Boulevard as far north as the Northwood Shopping Center.
"At times they're squawking so loudly, you can't hear somebody talking to you," said Greg Rex, president of the Original Northwood community association.
Longtime residents Stefan Goodwin and Dean R. Wagner, in an e-mail to The Baltimore Sun, described the crows' arrival more lyrically, as a welcome sign "that winter is on the way."
"For a couple of weeks during the fall, large flocks of crows sometimes migrate through the beautiful old growth trees for an hour or so as the sky darkens," they said, adding that the birds "can occasionally be a bit noisy for a half-hour or so," but then move on, "leaving Original Northwood as peaceful as before."
In fact, the birds do quiet down at night, but they stay for the night, and for the winter, Rex said. And their presence is evident each morning.
"They just mess all over everything," Hoagland said. "You never know when you go to your car in the morning whether you can put your hand on the handle, or what's going to be on your windshield."
The big black birds have been gathering each evening since Halloween, filling the tall oaks, cawing, squabbling and flapping around before settling in for the night, or moving to another roost.
They'll fly off in the morning to forage in the country, and return every evening, no matter what residents may do to discourage them.
"You can go outside with pots from the kitchen, and bang on the lid and they will take off immediately," Hoagland said. "But they circle around and come back, and they'll be all settled again within 20 minutes or so. It's kind of a fascinating phenomenon."
Crows have been gathering like this on winter nights "for as long as there have been crows," said Kevin McGowan, a crow expert at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, in Ithaca, N.Y. Some roosts can draw as many as 2 million birds. Scientists have documented sites that have persisted for more than a century.
"Perhaps there's a nice hill, with a bunch of big trees, and it's an attractant; so they come," he said. "I think it's quite conceivable there are honest-to-god traditions - that old crows bring younger crows, or birds from last year remember where they're going. But we don't know about that."
Scientists suspect the gatherings are partly defensive, partly social. "Crows are like people; they don't like to be alone," McGowan said.
There are often staging areas - noisy, busy places where the birds gather and mix before flying off, a mile or so, to an overnight roost, which tends to be quieter.
Ornithologists suspect the large gatherings also enable "information transfer," McGowan said. The birds, by observing each other fly in and out, may gain clues to the direction of good winter forage.
What does seem relatively new is the crows' willingness to winter near people.
The winter roosts "seem to be urbanizing all across most of North America," McGowan said. "There are still some rural roosts, but [urban roosts] are getting more and more common."
Again, scientists can only guess at the reasons. "There are things we know they should like," McGowan said, such as the urban "heat island" effect, which makes cities a few degrees warmer than the country.
And, "they tend to like being around lights," he said. "They don't see very well in the dark," and urban lights may help them guard against their greatest threat - the great horned owl. "A night light is a great thing."
In the past, in a more rural America, crows avoided people, because farmers hunted them relentlessly to protect their crops. Hoagland said she grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore, "and I remember my grandfather ... shooting one of them and hanging it up" as a warning: " 'You're not wanted here' ... That wouldn't go over too well here in Baltimore City."
As hunting pressure waned, crow numbers increased, McGowan said, and more of them learned they were safer near dense human populations, where firearms can't be fired, legally.
"I always liken it to a tired boxer," McGowan said. "If you're tired, you don't run away from your opponent; you go in and grab him." For crows, cities may now be the safest places to roost for the winter.
Crow numbers were growing until early in this decade, when the West Nile virus arrived in North America. Mosquitoes spread the dangerous West Nile fever among both humans and crows, and dead crows became a primary marker for the virus' advance across the continent.
Crow populations dropped sharply for several years. The most reliable estimates come from the annual Breeding Bird Survey run by the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, which uses a standardized counting protocol, then converts the data into an index number to reflect population changes.
In Maryland, the crow index reached a high of 57.8 in 2001. Then it fell by almost half, to 31.9 in 2004. It has since rebounded to 41.7 in 2007, McGowan said.
So the crows are coming back. But they have never entirely left the neighborhoods around Loch Raven Boulevard and The Alameda.
Hoagland and her husband, Lou Borowicz, bought their home six years ago, delighted to find a quiet neighborhood with fine old homes from the 1930s, mature hardwood trees and "a little bit of nature" in the city, even foxes.
No one mentioned the crows.
"We were here a few months before we actually saw it happen," she said. "We said, 'Oh my gosh! What's this?' "
"There are people who have been here for a long time, and [for them] it's just part of life in the neighborhood," she said. "I sort of look at it that way, too, although sometimes it's really aggravating."
After a few days during the winter crow roost, she said, a good hard rain is always welcome.
Caption:A murder of crows has established a roost on the grounds of the Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Center and in many other trees on both sides of The Alameda in Northeast Baltimore, to the delight of some people and distraction of others
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24326
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Other Nature Related Information / General Nature Discussion / Re:Whoopers on their way again
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on: 07-Dec-09, 06:44:13 AM
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Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 12:12 a.m.
Shoals residents should not be shocked next week if they happen to see a group of large birds following southbound ultralight aircraft.
It's not a remake of the movie "Fly Away Home" where a girl and her father teach a group of orphaned Canada geese how to migrate south for the winter. Instead, it will be the latest flock of whooping cranes to be led south by Operation Migration volunteers.
The whooping cranes that pass over the Shoals are headed to a wildlife refuge in Florida. After spending the winter there, the birds will be able to return on their own to a wildlife refuge in Wisconsin where they were raised.
Northwest Alabama became part of the migration route for the whooping cranes in 2008 when volunteers for Operation Migration, a Canada-based non-profit organization, led a flock of the rare birds from Wisconsin to Florida. The volunteers wear whooping crane costumes and use ultralight aircraft to lead the flights.
The young whooping cranes were hatched raised in captivity and must be taught the migration route. In a natural setting, their parents would teach the young whooping cranes the migration route.
From 2001 to 2007, the young whooping cranes were led from Wisconsin to Florida along a route that passed through eastern Tennessee and Georgia. The route shifted in 2008 to avoid having to fly over the Appalachian Mountains and to create a flyway for the birds. The new route includes stops in Hardin County, Tenn., and Russellville.
The migration reached western Kentucky Friday.
Liz Condie, chief operating officer for Operation Migration, said it is impossible to predict exactly when the birds will fly over the Shoals.
"We are at the mercy of the weather," she said. "We can only fly when the weather allows us to."
Strong winds make it dangerous to fly the ultralight aircraft. In 2008, the group spent more than two weeks in Russellville after bad weather and Christmas stalled the migration. A large crowd assembled at the Russellville airport hoping to watch the whooping cranes pass by each day the volunteers attempted to continue the migration. When the migration finally resumed on Dec. 29, many of the spectators gathered at the airport cheered as the cranes and ultralights flew past.
If the weather is perfect during the coming days, the flight could pass over the Shoals as early as Tuesday. A cold front that could spawn thunderstorms is expected to move through the Tennessee Valley early next week and the migration might have to be delayed. Daily updates about the progress of the migration are posted on the Operation Migration Website at operationmigration.org/FieldJournal.html
The effort to expand the whooping crane population is a joint effort of Operation Migration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies and organizations.
Whooping cranes, which grow as tall as 5 feet when mature, are one of the rarest birds in America.
Biologists believe about 1,400 whooping cranes lived in the United States in 1860. The whooping crane population declined because of hunting and habitat loss until 1941 when only 15 birds were left. Efforts were launched to protect whooping cranes, and by 1999, about 180 of the birds lived in the wild. That flock winters on the Gulf coast of Texas. In spring, they migrate to Canada.
Operation Migration and Fish and Wildlife Service officials hope that by establishing new migration routes, wintering and breeding ground for whopping cranes, the rare birds will be better protected than if they all lived in a single location and used the same migration route.
Caption:
Ultralight pilot Joe Duff leads a flock of six whooping cranes as they fly south after taking off at sunrise from a farm near Springfield in Washington County, Ky., on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2001, where they had stopped for the night during their weeks-long migration from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin to the Chassohowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. The cranes are on a 1,250-mile journey from Wisconsin to Florida that is part of an experiment to establish a migrating flock of the endangered species in the eastern United States.
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24329
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Member Activities / Pets / Re: Prayers needed for my little Ozzie
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on: 06-Dec-09, 05:26:08 PM
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2 months ago my little Ozzie, my single female lovebird, started to fall out of her happy hut in the night. We took her right into a board certified avian vet and after blood tests and an xray he said she was very sick with multiple bacteria, fungus and a growth in her abdomen. He gave us antibiotic to give her and an anti fungi but we could see it didn't help her for very long. He didn't give us much hope. We don't know how she got so sick because we are very careful, clean and even give them all bottled water. Her favorite treats are just peas and avi cakes. She could only talk enough to say her name but she twirled on her bong as I clapped and said yeaaaa! The vet suggested against surgery saying she probably wouldn't survive.
Today shes lying on the bottom of her cage and her eyes are open very little and dying. Ive had her for 7 years and we love her very much. This is so hard to watch but there is nothing we can do but keep her comfortable and warm. I also tried giving her water with a dropper on the outside of her beak but shes very weak. Just say a prayer that she flys with the others soon we've lost in our avian family. I believe the lion lays with the lamb in heaven so I'm sure they won't hurt her. I'll miss her so much. Here's her picture. Catie, I am so so sorry. I lost a Cockatiel to the same thing. New Year's Eve 4 years ago. Taco kept falling off his perch and just stayed on the bottom....laying next to the light bulb we put next to his cage. He barely was breathing. It was the God awfulist New Years. Right after midnight, he took his last breath. I feel for you and Ozzie. My prayers are definitely with you. It's not easy with any animal. Sorry. |
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