Buckeye - 1996-2009
I am very sad to report that Buckeye was found on a sidewalk by West 3rd and Huron Rd in downtown Cleveland this afternoon and died in transit to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. It appears that he sustained fatal head injuries. He had a long and distinguished career at the Terminal Tower with Zenith and S/W and sired many, many young.

Harvey



Buckeye Update
To follow up on my last post, this is what I know. A lady walking on West 3rd and Huron found Buckeye on the sidewalk clearly in distress and barely responsive. She covered him with her coat and contacted me at the Museum about 1:40 pm on Tuesday, 11/17/09. She offered to transport Buckeye to the Museum so that we could assess his condition and expedite his transportation to the Medina Raptor Center or Lake Metroparks Clinton Wildlife Center. When she arrived at the Museum around 2:10 pm Buckeye had already expired. I confirmed his identity by the R/K color band and notified the Ohio Division of Wildlife. We will have a necropsy performed at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo today. However it is clear that, without a mark on his body and blood streaming from his mouth, Buckeye sustained a fatal head injury consistent with a window or building collision. A necropsy might reveal if there were any underlying health issues. My examination suggested he was in good health and plumage with no sign of other conditions or injuries that might have contributed to his death.

I will be spending time at the Terminal Tower this afternoon to assess the work being done on the ledge and I will keep an eye out for S/W.

This is is a difficult time of transition for all of us falcon enthusiasts who have become so attached to the lives of Buckeye, S/W and their offspring. This is also a time of transition for S/W. It is my hope that her long term attachment to this very successful site will hold and she will recruit a new mate in the coming weeks or months.

I will keep you updated with any news.


Harvey

How very very sad for Buckeye...lots of us here have watched that cam also. RIP Buckeye, you sure were a cutie. Wow, that's 2 Ohio males in a few months. Darn buildings.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/around-town/events/Watch-Live-The-Rockefeller-Center-Christmas-Tree-69983477.html

They are getting ready to decorate it...all scaffolding is up. You can click it to make it full screen. It's nice when it's all decorated...of course.

 

OMG....those are the cutest ever!! OK, so now tell me...who found it, are they keeping it and where's it's momma??? 

I'll be the momma!!!

Cuteness alert!!!!

                               
I just received these pictures with a warning to be careful outside and wait for (baby) hedgehogs.
greetings Aafke

OMG....those are the cutest ever!! OK, so now tell me...who found it, are they keeping it and where's it's momma??? 

[Kingfisher]

Here is the Puzzle of the Week 231

  Kingfisher

It was one of the only moments that I saw a kingfisher sitting and not flying like a rocket, flying so fast that you only see a blue stripe. Now I had a moment to look at him very good and of course to take a picture.

    Nice Aafke

Solving a longstanding puzzle among bird experts, scientists have found that the sharp, violin-like sounds of a South American songbird come not from the beak but from a suite of specially evolved, vibrating feathers.A new study offers the first hard evidence that birds use feathers for audible communication as well as for flight and warmth.

In 2005 Kimberly Bostwick theorized that the male club-winged manakin—a tiny bird of the Andean cloud forest—was vibrating a club-shaped wing feather against a neighboring, ridged feather to "sing" when trying to attract females. (See "Cloud Forests Fading in the Mist, Their Treasures Little Known.")

Proving the feather-song connection, though, would be a huge challenge.

"It was very hard to mess with the birds' feathers and still have them do their display," said Bostwick, curator of birds and mammals at the Cornell University of Vertebrates in Ithaca, New York.
"There were many times where I listened to the sound and started doubting that a feather could possibly make [the sound]," she recalled.

Bird Vibrations

To determine, once and for all, how the manakin was making its bizarre sounds, Bostwick and colleagues decided to take feather samples and analyze them in a lab.

She knew from previous work that the frequency of the sound made by the manakin was 1500 hertz—1,500 cycles per second. If the two feather types were making the sound, they should resonate when vibrated at the same frequency during the experiments.

The team used lasers to monitor vibrations as they were oscillated by a lab device called a mini-shaker. The special feathers vibrated at exactly 1500 hertz—proving they're responsible for the strange sounds.

But there's a twist: Bostwick was surprised to find that club and the ridged feathers aren't a duet, but part of a chamber orchestra.

Individually the manakin's "regular" feathers didn't resonate like the special ones. But when the nine feathers closest to the special feathers were still attached to the ligaments, they vibrated at around 1500 hertz, harmonized with the club feathers, and amplified the volume of the sound.

The results, Bostwick said, could lead to better understanding of the newly discovered form of bird communication.

Lots of birds make simple clapping sounds or whooshing noises with their wings, and we haven't even begun to understand how the sounds are made or how they've evolved, she added.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHSQQMnOko  see video here

[The odd beak on this finch makes it unpopular with the locals.]

A new species of finch may have arisen in the Galapagos.

Daniel Cressey
finchThis finch's odd beak and song make it unpopular with the locals.Grant, P./PNAS

A husband and wife team has spotted what could be the beginning of a new species of finch on one of the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin developed his ideas about evolution.

Peter and Rosemary Grant, evolutionary biologists at Princeton University in New Jersey, have spent nearly four decades watching finches on Daphne Major, in the Galapagos archipelago where Darwin, too, studied finches. The birds later figured prominently in his discussions of variation and natural selection.

Over the decades, the Grants have measured and tagged the vast majority of the finches that inhabit Daphne Major, and as a result have been able to observe evolution in real time (see 'Evolution caught in the act').

It was in 1981, that the Grants spotted an unusually heavy medium ground-finch (Geospiza fortis). At 29.7 grams, the male was more than 5 grams heavier than any they had seen on Daphne Major before. Genetic analysis showed that it probably came from the neighbouring island of Santa Cruz.

The Grants numbered the bird 5110 and followed it and all its known descendants over seven generations. Many of its descendants stuck out from the other G. fortis on Daphne Major: they had unusually shaped beaks and their songs differed from those of the other finches.
All in the family

In the fourth generation, a severe drought hit the island and 5110's descendants were reduced to one male and one female — a brother and sister. From then on the immigrant lineage isolated itself, breeding with no other G. fortis on the island, they report in an article in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.

"No study of this sort has been done before, and it shows one way in which speciation can get started," say the Grants from Japan, where they are receiving the Kyoto Prize for basic science for their life work (see: 'Kyoto prize for evolution while you watch').

The distance between Daphne Major and Santa Cruz had made contact between finches on the two islands a rare event. 5110's arrival is an example of a phenomenon called 'secondary contact', when separated populations of the same species meet after a period of time, during which they may have evolved.

"The secondary contact phase is typically discussed as a thought experiment," says Jeff Podos, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who has worked extensively with Darwin's finches. "The real strength of the paper is that it documents, in natural field circumstances, the arrival and fate in secondary contact of a previously separated lineage."

He adds that "the authors' ability to document the reproductive fate of the immigrant bird is nothing short of remarkable."
Second coming

The fact that 5110's descendants haven't mixed could be because they differ from the natives. The Grants note that the descendants have a differently shaped beak from those native to Daphne Major. As finch beaks are vital in identifying potential mates, this could serve to keep them reproductively isolated.

5110's offspring also have the avian equivalent of a strange accent. These finches learn their songs from their father, and the Grants suggest that 5110 sang the songs from his birth home of Santa Cruz then modified his come-hither ballad by roughly copying the Daphne Major birds'. This imperfect copying, they suggest, has over time acted as a barrier to interbreeding.

The odd beak on this finch makes it unpopular with the locals.

Painting contractor Anthony Gross works a tough job. Sometimes he's wheeling a 200-mile round-trip commute to work.

His guaranteed relaxation?

Like millions of Americans, he's become a bird feeder, which in his case also means he gives handouts to deer and black bears, because he lives in the woods in Milford, Pa.

"I go through maybe 50 pounds of birdseed every week and maybe 100 pounds of cracked corn."

Yup. It's become serious.

"He's up at the crack of dawn every day to put out the feeders," says wife Patti DiMeo. "As soon as the sun starts coming up, he's out there on his ladder, and yes, in the dead of winter he puts on his one-piece insulated jumpsuit and goes to it."

Wearing a paint-stained T-shirt, he stands under a tree festooned with bird feeders. He holds out a hand filled with birdseed to lure tufted titmice.

"This is a peaceful and relaxing thing," says Gross. But he's not the only one up his tree.

"There was a black bear that climbed the tree, and it braced one foot against the tree so it could reach out and get the feeder and lick the seeds," says Gross, with affection and admiration for the furry intruder. This is a put-it-out-and-they-will-come backyard.

He's got pileated and redheaded woodpeckers, along with the regular feeder crowd, including upside-down, tree-trunk-walking white-breasted nuthatches, chickadees and smaller woodpeckers.

"I've got no other hobbies," says Gross. Well, he and Patti are big New York Giants and Yankees fans, but nothing compares to the gentle fun of feeding birds.

He grew up in the Bronx and then Yonkers. Birds didn't become the passion they are now, but he did get a taste early in life, he says.

"When I was little and the Bronx River was full of (oil and other pollution), my grandmother would take me there and we'd rescue birds. She'd put lighter fluid on them to clean them up and let them go."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says some 52 million people in the United States spend $2.5 billion a year on birdseed.

Gross buys black oil sunflower seed. Goldfinches love thistle seed. Woodpeckers and many others go crazy for suet. Black oil sunflower seeds are top-of-the-line for most birds, although larger birds seem to also like mixed seeds and striped black sunflower seeds. Mourning doves appreciate cracked corn. What's best for your birds? It's best to ask your feed supplier.

Jerry Glass, who owns the Red Barn Discount Pet Store in Middletown, has seen all kinds of bird-feeding people. (He's one, too.)

[Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge]

Each year, more than 150,000 visitors come to the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge to view the millions of birds that live at, or just pass through the extensive wetland area.

What many don’t realize is that each fall the refuge also offers some great, but restricted, hunting opportunities for deer and waterfowl.

"We were established back in 1937 as a migratory bird refuge, primarily for water fowl. However, we have other migratory birds here as well, such as woodland birds and raptors," said Tom Jasikoff, the refuge’s manager for the past 12 years. "Initially, we didn’t allow hunting. But as time went on, the refuge’s deer population kept getting bigger and bigger and the health (characteristics) of the herd were declining."

He said deer are capable of harming a habitat and eating themselves out of house and home.

"They’re capable of eliminating the understory (of plants and trees), which would have a major impact on ground nesting birds, such as the wood thrush," he said. "Is it fair to the wood thrush to let its population be damaged because we don’t hunt deer? I don’t think so."

The idea of maintaining a healthy diversity of wildlife at the refuge, coupled with the passage in 1999 of the National Wildlife Improvement Act, have both contributed to the refuge’s pro-hunting policies.

The federal legislation puts the focus on "wildlife first" at each of the country’s more than 500 federal wildlife refuges. The law also identified six big public uses for the land — hunting being one.

"Congress and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife system recognize hunting as a legitimate activity and management tool and that it should continue," Jasikoff said. "So, while deer are hunted here as a management tool to keep the herd size in check, ducks and geese are also hunted here as an allowed recreational activity."

Federal law requires up to 30 percent of wildlife refuge to be open for hunting. But that percentage varies from refuge to refuge. At Montezuma, the percent on land that’s hunted is about 12 percent, Jasikoff said.

Somewhere in LaSalle County, Ill., 20 whooping cranes are awaiting better weather. The cranes are part of Operation Migration, a nonprofit group establishing a migrating flock of endangered whooping cranes that will nest in Wisconsin and winter in Florida.

The trip, which will drop off half the group at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge and the other half in Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge, 65 miles north of St. Petersburg, takes a total of 23 days of flight, not including stops for bad weather.

"The birds fly at about 38 miles per hour and the ultralights weigh about 400 pounds," said Joe Duff, Operation Migration co-founder and lead pilot, about the single person planes that lead the birds south. "It doesn't take much wind before you are not going anywhere."

For now, weather has the birds stuck in Illinois, only 170 miles into their 1,285-mile trip.

They began their flight Oct. 16 and are expected to arrive sometime between Thanksgiving and the end of January.

The cranes stop in Jefferson County before flying over the town of St. Marks (right after dawn). Afterward a meet and greet with the pilots and the public takes place. As many as 2,000 people came to watch last year.

"I think it is one of those things that gives people hope," St. Marks Refuge Manager Terry Peacock said. "We are trying to save a species from extinction."

Once in St. Marks, the cranes will be released into a pen with no top netting. Eventually, they learn they can fly away and by March, they begin their unaccompanied flight back to Wisconsin.

"The target is to start a self-sustaining population with 125 cranes and 25 breeding pairs," Duff said. Currently there are 77 birds in the flock and 12 breeding pairs.

A 2007 storm that killed 17 of the 18 birds taken to Chassahowitzka was the reason Operation Migration decided to split the flock, taking half to St. Marks for the first time in January 2009.

There is only one other migrating flock, a group of about 240 birds that nest in Canada and winter in Texas. Founded in 1994, Operation Migration's goal is to ensure the survival of the species in case something happens to the Texas flock.

Froona went on a "walk about"

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/photos/the-15-most-toxic-places-to-live/apocalypse-now#image

OMG....these are scarey....look at those kids swimming in garbage...breaks my 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxa6P73Awcg&feature=player_embedded

Amazing but poor   

Gee, you'd think the drive saw something important like a red tail on a street light.

For those not familiar with the area, the Strong Museum is just a few blocks away from Midtown Plaza, the site of A&B's failed nest.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-16-2009/windowless-news-van-for-kids---the-ball

  He's funny that Jon