This reminds me of when Carol tried to push me in the gorge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnJPyczYyS0

Lou

 

Don and I were at the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge Sunday and were entertained by a juvie Peregrine!  What a show this guy put on for all the visitors
Suzanne

Yay for you guys...so lucky   

[After, he said the bat flew off..unharmed, just stunned...hmmm.]

There is un update today about the bat situation:
 http://usa.manuginobili.com/
He has started the rabies shots and talked a little about the value of bats.
Hope everyone listen to him now...
I´ve written him asking for his help talking facts about bats and rabies... We will see...
Mirta

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1DpjBEwekE  and here's the video

After, he said the bat flew off..unharmed, just stunned...hmmm.

[This is so sad and I'm sure we'll see more and more of it.]

STUART — Lisa Stukel was working at the Pelican Café downtown Monday afternoon when she learned of a visitor in need.

While Stukel, 25, of Port St. Lucie, was on-duty as a cook at the cafe, a manatee ensnared in something swam close to the restaurant dock and got stuck between the dock and a column of the Roosevelt Bridge.

A diner saw the manatee in the water near the docks to the west of the café building and told Stukel’s friend and co-worker, Stephanie Grigsby, a server working the diner’s table.

The large manatee was ensnared in what looked to Stukel like a cast net and it was thrashing in the water. A smaller manatee was swimming close to it, she said.

Stukel said that the net was caught on some rocks in the St. Lucie River.

The café’s manager, Vicki Tschudi, said she called wildlife and marine rescue agencies for help.

Meanwhile, Stukel walked down the bank of the St. Lucie River on the western side of the Pelican Café and waded toward the creature, followed by Grigsby, she said.

“I didn’t know if the manatee would knock them on their feet,� Tschudi said later.

An employee of the Flagler Grill, the Pelican Café’s sister restaurant, handed Stukel a knife from the dock and she approached the panicked manatee with it.

Standing face-to-face with the manatee, she sliced loose a strand of fishing line wrapped around the manatee’s throat and pulled at the net wrapped around the creature’s head and flipper. The creature lingered for a while before disappearing into the water, before any other help could arrive.

“�It felt amazing,� Stukel said afterward, as she was enjoying the rest of the evening off with Grigsby.


This is so sad and I'm sure we'll see more and more of it. 

If you’ve been watching this blog for a while, you know that one of Pittsburgh’s peregrine falcon “sonsâ€� has spent the past 11 months in rehab.  Now, at last, Pittsburgh Pete has a permanent home.  This is quite a victory for Pete, and for Judy Bailey who rescued him.

Pete (black/green 3/K) was born at the Gulf Tower in 2006 and nested successfully at the Burlington Lift Bridge in 2008 but he was seriously injured in a battle with a rival that June.  Pete seemed to recover on his own but was found grounded and unable to fly in November 2008.

Since then Pete has been in the care of Judy Bailey, pictured with him here.  Judy is an Animal Control Officer in Hamilton so she could nurse him back to health but is not licensed to keep him.  When it was determined last May that Pete’s seizures prevented him from being released into the wild, Judy had to find him a permanent home.  Otherwise he would die.

Over the summer Mountsberg Raptor Centre in Campbellville, Ontario offered to take Pete as an educational bird if he could sit quietly on the glove and tolerate people near him in an educational setting.  Pete didn’t know these skills so Judy trained him.  Thanks to her hard work and Pete’s ability to learn, he went to his permanent home at the Raptor Centre in late October.  Mountsberg is excited to have him.

Hooray for Pete and a big thank you to Judy Bailey!  She really is Pete’s guardian angel. 

White pelicans arrive to help liven things up at Bolsa Chica wetlands
November 2, 2009 |  7:51 am


American white pelicans have begun to arrive at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, helping to usher in the winter birding season at the vast wetlands adjacent to Pacific Coast Highway and Bolsa Chica State Beach.

I counted five Saturday afternoon, including the three in the top image, and heard many more have since landed. The large, unwieldy and sometimes comical birds spend their summers in the northern U.S. and Canada. Many winter in Southern California.

As for brown pelicans, they're always around and often amusing. If you have a camera and are patient, you'll be rewarded with exceptional photo opportunities from the footbridge, just steps from the parking lot.IMG_7209

Most but not all of these dive-bombing birds are adept at catching fish.

The pelican in the photo emerged from its high-speed plunge with a small fish in its spacious beak. But the poor bird in the image below tried again and again, only to come up empty each time. It became so tired, it began to have trouble lifting off.

I did happen on another good fish-catcher: the snowy egret in the bottom photo, which nabbed a small morsel and spent 20 seconds carefully turning the fish to swallow it head-first.

The great thing about visiting Bolsa Chica, or any wetlands, is that there's rarely a dull moment, especially at low tide, when feeding is at its height. That's when the avian characters become animated, in some cases almost cartoon-like.

Birds that once flourished in suburban skies, including robins, bluebirds and crows, have been devastated by West Nile Virus, a new study has found.

Populations of seven species have suffered dramatic declines across the continent since West Nile first emerged in the United States in 1999, according to a first-of-its-kind study. The research, to be published Thursday by the journal Nature, compared 26 years of bird breeding surveys to quantify what had been known anecdotally.

“We're seeing a serious impact,� said study co-author Marm Kilpatrick, a senior research scientist at the Consortium of Conservation Medicine in New York.

West Nile Virus, which is spread by mosquito bites, has infected 23,974 people and killed 962 since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the disease is primarily a bird virus, hitting seven species hard enough to be scientifically significant. Of the American crow, blue jay, tufted titmouse, American robin, house wren, chickadee and Eastern bluebird, only the blue jay and house wren bounced back, in 2005.

The hardest-hit species has been the American crow. About one-third of crows across the United States have been killed by West Nile, said study lead author Shannon LaDeau, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington. The species was on the rise until 1999.

In some places, such as Maryland, crow loss was at 45 per cent, and around Baltimore and Washington, 90 per cent of the crows were gone, Ms. LaDeau said.

While crows are scavengers and often disliked, they play a key role in nature by cleaning up animal carcasses, she said. Researchers will next look into what species benefit from the disappearance of crows.

Researchers noted the die-offs came in patches, with many in some places and none in others. Maryland appeared to be at the centre of bird deaths, although that was partly because the data were not as good from New York, where the virus first hit, Ms. LaDeau said.

Chickadees, Eastern bluebirds and robins in Maryland were 68 per cent, 52 per cent, and 32 per cent below expected levels in 2005. Tufted titmouse populations in Illinois were one-third of what they were expected to be.

“It tends to be more suburban areas. Some of the common backyard species including the blue jays, the robins, the chickadees have suffered significant declines,� Ms. LaDeau said. “That heavily packed urban corridor is a bad place to be a bird. The reason for that is that the mosquito prefers human landscape. They do very well in suburbia.�

The birds act as an early warning system for humans, said Wesley Hochachka, assistant director of bird population studies at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“If you start seeing crows dying and dying in numbers, that means there could be a human outbreak,� said Mr. Hochachka, who was not involved with the study.

The researchers looked at 20 species that were regularly counted each breeding season and found that populations of 13 species were not down because of West Nile. Biologists say that they have seen other species with many deaths, including owls, hawks, sage grouse and yellow-billed magpies, but that there are no breeding surveys to quantify how bad the problem has been.

Although entire small clusters of crows were “wiped out by West Nile Virus in a single season,� Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation at the National Audubon Society, remained hopeful.

“All of those (bird populations) have the capacity to rebound,� he said.

 

CORDELIA, CA- An oil spill Friday in San Francisco Bay has left an untold number of birds coated in oil. So far, 35 birds have been brought for cleaning to the International Bird Rescue Research Center near Cordelia.

On Friday, the Coast Guard reported up to 800 gallons of toxic bunker oil spilled as a ship was refueling about 2 1/2 miles south of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Over the weekend, rescuers found 35 birds coated in oil.

"We have been very lucky so far in terms of the amount of animal impact that we have seen," said Dr. Greg Massey with the Oiled Wildlife Care Network.

At IBRRC , rescue veterinarian Dr. Shannon Riggs worked another very long day checking incoming birds for injuries and taking blood and feather samples. A western grebe gave out an anguished cry as Riggs checked its beak and head.

"Most of us that have been here have been here for 16-hour days," Riggs said.

Riggs says many workers and volunteers have also been grieving over the loss of a Coast Guard C-130 transport crew and plane lost off the Southern California coast on Thursday. The same plane and several of the same crew members flew down a shipment of migratory birds from Oregon last Monday after a red tide damaged their feathers.

"Today we heard for certain that it was the people that flew our birds down from Oregon and it was really hard to deal with," said Riggs.

But volunteers and workers continue their grueling schedule. "It's wonderful that this building has been built and that it's here and that we can do this," said volunteer Janet Barth. But she would rather not have to be working to save dying birds in the first place. "We'd like to see double-hulled ships. We'd like to see a little more care of our bay so we don't have to do this again," Barth said.

At the rescue center, the birds are checked for injuries, photographed, fed and kept warm. Within 48 hours most are healthy enough to have the oil cleaned from their bodies and feathers.

Experts believe up to half the birds they receive may survive and be released into the wild once again. "Seeing them go out the door once they're clean and healthy is sort of the payback for all that investment," said Massey.

[and Tracy Eccles, when an adventurous teenage chick went on a walkabout through the complex.Return]

Pot Plant Owl: A Spotted Eagle Owl family who amazed ornithologists by casually adapting to the dangerous city life by nesting in the pot plant of a Johannesburg townhouse. (Sapa)

Johannesburg - A Spotted Eagle Owl couple, who casually adapted to Johannesburg's hazardous city life by nesting in the pot plant of a townhouse, have fast become celebrities in the publishing world.
Their owl family of four stars in a unique book called Pot Plant Owl, launched by the townhouse owners last week, diarising the 54-day drama of chicks landing under car wheels and being harassed by barking dogs and lawnmowers.
It tells of the moment when protective neighbours had to step in and call the owls' "owners", Allan and Tracy Eccles, when an adventurous teenage chick went on a walkabout through the complex.
Return

But "Pot Plant Owl" was so happy with the living conditions that she returned last month - a year later - to nest on the Eccles' balcony again, scoffing at the owl box her eager protectors presented as alternative accommodation this year.
Instead, she fluffed her spotted brown and white feathers into a cosy spot in her favourite pot plant as the Johannesburg couple squealed in delight at her return, already planning the set-up of a webcam and blog to detail the second year's nesting process on the balcony.
It all started one early August morning last year when the Eccles woke up to find a Spotted Eagle Owl crouching in the Ficus tree pot plant, hiding away from two crows dive-bombing her.

Bird enthusiasts
What were the chances that she would choose the balcony of keen bird enthusiasts, one of them who conducted birding tours while working as a pilot and guide in the Okavango Delta in Botswana?
"We thought, oh sweet, isn't nice to that we have her for one day," recalls Tracy, whose only pets are parrots but whose neighbours have dogs.
That evening, she and her husband went outside to water the plants on the balcony - and discovered an egg in the pot plant.
"In my totally ignorant state, I picked it up. I thought it was cold and useless."
Her ex-birding guide husband suggested they leave the egg there and contact a wildlife rehabilitation centre the next day.
The couple, whose house is situated next to a green belt north-west of Johannesburg, was not prepared for its response.
'You've lost your balcony'
"You've lost your balcony," FreeMe's senior clinic manager Nicci Wright declared.
"The female Spotted Eagle Owl has chosen your balcony, and your pot plant to lay her eggs. She will lay one egg every three to four days until her clutch is laid, and she will sit on the eggs for the incubation period to begin."
"If all goes well, the female will return every year to within a few metres of the same nesting spot and raise her chicks," said Wright.
"It was a totally gob-smacked moment," says Tracy. "The response was very casual, 'oh, you've lost your balcony'."
That was the beginning of an exceptional journey for the couple, who immediately set up a hide in their bedroom to observe "Pot Plant Owl" and her family.
Their whereabouts were documented and photographed in a diary between August and November last year every day, culminating in the launch of the book.
It tells the tale of "Big Chick" and "Little Chick", learning how to eat, hunt and fly, and "Pappa", the ever-protective male owl, hunting for his family and always keeping an eye on them, albeit from a distance.
Once, Allan made the mistake to assume it was safe to water the plants on the balcony when "Pot Plant Owl" had left her nest for moment.
Attack
"But as I walk towards the nest, a silent hunter moves in for the attack," he writes in the book.
"Out of nowhere - THUD - a big whack on the side of my head. The male swoops down and hits me, sending my head sideways with the force of his talons. It feels like a steel pole has been wielded and connected with the side of my head.
"When Tracy arrives home, my ear and head are still bleeding profusely."
From then onwards, the couple wore cycling helmets and carried umbrellas whenever they ventured out onto the balcony.
For Tracy, the worst moments included the loss of the third chick, whom the Eccles believe was snatched by a crow on Day Eight, or the day one of the chicks fell off the balcony and went missing.
"That to me was very stressful, I found it under the wheel of a car at our neighbours," says Tracy, adding that residents in the complex were very supportive throughout the process.
"We have people in the complex who bought the book, they are saying, 'our owls are getting famous'."
Hail storm

Another bad day was when a hail storm hit the area.
"Pot Plant Owl opened her wings, she was trying to protect the chicks but she was struggling to keep them under her wings.
"These hail stones were hitting her head so hard, she was wincing at every single hail hitting her."
The chicks' learning-to-fly lessons were a highlight, she says.
"The night that they actually left us, Big Chick flew up to roof. Little Chick watched, and we held our breath, and she just made it to the roof.
"That's when we knew we were probably not seeing them again.
Bittersweet

"It was a lovely moment, but bittersweet."
The Eccles waited in anticipation to see if their owl family would return this year, but August came and went; the couple's preparations for the return apparently in vain.
"Then, on the morning of October 4, Allan went to the curtains, he turned around and jumped, shouting, 'we've got an owl back, we've got an owl back!' "
Three eggs have been laid and the couple is expecting the chicks to hatch this week - and "Pappa" is back again to support his family.
"The other night he got back with a little snake. She ate it like spaghetti. She went up to his beak, it looked like she was almost kissing him thank you."
"Pot Plant Owl" has ignored the owl box or green dog kennel set up on the balcony for her.
"She is saying, 'no, I'm not interested'. She is sticking with her pot plant."

CAMBRIDGE — Tens of thousands of migrating waterfowl, one of the nation's largest populations of breeding bald eagles and the endangered Delmarva fox squirrel all call Cambridge's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge home.

And all are vulnerable to the rising sea levels that threaten coastal marshland.

The Chesapeake Bay is experiencing sea level rise at a rate twice the global average, and the thin ribbons of marshes and wetlands that form along coastlines--Blackwater, Smith Island, Assateague Island--will be the first to be flooded with rising water.

Flooded marshland means the loss of land that filters nutrients and pollutants from entering the water and acts as a barrier to offshore storm surges. It also means the destruction of vital habitat for the wildlife that forms the backbone of Maryland's seafood industry and tourism economy.

Since the 1930s, Blackwater has lost 5,000 acres of marshland, said Dixie Birch, supervisory biologist at the refuge. Blackwater contains one-third of Maryland's tidal wetlands, which are disappearing because of factors like climate change, saltwater intrusion and animals like the nonnative nutria and resident Canada geese that consume loads of vegetation.

A report from the College of William and Mary's Center for Conservation Biology predicts that sea level rise will have catastrophic consequences for marsh birds, causing an almost 80 percent population decline in species like the clapper rail, seaside sparrow and marsh wren.

The problems that marshland loss can cause for fisheries are probably even more extreme than those it causes for marsh birds, said Mike Wilson, a research biologist at the center who headed the study. Fisheries rely on marshlands as both a spawning ground and a nursery for juvenile fish.

Although the leading cause of sea level rise in this region is global warming, the state's marshes are undergoing "a two-pronged attack," Wilson said.

The sea is rising, but the land is also sinking due to the compaction of the earth's crust, said Wilson. Some also attribute such land subsidence to our withdrawal of water from underground aquifers, citing their creation of a vacuum that allows marshes to sink into "areas that were once filled with water and are now empty," Wilson said.

"Some wetlands can keep up with sea level rise, and have kept up with sea-level rise," said Andrew Baldwin, associate professor at the University of Maryland's Department of Environmental Science and Technology.

"The question is, will coastal wetlands keep up with this newer, faster rate of sea level rise? And where are those wetlands?" Baldwin said.

Not in Maryland. Although marshlands have the potential to migrate inland, their movement depends upon the presence of forgiving topography, and the elevated part of the (Chesapeake) bay's shoreline "is just a little bit too much above sea level for these marshes to really go anywhere," Wilson said.

"There gets to be a point where the elevation is so high that you won't have a marsh form. It'll just stay dry. So what you see is these marshes being squeezed out of existence," Wilson said.

Even if marshes were to migrate, the new wetlands that would develop over flooded land "would not offset the loss of existing wetlands," concluded the Climate Action Plan released in August 2008 by the Maryland Commission on Climate Change.

Another obstacle to marshland migration has appeared along coastlines in recent decades--shoreline armaments, or structural methods of shoreline erosion control.

The state's shorelines are "becoming armored at a relatively high rate" with structures like bulkheads, retaining walls, stone revetments and riprap, Wilson said.

"These seawalls ... prevent marshes from being able to move any further inland," he said.

In October 2008, the state implemented the Living Shoreline Protection Act, requiring landowners to install living shorelines rather than other methods of erosion control, unless another method is proven more appropriate.

Living shorelines, built by placing plants, stone, sand and other material along coastlines, mimic marshlands and work "in concert with nature to provide that interface between land and water where both can benefit," said Jordan Loran, director of the Department of Natural Resources' office of Engineering and Construction.

Living shorelines are "becoming more and more the matter of course, as the technology develops and the importance of wetlands becomes more and more apparent," Loran said.

Marshland restoration in Blackwater has stalled due to a lack of funding.

During the 1980s, the refuge restored 12 acres. In 2003, eight more were restored. The recent postponement of a partnership that would have funded the restoration of thousands of acres was "a big disappointment for us," Birch said.

The refuge is now restoring Barbados Island, which sits at the center of Blackwater and is losing .8 acres of land each day.

Senators Benjamin L. Cardin and Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrats, announced Friday the passage of a bill containing $2 million in funding to acquire more land for Blackwater.

Marshland loss will prove to be a difficult problem to solve.

"Climate change is a difficult [problem] because you can't really fight rising temperatures that accompany rising seas," Wilson said.

[The Greenest City Action Team was inspired by a peregrine falcon that swooped down to perch outside the team’s brainstorming session.]

With bold steps, Vancouver is poised to become the world’s greenest city by 2020, as outlined in the Greenest City Action Team’s recent report.

In so doing, Vancouver can reap tremendous benefits that will come with leadership in the sustainability transition, including lasting, high-quality green jobs.

This Action Team, co-chaired by Mayor Gregor Robertson and environmental lawyer David Boyd, is a team of action heroes. Together, they’re chock full of bold goals and great ideas.

Climate change is one villain sure to fall to this team: Although Vancouver is already well ahead of similar-sized North American cities in per-person climate-change pollution, the Team is targeting some of the most aggressive cuts in the world (30 per cent below 1990 by 2020).

Some of the most important actions can’t be tackled by Vancouver alone, but the Team is embracing those challenges also.

For example, the report outlines an innovative financing mechanism so that the up-front costs of energy efficiency investments are actually paid by energy bill savings. Such a mechanism would overcome a major obstacle to smart choices, when builders or owners lack capital or don’t receive the benefits of the long-term cost savings.

But Vancouver doesn’t yet have the needed legal powers, so it proposes to convince the provincial government to amend the Vancouver Charter.

As Vancouver enters the world stage with the 2010 Olympics, now is just the time for the city to showcase its brains and brawn in making Vancouver the world’s greenest city.

A selection of targets for 2020:
• Create 20,000 green jobs
• Plant 150,000 trees
• Enable a majority of city trips by foot, bicycle, and public transit
• Got a good idea? Check out http://vancouver.ca/greenestcity/ and get involved!

(Image)
The Greenest City Action Team was inspired by a peregrine falcon that swooped down to perch outside the team’s brainstorming session.

http://www.aad.gov.au/Asset/Sounds/seal_yawn.mp3

Here's a Weddlell seal yawning   

http://www.aad.gov.au/Asset/Sounds/call3.mp3   Weddell seal underwater

http://www.aad.gov.au/Asset/Sounds/call4.mp3    Chirps underwater  Weddell seal mating season

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G7bGBUlx2M&feature=player_embedded

They make cute Commercials but need to update their Peregrine page. 

[I'm so happy you found her home. As Carol mentioned she has been visible this weekend. I saw Beauty just before dark on Saturday on Old Changing Scenes (see Twitter), and last evening Brian and I found her on Widows Walk railing. As you can see, she looked beautiful in the setting sun.]

I'm so happy you found her home.  As Carol mentioned she has been visible this weekend.  I saw Beauty just before dark on Saturday on Old Changing Scenes (see Twitter), and last evening Brian and I found her on Widows Walk railing.  As you can see, she looked beautiful in the setting sun.

Those are amazing pics joyce and she sure does look BEAUTY-FUL. Thanks 

Dubai: With Romeo, a fully-grown male Ruppell's Griffon Vulture, still missing after he took to the skies from his perch last week, another vulture has followed suit and taken flight to the surprise of their handlers at the Birds of Prey Show in Al Khawaneej.

Tschotu, a nine-year-old female White-backed Vulture, disappeared on Thursday. As part of the show, all the birds fly freely to display their size and grace, but rarely fly away completely.

"In the last few days we have lost two friends. It is very sad. But as these are wild animals, to make a show with them, they have to fly free. Whether they come back is their own decision," said Sandra Stuckenbruck, a professional falconer and breeder.

"We don't know but we think the change of weather could be the reason. The wind has changed in the last few days and vultures like wind because they can fly very high. It is also the migrating season for Griffon Vultures so perhaps they decided to go back to the wild," she said.

Tschotu weighs about seven kilos and her wingspan is about 2.3 metres.

Like Romeo she is micro-chipped, making her very easy to identify.

"Maybe somebody will spot her. You can see them very well in the air, but if they are sitting in a tree or in bushes they have a good camouflage," said Stuckenbruck.

"We thought we saw Romeo circling above us at a very great height. We thought she might attract him but instead of him coming home, Tschotu flew away as well. She was born in the wild so surviving is no problem for them," she added.

In the past falcons that have flown away were identified thanks to their chip and returned to the show.

If spotted

If you think you have spotted Romeo or Tschotu please call Sandra Stuckenbruck from the Birds of Prey Show Dubai on 050 289 1863 immediately. Vultures are very intelligent, so do not mistreat or try to catch or touch them.