Bald Eagles Up in 3 States

Bald eagle numbers are up in Georgia and Massachusetts, and a Wisconsin county has seen its first bald eagle nest in over 100 years.

In Wisconsin, an article in the Kenosha News reported that Seth Fisher, a Department of Natural Resources wildlife technician, flew over the nest, which is on private property in the southern part of Racine County. “It’s exciting to have this be the first nest in a long time this far south” in this region of the state, the article quotes Fisher as saying.

In Georgia, bald eagle surveys in January and March found 166 occupied nesting territories, 124 successful nests and 185 young fledged, according to a Department of Natural Resources press release. That’s an increase from last year’s 163 nesting territories and 121 successful nests, the release says, while the number of eaglets fledged dropping slightly from 199.

The Quabbin Reservoir and the Connecticut River remain the strongholds of the Massachusetts bald eagle population, the Worcester News Telegram reports. There is still plenty of unoccupied bald eagle habitat on the state’s ocean coastline, the article quotes Joan Walsh, coordinator of the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas for Mass Audubon as saying.

There were 107 bald eagles in the state during the last count, in 2011 and there were 38 nests last year, the News Telegram article says. Preliminary results from the state’s first spring survey suggested the state’s bald eagle population would continue to increase.

Read the Kenosha News article, here.
Read the Georgia DNR press release here.
Read the Worcester News Telegram, here.

Photo: Bald eagle, by Dave Menke, used courtesy of the USFWS.

 

Thousands of Grebes Crash in Utah Desert

Some 5,000 eared grebes mistook pavement for water at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the Salt Lake City Tribune reports. Hundreds of the birds died after their hard landing. Because the birds cannot take flight from dry land, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel collected the living birds and transported them to nearby ponds.

Other birds were treated for their injuries or euthanized, the Tribune article says. The article also notes that the night was foggy, the pavement was wet and the grebes were on their spring migration to the Great Salt Lake.

The article also notes that 17 months ago migrating eared grebes crashed in a Wal-Mart parking lot, where about 1,500 of the grebes died.

Read the Salt Lake City Tribune article here.
Check out the slide show with the article, which includes beautiful grebe photos and state wildlife staffers at work.
Read a Utah DWR newsletter on loons and grebes.

Photo Copyright Nicky Davis. Eared grebe in happier times. Photo used courtesy of the Utah Department of Wildlife Resources.

3rd Draft for Prairie Chickens

Five states submitted a plan for conserving lesser prairie chickens to the US Fish and Wildlife Service last week. It is the third draft for the plan, Lone Star Outdoor News reports. The five states are Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. The multi-state conservation plan is a bid to keep the bird of the federal endangered species list.

The planning process began a year ago, in April 2012. The USFWS will make its final ruling on September 30, 2013.

Read the press release from the Kansas Department of Parks, Tourism and Wildlife here.
Read the same press release from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department here.
Lone Star Outdoor News adds a headline that mentions the third draft, here.

Photo: © Gerard Bertrand, courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

Sage Grouse Under Fire

A US Fish and Wildlife Service report says that sage grouse are threatened by the loss and fragmentation of their sagebrush habitat. The habitat is being lost most commonly to wildfires which burn hotter because of invasive species. Ironically, another cause of habitat loss in the invasion of conifers into the sagebrush ecosystem, which is caused when fires don’t occur frequently enough.

A Wyoming Public Media report says that the USFWS report doesn’t tell people what to do, it just explains the threats.

A press release from the American Bird Conservancy says that the Bureau of Land Management should pay attention to the report.

You can find the 115-page report here.

In related news, the Idaho Statesman reports on an effort by a Nevada county on a local ranch to kill ravens with poison eggs and to reduce wildfires by increasing livestock grazing. The goal is to increase the number of sage grouse and stave off an endangered species listing.

The county does not expect support from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the article reports, and has already drawn the ire of a regional environmental group. The article says:

“Their fixation on killing and poisoning native wildlife and turning lands back into a dustbowl is really twisted,” said Katie Fite, the biodiversity director for the Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project.

Photo: Greater sage grouse by Stephen Ting. Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

 

Peeps Not a Species of Concern

In a press release issued this week, the American Bird Conservancy named Peeps its Easter bird of the week for the second straight year and declared that while the overall population is severely depleted each year at this time, “Populations appear to quickly rebound in subsequent years and therefore they are not a species of conservation concern.”

Further, the report says, there is reason to believe that each color morph is actually an individual species. “There simply isn’t any evidence that these forms interbreed,” said ABC senior scientist Dr. David Wiedenfeld in the release. “While they can often be found roosting in the same box, the fact is that nobody has ever seen an intermediate bird between the color morphs,” he added.

More fun can be found both in the ABC press release and its bird of the week profile (which are nearly identical).

This is what happens when Easter is the day before April Fool’s Day. However, you can expect all seriousness from us on Monday. (And personally, I have never found different color morphs nesting in the same box.)

Photo: Marshmallow Peeps, by Just Born

The Word on Birds

The recent issue of The Auk (subscription or fee required to read full articles) has several articles of interest to state wildlife biologists:

It has long been assumed that early successional forests are important habitat for young ovenbirds. A paper by Andrew Vitz, now with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, tested that hypothesis experimentally. He found that the density of understory vegetation was a factor in the birds’ survival, but that the birds could do well in smaller patches of early successional habitat, such as microhabitats within mature forests.

Read the ovenbird paper here.

A paper on California spotted owls found that two is the magic number for a number of offspring. Owls that were part of a pair of nestlings had higher survival rates that onlies or triplets. The research also found that the number of young produced is a good indicator of habitat quality.

Read the spotted owl paper here.

Piping plovers hatched earlier in the season in the Great Lakes region had a higher survival rate than those born later in the season, another paper reported. Nest sites that were closer to trees also had lower survival rates. The older the plover chicks were, the more likely they were to live another day. Because the Great Lakes population of piping plovers is federally endangered (with other populations being threatened), these factors can help inform management strategies.

Read the piping plover paper here.

Photo: ovenbird, courtesy Wisconsin Division of Natural Resources

 

Water Users v. Cranes in Texas

In 2009, 23 federally endangered whooping cranes died because of a drought. A recent court ruling says that this is an illegal take of a federally-endangered species, and that the federal law has precedence over Texas state law, which says that water is doled out on a first come, first served basis, says an article in Bloomberg.

The Texas state agencies will appeal the ruling, the article says.

The whooping crane flock in question is the world’s only self-sustaining wild flock, the article says, migrating from Canada to Texas. The article also implies that what was once “an isolated stretch of Texas coastal marsh,” where a tiny flock of whooping cranes survived unnoticed at a time when the species was thought to be extinct, is now home to the “world’s largest concentration of refineries and petrochemical plants.”

Read the Bloomberg article here.

Photo: Whooping cranes at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, by Steve Hillebrand, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

The Crows Are Back

An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says that recent Audubon Christmas Bird Count figures indicate that the American crow population in Illinois may be back to its pre-West Nile Virus level and is returning to normal in Missouri.

Crows were particularly susceptible to West Nile Virus and populations across the country dipped about 10 years ago as the virus swept across the country.

Read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article here.

If you are trying to sneak up on some crows to do research on them or near them, a recent paper in the journal Ethology has some tips: crows can tell where you are looking, but they can’t read your facial expression. So smiling as you approach isn’t going to help, but looking the other way just might.

Read the article in the journal of Ethology here. (Fee or subscription required.)

Photo by David Herr, courtesy of US Forest Service

Two Golden Eagles Killed; One Was In Study

Three golden eagles were recently caught in snare traps in Montana. Two of the eagles were killed, and one of the dead eagles was part of a research project by Craighead Beringia South, a wildlife research and education institute based in Kelly, Wyoming.

The Jackson Hole Daily reports that the dead eagle was one of six golden eagles wearing a GPS backpack since 2010 in a project designed to study golden eagle migration corridors.

An article in the Ravalli Republic says that one of the golden eagles was found dead, the other had to be euthanized and the third is being rehabilitated. The article also notes that golden eagles have been in sharp decline in the region.

Read the Jackson Hole Daily article here.
Read the Ravalli Republic article here.

Photo: Golden eagle in Alaska, by Donna Dewhurst, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Kansas Trumpets Swan Sightings

“These birds are an excellent conservation success story,” said Ed Miller, nongame biologist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism in a department press release trumpeting recent trumpeter swan sightings in the state. “They have rebounded from a population low of 73 birds in the U.S.”

Trumpeter swans are the largest members of the swan family, and can be up to sixty inches long with an eight-foot wingspan. They are one of two swan species native to North America, the release says. (The other, the tundra swan is similar looking, but has a yellow spot on its bill, the release notes. Also, tundra swans aren’t usually seen in Kansas.)

Read the press release here.Learn more about trumpeter swans at All About Birds, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
And see this year’s trumpeter swan reports on eBird, here.

Photo by Kali Kostelac, courtesy of the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism