| INTERESTING ODDS & ENDS |
| I have found birders to be "information junkies" when it comes to learning about birds. So, on this page I'll attempt to share "bird facts" with you. Some facts you may already know and some may be new, interesting and fun. Enjoy! And Please Share!! Read something interesting? Send me an email & I will post it! Thanks! |
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| Soccer Threatens Swallows (Bird Watcher's Digest, March/April 2007) The 2010 World Soccer Cup games, scheduled to take place near Durban, South Africa is causing airport development near the Mount Moreland reed bed. Mount Moreland is a "major roosting site for more than 3 million barn swallows. The birds spend the winter there after breeding in Britain and elsewhere in Europe." The proposed airport will put the reed bed in the way of arriving and departing planes; and there is fear that the reed bed might also be cleared by developers due to a threat to air traffic safety. "Apparently the landing of the swallows in the evening is one of the best avian spectacles in all of South Africa. If the airport construction proceeds and the reed beds are removed, Britain stands to lose much of its swallow population and the KwaZulu Natal region its symbolic bird." |
| Songbirds and Mercury (Bird Watcher's Digest, Nov/Dec. 2006) "Mercury, a pollutant usually associated with wildlife living in streams and lakes, has been found in unusually high levels in the blood and feathers of 178 woodland songbirds living in New York State." A study was expaned "to wood thrushes, whose population had declined by 45 percent in recent decades. Of all the songbirds tested, the wood thrush had the highest levels - levels high enough to affect reproduction....The state government has proposed cutting mercury emissions from New York power plants in half by 2010, but much of the mercury in New York comes from smokestack emissions drifting eastward from coal-burning power plants in the Midwest." |
| Song Matters as Much to House Finches as Color (Bireders' World Magazine, August 2006) "Researchers who pored over 10 years of data on a finch population in Montana have concluded that the long-held notion that females (House Finch) select males with the reddest breasts is not entirely true. Early in the breeding season, females do choose mates with redder feathers, but later in the season, after more birds arrive in the population, females search for mates that are significantly different genetically from themselves. It's unclear how finches determine genetic differences, but the behavior prevents inbreeding, a factor that is important to the survival of the species....The same population of finches led...(the researchers)...to report...that males with the most elaborate songs are more successful at breeding...Males that sang long songs initiated their first clutch significantly earlier, and males that sang songs at a faster rate had larger clutches...Other studies have shown that males that nest early produce more and healthier offspring than late nesters." |
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| A Site About Long Island Birds & Birdwatching |
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| Will Towers Soon be Bird Friendly? (Birder's World, April 2007) “After turning a deaf ear to ornithologists and birders for years about the death of migratory birds at TV, radio, and other communication towers, the Federal Comunications Commission in late 2006 opened the door to dealing with the problem. Recent research in Michigan has suggested that blinnking or strobe tower lights are much less dangerous to birds than non-blinking lights. The FCC sought public comment on whether medium-intensity white strobe lights would be better than non-blinking red lights. A spokesperson could not predict when the FCC would make a final decision." |
| City Birds Sing Different Tune (Bird Watcher's Digest, March/April 2007) Recent studies have shown that birds sing different courtship and territorial songs in the city than those in forest environments. The study was done on Great Tits (an urban-dwelling European bird) in "10 major cities, including London, Prague, Paris and Amsterdam". City songs were found to be shorter and faster than forest songs. "The urban songs also showed an upshift in frequency that is consistent with the need to compete with low-frequency environmental noise, such as traffic noise.....Species without the capacity to adapt to urban noise may have no other choice than to escape city life." |
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| Pelagic Birds - Tubenoses (WildBird Magazne, Nov/Dec 2006) Taken from the article "Life on the Open Ocean" "..most seabirds, or "tubenoses" as they are called in the birding community, breed on oceanic islands around the world but spend the majority of their lives at sea....Though they vary incredibly in size and shape, all share similar adaptations that enable them to live on the open ocean. The most prominent adaptation is the nasal tubes found on all true seabirds' bills, giving the group its colloquial name "tubenoses." These tubes can be unified as a single tube atop the base of the bill - as on fulmars, shearwaters and petrels - or split in two tubes, one on each side of the bill, as seen in albatrosses....These large tubes do two things for seabirds. They promote an excellent olfactory system that allows seabirds to locate food across the wide expanse of the open ocean. They also allow seabirds to excrete salt, enabling them to drink salt water - an incredibly important adaptation when living on the ocean...." |
| Stopovers for Migrating Birds (Birder's World magazine, June 2007) Stop-overs used by forest-dwelling eastern landbirds can be put into three types, as stated in this magazine's article: -(1) Fire Escapes: "Small, isolated, infrequently used patches surrounded by unusable habitat...If a fire escape is not available at the critical place and time...migrants are not likely to survive to continue migration." -(2) Convenience Stores: "Habitat patches of varying size in generally inhospitable surroundings, such as New York's Central Park or Chicago's Jackson Park. Offering more resources than fire escapes, convenience stores are places where birds can rest briefly and replenish fat and muscle easily." -(3) Full-Service hotels: "Extensive areas of predominantly forested habitat, such as DeSoto National Forest, Mississippi, or Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina. They make abundant food, shelter, and water available for many individuals of many species. |