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There is an association of wildlife photographers down here, much maligned among my Mexican birder friends for a variety of reasons, which has proposed a rule that governs which photos they will accept: No wildlife photography should contain any human elements. Is a human element still disallowed if it is the road on which a Roadrunner runs?
One of the pleasures of birding through a landscape no man has gone before is that one has frequent encounters with individuals – birds, mammals, herps, whatever – that have never seen a human in their life. But also, yet again to my utter surprise, a single Tolai Hare. what is this thing? And it walks on its hind legs.
Well, it is that time of year again and shorebirds are breeding. Hopefully all of the migratory shorebirds that left Roebuck Bay earlier this year have been successful at breeding in the Northern Hemisphere and will soon be heading back to our shores. I have also learnt to not count my chickens before they hatch.
The White-rumped Swift Apus caffer , a tropical African breeding species, was only discovered breeding in Europe in the 1960s. Little Swifts breed in Tangier, just a few kilometres on the other side of the Strait so it would have been logical to expect these to have made the short sea crossing into Europe.
It also has one of the highest human population densities in the state. Not surprisingly, this brings Burrowing Owls into close contact with humans across the county. Loss of habitat due to development, disturbance at burrows and negative interactions with humans are some of the threats facing this charismatic species.
However, in this post, I’d like to lay out the basic numbers as we pretend to know them about overall bird mortality, human related causes of mortality, and somewhere in there I’ll note that the number of birds that are killed by windmills is so small that it says “zero” on my pie chart. So keep that in mind.
Most were introduced, meaning they were brought to Florida by humans. These wild birds migrate out of Florida to northern breeding areas in the spring and are not present in Florida during the mottled duck breeding season. However, captive-reared mallards are being unlawfully released by humans in large numbers in Florida.
Its amazing to me that there are still places on earth where wildlife is blissfully unafraid of humans. It was made a National Park in the 1980s and is a major breeding and nesting area for over 30,000 seabirds. A male Magnificent Frigatebird in full breeding regalia. Red-billed Tropicbirds nest on these craggy cliffs.
There are two Painted Bunting populations, one that breeds along the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Florida and one that breeds in the interior United States and northern Mexico from southeastern New Mexico to western Mississippi. The Atlantic Coast population lingers on the breeding grounds after nesting to molt.
While the P-a-P Wildfowl Trust’s main thrust is the breeding and release of five duck species, the habitat encourages a number of native wetland birds to inhabit and proliferate the area. Witnessing unbothered Blue-and-yellow Macaws lazily perusing the larder of moriche palm fruit ensures that thoughts of anything else all disappear.
The Osprey is one of the true cosmopolitans of the avian world, found on six continents and breeding on five. It can and will live near most any body of water with an adequate supply of fish — fresh or brackish, wild or crowded with human activity. Because the stadium is by the river. And Osprey love them some nest platforms.
That’s because these birds won’t breed when rats are around. And let’s face it, would you go to all the effort of breeding if there was a hefty chance that your newborn would just go down some invader’s gullet?). A final round of baiting just launched in what’s being called the world’s largest rat-eradication project.
There are three things that will go wrong: 1) The inland zones that would become the new wetlands are already, in many cases, occupied by human-built things that will severely interfere with this process. Also, these human-occupied area are probably full of toxins and other impediments to normal use by wildlife. ” GL: Aha.
The breeding season is longer, starts earlier. “Many long-distance migrants arrive so late on the breeding grounds that they have little opportunity to respond to warming conditions by nesting earlier.” The mechanism by which this is happening in at least some species of birds is very interesting. ” GannetCam.
Today, there are more than 3,000 birds at this accessible colony and they are protected by fences and stiff fines for human disturbance. The only other significant mainland breeding colony is based about an hour out of Cape Town on the east coast at a place called Betty’s Bay.
One of the more unusual additions to our local avifauna is the Common Hill Myna (not to be confused with Common Myna, a parking lot obligate in Miami), a popular bird in the pet trade due to its ability to mimic human speech. Common Hill Myna’s range in South Florida.
Other researchers apparently tried to get their universities to fund their drone toys, resulting in papers with titles such as “The use of drones to study the breeding productivity of Whooper Swan “ Another finding does not come as a surprise to birders watching birds both from cars and on foot.
As far as I know, White-rumped Snowfinches are not among the main prey of the Saker Falcon – but they associate with colonies of pika, using burrows for both roosting and breeding (HBW), so it makes sense to mention them here (plus I forgot to cover them in my earlier post on Ruoergai birds).
Not sure if they are breeding but certainly they are trying, though I am not fully convinced of their competence. And of course there are passerines, some which spent the summer at Nanhui, some just returning from their breeding grounds elsewhere. Another new breeding record for Shanghai . Some cuckoo species. Brown Shrike.
Spring through summer is baby season, and the human population ventures outside and finds little creatures in their backyard, their garden, their porch, the edge of the trail, the sidewalk, the train platform, etc. Aha, Georgia, so it’s too small for a Carolina Wren and there aren’t any House Wren s in your area during breeding season.”.
According to Wikipedia, these birds are good at multitasking, being “in some parts of its range … known as a symbol of luck, longevity, and fidelity” As in humans, “the social implications of dancing [among the cranes] are complex in meaning” ( source ). It seems that two Italian men have found a way to do both.
Image by Adam Riley Of the 115 African species now listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered, nearly half occur on the islands surrounding Africa or are non-breeding migrants to Africa. There has been growth in the breeding population at the colonies in Morocco (now estimated at 106 breeding pairs and approximately 500 birds in total).
If there are human fishing activities then all the better – Marabous will gather in numbers around fishermen’s docks and fish markets, in fact anywhere where fish are cleaned and scraps disposed of, allowing these intelligent birds to obtain a free meal. The Saddle-billed Stork has a similar Africa-wide distribution as the Marabou.
Apparently, this is another bird species that feels not so certain about flying (many humans have similar feelings). Citrine Wagtails are rare in Shanghai but apparently quite common around Chaka, though unfortunately most of the ones we saw were not in breeding plumage. I blame this on covid-19.
Let’s say you’re a bird wrapping up your breeding season in the north of Scotland—where do your thoughts turn when winter beckons? In either case, they’ve got a travel history that would leave most humans’ passports in the dust. Photo by Adam Rowlands/HEMEDIA. News geotagging migration Red-necked Phalarope Scotland UK'
Beginning this year, New York State embarked on its third-ever breeding bird atlas , and it’s the first one I’ve been able to participate in as a birder. Over the last several weeks there, I’ve watched them gather bits of straw and other sundry materials and ferry these back to their nest holes in the old barn walls and eaves.
They can reach heights of up to 5 ft 7 inches, taller than many adult humans. They are not bound to wetlands the entire year and large groups of birds will disperse to dry grassland and savanna outside of the breeding season. This is worrying because paired birds generally only lay one egg and the breeding cycle can be very irregular.
The usual way to find an owl would be to listen to its territorial call in the breeding season (to listen and not to lure it – I oppose the playback ), but this species is even less vocal than most other owls. Population estimates from “Birds of Serbia: Breeding Population Estimates and Trends”, BirdLife Serbia, 2015.
Bird names say much about human perception, they can also give us insight into the people who invented names for official bird descriptions. Three live and breed here, two migrate through the country in large numbers (one of those also breeds here in small numbers), and another migrates through and winters in Costa Rica.
I assume this is because so many of them breed in the Arctic and tundra regions, so their summer is much briefer than that of other birds. Still, most of the birds were locals, including Fulvous Whistling-Ducks , Black-necked Stilts , and a lone American Avocet (still with a bit of breeding color). Let that be a lesson, to me.
So modest and retiring is this well named woodland recluse that it will not sing if it suspects humans are taking notice of it. Perhaps it feels some measure of security from human intervention in subdued light. It was a warm winter day and the bird seemed to be practicing its song for the breeding season to come. … a.
So it was with a superlative, breeding-plumaged, male Scarlet Tanager today at Jamaica Bay. Now Scarlet Tanagers are always a gorgeous bird, and if you walk by a breeding-plumaged male without looking not only are your credentials as a birder at stake but so are your credentials as a human being.
The vast majority of you reading this accept it is happening, and for the time being it is caused by humans. Though they breed on the tundra, Pomarine Jaegers spend most of their lives at sea. If a seabird is trying to breed, if all the forage is too far from their nest, their nest is guaranteed to fail. Climate Change.
Kirtland’s Warbler is a classic niche species; they breed in only very specific conditions, which occur in only a very specific area. this species breeds. Fortunately, there were still a handful of immature birds alive at sea, and a few years later they were back on Toroshima breeding again. Somebody won a Nobel Prize.
This is my first visit to this area, known as the Madz Brod, where two new breeding species for the country were discovered a decade ago. They are common winter visitors, but this is my first observation of them in the breeding season. Madz Brod by Slobodan Puzovic. At some rock faces we see juveniles on their nesting ledges.
My Dark-eyed Juncos are trilling in preparation to retreat to quieter breeding grounds, the Black-Capped Chickadees sing their two notes, and the Song Sparrows absolutely will not shut up. Snow Geese overgrazing their breeding grounds, displacing other Arctic-breeding species and setting themselves up for a fall. The result?
And much of that time is spend loafing around the breeding colonies trying to pair off and engaging in silly-looking behaviours referred to as dancing by scientists. It can take over a year to raise a chick for the larger species, and even species that can fit their entire breeding cycle into one year tend not to breed in consecutive years.
In fact, the family name Lanius derives from a Latin word for “butcher”, though the “butcherbird” was a butcher long before humans even developed the language to describe these activities. Who knows – perhaps early humans got the idea of cutting and hanging meat by watching these shrikes at work in their arboreal abbatoirs?
One website states that only 15% of the birds that hatch make it to become first year breeding adults, 6% make it to the second year, and 3% to the third year. Other species – such as starlings or t**s – stealing the nesting site of Eurasian Nuthatches is one of the major reasons for breeding failure.
Previously common at its only known site, Lake Aloatra, into the 1930’s, the introduction of numerous exotic fish species and human disturbance led to massive population declines. Madagascar, however, has had more than its fair share of extinct or lost species and Madagascar Pochard was firmly on this list.
After all, what was thought as its habitat was heavily deteriorated and converted to agriculture as the human population grew. A captive breeding program was established with a facility at Gustavo del Solar’s property, not far from where the birds were re-discovered. Photo: Fernando Angulo Pratolongo.
It breeds in a broad and not quite coherent band from Iceland in the west through central Europe and southern Scandinavia all the way to eastern Russia, wintering in Africa, parts of India, and Southeast Asia to Australia. Aspect one is feeding when humans are not around.
Luckily for them, even though they nest on the ground, they usually breed far from human habitation, under heavy vegetative cover. They form a monogamous relationship with a female each breeding season, but attempt (and sometimes succeed at) extra-pair copulations with other females. Click on photos for full sized images.
Contrary to alleged preferences among humans, the golden-headed cisticola has a shorter tail during the breeding season ( source ). “She monitors Pied Oystercatchers breeding along a 23km stretch of beach by bicycle and on foot.” It breeds in tree holes, presumably explaining the more commonly used name for it.
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