This Birding Life – Page 2 – This Birding Life

Gulls

Rats with Wings

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

In the avian scheme of things, gulls are the bird world’s biggest losers. For starters, they always seem to be starving for attention raucously flying around screaming at the top of their lungs.

Although most people call them “seagulls,” the term is not only taxonomically wrong but also very misleading. Gulls can be found just about anywhere, the primary criterion being the presence of a sanitary landfill—also known as the town dump. Gulls fill the same ecological niche as rats—only they descend on garbage from above instead of working their way through the trash from the bottom up.

A Western Gull rests on a piling while conjuring what type of trouble it can initiate. (Photo Copyright Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Gulls squabbling over a piece of meat one of them found on the beach. (Photo Copyright Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Roger Tory Peterson writes, “Ever-present gulls have adapted their ecology to the cities along our coasts and the Great Lakes. . . . On the big municipal dumps they swarm by confusing thousands—brown gulls, white gulls, young ones, middle-aged and old ones, rising in windrows at our approach and dropping to the rear among the grapefruit rinds, chicken bones, and coffee grounds.” Not only will gulls eat anything they find, but they are extremely brazen about doing so. On whale-watching trips out of Massachusetts, I’ve seen gulls snatch sand lances right out of the open mouths of humpback whales. While walking the surf line of Sanibel Island, Florida, I’ve watched them steal freshly caught fish away from diving brown pelicans. They also regularly raid nests of other birds—consuming both eggs and chicks—and even cannibalize nests in their own breeding colonies.

A flock of gulls hovers over a feeding humpback whale. These brazen birds are hoping to glean krill that spill out of the behemoth’s baleen-lined mouth. (Photo Copyright Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

On ferry lines cruising from Cape Cod to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island, I remember passengers feeding herring gulls. On every trip, people would buy bags of potato chips and then stand on the upper deck holding individual chips high above their heads. The gulls following the boat would somehow establish a pecking order that determined which bird’s turn it was to swoop in and snatch the chip out of the fingers while the others watched. This went on until the entire bag of chips was gone.

In their defense, gulls are also some of our brainiest birds. I’ve watched laughing gulls crack open mussels and clams by dropping them on a parking lot pavement. If the shells didn’t open on the first drop—the gulls just scooped them up and dropped them again—only from higher up. Inland, gulls often follow tractors that are plowing fields swooping down to glean earthworms and insect larvae turned up by the plows.

Herring gulls also regularly follow fishing boats, knowing that these are always going to be excellent sources of waste fish parts and human garbage. Gulls have even been observed “bait-fishing” by dropping pieces of bread into a municipal pond. Then when the goldfish in the pond rise to grab the bread, the gulls plunge down, snatch them up and gobble them down.

Text excerpted from book: BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need. Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Double-Crested Cormorants

Using Boats as Tools?

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

For what seems like forever, scientists have hotly debated whether or not animals really know how to use tools. Based on my experience with the double-crested cormorant, the answer is unequivocally yes!

First some life-history information: The double-created cormorant is widely distributed throughout both coastal areas and inland waterways of North America. Incredibly dedicated fishermen, cormorants spend most of their non-nesting time swimming and diving after their finny quarries. As soon as they complete a fishing trip, they pop back out of the water onto a convenient limb where they spread their wings to dry them out. Unlike those of most birds, cormorant feathers aren’t coated with waterproof preening oils. This allows them to easily submerge into their watery homes and chase down the fish they depend on, but it also means that they have to be very diligent about drying their wings to avoid hypothermia.

At least one double-crested cormorant in Wakulla Springs State Park, Florida, regularly uses what I suspect would be classified as the largest tool in the history of the animal kingdom: a thirty-five-foot-long passenger tour boat that, fully loaded with forty-five people, weighs more than five tons.

Here’s what happens: As a tour boat makes it way along the designated route through the crystal-clear waters of the Wakulla River, a cormorant follows along behind. Then as soon as this clever waterbird decides the time is right (he obviously has certain criteria fixed in his avian brain) he flies directly up and over the moving boat, landing about ten feet ahead—a bold move that is also quite disconcerting for the driver.

The first time this happened to me, I was a driver in training with no tourists on board. After the cormorant flew over and settled directly in front of the boat, I slammed into reverse and just watched as the sleekly black-feathered bird disappeared under the bow. I guiltily looked around to see if anyone else had witnessed my murderous act.

You can imagine my relief when I looked back and saw the daring cormorant pop up behind the boat, none the worse for wear. What’s more he had a freshly-caught fish hanging from his beak which he summarily tossed into the air and gulped down headfirst.

Swimming with a freshly caught catfish, a Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) glides triumphantly across a coastal pond. (Photo © Gerald Marella/Shutterstock.com)

I shoved the throttle into gear and confidently started moving forward. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. Not more than another one hundred feet downriver, he came again, veering down from nowhere and plopping into the water ten feet from my boat’s bow, where I promptly ran over him for the second time. Then suddenly there he was behind my boat again, floating serenely with another fish hanging from his beak which he proceeded to toss up and swallow headfirst.

I began to sense a pattern. The cormorant was relying on the motion of the boat’s motor to churn up fish, which he then caught in his hooked bill while swimming under the hull. Sure enough, he repeated this action at least three more times before vanishing for parts unknown with his belly full of fish provided courtesy of my tour boat.

While this may not scientifically qualify as “tool use,” it sure rates that way in my book. This fish-loving dude is certainly one cool customer and a very smart bird!

Text excerpted from book: Bird Brains: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Crows

Avian Einsteins

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

I feel really uncomfortable when I’m around crows. I see them looking down at me from their always lofty perches caw-caw-cawing while jerking their heads up and down. First one caws, then another responds, then a third, and so on. Before I know it a whole bevy of crows has me surrounded. They’re all talking back and forth to each other and, knowing their famous intellect, I’m quite sure they’re all making jokes and laughing at me.

Crow holding a purloined piece of organic beach debris. Opportunistic feeders, crows will—as the saying goes—eat anything they can get their beaks around! (Photo Copyright, Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

American crows are commonly found throughout the North American continent. Crows are so widely distributed because they readily adapt to all habitat modifications. Whatever we do to the landscape, crows figure out how to deal with it and continue to prosper in the process. Because of this, you will see crows everywhere, from open woodlands to desolate beaches to farm fields, landfills, and town centers.

Being not the slightest bit picky about what they eat also contributes greatly to the crow’s success. They literally eat anything they can find and fit into their mouths, including seeds, mice, frogs, other birds, carrion and—most noticeably—garbage that humans cast aside. Crows are the fast-food specialists of the bird world, always patrolling roadsides and parking lots for discarded containers of french fries and half-eaten burgers. They also specialize in stealing food from other animals, ranging from river otters to sea ducks and even domestic pets.

Crows are not only the smartest birds, but they are among the smartest of all animals on the planet. They have approximately the same relative size brain as chimpanzees and humans. As Reverend Henry Ward Beecher observed, “If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.”

I once watched a crow spend ten minutes figuring out how to get a single red jellybean out of a box. It finally accomplished this by opening the end, then picking the box up in its beak and shaking the jellybean out. (Photo Copyright, Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Flocks of feeding crows are generally considered pests by farmers and other landowners. Especially during the winter months, crows will gather in immense roosting flocks consisting of up to two million birds. In some places, crow roosts have been increasing in size for more than one hundred years. Methods used to get rid of crows range from the basic scarecrow to widespread poisoning. In their defense, crows are often beneficial to agriculture since they consume insect pests that can ruin crops.

The 250 different calls of crows include a variety of distress calls that will bring aid from even other unrelated crows in an area. They can also mimic the sounds of other animals and even the human voice.

Holding a significant place in North American culture, crows were considered sacred and revered by many Native American tribes. Today our language is infused with many crow-related terms, such as “eating crow,” “as the crow flies,” “crow’s feet,” “crow’s nest,” “scarecrow,” and “crowing about” something. The family Corvidae—to which crows belong—is known for having the most complex social structure of any bird species. Because of this, you don’t want to get on their bad side. Remember, there’s a very good reason why a group of crows is called “a murder.”

Text excerpted from book: BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Cedar Waxwings

Irruption Kings

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

Flocks of cedar waxwings descending en masse on berry-bearing bushes might be considered a plague, if the birds weren’t so incredibly beautiful.

I’ll never forget my first experience with these elegantly colored and boldly patterned birds with their almost imperceptibly high-pitched whistles, typically sounded in unison by multiple birds—bzeeee—bzeeee—bzeeee—bzeeee—bzeeee.

It was a very cold February morning. A flock of at least fifty birds came swooping in on the northeast wind and landed in the top of a crabapple thicket near our eastern Massachusetts home. They picked all the branches clean in less than fifteen minutes. Then, just as suddenly as they came in, they all lifted upward and darted off as a small dark cloud in search of more berry bushes to devour. Cold weather places a tremendous burden on a bird’s metabolism, especially when they spend all their time jetting around in huge feeding flocks.

During the winter months, Cedar Waxwings—traveling in large flocks—can glean all the leftover berries on a tree or shrub in a matter of minutes.

There is a special word that describes the sudden arrival of large numbers of the same species of bird, like flocks of cedar waxwings. This word is “irruption”—ir, not er.

Sometimes irruptions involve a species that is relatively common to an area, but mostly they involve unexpected birds that are seldom seen in the local vicinity. According to the website About.com, an irruption is defined as “a dramatic, irregular migration of large numbers of birds to an area where they aren’t typically found, possibly at great distances from their normal ranges.”

The most common cause of winter irruptions is a lack of food in the birds’ normal ranges. Songbirds, like cedar waxwings, may irrupt when berry crops in their home territories are poor, while a raptor species may irrupt when preferred prey populations are low. Unduly harsh winter weather may also induce irruptions in bird populations to move further south into areas where they are otherwise seldom seen.

Some years ago, a major irruption of great gray owls occurred when hundreds of these massive predators moved as one from their common wintering grounds in northern Canada and Alaska down to the northern tier of the United States. Word of this phenomenon caused an equally amazing irruption in the nature photography world, as hundreds of photographers armed with super-telephoto lenses suddenly showed up in Minnesota, North Dakota, Michigan, and New York in the dead of winter.

Cedar waxwings are named for the bright red slashes on their wings that look like wax droplets. They have a reputation for gluttony, with many birders reporting seeing waxwings over-consuming fermented berries until they become so inebriated that they either fall helpless to the ground or fly directly into the walls of buildings and knock themselves out. In both cases, the drunken birds are easy pickings for house cats, red foxes, and other ground predators. As we so often see with human celebrities, being really good-looking doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to do the right things for your health.

Text excerpted from book: BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

CATTLE EGRETS

An Assigned Host for Each Bird

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

A “wading bird” that spends most of its time in bone-dry pastures surrounded by cattle often nowhere near water. How does this happen?

Most of the lean, lanky, long-legged birds in the world spend the majority of their daylight hours standing in shallow water, hunting for fish, frogs, crabs, or anything else they can spear with their sharp, pointed beaks. That’s why these birds are collectively called “wading birds”.

The one exception to this rule is the cattle egret, a wading bird that mostly stands around and feeds on dry land. In fact, driving along roads in central Florida’s cattle country, I often laugh out loud when I see how cattle egrets spread themselves out in a pasture — one cow, one bird – one cow, one bird – one-cow, one-bird – everywhere I look. It’s as if the cattle egrets have taken pity on the chunky bovines and each decided to adopt their own animal. Actually, this is – in a way – how it works.

A Cattle Egret stands beside “its cow”, waiting for the sturdy bovine to stir up tasty insects with its hooves. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

As a cow grazes, it stirs up insects and small vertebrates – toads and salamanders – with its hooves which each “assigned egret” eagerly grabs up and gobbles down. In return, each egret periodically jumps onto the back of its designated cow “host” to pick and eat parasites off its head and body. Known as a “mutualistic” relationship, both the cows and the egrets benefit from having each other around while neither one is harmed by the interaction.

Showing off their adaptive “smarts”, cattle egrets have also learned to flock toward the smoke of a grassland fire. They’ve learned that where there’s fire, there will also be millions of tasty insects fleeing the flames.

The cattle egret is a cosmopolitan species of the heron family found throughout the tropics, subtropics, and warm temperate zones of the world. Adult birds are all white except for washes of buff feathers during the nesting season. Due to its close relationship with humans and their cattle, the cattle egret has undergone one of the most wide-reaching expansions of any bird species in the world. Anywhere livestock owners – from nomadic herdsmen to today’s massive agri-business operations – moved, cattle egrets followed closely behind. Global population estimates for cattle egrets now exceed five million birds.

An adult cattle egret lands in a rookery near St. Augustine Beach, Florida. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Relatively new arrivals to North America, cattle egrets didn’t nest in the United States until 1953. During the next 50 years, these birds spread rapidly northward to become one of the most abundant wading birds on the continent. Now found from Alaska to Newfoundland, cattle egrets nest from Florida to California and almost every state in between.

Cattle egrets nest in colonies, which are usually located over bodies of water. They build small, untidy platform nests out of sticks in trees or large shrubs. Clutch sizes vary from one to five eggs with three to four being most common.

Randomly-feathered at birth, cattle egret chicks often look like Phyllis Diller on a “bad hair day”. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Like many “ugly ducklings”, however, these unusual wading birds mature into lovely adults that enhance the pastoral beauty of our Nation’s pasturelands. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Text excerpted from book: BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Canada Geese

Water Fouling

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

The cacophonic honking of migrating V-shaped skeins of Canada geese has historically been considered a primary herald of the changing of seasons, from winter to spring and summer to fall. Unfortunately during the past few decades, the reputation of these once-magnificent birds has taken not just a dramatic turn but also a dive into the depths of human contempt.

A regally handsome bird, the Canada goose does not look like a villain but, in this case, appearance is definitely deceiving. Canada geese are contaminating many of our ponds and lakes at an alarming rate.

A large flock of wintering Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) swim in a municipal pond in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts.© Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS

Many populations of Canada geese no longer migrate. Instead they live full-time in city parks, golf courses, and municipal ponds—anywhere there are significant patches of turf grass lawns for them to graze. With heavy grazing also comes heavy . . . well, if you’ve ever walked around a pond frequented by Canada geese, you know exactly what I mean. Goose poop literally everywhere, and where do these massive droppings end up? You guessed it—they wash off the manicured lawns right into adjacent ponds and streams, creating horrendous nutrient loading and fecal coliform contamination problems.

Why is this happening to these once noble birds? First, let’s examine two main reasons why the geese have stopped migrating: Our warming climate has reduced their natural instinct to move with the seasons, and the general public is artificially feeding the geese. Like just about every animal on earth—including humans—the Canada goose is always going to take the easiest path possible. No matter how strong the migratory gene may be, flying long distances is extremely stressful and fraught with danger. If all the essentials of life are being provided to you year-round, why bother to move?

What can be done to alleviate this problem? Land managers and wildlife biologists have tried many things to control Canada goose populations and restore their migratory habits. But since these birds are federally protected, the best legal approach is to employ some common sense measures that make properties much less attractive to them. First, don’t plant Kentucky bluegrass lawns but rather plant species like fescue and switch grass that don’t taste as good to geese, and also require much less water and maintenance time. Next, don’t mow so much. Especially close to the water, let the grass grow at least 12 inches high. The geese don’t like the tall grass because it provides places for potential predators to hide. Finally, geese don’t like to have to fly back and forth between water and feeding areas, so creating a barrier between land and water—even a three-foot high fence or hedgerow—will cause the geese to move on.

With just a few simple adjustments in the way we manage our public open space, we can keep these large waterfowl from fouling our waterways.

Text Excerpted from Book: Bird Brains: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Author’s bio:For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Burrowing Owls

Stopping Development in Its Tracks!

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

One of the best anti-development books I’ve ever read wasn’t written by a naturalist named Muir, or Thoreau, or Carson, or Leopold. No, the author is Carl Hiaasen, a very funny writer famous for his tongue-in-cheek tales about the various vagaries and foibles of life in South Florida.

Mr. Hiaasen’s book Hoot is all about a little owl that stands less than a foot tall and lives in a hole in the ground. It’s a book for young people who are just trying to find their way in life.

Here’s a synopsis: A young boy named Roy moves from Montana to Florida, where he takes on the burden of helping to save a family of burrowing owls by stopping the planned construction of Paula’s Pancake House in a vacant lot. By employing some crafty ecological strategy, Roy first makes some quirky new friends, then helps those friends expose the dishonesty of the developers and their total disregard for the environment. Through this process, Roy becomes a mature young man. Of course, the real heroes in Hoot are the burrowing owls that have created their home on the proposed development site.

A family of Burrowing Owls (Speotyto cunicularia) occupies a vacant lot in suburban South Florida. (Photo Copyright: Tania Thomson / Shutterstock.com)

Burrowing owls are found throughout open terrain—grasslands, prairies, savannas, deserts, farm/ranch land, golf courses, and urban/suburban vacant lots—in both North and South America. Despite their small size (about nine inches tall with two-foot wingspans) and ground roosting and nesting habits, they are real owls. They use their sharp talons to capture and kill prey, mostly large insects and small rodents, both on the wing and by running them down on the ground.

Demonstrating their smarts, burrowing owls regularly collect animal dung—especially from grazing horses and cattle—which they then spread around their dens. The provides these miniature birds of prey with their own home delivery service, since they eat the beetles and other crawling insects that are attracted to the livestock droppings. Another burrowing owl trick is to make hissing noises that sound just like a rattlesnake, to ward off unwanted intruders.

An adult burrowing owl poses on its hunting perch remaining vigilant for both prey and predator/human dangers. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow / NATUREGRAPHS)

While they are often active in the daytime, they mostly hunt like “normal” owls from dusk until dawn. In the western US, they primarily live in holes dug by prairie dogs In Florida, they typically live in the burrows of gopher tortoises where they have become tolerant of humans, often nesting on golf courses, airports, and farms.

When burrowing owls get in the way of “progress” (which happens often in South Florida) developers sometimes hire biologists to entice them to move into new burrows on other sites. At least this helps the tiny owls avoid being entombed when the bulldozers show up.

Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow / NATUREGRAPHS

Those of us who share our land with burrowing owls need to do all we can to help protect them. Throughout much of their range, these big-eyed, tiny-limbed birds of prey are considered rare species. In addition to land development, they’re severely threatened by indiscriminate use of pesticides and predation by many other animals—especially feral dogs and cats.

Sadly, when I heard Mr. Hiaasen speak in Florida, he was asked the following question: “Does this bird [Hoot] really exist and live in the ground or is it a figment of your imagination?” Obviously we need to do a better job of educating the public if we want to successfully protect future generations of “Hoots.”

Text Excerpted from Book: Bird Brains: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Blue-Footed Boobies

Cerulean-Powered Missiles

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

When it comes to strange bird names, even biologists sometimes need a little convincing about etymology.

The best family vacation I ever had was in the Galapagos Islands. Located six hundred miles off the western coast of Ecuador, these islands are among the world’s most famous ecological wonders. It was here that Charles Darwin studied many birds—especially Galapagos finches—in developing his science-shattering studies that led to his theories of natural selection and species evolution. The Galapagos are also famous as nature preserves where birds and other animals have no fear of humans.

I had long heard this reputation, but as a career wildlife photographer and biologist, I was very skeptical that wildlife—especially birds—would allow humans to walk right up to them without flying away. Plus some of the names of the birds just sounded ridiculous. Blue-footed boobies—please, who ever heard of such a thing? They can’t possibly be real!

A pair of Blue-Footed Boobies (Sula nebouxii) sit on their nest in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

The first island we visited in this natural wonderland, Española, provided me with all the proof I needed. As we glided breathlessly along the trail accompanied by our naturalist guide, we had to carefully plan each step to avoid crushing an egg, nest, or even an entire bird. We walked right through the middle of huge rookeries full of nesting masked, red-footed, and—yes, there they were in all their cerulean splendor—blue-footed boobies by the thousands!

OK, so exactly what, you may ask, is all this “blue-footed” nonsense anyway? As you might guess, it has to do with attracting the ladies. The males with the bluest feet are the ones that are the most successful at catching nutritious fresh fish. In fact, when boobies are kept in captivity and fed already dead or frozen fish, the color of their feet starts to fade within two days. Thus the combination of the males’ fabulously bright blue feet—signaling “hey, I’m the best provider”—and some nifty prancing, dancing, and stamping quickly has the females falling for the showiest males, and the nesting games soon begin. The blue-foots also use their fabulous feet in the chick-rearing process, using them to cover the nestlings for extra warmth.

Flying in tight formation like fighter jets from the movie “Top Gun”, blue-footed boobies dive head-to-tail in search of their piscatory quarry. (Photo Copyright: Walter Rijk — Galapagos Conservation Trust)

Spanish explorers called the blue-foots bobo, meaning stupid, because they appeared clumsy on land. But when we got back to our tour boat and watched their amazing aerial artistry, the word awesome—not stupid—was what came to mind. A large feeding flock of blue-foots repeatedly soared up to more than fifty feet above the water. When they spotted fish down below, they turned into sleek avian guided missiles, folding their wings against their bodies, sticking their necks and heads straight out, extending their feet behind them, and zooming down in extreme power dives. The effect was like watching hundreds of miniature torpedoes exploding below the water’s surface all at once.

Demonstrating their amazing aerial artistry, a flock of blue-footed boobies dive-bombs a school of fish. (Photo Copyright: Christopher Swann)

Text excerpted from book: Bird Brains: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).

Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Brown Pelicans

Playful Dive-Bombers

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

During a long career of bird-watching, I’ve seen birds do a lot of strange things, but from an overall crazy standpoint, brown pelicans take the cake.

Despite their somewhat gangly appearance, brown pelicans are actually one of the birding world’s most colorful and graceful members.

Perhaps their outlandish appearance leads to their wild antics. I once watched a brown pelican play tag with two eastern painted turtles that had the misfortune of sharing a small enclosed pond with the misguided fish-eater. The game started when the pelican snuck up behind one of the turtles and bit it in the backside. While the pelican’s bite didn’t hurt the turtle, it did make it mad enough to whip around and lunge at the pelican. This made the pelican jump back and, with a mighty flap of his wings, look down derisively at this creature (one-tenth its size) that had just “attacked” him. The pelican then hopped over to the other side of the pond and proceeded to sneak up and bite the second painted turtle which, to the apparent utter delight of the pelican, reacted the same way as the first turtle. Having established a successful pattern of “tag, you’re it,” the pelican kept at it—alternately biting one turtle, then the next—for the next fifteen minutes.

Finally tiring, the pelican began his next game—playing catch with himself. To start this game, the pelican scooped several golf ball-sized stones into his pouch. He then dunked his entire head underwater and jerked his bill sideways, flinging the stones out of his pouch and sending them clattering up against the rounded opposite side of the pond. Swaggering his head from side-to-side as if to say, “Hey did you see what I just did!” the pelican then proudly sauntered across the pond, picked up the same stones and “threw” them back across to the other side. When I left after another fifteen minutes, the pelican was still engaged in his self-made game of toss.

One of Nature’s most proficient birds at skimming just above the water surface, this brown pelican quartet prepares to feed in tandem.

Watching brown pelicans feed is even more entertaining. At Sanibel Island, Florida, brown pelicans come barreling along just above the waves like fighter squadrons in groups of three to eight birds. Then on the command of the squadron commander (lead bird) who has spotted the quarry (fish) in the water below, the birds all rise up—one after the other—to a height of some twenty-five to thirty feet above the surf. They then all dive-bomb in unison face-first into the water below and pop back up a few seconds later with their pouches fully engorged with water and fish. They float for a few minutes to gulp down the fish before taking off again as a group for their next fishing sortie further down the beach.

READY, SET—A brown pelican prepares to dive while hovering above its prey.

GO—Having selected its prey, a brown pelican demonstrates its amazing plunge-feeding behavior.

The range of the brown pelican is enormous, covering most of the Americas as well as many Caribbean islands. Primarily found in coastal areas, these comical-looking birds of children’s book and story fame frequently live full-time in shallow waters along islands, sandbars, and shorelines or in sheltered bays. Brown pelicans prefer to nest in colonies on islands that are covered with rocks or mangrove forests.

Finally, there’s this: In his book All Things Reconsidered, renowned birder and illustrator Roger Tory Peterson describes a brown pelican that brazenly walked into a Venice, Florida, fish market and then just stood there waiting to be served.

Brown pelicans settling into roost at sunset on a line of pilings in northwest Florida’s St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge.

Author’s bio:For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Barred Owls

Who Cooks the Soup?

BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

During bird-watching trips, the lead biologist always has the most fun imitating the ethereal, Who cooks the soup, who cooks for you—ALL? back-and-forth caterwauling of barred owls that often resounds through forested wetlands in broad daylight. The call never fails to get the attention of the trip’s participants for two reasons. First, the words are quite comical and really sound like what this raptor (bird of prey) is saying. Plus most people are flat-out surprised to learn that owls can be active while the sun is up.

As nonmigratory residents, barred owls are commonly found throughout eastern North America, from southern Canada down to Florida. Plus they have been gradually expanding their range across western Canada and down into states of the Pacific Northwest. This is of particular concern for the federally threatened northern spotted owl, which has been waging serious warfare with Pacific forest managers and loggers for more than twenty years. The problem is that barred owls readily outcompete their spotted cousins, potentially placing the local populations in even greater jeopardy.

A Barred Owl (Strix varia) hunts during broad daylight from a wintry perch in a birch tree.

Back in the eastern US, the overall owl situation is much more stable. Barred owls often nest in large tree cavities drilled out by pileated woodpeckers. They may also take over an old nesting site previously built by a red-shouldered hawk or Cooper’s hawk. Because of this, good barred owl habitat must feature some mature trees which are at least 25 feet tall and two feet in diameter-at-breast-height (dbh).

Owls in general have few natural predators, although feral cats may capture and kill unwary, young owls. Curiously, the number one predator of barred owls is the slightly larger great horned owl.

Barred owls are opportunistic predators, subsisting primarily on meadow voles, field mice, and shrews. But when the opportunity arises they will also take rats, squirrels, rabbits, bats, moles, opossums, raccoons, mink, weasels, and occasionally other birds, including a variety of songbirds and even waterfowl. From time to time, they even wander into shallow water for a quick bath and meal of frogs, salamanders, and fish.

With some amazing adaptations, barred owls are coldly-efficient silent assassins. In most animals, having offset ears is a bad thing—likely some sort of a birth defect. But for barred owls having one ear higher and the other ear more forward is a huge plus. This “crooked hearing” means that the sounds of a mouse reach one ear a split second before they reach the other, allowing the owl’s brain to precisely calculate the location of its next victim. Like all owls, barred owls have the unique ability to fly on silent wings. Their body feathers are velvety-soft and thick which absorbs most of the sound of flight and their primary feathers have soft, comb-like edges which break up the whooshes of each wing beat.

Recent studies have shown that barred owls are moving into suburban—and even urban—areas which have only a few old trees for nesting cavities. This increases the chances for making another favorite find of birders everywhere—an owl pellet. Owl pellets contain the coughed-up, undigested remains—bones, teeth, and fur—of a barred owl’s meals and examining one always tells you what’s been on the menu lately.

Text excerpted from book: Bird Brains: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).