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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

The first time I set foot on Monhegan Island, Maine in June of 1988, I was sure I had died and gone to heaven.  

Walking up the hill from the ferry into the village is like going back in time 50 years.  The roads are all dirt, the signs are all hand-made, the buildings are all wooden, and multi-hued lobstering paraphernalia – buoys, traps, and ropes – is scattered everywhere.  It is like a Winslow Homer portrait had suddenly sprung to life before your eyes.  

If this wasn’t enough – flocks of colorful songbirds flitted about all over the place, perching on trees, rooftops, fences, anything that was standing upright.  I was so excited that I didn’t know which way to turn first, so I froze mid-stride. Debby had to literally grab me by the shoulders and shake me so that I would move out of the street and avoid one of the island’s few pickups that was hauling everyone’s luggage to the village’s three rustic inns. 

Mohegan Island looks like a Winslow Homer portrait has suddenly sprung to life before your eyes. (Photo Credit: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Fortunately, Monhegan is never crowded since there are no honkytonk elements to attract the typical beach-going crowd.  The only things for visitors to do on Monhegan are paint (Monhegan supports a summer art colony including many famous artists like Jamie Wyeth), photograph (every well-known bird photographer visits the island from time-to-time), and watch birds – lots and lots of birds!  

Monhegan sits about 10 miles offshore in the open Atlantic Ocean.  During the spring and fall migrations, the island is like a 1,000-acre oasis in the middle of a watery desert.  Exhausted birds of every color and size come fluttering down into Monhegan’s old-growth spruce forests and rocky headlands where they mostly sit around and look at you before regaining their strength until they can take off again.

Exhausted birds of every color and size come fluttering down into Monhegan’s old-growth spruce forests and rocky headlands. (Photo Credit: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

On a good spring weekend, you can see as many as 100 different species of birds on the island.  But – without a doubt – warblers are the highlight of any Monhegan birding trip.  

Often seen during spring migration on Maine’s Monhegan Island, a Northern Parula Warbler (Parula americana) perches in a shrub thicket. (Photo Credit: Steve Byland/Shutterstock.com)

Glittering in the sun like tiny jewels in canopied crowns, these talented songsters are everywhere you look.  Their musical songs reverberate through the forested glens adding audible thrills to the visual delights.  

A chestnut-sided warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica) surveys his surroundings while perched on Monhegan’s ever-present granite rock formations. (Photo Credit: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Quick look up there in the top of that tree — it’s a black-and-white warbler – wee-zee, wee-zee, wee-zee.  Now over here in that shrub, there’s a common yellowthroat – witchity-witchity-witchity.  Now turn around and look at the black-throated green in the tree behind you – zee-zee-zee-zoo-zee.  Wow, on your left, there’s a chestnut-sided on that fence – pleased, pleased, pleased ta meetcha.  And on that roof – that’s a hooded warbler – ah-weeta-weeta- weet-tee-yo. 

A yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia) sings his sweet spring song from a leafy perch. (Photo Credit: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

On and on it goes. Birds on Monhegan can sometimes be so dense that you have to watch where you walk for fear of crushing one to death.  

During the decade I was living in Massachusetts,  I took more than 10 more trips to Monhegan. While the birding was not always spectacular, the experience certainly was.  How can you go wrong sharing an island with people who value nature and art above all else?  If you’re of a like mind, by all means, take a trip to Monhegan.  Only once you get there don’t be surprised if someone has to pinch you to convince you that you’re not dreaming!

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 award-winning 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. 

Serene & Peaceful? Baloney!

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

In human terms, the swan is commonly associated with peace and serenity. But, in one case, nothing could be further from the truth.

A Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) floats across a small municipal pond in Denver, Colorado. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow / NATUREGRAPHS)

What could be more tranquil than the sight of a glistening white swan with its elegant neck bowed back into a graceful S-curve, gliding effortlessly—almost floating—across the mirror-still surface of a pond? Watching several swans swimming together, it’s easy to understand where Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky derived the magnificent creative vision for his mesmerizing Swan Lake ballet. But in the wilds of nature, tranquillity is the last thing on the mind of one swan species. Pound-for-pound, mute swans are one of the most aggressive and competitively successful bird species in the world. 

Mute swans are indigenous to Europe and Asia, where for centuries they were celebrated in art and legend and prized by the wealthy as status symbols. Imported into the United States from Europe for display in public zoos and private garden ponds in the late 1800s, these birds soon escaped and established multiple wild populations.

Now more than seven thousand mute swans occupy coastal and freshwater habitats along the Atlantic Coast from New Hampshire to Florida, the Great Lakes, Washington State, southern Ontario, and British Columbia. Weighing twenty-five to thirty pounds and measuring five feet in length with eight-foot wingspans, adult mute swans are one of our largest waterfowl species. Plus, since they have no natural predators, they often live up to seven years in the wild. As a result, anytime they find their way into small bodies of water—often municipal ponds in city parks—they quickly become demon-tyrants, brutally killing smaller native waterfowl and aggressively driving them out of the ponds altogether. These feathered ogres sometimes attack and injure children and family pets, even going after adult humans who venture too close to the shoreline during nesting season.

Mute swans are also highly disruptive to the natural estuarine ecology of coastal areas. Voracious feeders, adult birds typically consume eight pounds of habitat-rich submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) each day. The resulting decrease in these critically important SAV beds leads to the loss of tiny nursery fish, baby crabs, and even freshly born seahorses that depend on the wild seagrass beds for escape and resting cover.

Until 2005, mute swans were protected under the blanket coverage provided by the federal 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). Now considered a nuisance species, these swans can be controlled by everything from shooting with firearms and live-trapping to egg addling (shaking eggs in the nest to destroy the embryos), visual harassment (using scarecrows), sterilization, and capture/relocation.

I should point out here that all swans are not bad. Two swan species native to North America do not harm natural ecosystems. Both trumpeter swans and tundra swans are wild, wonderful, and revered components of our native waterfowl populations. The key giveaway for identification of these three swan species is that both trumpeter and tundra swans have black bills while the mute swan has a bright orange bill. 

So remember, when you see “seven swans a-swimming”—if they have black bills, it’s okay to ooh and aah. But if they have orange bills, stay alert!

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.

Ubiquitous Cooers

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

If you stay attuned to the sounds of the natural world, you’ll always know when mourning doves are around. They’re named for their lamenting, drawn-out cooing calls—woo-OO-oo-oo-oo, woo-OO-oo-oo-oo, woo-OO-oo-oo-oo—which are often mistaken for owl hoots. Plus their wings make sharp whistling or whinnying sounds whenever they take off. 

Nesting in every US state except Alaska and Hawaii, mourning doves can be seen just about anywhere you look in open country, including most rural and suburban settings. Plus they spend a lot of their time perching on power lines and feeding on turfgrass lawns.

Meandering warily along, a Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) gobbles up leftover grain in a farm field. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow / NATUREGRAPHS)

Ninety-nine percent of a mourning dove’s diet consists of grass and weed seeds, which they store in their enlarged esophagi—called crops. Researchers studying dove feeding habits found that the record for storage in a single crop was more than seventeen thousand bluegrass seeds.

Mourning doves are the most hunted bird in North America. At least twenty million doves (out of an astounding total of 350 million doves nationwide) are killed annually for sport and eating in the US[TH1] . Their flight is bullet straight and rocket fast (up to fifty-five miles per hour), with many quick darts, descents, ascents, and dodges thrown in for good measure. For hunters, this adds a special challenge to any dove shoot; those who can bring down at least one dove for every two shots are considered excellent marksmen.

Two things allow doves to maintain and steadily increase their populations in the face of such withering hunting pressure. First, they easily adapt to just about anything humans do to the natural landscape. Since doves generally avoid thick woodlands, clearing forests actually increases the amount of habitat available for their feeding and nesting. Plus, in warmer climates, a nesting pair of doves typically produces an incredible six broods—that’s twelve new squabs—each spring. With this prolific annual repopulation ratio (six-to-one), it’s probably a good thing that hunters kill so many adult doves each year. Otherwise, they might soon overrun the whole country!

Like all dove species worldwide, the mourning dove is usually associated with tranquillity, being official symbols of peace in both Wisconsin and Michigan. But with their delicately curving heads and bodies, these birds only look like they’re peaceful. If you spend any time watching mourning doves feed, you’ll notice that most other songbirds keep their distance and let doves go wherever they want. Doves also always aggressively defend their nesting territories, walking around with their chests puffed out and chasing away any other birds that dare to venture near.

Mated pairs of mourning doves also engage in some memorable behavior. Male birds collect nesting materials and bring them to the female birds who build the nests. Nothing really unusual about this so far, but here’s the strange part. The male bird often stands on the back of the female bird while she’s assembling the nest, sort of like a job foreman supervising on-site construction work. Then when the chicks hatch, both parents produce “crop milk”—a nutritious and fatty cottage cheese–like substance—that they feed the young while they’re in the nest.

Even though mourning doves live everywhere in the US, they have been always strongly associated with rural southern landscapes. As Julie Zickefoose so eloquently puts it in her book The Bluebird Effect: “[The dove’s song] is a song of the south, of tall pines and dirt roads and long evenings heavy with honeysuckle.”

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.

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Daffy Wants a Cracker

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

Contrary to popular opinion, most wild ducks don’t actually quack. In fact, only the female mallard emits the quintessential loud duck “quack” when it walks, swims, or flies. 

The glossy, bottle-green head and bright yellow bill of the male mallard is a familiar sight to most people living in the United States. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow’s NATUREGRAPHS)

The mallard is thought to be the most abundant and wide-ranging duck on earth. In the US alone there are more than ten million mallards. When we think about a duck, the first thing that probably comes to mind is a mallard.

Historically, mallards have always welcomed human presence. In fact, wild mallards are the ancestors of all domestic ducks and still readily interbreed with any tame ducks found living with humans in both rural and urban settings. Close examination of any flock of ducks floating on a farm or municipal pond will provide evidence of this. Very few of the mallards will have the solid-colored heads and bodies of their wild counterparts. Instead the feathering looks quite messy, with lots of white streaking and spattering scattered all over. 

Mallard duckling broods are likely to be seen waddling about anywhere in urban areas, from rooftop gardens to municipal parks. While the ducklings are precocious at birth, they remain with their parents for warmth and protection for several months. Their extended brood care leads to the classic “Duck X-ing” signs we’ve all seen at road crossings showing an adult bird closely followed in line by six tiny ducklings. 

As children many of us read Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings, about a family of mallards living on an island in the pond in the Boston Public Garden. With its prominent white collar, the male mallard was also the model for Daffy Duck of cartoon fame. A character named Dr. Mallard—nicknamed “Ducky”—stars on the television show NCIS. Mallard Fillmore is one of America’s best-known comic strips. The clothing brand Duck Head uses the head of a mallard in its logo.

Just about everything mallards do is fascinating to watch. As classic dabbling ducks, they are always floating along with their tail feathers poking straight up while they gobble plants, seeds, and anything else they can get their beaks around beneath the water’s surface. When startled, mallards can burst straight up off the water like launched rockets leaving just a splash and ripples in their wakes. 

Mallards also exhibit a variety of entertaining courtship displays with several couples engaging in a watery dance likened to a solemn French quadrille. As part of this dance, mallard drakes bob up and down while simultaneously tossing water droplets with their bills and making sharp sounds called grunt-whistles.

Finally, when families go out with the kids to feed ducks, they most likely feed mallards. While feeding bread to ducks is a popular outdoor activity, it’s not at all good for the waterfowl receiving the food. Since artificial feeding concentrates ducks in small areas, it may lead to the rapid spread of disease. Plus ducks that become dependent on free food don’t migrate in a timely manner, leaving them vulnerable when winter weather moves in. So remember to just enjoy watching mallards on your local ponds instead of feeding them.

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.

Snake Wranglers 

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

The great blue heron—or GBH in birder’s parlance—is a very large bird. Many refer to it as the “pterodactyl bird” because of the way it surprises people by suddenly bursting straight up out of a roadside ditch. Even its biblical-sounding scientific name, Ardea herodias, implies that the GBH is not to be trifled with. 

Displaying its typical feeding behavior, a Great Blue Heron carefully stalks its prey in the San Diego River Channel’s Southern Wildlife Refuge. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow’s NATUREGRAPHS)

One early morning, just past sunrise, I was with a group of nature photographers on Sanibel Island, Florida. We were indulging ourselves in the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge’s morning smorgasbord of bird life when something suddenly swooped through my peripheral vision that was so unusual, I just knew it couldn’t be real. Seconds later, came a high-pitched voice on the opposite side of a cluster of red mangroves: “He’s got a snake! The great blue heron has caught a snake!”

Proudly holding its latest catch, a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) begins gulping down a huge water snake while sitting on a small island in Florida’s Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo Copyright Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

The largest North American heron, GBHs are commonly seen along the shorelines of wetlands and open water throughout North America. A highly adaptable bird both in terms of habitat and diet, this mighty wading bird thrives wherever it decides to live, from subtropical mangrove swamps to desert rivers and the estuaries of southern Alaska. 

Now it’s not at all unusual for a GBH to catch a snake. But this was a northern water snake, at least eight feet long and as big around as a baseball bat. Even with its head and upper body looped around the heron’s beak and neck, this reptilian behemoth’s body was twitching and turning all the way down into the water at the heron’s feet.

For the next 30 minutes the battle royal was on. The snake coiled and danced, trying desperately to break the grip of the heron’s beak so it could drop free into the water and swim away. In turn, the GBH countered every one of the snake’s elusive moves by systematically yo-yoing the reptile’s body high into the air, then slamming the writhing body down against the hard sand surface of the small island on which he stood. The snake would repeatedly curl up into a jumbled ball only to have the heron shake him loose again like a fisherman unfurling coiled rope from a boat.

Finally, the heron was able to trap the snake’s wildly wriggling head between its upper and lower beak, making the snake’s body go limp for a split second. This was just the moment the heron had been waiting for. He immediately began gulping the snake down at what seemed like a foot every second. Soon the entire snake had disappeared down the heron’s gullet except for the very last six inches of its still twitching tail. After a few more gulps the tail also vanished into the heron’s mouth.

The next thing that happened had us all watching agape and aghast. The heron’s entire long neck—all two feet plus of it—began heaving convulsively, distending to four times its normal width. Clearly the engorged snake was still very much alive and was now wreaking havoc inside the heron’s body. Finally, after several minutes of agitated gulping and swallowing water to force the snake down, the GBH raised one leg and tucked it into his body feathers, folded his neck into his breast, and went to sleep—seemingly none the worse for wear.

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.

Clown Princes of the Cattails

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

Within minutes after starting down the trailhead, I knew for certain that the clown princes of the cattails were at it again. 

During my decade in eastern Massachusetts, I was fortunate to have daily access to the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord. With a ten-foot-wide, mile-long hiking path encircling a freshwater marsh, Great Meadows is a wonderful place to watch a variety of wild birds—everything from Canada geese and great blue herons to sora rails and least bitterns. Starting around of the middle of April every year, the unquestioned rock star of Great Meadows is always the marsh wren, at an average of only four inches in length.

A male Marsh Wren (Cistothorus palustris) sings his spring territorial song from his perch atop a cattail in Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord, Massachusetts.(Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS

The life history of the marsh wren revolves around the common cattail. They use these plants for everything from nesting materials (including fronds for constructing nest walls and seeds for lining the insides of the nest cavities) to singing/hunting perches and escape cover. The males are master home-builders, each typically building ten or more cup-shaped nests each spring and then letting the female pick the one she likes best. The rest are left as dummy abodes to fool potential predators and keep them away from the family’s real residence and precious offspring.

A Marsh Wren (Cistothorus palustris) plucks a mass of cattail seeds to use in lining his bevy of cup-shaped nests. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

If you find an area where several male birds are singing and flitting about, you can witness how they establish their territories. Watch the male birds carefully as they fly to four cattail perches in succession, forming an approximate rectangular shape. When you see a bird fly to the same perches in the same exact order time after time, you will know you’re seeing his territorial boundaries. This will allow you to pick exact spots for prefocusing your camera’s telephoto lens, getting the best shots, and recording the marsh wren’s royal antics for long-term viewing pleasure.

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.

Conservation Icons

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

Dazzling white feathers and gracefully buoyant flight make the great egret an iconic symbol of the avian world. So much so that in 1953 the National Audubon Society, one of America’s most esteemed and important conservation organizations, adopted a drawing of a great egret in flight as its official logo.

Looking iconic in its regal flight, a Great Egret (Ardea alba) wings its way toward its marshland fishing habitat. (Photo Copyright Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Living and nesting in both fresh and saltwater wetlands, great egrets range along the East Coast from Maine to Florida, west along the Gulf Coast to Texas, and in isolated pockets along the West Coast. Feeding in classic wading bird fashion, these gangly birds stand stock-still in shallow water, then suddenly lash out to spear their prey with quick jabs of their needle-sharp bills and long, sinuous necks. They primarily eat fish, but frogs, crayfish, turtles, snakes, shrimp, marine worms, large insects, rodents, and even other birds are also often on their menus.

Great egrets are closely related to great blue herons, though the great egret is slightly smaller and more svelte than the great blue. Also, the great egret makes a polite gronk sound when it takes flight but it’s much more subdued—even dainty—compared to the great blue’s lusty, booming GGGRRRONKKK.

During the nesting season, great egrets become even more spectacularly coiffed. Long, billowy plumes called “aigrettes” (from which the word “egrets” evolved) sprout from their backs and tails. In one of the bird world’s most visually stunning courtship displays, great egrets fan these freshly grown feathers out wide so that they completely envelop their bodies and heads. Unfortunately, these magnificent exhibitions of feathery fancy almost led to their demise.

During the height of the “plume boom” in the 1880s, wearing bird feathers in flamboyant hats was all the rage for social standing among women—the more plumes, the higher the status. This demand led to a burgeoning industry involving nearly eighty thousand murderous milliners and thousands more plume hunters, all with the same goal—to shoot and kill entire nesting colonies of wading birds. The delicate aigrette feathers of great egrets were especially in demand. 

Estimates of the total carnage are both unbelievable and reprehensible. According to statistics, milliners in New York City alone were supplied with 130,000 egret “scalps” during 1892. Naturalist Scott Weidensaul provides this sordid summary: “Overall, the plume trade was chewing through an estimated two hundred million (wading) birds a year.”

The deaths of three game wardens charged with stopping this wanton slaughter sparked a national outcry and led to the two landmark conservation happenings. First in 1896, two outraged Boston socialites and cousins—Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall—created the nation’s first Audubon Society in Massachusetts. Within six years, twenty-six other states had their own Audubon Societies. Then, Congress finally took action against the fashion feather industry, passing the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act which provided full federal protection for great egrets and the rest of this nation’s wading bird populations.

As a result of these two historic conservation events, great egrets—as well as populations of our other majestically feathered wading birds—recovered quickly and are still doing well today.

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.

Nature’s Odysseus

To say the bar-tailed godwit has a penchant for travel is to master the understatement. 

Although one of our largest shorebirds, this indefatigable flyer is still only thirteen inches tall and—on a good day—tips the scales at thirteen ounces. Yet every year, bar-tailed godwits manage to fly more than seven thousand miles from the Alaskan tundra—where they nest—to their wintering grounds in the South Pacific off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. And they make this trip without ever stopping for either food or drink. If only the world’s airlines could figure out how to fly on so little fuel. 

Fluffing its feathers after a quick bath, a Marbled Godwit (Limosa fedoa)—close cousin of the Bar-Tailed Godwit—feeds along the shoreline of Florida’s Fort De Soto Park. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

The veracity of the godwit’s incredible flight—equivalent to a human running nonstop for a week without food or water—was documented in a study jointly conducted by the US Geological Survey and the Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO), a California-based nonprofit organization. Some seventy thousand godwits make this epic journey each September and then fly all the way back to Alaska to nest again in March of the next year. If they really put their “feathers to the metal” and are fortunate enough to have a strong tailwind the whole way, bar-tailed godwits can fly up to sixty miles per hour, making this journey in an incredible nine days!

Other shorebirds demonstrate similar feats of avian derring-do. Eighty percent of the Western Hemisphere’s population of red knots, a sandpiper weighing less than a cup of coffee, fly northward from Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of Argentina, arriving along the shores of the Delaware Bay and Cape May, New Jersey, at precisely the right time to dine on billions of eggs freshly laid by thousands of horseshoe crabs. After feasting and fattening up on the crab eggs, these intrepid voyageurs travel another 2,500 miles to their nesting grounds high above the Arctic Circle. In one remarkable study, a red knot banded on Cape May in 1987 was seen on the shores of the Delaware Bay in May of 2000. During the intervening 13 years, the researchers estimated that this tiny ball of fluffy feathers traveled a total of about 242,000 miles, a distance farther than from the earth to the moon.

For sheer total distances traveled, the pectoral sandpiper usually swoops off with the first-place award for shorebirds every year. Pectorals winter in southern South America and breed as far north as Central Siberia, a total migratory distance of more than eighteen thousand miles. 

As remarkable as these shorebird migrations are, they still don’t take the ultimate grand prize for the longest total migration of any animal on earth. That honor goes to the arctic tern, which flies forty-four thousand miles from pole to pole each year. Nesting in Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere and wintering along the shores of Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere, this bird spends its lifetime in perpetual summer. Since arctic terns may live up to thirty years, it’s conceivable that one of these birds could travel more than 1.25 million miles in its lifetime. That’s the equivalent of more than two and a half round-trips to the moon!

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.

Sleep Inducers & Killing Machines 

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

If you’re seeking a cure for insomnia or a way to design a more efficient deadly weapon, the same bird can provide solutions to both of these very different problems.

Having trouble falling asleep or going back to sleep again after you wake up? Just convince a great horned owl—GHO in birding lingo—to move into your neighborhood. They are the classic hoot owls, whose call, Who’s awake? Me too!, is repeated every minute or so. If you concentrate on listening to them, they will divert your worrisome thoughts and help you back to sleep.

A Great Horned Owl is the classic “hoot owl”, whose call, “Who’s awake? Me too”, is repeated every minute or so. They can be found in just about every habitat throughout the United States. (Photo Copyright Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS)

Living throughout the United States and Canada, great horned owls can be found in just about any habitat imaginable. They set up their feeding and nesting territories everywhere from tropical rain forests to barren deserts to residential backyards and every place in between. The primary reason GHOs are so widespread and successful is quite simple—it’s because they have no challengers. They are “alpha birds,” meaning they are at the top of the food chain. Plus, since adult GHOs fear no other animals on earth, there’s nothing that can keep them from going wherever they want whenever they want.

Because of their awesome physical features, the GHO would make the perfect avian prototype for designing a new fighter jet. GHOs are often called “nature’s perfect killing machines” and “flying tigers” for very good reasons. In the minds of most birding experts, they are the deadliest raptor on earth.

Displaying its ominous “killing machine” features, a Great Horned Owl (Bubo Virginians) glides silently across a forest clearing. (Photo Copyright Lorenz/Shutterstock.com)

Named for their prominent tufts of ear feathers, great horneds hunt under the cover of darkness by perching on the tops of snag trees or dead limbs and waiting for unsuspecting prey to come along. Practically any living creature that walks, hops, runs, crawls, flies, or swims—except large mammals—may be on the GHO’s dinner menu. Statistically, small- to medium-sized mammals that move around a lot at night—rabbits, flying squirrels, and shrews—comprise this awesome raptor’s most common food items. Whenever possible, great horneds also take their meals the easiest way possible, by snatching sleeping songbirds right off their nocturnal roosts.

 This incredible killing efficiency of great horneds is based, first and foremost, on their ability to fly stealthily on silent wings—an amazing feat for such a large bird. The leading edges of their wings have comb-like devices that deaden the “whooshing” sound wings typically make. This allows GHO’s to swoop in for kills, their prey unaware that instant death is descending from above. 

Although we’re not listed among their natural prey species, humans could even be susceptible to hunting prowess of great horned owls. Their razor-sharp beaks can rip clothing and gouge human flesh and their tong-like, bone-piercing talons—generating three hundred pounds per square inch (psi) of crushing power—can rip open human scalps. If provoked, they can even use their sixteen-inch-wide, sixty-inch-long wings to beat even full-grown men to the ground. Finally, there’s the GHO’s unearthly horror-movie scream, fair warning of the destruction to come. 

With the exception of smell, the GHO’s senses are also exceptional, especially in the dark. Their sound-collecting facial disks and offset ears allow them to hear a mouse moving under a heavy snowpack. Visually, they are able to see one hundred times better at night than humans. However, they have no sense of smell, perhaps explaining why skunks are also one of their favorite prey species.

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.

 

On the Half Shell, Please!

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

by

Budd Titlow

http://www.buddtitlow.com

By any measure, the American oystercatcher is one cool bird. All decked out in their stylish black-and-white plumage accentuated by distinctive bright yellow eyes with red rings, long orange-red bills, and stout pink legs, they seem to think they’re just too sexy for their feathers. 

Displaying his regal feathering, an American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus) feeds on mollusks in the tidal zone.

Oystercatchers work really hard for their living, patrolling tidal flats and pulling live oysters right out of the muck. Then, just as efficiently as the oystermen at your favorite seafood house, they use their heavily serrated beaks like oyster knives to pry open the bivalves and clip the adductor muscles that hold the shells together. This gives them some nice, fresh “oysters on the half shell” to gulp down. 

Oystercatchers also seem to delight in being seen as self-sufficient loners, always just hanging out on their own. If birds had tattoos, all the oystercatchers would have a thumbs-up symbol surrounded by the words, “Hey—No Problemo, Man—I Got This!”

From a photographic standpoint, I’ve always found oystercatchers exceedingly wary and difficult to get close to for a tight portrait. Dutch naturalist Coenraad Jacob Temminck described the bird’s temerity this way: “The usual impression that one gets of this large and showy wader is a fleeting glimpse of [it] disappearing in the distance . . . It is one of the shiest and wildest of our shorebirds, ever on the alert to escape from danger.” 

From a family perspective, oystercatchers are extremely conscientious parents. First, they take great pains in disguising the location of their speckled eggs by scattering shell fragments and pebbles throughout the nests. Then they continue to feed their young chicks until their beaks grow strong enough to open bivalves on their own—which may take as long as sixty days after hatching. In some instances, oystercatcher adults have given so much time to feeding their young that they forget to eat and starve to death. Now that’s what I call dedication to your kids!

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States, oystercatchers were hunted for both meat and plumage. The uncontrolled slaughter of these birds resulted in precipitous declines in East Coast populations, to the point of extirpation (total elimination) in some coastal areas. After passage of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act provided federal protection, many oystercatcher populations began to recover nicely. 

Today, oystercatchers have successfully repopulated most of their former ranges. While they’re still not plentiful, they can usually be seen on any East Coast and Gulf of Mexico shoreline you visit—anywhere from Maine to Florida and west to Texas.

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).

Photo Caption & Credit:© Budd Titlow, NATUREGRAPHS

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.