January 26, 2007A Red-Shouldered Hawk in East Lake Park
January 24, 2007A Great Blue Heron Fishing in East Lake Park
December 14, 2006A Male Downy Woodpecker
December 08, 2006A Cold Bird On A Cold Winter Day
November 03, 2006A Great Blue Heron On The Black Warrior River
October 27, 2006Numbers Show Gulf Coast Bird Populations Up
by Glynn Wilson CLAY, Ala., Oct. 27 - Amateur bird expert Bob Sargent is now back at home in Clay, Alabama, east of Birmingham, after spending a couple of weeks on the Gulf Coast tracking the migration of birds south for the winter. His team banded 2930 birds, 73 different species, and he says he is "thrilled" with the count this year, which came in a bit higher than expected.
In an average year, they would catch, band and release 1500 to 2500 birds and 70 to 75 species, although they have done as many as 4500 and as few as 600 during the spring migration count. "We caught a lot of birds. Overall, it was really a good session," Sargent said in an interview. "The influx of birds was pretty much what we would have expected." Although overall, the trend has been and probably will continue to be a general decline in many of the bird species, he says. "The answer for that is fairly straightforward," he said. "It's either degradation of existing habitat they require to breed in, in the states and Canada, and to winter in in the tropics. Degradation or outright destruction of habitat." It's a human population-based reason for most of the decline. "It's the continued requirement humans place on the land. Birds are typically not a priority in that. They are low on the totem pole," he said. "Without pointing the finger at any country in particular, it's just that we have so many human beings on earth that these birds are just losing out in the long run." The other side of that is, the public, due in part to the conservation movement, is becoming more involved in protecting habitat, he said. "That's a wonderful occurrence. That's something we've been seeing for the past four or five years anyway. It even starts in the schools," he said. "I think there is a trend now for the public to be more aware that essentially, what we do to the birds we do to ourselves. I think we are realizing we've got to take better care of this earth." This year's totals were higher than normal, but at the Gulf Coast location it is difficult to understand that increase, he said.
"We can expect a lot more migrants to stop and rest at our site when the weather is stormy and wet. This apparently was the case at Fort Morgan," he said. "We suspect that there's been some sort of change in the migration pattern of birds." They caught and banded 235 wood thrushes this year, for example, a high number, even though records for the decline of the species go back at least 40 years. "On breeding grounds we see them less and less," Sargent said. "But on migration we continue to see them in record numbers each year." That may seem like a conflicting statement. And it is, he admitted. "But it appears that this species, for whatever reason, has changed its migratory pattern. It could just be a chance thing. The subtle change in migration routes could be a normal occurrence." What they do is not an exact science, he concedes, and we have a lot still to learn about bird populations and their migratory patterns. The wood thrush (catharus mustelinus) is one of the most melodious songbirds in the world. Its beautiful, fluted song echoes through eastern North America's woodlands, yet it is close to endangered status and conservation is critical to prevent its decline to extinction, according to experts.
In the words of Arthur Cleveland Bent, author of a series of authoritative life history studies of American birds, "The nature lover who has missed hearing the musical bell-like notes of the wood thrush, in the quiet woods of early morning or in the twilight, has missed a rare treat. The woods seem to have been transformed into a cathedral where peace and serenity abide. One's spirit seems truly to have been lifted by this experience." The wood thrush is also useful to forest ecosystems, consuming vast amounts of insects. Unfortunately, its populations have declined in recent years from 40 to 80 percent, depending on the area, according to the Endangered Species Handbook. Major causes include the destruction of both its nesting and wintering forests, combined with parasitism on its nests by the brown-headed cowbird, which lays its large eggs in the nests of other birds. While the wood thrush is related to the American robin, today it is rarely seen in suburban yards and breeds only in undisturbed forest tracts. The problem is its forest habitats have become fragmented into smaller and smaller blocks, causing the species to disappear from many areas. Wood thrushes, like hundreds of other bird species that stop to rest and feed on the Ft. Morgan peninsula each year, migrate to Mexico and Central America each winter where they seek out old-growth rainforests from southern Mexico to Panama. During the past 40 years, their forests have been logged and converted into grazing land. Researchers tracking them to their wintering grounds have discovered they stay in the same area, even though it has been destroyed, and usually die within a short period from starvation or predation. Sargent and his team are not professional ornithologists. They are referred to as "field ornithologists," and they are just one of many disciplines that study the decline of birds, from those who study insects to plants to the weather. "But that's just fancy words," he said. "It doesn't matter whether you've got a degree or are non-professionals like we are. A great deal of what we do is speculation."
The question is, what to do about the overall, general declines in species on the planet? "Human beings have the option of sitting on our duffs and letting nature take its course, or we can get involved in some kind of protocol that we think can be beneficial in monitoring these birds to determine what kind of plans to make," he said. "As bird banders that's what we've done." They caught, banded and released 74 house wrens this year, a particularly large number. "The huge numbers of birds we caught this year are a product of range expansion and perhaps some weather events as well," he said. "It's so difficult to draw firm conclusions from a season's total. You really have to look at a bigger picture over a long period of time." As food resources dwindle, birds shrink into their historical ranges, he said. It's just a product of birds pushing to the edge of what they can do as a species. "Mother nature takes care of that," he said. "If she doesn't kill them off with bad weather, she deprives them of the food it takes for that species to survive." Sargent says he doesn't think there are long-term, lingering effects from all the hurricanes of recent years, from Ivan to Dennis to Katrina. "These horrible storms that are so destructive to our human friends along the coast are a normal part of the lives of wild creatures such as our neo-tropical migrant birds," he said. "This scenario is much different for resident bird populations, since they are usually severely affected by hurricanes and their populations are greatly reduced. They too will recover as long as we can keep their habitat pretty much intact." One resident bird of the Alabama coastal area is the brown pelican, pelecanus occidentalis, which is endangered in many areas except the Atlantic coast. It is on the way back in coastal Alabama due to government mandated conservation efforts, mainly the banning of the pesticide DDT by the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s. The brown pelican is being honored in the Eastern Shore township of Fairhope with art and during the Alabama Coastal Birdfest.
Continue reading "Numbers Show Gulf Coast Bird Populations Up" » October 19, 2006A Common Yellowthroat Warbler...
October 14, 2006A Black and White Warbler Banded and Released...
October 08, 2006Birds of the Ft. Morgan Sanctuary...FT. MORGAN, Ala., Oct. 8 — As I turned off Gulf Shores Parkway onto Ft. Morgan Road heading for Bob Sargent's bird banding operation on state property past the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, the spiritual "Amazing Grace" on a single flute came across the public radio speakers and put me in the mood for Sunday services in the great outdoors.
Ominously, the station quickly changed to dramatic German orchestra music as the refuge came into view. There at the end of the road by the famous fort sat Bob Sargent's entourage under a tent amongst the live oaks, waiting on the birds to land in their nets for tagging during the fall migration south. "This is a beautiful spot," Sargent said. "We've been coming here for a long time, working to prevent the developers from getting it, like they tried one time before..." Every year about this time, Sargent's team makes camp here to document the numbers and diversity of species which stop here before making the long trans-Gulf flight over the Gulf of Mexico. After only two days of a two week research effort, the numbers and diversity are above average, Sargent says, indicating a good year for birds, and science.
"We can expect to document 75 different species in the fall. We've already counted 50. Its better this year than we've seen in awhile," he said. The rarest species spotted this year has been a Brewster's warbler, a hybrid of the blue-winged warbler and the golden-winged warbler. "I've only seen 10 in 20 years of doing this," Sargent said. They've also tagged an American restart, a very photogenic species, along with flycatchers and red-bellied woodpeckers and all the usual suspects. According to another Alabama native and scientist, about half the world's species may face extinction by 2100 because of pollution, climate change, human population growth and other influences, says Edward O. Wilson, who has conducted pioneering research in biology and developed a field known as sociobiology, which links humans and animals in a common evolutionary heritage. Wilsons new book, The Creation, presents a case for religion and science to work together to protect nature for future generations. I don't know if it will work or not, but it would be nice to see the religious community do more to protect the planet — for the birds and for people, in the name of creation or the biosphere, depending on your point of view. As I headed away from the bird banding encampment back toward the main beach road in search of a wireless Internet connection, the people at the Mobile public radio station played the theme song to "The Lone Ranger." Time to get on down the beach and find a brew at the Flora-Bama Roadhouse Lounge. More to come... June 15, 2006A Clean, Happy Mockingbird...
June 04, 2006An Eastern Screech-Owl
May 24, 2006A Yellow-Crowned Night Heron Fishing...
May 07, 2006A Female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird...
May 06, 2006A Pair of Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks on a Saturday Afternoon
May 02, 2006A Red-Headed Woodpecker...
May 01, 2006A Rose-Breasted Grosbeak...
April 28, 2006Giant Pileated Woodpecker in The Hood....
April 27, 2006A Male Barred Owl Taking a Nap...
April 21, 2006Taking Flight...
April 20, 2006A Robin Taking A Bath On A Hot Spring Day
April 17, 2006Cedar Waxwings Pass Through Easter Sunday Week
April 16, 2006White-Throated Sparrow Photo and Sound
April 02, 2006Feature Fascination: A Barred Owl Watching
March 26, 2006Bob Sargent: Still Protecting Birds, Educating Kids After All These Yearsby Glynn Wilson CLAY, Ala. - It had been 15 years since I last ran into Bob Sargent, a retired electrician and amateur bird scientists from Clay, Alabama. It was nice to see he still practices his passion for birds and their habitat and is still working hard to educate the young about the importance of conserving the environment.
He and his wife Martha were instrumental in helping to launch the Clay Elementary Bird Fest last year, along with Shirley Farrell's fourth-grade enrichment class. The second annual festival took place Saturday. Here's the link to the little story about it in the Birmingham News. Clay Students Meet Some Big Birds That last time I talked to Mr. Sargent, the United States Navy was trying to take out a 200-square mile area in the Gulf of Mexico off Alabama's coast to locate an electromagnetic pulse simulation device to test ships for hardening against an atmospheric nuclear blast. He spoke out publicly against some bad science being conducted as part of that project by University of Southern Mississippi researchers. And along with a budding environmental and economic public movement against the project and some aggressive press, he helped to kill the program's $78 million line item in the Defense Department budget and put the EMPRESS II in dry dock - permanently. I quoted Sargent in the first of about 40 stories I wrote on the subject. And since that story was one of my favorites in the series, you can now read it on this Web site in my old clip archive. Research Ruffles Birders' Feathers Sargent well remembers the EMPRESS battle and acknowledges that the publicity provided by a chain of newspapers along the Gulf Coast made the difference in that fight. "It made the difference in us putting them out of business, permanently," he said. The problem for the important migratory bird habitat on the Ft. Morgan peninsula today is the unchecked development in the area, he said, exacerbated in part by the annexation of that 22 miles of beaches and wildlife habitat by the city of Gulf Shores. "We are still working to protect the birds and their habitat, trying to ensure the birds have a safe place to land," he said. "We've had some successs, but more failures. The free-wheeling development being carried out there now on a huge scale is a real problem. We may not be able to do anything to stop it. The only thing we can do is to speak out against it." This week, Sargent and his team will be loading up the trucks and vans to head down to Ft. Morgan next weekend for the annual two-week-long bird banding excursion. The spring migration is especially important, since hundreds of bird species stop, rest and refuel with food in the Bon Secour National Wildlife refuge and the surrounding area after their long trans-Gulf flight from South and Central America. It is also important in the fall, when the birds stop there to rest and fatten up before heading south across the Gulf for the winter. He said the much improved Mobile Press newspaper does a pretty good job of covering the issues there these days, although Gulf Coast Newspapers became very week chain indeed after my time there. "But the newspapers can't change the laws," he said. "The Baldwin County Commission has never seen a developer they didn't like." Another problem, he said, is the Alabama Legislature's underfunding of the Ft. Morgan Historical Commission. He said there are some emerging stories along the Gulf Coast involving development scandals that include local government officials. But he declined to go into the details since there are ongoing investigations by law enforcement authorities as well as the press. Sargent may be best known for his published studies of humming birds. The Hummer Study Group, a non-profit organization, is still going strong, he said. As for the Clay Bird Fest, he said it is a small festival but important to his local community and the next generation's education into conserving the environment. Mr. Sargent was surprised to hear the news that the community of Fultondale submitted more checklists in the Great Backyard Birdcount of 2006 than any other community in the United States or Canada, according to the official results from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. He said the bird count, while mostly conducted by mom and pop bird feeders and not real professional or amateur birders, "does provide some very important data." Sorry to give away your lead, Dr. Gibbons, but the conclusion is that the number one environmental problem facing us today is public "apathy." Top Ten Lists and the Environment We would add to the top of the list a lack of leadership on science and the environment out of the White House, where the priorities changed drastically after the election fiasco of 2000. On another bird science note, while we were off traveling to New Orleans last week, there was another development in the ongoing controversy over the reported sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods of Arkansas. The upshot is that some researchers are questioning the validity of a recent video, which is reportedly the first sighting of a live ivory-bill in decades. You can read all about on the LiveScience.Com Web site. March 25, 2006Exploring the Humming Bird Study Group and Clay Bird FestWe ran into bird researcher Bob Sargent and some other nice folks today at the Bird Fest in Clay, Alabama, between Springville and Birmingham, so there will be more bird news soon as the spring migration season takes off in these parts. While we contemplate more life fascinations, here are a couple of links to check out for the time being. Fatbirder's Birding Mississippi and Alabama Not sure what the column will be about Sunday. Depends on what seems important when I wake up and watch the Sunday morning talk shows. The news looks pretty interesting over on the news page, just nothing much to blog about tonight. For tomorrow's news, check The Locust Fork News before you go to bed... March 12, 2006Fultondale Alabama Wins Backyard Birdcount Top LocalityBirders from Fultondale, Alabama, submitted more checklists in the Great Backyard Birdcount of 2006 than any other community in the United States or Canada, according to the official results from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.
Localities Submitting the Most Checklists The ninth annual Great Backyard Bird Count, Feb. 17-20, set new records as participation soared across the United States and Canada, according to the official press release. From backyards to wildlife refuges, bird watchers tallied a record-breaking 623 bird species and 7.5 million individual birds during the four-day event. Participants sent in more than 60,000 checklists, providing a wealth of information unmatched in previous years. The flood of reports yielded what would have been otherwise impossible - a comprehensive snapshot of the continent's birdlife. "With more people watching birds, together we discovered amazing things," said Paul Green, director of Citizen Science for National Audubon Society. "In some places, observers described flocks of robins so large their combined calls were louder than jetliners, and good seed crops in northwest Canada caused several species of seedeaters to remain in sub-zero northern Canada rather than move to warmer areas further south." American robins are typically reported in greatest number by observers in the balmy southern states, but they inundated the Northwest this year, including Washington State, where flocks of 40,000 or more were seen and totals skyrocketed to 96 percent above last year's count. In contrast, tallies of robins were down to less than one-half of their 2005 numbers in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi for reasons that are as yet unclear. Although most insect-loving birds travel south of the United States in winter, warm weather may also have enticed some swallow and warbler species to stay farther north than usual, living on a partly vegetarian diet. The number of bird watchers who reported orange-crowned warblers rose by more than 50 percent compared with last year and they reported twice as many birds, some of which were eating suet and nectar from feeders. Tree swallows, which can feed on bayberry berries during winter, have broadened their distribution from 11 states in 2001 to 20 states in 2006. Adjusted numbers were up by 134 percent compared with last year. Complete tallies and maps are available at the Great Backyard Bird Count web site, along with photos and narratives about other birds - including species in southern states hit by hurricanes, the stunning invasion of snowy owls in the Pacific Northwest, migratory pathways of sandhill cranes, regional rarities such as a black-throated blue warbler in Connecticut, and continued drops in counts of American crows, plagued by West Nile virus. The web site also announces winners of this year's contests for localities with the highest participation, and features some of the more than 3,000 bird photos sent in for the photo contest. Next year's Great Backyard Bird Count takes place February 16–19, 2007. Checklist Champs for 2006 With more than 60,000 checklists submitted, the 2006 Great Backyard Bird Count ranks as the second-highest ever in participation, up 15 percent compared with last year and up a whopping 40 percent from two years ago. While Alabamians submitted 1,368 checklists, up by 565, an increase of 70 percent , from last year, the state did not make the top 10 list. The Top 10 States? 1) New York (3,978) March 05, 2006Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker Photo and SoundThere is no final report out yet on the Great Backyard Bird Count of 2006. We'll post a link as soon as it becomes available. Meanwhile, the photo gallery is up. Great stuff...
Great Backyard Birdcount 2006 Photo Gallery The woodpecker in the photo was perhaps mistaken at first as a red-naped sapsucker, but that would put it way out of its range. It came just two days after we constructed the bird blind in the backyard to get ready for the spring migration. Unfortunately, this shot was snapped after the official birdcount ended. According to the official research on this species, most non-birders believe that the yellow-bellied sapsucker is a fictitious bird created just for the humorous name. In fact, it is a widespread species of small woodpecker. Its habit of making shallow holes in trees to get sap is exploited by other bird species, and the sapsucker can be considered a "keystone" species, one whose existence is vital for the maintenance of a community. Yellow-bellied sapsucker facts from Cornell. Listen to the warning sound it makes, recorded the same day on an old jam box with a strong, built-in condenser microphone, followed by the noise it makes pecking for food on a hickory tree Yellow-bellied sapsucker warning call. Yellow-bellied sapsucker pecking sound. See comments for expert identification... March 01, 2006Feature Photo: Robin Red Breast, The First Sign of Spring
Growing up in these parts, the arrival of Robin Red Breast always meant the first sign of spring. Guess it still does, although the cycles of migration seem volatile of late. Global warming? But finally, today, a beautiful day in Alabama. Reached a high of 74. I found an old tarp and formed a blind by attaching it with bungee cords over a swing set in the backyard. To get a closer shot. Remember your mom reading the Nursery Rhyme? I do. August 04, 2005A Mourning Dove With a Real Camera
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