The Bird of Doom!

Imagine walking alone across a meadow at dusk. The light is getting increasingly dim, and you still have a few lonely miles until you reach home.

Then you hear it. A sharp, hissing screech that abruptly ends just as goosebumps rise on your arms. Suddenly, a pale, ghostlike figure swoops into view. You find yourself mesmerized by its dark, soulless eyes...


OK, maybe I shouldn't leave my corporate writing gig for horror novels just yet. But I did my best to describe your very special Halloween BOTW, the barn owl.

Fact: The barn owl is a medium-sized owl, standing around 14 inches tall with a wingspan of more than three feet. It has white undersides and a caramel colored back. Its white, heart-shaped face is marked by opaque eyes. Look at the picture: it's just plain creepy looking!
Fact: The female barn owl is significantly larger and more colorful than the male barn owl. She has many more spots all over her breast.
Fact: These black spots may serve as a stimulus for the male. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which gives me the majority of my awesome facts, studies have shown that a male barn owl will feed his nestlings less when his female mate has her breast spots artificially removed.
Fact: The barn owl flies with deep, somewhat slow wing beats. Its flight is noiseless, which helps it hear its prey. This video gives you a decent idea.




Fact: The only thing creepier than the barn owl's empty eyes is its screech. It sounds like a woman possessed by an evil, hissing spirit. Click here to listen to it again!
Fact: The barn owl hunts at night, and, as you might imagine, it can see very well in the dark. However, its ability to hunt by sound alone is the best of any animal ever tested. It has caught mice in the lab in complete darkness, and it finds rodents in the wild underneath snow and heavy vegetation.
Fact: If you haven't caught on yet, barn owls eat mostly rodents.
Fact: The barn owl is one of the most widely distributed birds on the planet. It is found on all continents except Antarctica. It's most common in areas with marshes, meadows, and fields, where rodents are typically found.
Fact: The barn owl has long had a sinister reputation in mythology and folklore. William Wordsworth called it the "Bird of Doom."
Fact: California Newuk Native Americans believed that virtuous people who died became great horned owls, while wicked souls were doomed to become barn owls.
Fact: One English folk cure called for barn owl eggs to cure alcoholism. Children who were fed raw owl eggs were thought to have a lifelong protection against drunkenness.

This has been your very special Halloween BOTW!

Are We There Yet?

The bar-tailed godwit is making news this week for the longest, non-stop migration ever measured. We're talking 9 days, more than 7,000 miles, without taking a break for food or water. They gorge on worms and clams in Alaska and then take off for a huge flight to the coast of New Zealand, losing half of their body weight during the migration. They get sleep, of a sort, by shutting off one half of their brain during flight.

Below is one very short TV story. If you want to be a star BOTW student, though, you should listen to this NPR interview with the biologist who led the study.




Birds are awesome!

Rats With Wings

Have you ever been at a birthday party filled with hyper, giddy children, and then focused on one hyper, giddy child in particular, and thought to yourself: “You’d be sort of cute if there weren’t so many of you”?

No?

Well, then, you may not understand my feelings about Your Bird of the Week, the Rock Pigeon.

The rock pigeon is that feral urban bird you see mobbing lonely old people in parks across North America. If you’re like me, you’ve probably quoted Woody Allen at some point in your life, referring to pigeons as “rats with wings.” But I wonder if we saw these birds alone, rather than perched in huddled masses on freeway overpasses, if we’d feel a little differently about them. Take the time to focus on just one and you might realize, they really are kinda pretty.

I thought about that during my whirlwind trip to New York City this past week, where I saw plenty o’ pigeons. And, I figured it was time for us to learn more about them.

Fact: This is usually where I describe the bird’s distinguishing characteristics. Rock pigeons are pretty cool, though, because they don’t all look the same. Some are bluish gray, some are bluish black, a few are rusty red, and a tiny fraction are a grizzled white. Want to know more? Check out this chart on color morphs at PigeonWatch!
Fact: Whatever their color, you can generally count on a dark gray bill, a white rump, a rounded tail, and broad wings with somewhat pointed tips. Most rock pigeons also sport beautiful, iridescent neck feathers.
Fact: The rock pigeon is actually not native to the United States. It was introduced to this continent in the early 1600s by European settlers. Today, rock pigeons are considered “feral,” which basically means that they have reverted to their natural, wild state.
Fact: The overpasses and building ledges that feral rock pigeons generally use for roosting sites mimic the rocky cliffs used by wild pigeons in their native habitat.
Fact: The rock pigeon is found in cities and towns throughout the United States. And if you need me to tell you where to find them, well, you’re grossly unobservant.
Fact: (Sigh.) Fine, take the southbound 3300 South off-ramp on I-15 in Salt Lake City. At the light, look up.
Fact: Wild pigeons eat things like seeds and fruits. Feral pigeons in cities largely subsist on the crap that humans eat—popcorn, bread, peanuts, French fries, and Twinkie crumbs.
Fact: Ah, rock pigeons are romantics. They mate for life.
Fact: The rock pigeon bonds with his mate through an extensive display that starts with bowing and cooing, in which the male stands tall, inflates his crop (or throat area), fans his tail, struts in a circle, and bows his head and neck while cooing. You can see why the female might be impressed.
Fact: What comes after bowing and cooing? Why nibbling of course. First the male nibbles the female. Once an appropriate amount of time has passed and she doesn’t feel too trampy about it, the female will nibble the male.

This may not be the best video ever made of pigeon courting, but I thought it was pretty funny with the Al Green backup. You can just watch for a minute and get the picture.



Fact: I’ve been accused of getting a little too obsessed with the bird sex on this site, so we’ll pass by that part of the story today. (It wasn’t all that kinky anyway.)
Fact: Once the not-so-kinky mating has happened, pigeons must have a nest for their eggs. To build one, the female picks out an appropriate site and makes a specific nesting call. The male will then search for a single twig, stem, or pine needle and bring it back to the female, who will place it around her breast or flanks. This is repeated again and again and again for four or five days until a decent nest is built.
Fact: Rock pigeons are equal opportunity incubators. Dad sits on the eggs from mid-morning to late afternoon. Mom sits from late afternoon to mid-morning. They take a similar schedule for raising/feeding the chicks after they’ve hatched.
Fact: Though they are modern parents, rock pigeons do not put a high price on sanitary conditions at home. Because they do not remove the feces of their nestlings, the nest turns into a sturdy, potlike mound that gets larger month by month. Unhatched eggs and mummies of dead nestlings may also get cemented into the nest, but the parents will usually use it the next go round.
Fact: Rock pigeons may seem pretty comfy in the local park, but they do have a few predators to worry about. Cooper's hawks, peregrine falcons, merlins, and cats will all make a nice meal of them. And, apparently, there is at least one pelican in the world willing to eat pigeons as well (not even sure if it's a rock pigeon, but still). Note: this video is pretty gross. You'll see why pelicans should stick with fish.



Fact: Rock pigeons are known for their “homing” skills, basically being able to navigate home from a distant place. This is sort of an odd skill for these birds to have, as they don’t really migrate. But, wild rock pigeons would frequently travel from their nest sites on cliffs to distant fields to eat. They would then use the sun and the earth’s magnetic fields to get back home. The birds we usually see in the U.S. don’t necessarily need those skills anymore, but they’ve got ‘em!


This has been Your Bird of the Week…er, month…sorry.

The Dangerous World of Puppetry

ATLANTA, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- A hawk mistook a bird puppet for the real thing, swooping into an Atlanta parking lot and attacking two puppeteers, the victims say.

Jeff Domke and Alan Louis, who work for the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, said they were outside the building taking pictures of a puppet designed to look like a brown thrasher when the red-tailed hawk struck, WSB-TV in Atlanta reported Monday.

Domke said the feathered predator hit his hand and head before figuring out the thrasher was a fake.

"I suppose the hawk paid us a compliment on Jeff's design," Louis told the station.

Such hawks can reach speeds up to 120 mph in a dive, ornithologists say.

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Being a Bird

I came across this Creature Comforts video on YouTube about "Being a Bird." If you've never watched a Creature Comforts short, they interview regular people about, say, flying on airplanes. They then take edited versions of those interviews and pair them up with animation of animals. (Their first video was about animals in the zoo, but the interviews were people in housing projects and retirement homes.)

The British are so clever.

Anyway, it's a little long, but some of it is pretty funny.




Have a good weekend!

Strike a Pose

So, a couple posts ago we discussed the misprinted federal Duck Stamp, which I am now referring to as the “Tramp Stamp” (thanks, Rachel, for coming up with that). While the Tramp Stamp made me cringe as an editor, it also made me excited as a proud Bird Geek to tell you about the beautiful bird it features.

Your BOTW is the northern pintail.

Fact: Some of the Web sites I read this week said the northern pintail was “the greyhound of the air.” That’s nice, I suppose, but I think “the supermodel of the marsh” is more appropriate. Take a look at your field guide (you've all got one, right?) and you’ll see words like “lean, graceful silhouette,” “long, slender neck,” and “distinctive coloring.” Even its name evokes a nonexistent rear end. (Like all good supermodels, I’m sure pintails swear they LOVE to eat.)
Fact: The male northern pintail sports a chocolate brown head, white neck and underparts, and very long central tail feathers that look like a sharp little point extending from its black rear end. Hence the name pintail.
Fact: While the female pintail got screwed as usual in the coloring department (brown with more brown), she does sport the beautiful pintail shape, minus the extra-long tail.
Fact: The northern pintail eats grain, seeds, weeds, aquatic insects, and crustaceans (especially during breeding season). It picks food from the ground and also feeds on the surface of the water.
Fact: The northern pintail will also upend itself in shallow water to reach food on the bottom. I think the pintail boasts two advantages over competitors (aka mallards) in this arena: Its long neck helps it reach food in deeper waters. And its fabulous pintail looks so much better for what is basically a butt shot. (For an example of a not-so-fabulous butt shot, please refer to the video of me chasing geese.)
Fact: The Great Salt Lake has one of the world’s largest wintering colonies of northern pintails. You can look for them while driving a quiet 55 mph on Legacy Highway.
Fact: Pintails are one of the first ducks to arrive on breeding grounds in the spring. They breed throughout Alaska and Canada. They actually form pairs, though, during the fall and winter before they reach the breeding grounds. So, we'll probably have pintails hooking up right here in Utah soon. Ahh.
Fact: Pairs are often formed through long “chase” displays. One or sometimes an entire group of males will chase in flight after an unattached female. Whichever male refuses to give up the chase wins.
Fact: The act of copulation generally takes place on water. The male swims up behind his mate and bites her neck feathers to hold on.
Fact: While doing research for this piece, I learned about “forced copulation,” which is rather common in pintails and other ducks. Forced copulation is basically just like it sounds, but it usually takes place on land instead of water. Different kinds of ducks are known for doing it to each other. Biologists speculate forced copulation might be one of the reasons there are so many weird duck hybrids out there.
Fact: Once on the breeding grounds, the female will scrape out a nest bowl in the dirt. She does this by dropping on her breast and pivoting in a circle while scraping her feet. I’d like to see Kate Moss do that!
Fact: Dear old dad does not stick around to help incubate the eggs or see them hatch. But as the supermodel of the marsh, he probably has more important things to do.

This has been Your BOTW.

First picture: Wikimedia Commons
Second picture: Flickr

Hungry Birds = Bad Neighbors

So, I promise a real BOTW (the northern pintail) is coming soon. I don't have any excuses for not posting it besides just really getting into Fall TV and suffering from a dysfunctional DVR. (Love the CW, by the way, and I don't care if that puts me in the company of 13-year-old girls.)

Anyway, I noticed this news story on Live Science today and thought it was pretty interesting. I'm not sure about using the word "murder" in the headline (can animals really murder each other?), but it sounds like food shortages can bring out some pretty brutal behavior in bird parents. Although, history tells us it gets nearly as nasty when humans are under similar circumstances.

Food Shortages Drive Birds to Murder Chicks

by LiveScience staff
Photo credit: Kate Ashbrook

Adult seabirds in Scotland have launched brutal attacks on chicks in nearby nests, sometimes pecking to death the fledglings or just flinging them from cliff ledges. The ferocious attacks were documented in a study announced today.

"The attacks were brutal and usually involved more than one adult as chicks fled from the initial attacking neighbor," said lead researcher Kate Ashbrook of the University of Leeds in England.

The cause of the peck attacks can be traced to food shortages in the area where the common guillemots live, the study scientists suggest. Common guillemots (Uria aalge) are attentive parents, rearing just one chick during the breeding season.

They spend most of their time at sea except during the breeding season when the adults relocate to rocky coastal cliffs or offshore islands. On land, the white-bellied birds stand upright like penguins and reach a length of about 16 inches (43 centimeters).

Since chicks are vulnerable to attacks from predatory gulls, guillemot parents rarely leave their single chick unattended, taking turns heading out to find food. However, a decline in prey in recent years has forced both parents to search for food at the same time.

Ashbrook and her colleagues focused on a large established colony of guillemots that inhabit the Isle of May in Scotland. They reported almost half of all chicks were unattended at some point during the day. And the researchers observed hundreds of adult guillemots attacking such nests. The attacks often involved repeated jabs to the head and body, the researchers noted.

And even though food shortages sparked the attacks, the researchers said the guillemots clearly were not attacking the chicks for food, but rather as acts of aggression.

"More than two thirds of all documented chick deaths in the sample area were caused by attacks from neighboring parents," Ashbrook said. "Yet this particular colony has been monitored for almost thirty years, and in that time chick attacks have been very rare occurrences."

The findings, published online today in the journal Biology Letters, indicate that social harmony, as can be the case in such long-established colonies, can break down when conditions get tough.

The study also highlights a parental dilemma in the seabirds when starvation looms: They must choose between both parents foraging for food and possibly finding enough to feed their family or keeping one parental in the nest even if it means less food for the chick, the researchers say.

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