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Loose Feathers #310

Common Yellowthroat / Credit: Bill Thompson/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• A study found that weaver birds, which construct some of the most complex nests, learn how to build nests through trial and error.
• Workers are restoring a former wetland on Santa Cruz Island in California. The habitat restoration project is expected to benefit species such as the Island Fox and Island Scrub Jay.
• France is planning a cull of Canada Geese, which are not native to Europe.
• A study of forest types in Papua New Guinea found that birds are most abundant in primary forests, as opposed to primary forest edges, secondary forest edges and agricultural land.
• Mongabay has a photo of a Chestnut-breasted Coronet, a bird native to Andean forests.
• Tom Reed has already broken the big year record for New Jersey but faces strong competition to finish the year with the most species.

Nature blogging

• Laura's Birding Blog: A closer look at North American field guides
• 10,000 Birds: New Zealand Storm-petrels; Back from the Dead
• Coffee and Conservation: Research: Types of fruit trees on shade coffee farms important
• ABA Blog: The Chittering Curlew
• Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog: Curlew Caper Resurrected!
• The Drinking Bird: Birder Jargon Project: Abbreviatory

Environment and biodiversity

• The colors of ancients beetles are preserved in fossilized beetle remains. However, the colors are red-shifted because of chemical changes, so that a blue beetle now appears green, and so on. LiveScience has a gallery of extinct and living metallic-colored insects.
• Madgascar is seeking CITES protection for its rosewood and ebony because of a period when a coup opened its forest to unrestricted logging.
• Research on katydids found that female katydids will search for males if the males offer a gift in addition to the sperm packet.
• Over 100 people were arrested for civil disobedience in Ottawa during a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline.
• One of the two major ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic melted almost entirely this summer.
• Scientists have installed a data-collection device on one of the Cape May-Lewes ferry vessels to gather information on the health of Delaware Bay. The device measures the temperature and salinity, as well as levels of dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll.
• Oil left from BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is still harming Gulf Killifish (Fundulus grandis), even without killing them.
• Now is the season to gather black walnuts.
• LiveScience has a gallery on the devastating drought in Texas.
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Review: Binocular Vision by Spencer Schaffner

Many, perhaps most, of the books I review here on A DC Birding Blog are field guides, from new editions of respected guides like Birds of Europe to annotated checklists like Birds of the West Indies to genre-creating guides like The Crossley ID Guide. Birding field guides are primarily tools. While watching birds just requires good vision (usually assisted by binoculars or a spotting scope), one needs to turn to a field guide to identify birds or learn more about them. Since most birders own at least one field guide, how field guides represent birds can influence birders' attitudes towards birds and towards birding as a pursuit. In Binocular Vision: The Politics of Representation in Birdwatching Field Guides, Spencer Schaffner analyzes field guides that have assisted birdwatchers since the development of birdwatching as a hobby in the late nineteenth century. In the process, he shows how these books have reflected and guided changes in the ideology of birding, particularly the relationship between birding and aspects of consumer culture and environmentalism.

Early field guides such as Birds through an Opera Glass and Birdcraft sought to make the professional study of ornithology into the widely accessible hobby of birdwatching. In the process, they hoped to turn public opinion against the millinery trade, which at that time made extensive use of real birds and their feathers for decorated fashionable hats. So they made birds as sympathetic as possible by anthropomorphizing them and emphasizing their useful and ethical qualities. Not all birds were portrayed as equally good, however. While some were praised for their beauty or songs, others were denounced for cannibalism or placing their eggs in the nests of other birds. This set up an ideology of birding in which some birds should be protected and appreciated by birdwatchers, while others were to be scorned or controlled.

In the 1920s and 1930s, field guides became more technical and less sentimental, with a narrow focus on helping birders identify birds by visual and auditory clues. Such trends culminated in Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds and continued through most subsequent printed field guides up the present. While field guides presented all birds on equal footing, favoritism lived on culturally, both among birders and society at large. Schaffner examines how favoritism affected four "nuisance birds": Bald Eagle, Mute Swan, gulls, and crows. Each of their fates has changed as public and expert views of them have shifted; however, these shifts are not reflected in field guides. Schaffner argues that the persecution programs that have targeted those and other "nuisance birds" benefit birdwatchers by making those birds rarer, and thus more exciting to see. This is an argument, by the way, that I have not heard from birders, only from people seeking to justify projects that would harm birds.

Most contemporary field guides separate birds from their environments, either by depicting them against a plain background or showing minimal naturalistic backgrounds. These have an advantage of focusing attention on each bird and its key characteristics. However, it deprives field guides of the opportunity to make the user grapple with the environmental problems facing birds. One field guide, All the Birds of North America, breaks from that trend by showing birds in human-altered landscapes such as an airport and a garbage dump. Grappling with the environmental effects of modern society is left for artists outside of the field guide genre. Some companies attempt to make their products appear environmentally friendly by showing birds interacting with them or going about their lives with the products in the background. Meanwhile, some contemporary artists take the opposite perspective, showing birds and other animals being killed by human technology and waste. It would be interesting to read how Schaffner would interpret The Crossley ID Guide, which like All the Birds of North America shows birds in altered landscapes.

Electronic field guides provide new opportunities to help birdwatchers identify birds, as they have the ability to include recordings of bird vocalizations instead of just written descriptions or sonograms of them. Some audio tools like Identiflyer do this on a rudimentary level, but there are already sophisticated apps for mp3 players and smartphones that present audio recordings together with images and descriptions of birds. Meanwhile online guides (Schaffner discusses eNature.com and Cornell Lab or Ornithology's Online Bird Guide) present illustrations, descriptions, recordings, and life histories. It seems likely that tools will be available in the near future to automate identification of birds based on their appearance or sounds or provide birders with mobile access to vast databases of bird observations. Electronic guides offer the opportunity to present birders with a richer understanding of the birds they encounter than is possible in a standard printed field guide. However, they also link birdwatching to consumer culture, by expanding the number of "essential" products for birders to purchase.

From field guides, Schaffner moves to the phenomenon of competitive birding on polluted lands like landfills and sewage lagoons. This chapter has limited relevance to field guides, though such places are often included in bird-finding guides. However, it is important for Schaffner's major theme of the relationship between birding and environmentalism. Schaffner is fairly persuasive in arguing that birding is not a form radical environmentalism because birders use competitive birding to raise funds for conservation rather than to protest or highlight environmental degradation. (I am not sure that anyone would mistake it as radical, though.) I am less convinced by his argument that birders inadvertently support continued environmental degradation by looking for birds at toxic sites. He connects birding on toxic sites with projecting an image of toxic sites as being safe and friendly to birds if there is no overt mention of the toxicity, which is often hidden from view. Such an image of greenness becomes a tool for businesses or governments that want to minimize the scope of the toxic hazards that a landfill, Superfund site, or sewage lagoon contains. The reason I find this unconvincing is that many birders also engage in various forms of environmental activism from habitat restoration to political advocacy. What projects the image of harmlessness is less the birders than the birds themselves, and birders are at the sites because the birds are there, and not the reverse. Even without birders present, a person who sees a brownfield site covered in plants with birds singing in the shrubs is going to miss the toxins hidden in the soil underneath.

Spencer Schaffner poses important questions about the relationship between birdwatching and environmentalism and how that relationship is reflected in field guides. He offers a vision of a birdwatching that engages more with entire habitats and environmental problems. His prose is somewhat dense (especially towards the beginning of the book) but understandable and engaging. Overall, I think he provides a more useful account of twentieth-century birding than Scott Weidensaul did in Of a Feather, which I reviewed several years ago. I would recommend Binocular Vision: The Politics of Representation in Birdwatching Field Guides for anyone interested in the development of field guides or in re-imagining birdwatching for the twenty-first century.

Silver-spotted Skipper

There were fewer Monarchs around this afternoon than there were yesterday, but there were still several of them working the butterfly bush outside my window. Among them was this Silver-spotted Skipper. This is one of the larger skippers. Unlike most skippers, this one is easily recognizable because of its tall shape and the white splotch on the underside of its hindwing. It usually sits with its wings folded over its back instead of using the jet plane posture of the smaller skippers. Very occasionally I have a Silver-spotted Skipper with its wings spread flat. Silver-spotted Skippers are very common, and their larvae feed on locusts, wisteria, and legumes.

Monarch Migration

There is a large butterfly bush with white flowers outside my window. On most days I see a few butterflies at it, and some days there are a lot, with multiple species visiting it. Yesterday, this bush was covered with Monarchs. I could see at least a dozen at a time, and I could tell that more were present because I cannot see the entire bush from one position, and Monarchs kept arriving and leaving. Normally there will only be one or two Monarchs among the butterflies at the bush, so I think there must have been a major migratory movement yesterday.

Monarchs are probably the most familiar insects to the general public, as they are often used in schools as examples of biological phenomena like metamorphosis and mimicry. They are also large, colorful, and (at times) plentiful, so they are easily noticed even by people whose eyes are not tuned to insect movements.

Unlike most butterflies, Monarchs are fully migratory. In the fall, the eastern population migrates to wintering grounds in central and southern Mexico, while the western population retreats to southern California. In spring, these routes are reversed. No individual Monarch completes the entire round trip. Rather, females from the wintering population lay eggs in February or March, and subsequent generations complete the northward journey.

As with birds, geography influences Monarch migration. The best places to see large numbers of Monarchs at once are at southward-pointing peninsulas, like Cape May Point in New Jersey. Sometimes the air will be so full of Monarchs (and dragonflies!) that it can be hard to pick out birds from other flying things. One of my most memorable experiences of Monarchs was at Point Lookout State Park in Maryland on a chilly October morning when thousands of Monarchs were gathered at the point of the peninsula as they waited to warm enough to continue their journey. Migration occurs across a broad front, however, so you may see increased numbers in other butterfly gardens as Monarchs migrate.

Honey Bees

I find honey bees unusually difficult to photograph well. I am not sure if this is because they tend to keep moving or because they are so hairy. Either way, most of my photos of them are plagued by blurring from movement or improper focus. Yesterday, though, I caught up with a few honey bees that were plying the white snakeroot in the back garden.

A Threat to the Winter Refuge of Whooping Cranes?

If you have been following weather news in North America, you may be aware that Texas is in the midst of a prolonged drought that is extreme even by that state's standards. That drought has been exacerbated by one of the hottest summers on record. That situation is unpleasant for the people who live there and sets up battles over water rights. One of them concerns the winter residence of endangered Whooping Cranes.

Whooping Cranes at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge / USFWS

The western migratory population of Whooping Cranes breeds in Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Canada and migrates south to Aransas NWR for the winter. The refuge protects freshwater and brackish marshes where the cranes can forage. Unfortunately these marshes are now threatened by the recent drought to the extent that their water chemistry is changing. Conservationists are seeking to change water usage upstream along the Guadeloupe River to protect the cranes' winter home.

In drought-stricken Texas, heavy water use by chemical plants, refineries, and cities has left less fresh water for estuaries downstream, helping raise salinity levels in the coastal marsh 175 miles southwest of Houston. So environmentalists have sued state regulators to restrict water use along the river to protect the habitat of the last wild flock of whooping cranes that spend each winter there. But Dow Chemical (DOW), with a plant just upstream from the cranes, says it was there first. Citing the state’s first-come-first-served water-use regulations, Dow claims permits dating back to the 1940s allow it to use as much of the Guadalupe River’s output as it wants.

All this will be aired in federal court in December in a case that threatens to upend long-standing water rights....

Due to Texas’ historic drought, the Guadalupe’s flow is down by more than 60 percent at Victoria, roughly 20 miles upstream from the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the cranes’ winter range. In September the refuge’s marshes were three times saltier than normal. The birds migrate from Canada each year to spend the winter feeding on crabs and berries along the Texas coast. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service counted 571 wild and captive whooping cranes in July 2010. The Aransas group makes up half that number and is the world’s last migrating flock that can sustain itself in the wild.

The coastline from just east of the cranes’ refuge to the Louisiana border bristles with the world’s largest concentration of petrochemical and refining complexes, many of which rely on river water. An association including owners of five petrochemical plants near the refuge, including Dow, DuPont (DD) and Lyondell Basell (LYB), several power plants, and a nearby steel mill, have sided with Texas authorities to defend the allocation system, while some coastal towns and businesses that rely on healthy bays and estuaries support the environmentalists.

The two sides are far apart. LaMarriol Smith, the river authority’s spokeswoman, says that giving more water to the cranes “could basically wipe out economic development, especially in the lower end of the basin.” Yet Charles Smith, a county commissioner in Aransas County, counters that his county’s economy depends on tourists who fish, hunt, and bird watch along the coast and commercial fishing that relies on proper salinity levels maintained by adequate freshwater inflows. Says Smith: “Estuaries are the most productive zones on the planet—the cradle of life—and I think our cradle is being robbed.

It should be noted that this is not a simple conflict between birds and petrochemical companies. There are residents upstream who need drinking water, and there are fishermen downstream whose livelihoods depend on healthy estuaries. Ecotourism provides an additional economic incentive to maintain the estuaries. The endangered status of the Whooping Cranes may be the legal tool used to save the marshes, but if the suit succeeds, they are unlikely to be the only beneficiaries of a change in water rights.