Spread of Eurasian Collared-Doves

A couple weeks ago I saw my life Eurasian Collared-Dove in Cape May Point. As it turns out, these doves are far more common in North America than I knew, at least outside of the Northeast. Their population in Oregon has grown rapidly:

Actually, the Eurasian collared dove has been cropping up in Oregon since 1998 or '99 and, according to local Audubon Society records, it first was spotted in Corvallis in 2007. But now the bird's mid-valley numbers really seem to be taking off.

"This is something new," said David Mellinger, vice president of the Audubon Society of Corvallis. "They reached Corvallis a couple of years ago, and suddenly they're all over the place. It seems to be good habitat for them." ...

Although Eurasian collared doves feed on grains and seeds, there have been no reports of crop damage so far, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. It's not yet clear whether the new arrivals pose any threat to native species such as mourning doves and band-tailed pigeons.

"The jury's still out on that one," said Rick Boatner, who tracks invasive species for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "But it does appear they're expanding their range in Oregon." ...

"It's kind of an interesting story," said Cornell's David Bonter, director of Project FeederWatch, which monitors bird numbers across North America....

By the early '80s, Eurasian collared doves were breeding in Florida, and they soon established themselves in the Southeast.

"Then, between 2000 and 2007, they made this remarkable expansion from Florida all the way to the Pacific Northwest. Now they're found from Florida all the way to Alaska," Bonter said....

Like a couple of earlier European invaders, the starling and the house sparrow, the Eurasian collared dove is highly adaptable and does well in urban environments, two factors that help to explain its rapid advance across the United States, Bonter added.

"They're a bird that really does well in human-modified landscapes, and we've done a good job of making the world friendly to Eurasian collared doves," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind that the Eurasian collared dove will continue to expand and will become one of the most common birds at backyard bird feeders."

In that case, we might be seeing quite a lot of these in New Jersey fairly soon.

Life in a Mugwort Patch

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is an herb native to Europe, Asia, and Africa that was introduced to North America. It is not particularly eye-catching; instead it appears as a waist-high, gray-green plant.  (See a line drawing for identification.) In its native range, it was traditionally used as a substitute for tea (when tea was extremely expensive) and as a treatment in Asian medicine. In North America, its propensity to grow in dense clumps and spread quickly makes it highly invasive, and it can take over disturbed areas quickly. Once it gets established, it is very difficult to remove.

My patch, unfortunately, has a lot of mugwort, in addition to other native species. Yesterday morning, one particularly bank of mugwort drew my eye for having a lot of insect activity. Most noticeable were the Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles, which were plentiful in all of their life stages. Above are two lady beetles mating; below are a larva and a pupa. Like the mugwort, this is a nonnative species; it was introduced repeatedly in the 20th century as a control measure for agricultural pests.

Aside from the lady beetles, there were a lot of wasps, especially grass-carrying wasps like the one below, which I think is Isodontia apicalis.

Another insect in the mugwort patch was the soldier beetle below, which I think is Podabrus rugosulus.I should caution, though, that the genus Podabrus has a lot of species in it, many of which look very similar.

In a mothing session earlier in the week, I recorded another member of the Podabrus genus that looked very similar to this one, except that its pronotum was entirely orange. So there are at least two species from that genus wandering around the neighborhood. I recorded a lot of moths that night, and I will share some of them here once I get more identified.