Pale Beauty at East Brunswick Moth Night

On Saturday evening I went with my friend Anita and her husband to the final session of East Brunswick Moth Night for 2011. The moth diversity was a bit lower than expected. Relatively few macromoths visited the sheet, and those that visited the moth sugar were almost all Copper Underwings. However, there were plenty of insects to keep all of the attendees occupied, including one large katydid that alternated between sitting on the sheet and spooking attendees with its loud katydid calls from a nearby tree. I will post more photos from Saturday's session as I identify the insects.

Near the end of the night, just when we were thinking of wrapping up, this moth arrived and landed on the ground in front of the mercury vapor lamp. It is a Pale Beauty (Campaea perlata), a geometer notable for its large size and pale green color. A second Pale Beauty (shown below) flew in shortly after the first. The two moths displayed noticeable differences in size and color, despite being the same species.

Dave Moskowitz, who runs the moth night series, wrote a recent post on discovering the biodiversity that lurks in suburban backyards, especially insect diversity.

Looking for Warblers and Finding a Wren

Now that the Ospreys are gone, other birds can make use of their platforms.

I was at Cheesequake State Park yesterday morning to look for newly-arrived southbound songbirds. The birding was slower than I expected, with only five warbler species seen: Black-and-White Warbler, Northern Parula, Pine Warbler, American Redstart, and Common Yellowthroat. The Pine Warbler was notable since it was singing when I found it, which is a behavior I cannot recall seeing with Pine Warblers in past falls. It was in its characteristic habitat, the pitch pine forest near the edge of the salt marsh.

A hint of autumn

The clear highlight of the morning was a Marsh Wren that I pished up on the Yellow Trail between the lake and the interpretative center. It was very vocal, chattering in response to stuk sounds I was making with my tongue. Other possible migrants included a Red-eyed Vireo and an Eastern Phoebe.

Perennial salt-marsh aster

Birders thinking of visiting Cheesequake should be aware that there is bow-hunting in the park this fall to reduce the number of White-tailed Deer. I spoke to one of the park staff about this, and from what he told me, it safe to walk the blazed trails between now and November 1 (but not to venture off of them); after November 1, hunting will include all of the park except the areas immediately around the buildings and family campground.

Little Penguins Forage Far from their Nests

Little Penguins / Credit: Phillip Island Nature Parks

A new study tracks the foraging behavior of Little Penguins nesting on Australia's Phillip Island.

"When little penguins finish what we call the 'guard stage' and can first leave their chicks for extended periods of time, they are quite hungry, so they go on two long trips, which allows them to replenish their own energy stocks," says Dr Andre Chiaradia, a biologist at Phillip Island Nature Parks and co-author of the study.

"These extended journeys are well known in offshore seabirds like albatross, but normally we would expect inshore seabirds like the little penguin to take only short trips," he told Australian Geographic.

"Short foraging trips yield larger meals and allow for regular provisioning of chicks. But adults can deplete their energy reserves during these trips and ultimately risk their own survival," says co-author Claire Saraux, a PhD student from the University of Strasbourg in France.

To replenish themselves, adults have to take some longer trips when they reach a critically low body weight, she says. "The two consecutive long trips therefore enable little penguin parents to rebuild their reserves before another round of short trips."

The scientists used tracking devices to follow the number and duration of foraging trips. Short-range trips were more common in seasons when food was plentiful, but the penguins performed the long-range feeding trips every year regardless of food availability near the shore.

The study will be published in the journal Ecology, but it does not appear to be online yet.

Loose Feathers #307

Eastern Meadowlark / Photo credit: Carlton Ward, Jr./CarltonWard.com

Birds and birding news

• USGS scientists in the Upper Midwest are tracking loons, some with satellite transmitters and others with geolocators, to learn more about their migratory movements, including how avian botulism affects them and how deep they dive. You can follow the progress of individual birds marked with transmitters on the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center website.
• Here are some suggestions for good fall migration birding on lands administered by the National Park Service. 
• African honeyguides lay their eggs in the underground nests of bee-eaters. When the honeyguide chick hatches, it kills its rival bee-eater chicks with a sharp nail on its upper mandible. 
• An endangered Puaiohi (a.k.a. the Small Kauaʻi Thrush) pair recently fledged a chick from an artificial nest box, only the second recorded instance of a Puaiohi fledging from an artificial cavity. There is hope that use of next boxes will leave Puaiohi less vulnerable to nest predation and assist the recovery of the population.
• The veterinary drug diclofenac, which was banned in India, Nepal, and Pakistan because it poisons critically-endangered vultures, is still available from a third of India's pharmacies.
• New molecular research suggests that birds' three digits are equivalent to the thumb, middle, and ring fingers even though the avian first digit develops where an index finger should be.
• You can follow Happy Feet (the Emperor Penguin stranded in NZ and later released at sea) with Sirtrack.
• BirdLife Finland has made its flagship journal, Ornis Fennica, an open-access online journal. Online archives go back to 1924.
• The Willow Tit and the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker are being added to the British endangered list due to rapid population declines. 

Nature blogging

• Laelaps: Transatlantic Terror Birds
• March of the Fossil Penguins: Meet Inguza, the Smallest Penguin from Africa
• ABA Blog: L-o-n-g-Distance Nester
• The Daily Wing: Monday Morning Birding Basics – No. 10: On Buying Binoculars
• Rob's Idaho Perspective: Celebrating Vultures Through Art
• Tetrapod Zoology: Obscure, extravagant tropical crows
• Bug Eric: Spider Sunday: Black and Yellow Argiope
• Not Exactly Rocket Science: Hummingbirds dive to sing with their tails
• 10,000 Birds: Songbird-parrot link strengthened in new study, with implications for vocal learning  
• The Drinking Bird: Birder Jargon Project: Big Years not depicted on the big screen
• Urban Hawks: Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Environment and biodiversity

• This summer the U.S. experienced its second-hottest summer on record. Not all areas were equally affected by the record heat; the southern central part of the country experienced the worst heat, with Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Louisiana having their hottest summers on record while Texas had its driest summer on record.
• An op-ed argues that individual actions are not enough to address climate change.
• The Hudson River turned red because of red clay sediments being eroded by floodwaters in the Catskills.
• According to genetic research, the Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio appalachiensis) evolved from hybridization of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) and the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio canadensis). New species developing from hybrids is relatively rare among animals.
• When a particular virus infects a gypsy moth caterpillar, it climbs as high as it can and liquifies, so that the resultant particles fall and infect other gypsy moth caterpillars.
• The US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed endangered listing for the recently-rediscovered Franciscan Manzanita (Arctostaphylos franciscana). The only known specimen of this rare shrub is somewhere in San Francisco's Presidio.
• Warming water temperatures have allowed King Crabs to gain a foothold on Antarctica's continental shelf.

Blog carnivals

• Circus of the Spineless #65

Rain and Asters

The New England Asters are starting to bloom. Meanwhile, we seem to be stuck in a pattern of cool rainy weather, which I actually like (especially compared to the extremes we experienced in July), but it slows down birding and tends to suppress insect activity. So I will leave you with these waterlogged asters.

A Pollinator's Perch

Credit: Image courtesy of Oxford University Press (OUP)

Small South African irises in the genus Babiana have evolved an upright perch to attract sunbirds to pollinate them.

The research consisted of fieldwork across the western Cape, examining Babiana and making observations of the sunbirds that pollinate them. Barrett said: "What we found is when sunbirds visit Babiana ringens, they always land on this perch and then turn upside down to feed on nectar from the the ground-level flowers. In contrast Babiana carminea doesn't have a perch, and here we found that sunbirds land on the ground and probe flowers to feed on nectar. Ground level flowers are highly unusual in bird-pollinated plants because of the likely predation risk and to find two contrasting feeding strategies among related species is remarkable."

"Babiana avicularis has a perch, but these plants are only visited by the southern double collared sunbird. This is a smaller sunbird, and it looks like Babiana avicularis may have evolved a specialised relationship with it. Larger malachite sunbirds don't visit this plant but are the exclusive pollinators of Babiana ringens which has larger flowers. No one had seen birds pollinate this plant before and it's now one of the smallest bird-pollinated plants known."

The image above shows a sunbird feeding on a Babiana flower from one of those evolved perches. There is also some variation in the size of the perch, with the perch length being longer wherever sunbirds visited Babiana more frequently.

"What we also found with Babiana ringens is that the perch length was smaller in the east of our survey area. This is the region where we saw fewest sunbird visits to plants. So with fewer pollinators around there's less natural selection to maintain large perches, and it also makes sense to have self-pollination as a back-up when the alternative may be no pollination at all."

Barrett is pleased that the work provides insight into the most specialized bird perch in the plant kingdom, but warns that there is still much that we do not know about how the perch evolved in the first place: "Our research shows a clear functional basis between perches and bird pollination, but that's not all it shows. At the same time we're also seeing self-pollination and it's clear Babiana can adopt different mating strategies in different locations depending on the availability of sunbirds."

The study was published in Annals of Botany.

An Eye-catching Mushroom

Unlike a lot of other wildlife preserves that maintain native wildflower meadows, the fields at Cold Brook Reserve are sowed with corn. The corn is planted and harvested by a local farmer, who works under contract with the county. While corn monoculture is not ideal for producing a diverse array of insects and breeding birds, it presumably leaves behind ample food for migrating and wintering birds.

On Saturday, there were a lot of these eye-catching mushrooms nestled in among the rows of corn. There are a few species with a similar shape and color, but I think these are Phallus rubicundus, also known as devil's stinkhorn. These are distinguishable from the similarly-colored Mutinus elegans by having a separate spore-bearing head (more evident in the photo below). These mushrooms have a red shaft and a pointed head that is covered with a greenish brown slime that contains the spores. The slime's odor attracts many insects, such as the picture-winged fly in the image below.

Phallus rubicundus is native to warmer regions and is widespread outside of North America. It is suspected that the mushroom spread north to the Midwest and Northeast via commercial mulch suppliers. It is associated with parks and gardens, as well as other sites where mulching is common. It is especially conspicuous in New York's Central Park.