Teal are small ducks which, in migration, appear as fast, low-flying small flocks. Duck hunters know well how quickly they can appear over the reeds using their ground-hugging radar, and be past you before you know they are there. Early migrators, both species of teal have moved from their northern marsh breeding grounds to their homes in Central and South America by the time fall hunting season begins in the northern US. I doubt that we will bag any teal in our trip to Manitoba during the first week of October - they will be south.

The Blue-wing is the second most common duck in North America - after the mallard. (The blue wing patch is only visible in flight.) One of these days, we will get into the subject of duck plumage, an interesting subject because ducks have two plumages, breeding and non-breeding (or "eclipse.") Duck photos tend to show the colorful breeding plumage of the males, as in this photo, rather than the drab eclipse plumage which beginning birders and hunters find confusing.

During migration, both teal species are found in fresh-water or brackish ponds and marshes, often standing around on mud flats, looking bored but content. More on teal here.

Fair Chase

Ducks Unlimited, along with other hunter-conservationist groups, has begun a "Hunt Fair Chase" promotional program. "Fair Chase", for you non-hunters, refers to the ethics of hunting. Yes, man has a weapon and the animal does not, but there are many ways to apply ethics and respect to the ancient and honorable tradition.

For me, one of the primary ethics is to support conservation measures, and to do it - not to wait for the government to do it. That's why I love Ducks Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy, and a few others.

The General principles, as expressed at the DU website:

Fair Chase allows the hunter to pursue game, using hunting skills, knowledge of wildlife & outdoor savvy, without putting the game animal at an unfair disadvantage.  The principles of fair chase encourage hunters to: show respect to landowners & managers; respect wildlife; obey game laws; show courteous to other hunters and those that don't hunt; clearly identify your target; and remain ethical and safe at all times.

Something Beautiful for a Sad Time

Did you know that you can plant clematis in the fall? It's a good way to jump-start them. Best source for these climbers who require shaded roots, here. They have detailed planting instructions, too - important for these vines.

Sea Turtle Protection

Among the many predators which interfere with sea turtle reproductive success, Mexicans with the notion that turtle eggs enhance male potency are among the worst.

People hang out on the beaches of Mexico at night with flashlights, and after a female has finished laying, they raid the nest in the sand and sell the eggs at ridiculous prices to sexually-insecure hombres. Sea turtles have enough problems (few of their babies survive to adulthood, fishing nets ensnare and drown them, some are illegally hunted for meat and shell, and shipping and propellers do damage too).

So Mexico has produced an ad. Will it help? Worth a try. I don't think a photo of a turtle would have quite the same impact. Hey, amigos, try Viagra instead. It's cheaper than turtle eggs, and it really does work. Story here. 

For sea turtle conservation, we like the World Turtle Trust.

Worst Case Scenarios for Storm

From Stratfor.com, an excellent intelligence source which has sent out a Red Alert:

The Port of Southern Louisiana is the fifth-largest port in the world in terms of tonnage, and the largest port in the United States. The only global ports larger are Singapore, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It is bigger than Houston, Chiba and Nagoya, Antwerp and New York/New Jersey. It is a key link in U.S. imports and exports and critical to the global economy.

To read the rest, you need to sign on their site. Some of their stuff is free, but it's copywrited. 

 

I just got word from my migration
source that the Nighthawks are on
the move in New England, heading to South America for the winter. No longer as common as they once were in the Northeast, these aerial acrobats catch bugs on the wing and often nest on flat gravel rooftops.

Their falcon-like shape, their flight, their white wing-flash, and their loud beeping noise are easy diagnostics. They are seen as often in town as in the country - maybe more often in town, at dusk.

The photo, courtesy of P. LaTourette, obviously shows a perched nighthawk, but I have never seen one that was not flying. Read more about this bird here.

Thought you all might enjoy a photo of a captive-bred baby Eastern Box Turtle. Captive breeding is done for the pet trade (most of them taken as pets die - they are wild animals with exacting requirements which only their instincts know how to fulfill - you cannot just throw them a mouse once a week like you can with snakes), and for re-stocking of habitat. We do it for the latter. We do not approve of the former. Boxies are charming critters but do not make for responsive pets - stick with dogs and cats unless you are a herp nut. And herp people are strange, isolated, tattooed, eccentric, obsessed folk, like Bird Dog.

Mexican Navy vs. Turtle Killers

Man, is this story disgusting. Real Meal Ministries is right - turtle-lovers separate the men from the boys,  and the moral from the immoral.

Our friends travelling in the Amazon emailed us this photo of the point where the thousands of blackwater tributaries merge to form the brown-water Amazon River.

Grouper Wars

This kind of story is becoming common: battles between commercial and recreational salt-water fishing interests, and secondarily battles between different state and federal agencies. In this case, the fish in question is the big, fat, delicious grouper, but we have seen this happen with Striped Bass. A sustainable natural resource has to be carefully and conservatively managed. I like the idea of auctioning quotas. But what happened to catch-and-release? How many of these big guys do you need to take home? Story in CSM:

Red grouper in the Gulf of Mexico has become one of the nation's most sought-after fish, coveted both by commercial fishermen and rod-and-reelers in Bermuda shorts. But in an effort to safeguard the grouper, fishery management officials have driven a wedge between the two. In July they proposed closing the Gulf grouper grounds to sport fishermen this winter - while leaving the waters open for commercial operators. Read entire.

Known as the Right Whale because it was the whale the whalers wanted most, this baleen whale (plankton-sieving, as opposed to toothed whales like the Sperm Whale) has been in hard times since the whaling era nearly wiped them out. Now it seems that their numbers are most influenced by collisions with shipping, and nothing can or will be done about that.

There are two populations of this mighty 50-foot creature, one in the southern hemisphere and one in the northern. The North Atlantic species is the one that is in trouble. I saw a mom and calf in the Gulf of Maine ten years ago - a special sight. Our New England Humpbacks seem to be doing OK, but the Rights are on a steep decline which only luck or nature can reverse.

An Excellent, professional Blog

Environmental Economics

Sample from recent piece on dam removal:

There are benefits and costs to leaving a dam in place, and there are benefits and costs to removing a dam.  Can cost/benefit analysis help us weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives?  I think so (as do many others). 

The most widespread heron in the world, this
medium-sized heron is locally abundant in its summer breeding areas around much of the US, near water. A colony nester, like most herons, he is most often seen along shorelines at dusk, stalking frogs and minnows. He winters mainly in Central and South America.

Read more about this elegant heron here.

Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette - link to the left.

Abiogenic oil, Science and Politics

We have been hearing about how the earth is running out of oil for decades but thus far there seems to be no end of the petroleum reserves in sight. Those warnings begin to sound like just another Chicken Little story – the sorts of exaggerated scare stories which cause people to dismiss some valid claims and predictions coming from environmentalists.

The theory of “abiogenic” petroleum production  and also here - that is, petroleum production not from ancient plant and microorganism life, but generated chemically in the earth’s mantle – enters the debate about the limits of petroleum reserves. After all, if petroleum hydrocarbons are generated in the mantle from simple molecules like methane, then we are sitting happily on top of an essentially unlimited oil and natural gas production line.

Originally promoted by Russian scientists in the 1960s (eg: n for Natural Petroleum. Click here: Dismissal of the Claims of a Biological Connectio) in the US the theory has been mostly associated with astronomer Thomas Gold at Cornell. There are two interesting aspects of the abiogenic oil story: First, the science. Second, the politics.

The simplest way to demonstrate the origin of organic (carbon-containing) molecules is to look at the ratios of isotopes of carbon, especially carbon 13. Overall, the evidence strongly suggests that our fuel hydrocarbons do indeed have plant and bacterial origins – that they are “fossil fuels” - but it also indicates a likely but very minor production from non-living origins.

When science leaves the academy and the professional conferences, all sorts of things can happen, as in the global warming debates. Anti-environmentalists, and SUV drivers, want to believe the comforting abiogenic theory, and anti-growth and anti-oil environmentalists want to believe – or to make us believe – that we are down to our last drop. (Here is one such discussion.)

Psychologists and psychiatrists always are telling us about how powerful the wish to believe something can be, and how powerful wishes can be in distorting our version of reality. Even scientists are not immune from this human frailty, but they are hopefully more immune – and their results and opinions are always subject to the scrutiny and challenges of their colleagues. Trying to punch holes in one-another’s hypotheses and data is part of the job. Without the emergence of surprising new evidence, it appears that abiogenic oil is not a meaningful component of oil supply.

Eagle Cam

Looked at those babies lately? You click above to switch from the Eagle Cam to the Osprey Cam.

A huge wildlife management success story - the reintroduction of the Wild Turkey into the areas in which it had been eliminated (by extensive farming, combined with the 1904 chestnut blight). This giant, ever-watchful game bird is now back in huntable numbers in forested areas across the US, even in suburbia.

And with its return, we see the return of the cult of the ancient Indian turkey-hunting techniques. Everybody says they see them all the time, so they should be easy to hunt, but have you ever seen one within 20 yards when you were in camo, sitting under a tree with a shotgun in your hand, at 6 AM? I haven't.

Ben Franklin wanted this guy to be on the National Seal, not the fish-thieving Bald Eagle. And, by the way, this is not the ancestor of the domestic turkey - that ancestor is the white-tailed wild turkey of Central America. Read more about this dramatic bird.

Whaleburgers

Aw, man, gee whiz, can you Japanese give the whales a break? What is it about the Japanese and whales? They taste like beef? So eat beef. We will never run out of cows.

Red Tide

The worst red tide in memory has hit the New England coast this spring, from Maine to Nantucket, slamming Cape Cod and Cape Cod Bay. This nasty algae bloom renders mollusks toxic, so it's a disaster for the shellfishers as well as for the shellfish-eaters. Thus far, it has not moved south into Rhode Island. Details in Boston Globe. Basics on algal blooms here.

The Wild Salmon Problem

How do you solve this one? The dams in the Columbia River system provide cheap power but destroy the wild salmon. The farm-raised salmon, cheaper than 10 years ago, is great stuff, but how do you balance economics and conservation? These require Solomonic, or should I say, Salmonic, decisions.

A nationwide, usually flocking songbird with a subtle, creamy color. Not uncommon, especially where fruits and berries are abundant. Read more about this attractive bird.

Photo courtesy of Bill Horn - his link to the left.

Lynx in Minnesota:  This is good news. A wonderful critter.

Pardon this poor photo of this wonderfully-colored bird which is common in the eastern woodlands and edges, and in suburbia, with its masterfully-woven hanging nests and its loud call which announces its presence.

We must have seen a dozen of them last weekend in New Haven. Like the tanager, it looks like a jungle bird and, indeed, during our winter, it is. Read about this splendid bird here.

It's hard to imagine that in 1972 this large fish-catching water bird was named a species "of special concern" by the Audubon Society. It's numbers have rocketed since the banning of DDT.

Like their cousin Anhingas in the Everglades, they are often seen drying their feathers on rocks and buoys, with wings outstretched. They swim very low in the water - often only their neck and head are visible - and pursue fish underwater.

It has a wide breeding range, both coastal and inland, but instead of welcoming its resurgence, in some areas it is being killed as a competitor to recreational fishing. All animals beware: when it's dollars vs. you, watch out!

 Read more about this unusual bird here.  Photo courtesy of Bill Horn - his bird photography link to the left.

Despite being the end of migration, and despite the leaves being fully unfurled, we were able to find a few good birds Sunday morning in the expansive and lovely East Rock Park in New Haven:

Black and White Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Canada Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow Warbler
Redstart
Red-Eyed Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Solitary Vireo
Philadelphia Vireo
Baltimore Oriole
Wood Pewee
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Red Bellied Woodpecker
Rough-winged Swallow
Red Tailed Hawk
Turkey Vulture
Black Crowned Night Heron
Wood Thrush
Scarlet Tanager

Plus of course the regular stuff. Always good to see woodland robins - we think of them as suburban lawn birds but they aren't - they are woodland thrushes which found our suburban lawns to be an easy source of earthworms. Thanks to Ron Bell, the great Connecticut ornithologist, for joining us yesterday for the final warbler outing of the year, and thanks to M and J for their auditory skills. The Phila. Vireo was a first for the Bird Dog.

My photo of New Haven's Soldier's and Sailor's Monument, which overlooks New Haven and Long Island Sound from its perch on the peak of East Rock. God Bless both our eager and reluctant warriors, who give us the freedom we thrive on.