Journeys

It was March 3^rd this year when the cranes began to move. They rose on thermals almost directly above the house, circling higher and higher until they were visible only when their wings reflected sunlight. Headed north, they were disembodied trumpets to someone stuck on the ground, straining to see them. Trumpets in the orchestra of evolution, Aldo Leopold called them.

It was a good day to die.

And, since dying is a journey we all must take, why not take it on a day the cranes are on the move? A friend and loved one made that choice this year and took her last earthly journey with cranes flying high overhead, calling, beckoning all who listen to return to wildness.

Godspeed.

 

 

Pigeon Poop Menace

As the people of North Africa and the Middle East are reminding us right now, democracy is worth dying for. Just think of the immense physical and moral courage the Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan and Bahraini protesters carry with them as they walk into their streets to demand a say in their own government.

But, I have to report, democracy is no more immune from silliness than any other form of government. Exhibit A is the war on pigeons the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico is about to launch.

Pigeon Infested Rio Grande

Stop for a moment and join me in contemplating a person whose job it is to go around counting pigeon poops. How infinitely satisfying such a job must be, how joyous each morning, bringing forth another chance to count pigeon poop.  Imagine the thrilling conversations at dinner after the completion of another day enriching humanity through unstinting effort. Albuquerque has such an employee.

But, to return to the silliness. Some pigeon poop, you see, reaches the Rio Grande, “The Great River” which has given life to humans along its banks for centuries. We’ve written about this menace before. Apparently the city fathers back then paid attention but, as a result of the workings of democracy, we some new ones now so, once again, we are compelled to spring to the defense of science and actual data, and not wild surmise.

Let’s start with the river. The late-winter flow of the river today, according to the USGS is about 600 cubic feet per second. That’s about 45,000 gallons a second or about 387,000 gallons day. And, of course, late winter is a low flow time for the river. The snow pack that feeds the Rio Grande has not yet begun to melt. A flow ten times that of today will come along in a few weeks. (Depending on the up-stream dams. The Rio Grande stopped being a free river decades ago.) The city health poobahs have not told us how many pigeons poop in the river every day or how much they poop in the river or how much of their poop even reaches the river. Apparently some does during what these health officials call “a precipitation event.” In other words, when there is a rain storm some of the poop washes downhill and makes it to the river.

Local Polluter

Which will be flowing at a higher rate than it normally does since the “precipitation” of the “precipitation event” presumably also falls into the river and collects all over the drainage and flows downhill into the river. The river, by the way, flows south of Albuquerque to Texas and any self-respecting New Mexican is glad at the thought that our pigeon poop ends up in Texas.

We point out these realities not to cast doubt on the proposed law, you understand. After all, the city fathers, in their wisdom and without any data, conclude that the city has a pigeon overpopulation caused by humans. As we’ll see, they do have a point.

Nor do I dwell on the millions of gallons of water from the river used each day by the gigantic Intel printed circuit board factory because Intel assures us that none of the carcinogenic, poisonous chemicals used to make PCB’s ever gets into the river and I believe everything big corporations say. That is why the city health people aren’t worried about that pollution and are free to worry about pigeon pollution.

Not a Polluter

And I will not bring up Sandia National Labs or Kirtland Air Force Base or the nuclear weapon storage facilities all of which drain into the river. Those pose no pollution threat to the river and explains why the pigeon counter goes about his work unworried about radioactivity in the river.

And it would be ungenerous to bring up the arsenic. The arsenic in the drinking water. The arsenic that exceeded federal levels in several of the city’s wells. The arsenic that the city spread out to all of its wells by pumping that water all over the city to lower the average of each well. The arsenic everyone here drinks everyday.

Nor should we bother the city health people with all the hydrocarbons from cars washed off city streets into the river during “precipitation events.” That would worry them since Albuquerque has no meaningful public transportation. That would interfere with all the cars.

Nor will we bring up the tens of thousands of geese, ducks, and cranes that make their winter homes here. Geese after all, produce very little poop. Why a single goose couldn’t possibly produce as much waste as a pigeon. And we shouldn’t talk about the millions of song birds who live here. I guess none of their waste reaches the river?

The city proposes to rid us of this pigeon poop menace by enacting a law which says – and I am not making this up -

(A) It is a violation of this ordinance for any person to feed, offer food to, or through negligence allow the feeding of feral pigeons on any public or private property within Albuquerque City limits.

(B) It is a violation of this ordinance for any person to permit or allow the placement or discard of food, food by-products, vegetables, garbage or animal food of any kind in a manner that results in the lingering, roosting and/or congregating of feral pigeons.

The fine for violations? $50.00 a day for each and every violation. And the mayor or his representative may come onto a person’s property without a warrant to count pigeon poop. We assume the mayor himself won’t be traveling around without a warrant counting pigeon poop but the ordinance empowers him to do just that.

We’ll pause again and contemplate the glory of democracy. Pigeon poop. Had they known, the Egyptians might well have just gone home and let Mubarak keep his day job.

Old Town Pigeon Undeterred by Fake Owls

Pigeons are syanthropes, animals that live near and benefit from human habitations. As we have said many times before, if you build a city, they will come. The only way to get rid of the pigeons is to get rid of the people. Shut the city down and make everybody move away. Since the dawn of history pigeons have followed humans into their cities.

Here, on TV, is the city official responsible for counting the pigeon poop explaining that pigeons are an invasive species in the middle Rio Grande Valley. True enough. So are cats. Cat poop reaches the river. Are we to outlaw feeding cats? House sparrows are invasive. What shall we do about them? So are the Chinese Elm trees. Nobody is out chain-sawing them.

For that matter, people are an invasive species here, having arrived only a short time ago. What shall we do about them? Science demonstrates conclusively that they are the reason for the pigeons.

The New James Bond Movie

Sean Connery (photo by Alan Light)

News comes that the latest James Bond film (number 23 in the “official” series) is to be released in 2012, the 50th anniversary of the release of Dr. No. The new movie is, as yet, unnamed. Because Ian Fleming gave his famous fictional spy the name of a real ornithologist, it seems appropriate for us at the Fat Finch to name the new movie and help out with the plot. Here are some suggestions for the title and characters which we offer, free of charge, to the makers of the new Bond movie, starring -we hope- Sean Connery as an aging James Bond.

Dippers are Forever

Thunderbooby

The Man with the Golden Gull

For Your Eiders Only

Octopuffin

Die Another Dove

Goldflicker

We think the leading villain should be a disillusioned, resentful ornithologist named Dr. Bittern. His evil henchman, named after the original producer of the Bond movies, will be Bufflehead Broccoli who Bond will eventually throw into Bittern’s vulture pit. Bond will say to the vultures, “Eat your broccoli.” Bond’s love interest in this movie will be Booby Bushtit and she snipes at Bond so much that he finally says to her, “Booby, you’re emberizidae me.” Whereupon, she disrobes and responds, “Oh, James. Don’t be such a grouse.”

Valentine’s Day and Sex

Valentine's Hors d'oeuvre

For Valentine’s Day the folks at Enature have contributed a mating game for we humans to discover which members of the other species our romantic behavior most closely emulates. Play their Mating Game and discover for yourself. However, even if you turn out not to resemble a bird romantically, be sure to click on the bird species descriptions. There you will learn, for instance , that the male Greater Roadrunner dangles a tasty food morsel – a mouse, say – in front of his intended but won’t let her have it until after they’ve mated. Or that Sandhill Cranes, which mate for life, go through elaborate courtship rituals when young. They dance, display, hop, flap, and strut. But after many years together, they simply jump up and down a couple of times before mating.

Grandchild of Chuck?

This winter brought us a new roadrunner visitor. He or she exhibits many of the same traits as our old friend Chuck. Long-time readers will remember Chuck, the injured roadrunner who we kept in mice for some time before he disappeared. (For the full story of Chuck, go to “Categories” on the lower right of this page and select the “Roadrunner” category.)  Enough time has elapsed since Chuck’s disappearance for this new roadrunner to be a grandchild. Certainly this bird seemed to know that if he sat on our fence long  enough mice would appear for his dining pleasure. That raises the question whether genes develop memory over the short span of a single life. Could Chuck have passed on the knowledge that this yard was a good place to stop by in the winter for supplemental food through his genes?

We don’t know the answer but we thought you would like to see a portrait of our latest roadrunner passer-by whom we like to think is a grandchild of an old friend.

A Snowy Visitor

It’s snowing here today and we’re not certain this visitor is all that happy about it. As we’ve noted before, when you’ve been looked at by a raptor, you know you’ve been looked at.

 

Sharp-shinned Visitor

 

 

A New Albatross for Midway

 

Short-tailed Albatross -Photo coutrtesy of Jlfutari at en.wikipedia

The New York Times reported a bit of good news this month. A Short-tailed Albatross was born on Midway Atoll. Midway, the atoll about half-way between San Francisco and Tokyo – and near where the Battle of Midway was fought during WWII – is now a wildlife refuge protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Midway is the home base for millions of Laysan Albatrosses, but very few Short-tailed Albatrosses.

 

That’s because Short-tailed Albatrosses were almost extirpated from the earth in the late 19^th century. People liked their feathers, you see, and hunters killed them in vast numbers to supply the market.

 

Midway Atoll in 1941 (U.S. Navy Photo)

They were not the famed “Gooney Birds” of Midway that caused so much trouble to airmen stationed on the Atoll during WWII. By the early 1930′s short-tails were known to breed on only one Japanese island and, by the end of the War, were thought to be extinct. However, a few hardy birds wisely spent WWII at sea, survived, and returned to the Japanese Island in 1949. Until this month, not one pair was known to have bred on Midway, despite the fact that millions of its cousins Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses do breed there.

 

Around the same time humans were mindlessly hunting the short-tail version into extinction, we also began laying the first undersea cable between North America and Asia. Some of that work was done by an American cable-laying consortium which set up an outpost on Midway. Its workers promptly brought many non-native species to the Island to “improve” it. They improved it with canaries, cats, dogs, deciduous trees of all kinds, and – best of all – cockroaches, termites, and centipedes. When we humans set about improving a place, we do the whole job, not just a part of it.

When this “improvement” of Midway was brought to President Theodore Roosevelt’s attention, he promptly sent twenty-one marines to Midway with orders to hold the atoll for the United States and stop the “improvement” before it killed all the birds. After almost a century of use as a Naval air station, the atoll became a national wildlife refuge in 1988 and is now safe for the albatrosses.

 

Improving Enewetak Atoll

 

It is fitting that the United States protects Midway and has now hosted a new short-tailed baby. Short-tails used to breed on another Pacific atoll, Enewetak. We touched off forty some odd nuclear bombs on that 2.5 square mile atoll where the Short-tailed albatross once bred. We took care to remove all the people, but I imagine a great many birds were turned into elementary particles during the time we used the atoll to conduct nuclear tests. We’ve improved it too. We scraped off as much radioactive soil as we could, buried in a big hole on the atoll, and covered with a huge concrete mound. People have returned but, if I were a bird, I’d be hesitant to believe that we’re through with our improvements. Besides, as you can see, the concrete bunker doesn’t leave many good nesting sites.

Enewetak Today ( DOE Photo)

So, welcome to a new citizen and may he or she have a long life soaring over northern Pacific waters, knowing it will have a home on Midway to come home to in a few years when it’s time to breed.

 

This Little Birdie Went to Market

Long-time readers know that the distaff side of this house runs the Fat Finch Store. This blog is my primary contribution, as I am lost when it comes to retailing. Nonetheless, I was invited on recent trips to market and I am here to tell you about it.

For those of you unacquainted with the process, many wholesalers maintain shops of their own in large market buildings in Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York City, Dallas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Some markets are huge. For instance, the Atlanta market consists of three 22 story buildings full of these wholesale shops. All kinds of retailers come to these markets to buy goods to resell to you and me.

This year the Fat Finch traveled to the Atlanta and Dallas markets. I didn’t go to Atlanta, but I have just returned from the Dallas market, which is smaller but still almost too much for me to absorb. Dallas has only 5 million square feet of space; Atlanta has 7.7 million. Imagine being in a huge shopping center with thousands of people for nine hours a day and on the move the entire time and you’ll get an idea of what it feels like to go to market.

A big market for retailers reminds me of nothing so much as a casino. No windows, no clocks, mobs of intense people going about their business as fast as they can, making hundreds of decisions about what to buy and what not to buy with their hard-earned money.

A frenetic pace in a frenetic place.

And, for the retailers who shop there, it really is a casino, because they are betting their money on guesses about what you and I are going to want to buy our friends and family for Christmas next year. If they guess wrong, they are left holding the bag. Fully half the stores I entered had Christmas displays. We saw more artificial Christmas trees in three days than I’ve seen in my entire life. Moreover, all those retailers were forced to plan for their next Christmas season, almost a year away. For instance, The Fat Finch bought Christmas ornaments which you will definitely want to come see. And every one of these wholesalers have minimum order requirements. A retailer can’t buy just one or two of a particular item and see how things go. She has to buy in bulk, hoping to sell everything she buys. Retailing requires large up-front investments. Like farming, it is not for the faint-of-heart.

Man Stunned by Pink Christmas Tree

The wholesalers have to be thinking even further out in time because whatever they are selling today has to be ready for shipment in a few short months and they have to get their products manufactured, shipped, and delivered to their warehouses in time to get the product out to the retailers. The fact that most retail goods we buy in the United States these days come from China lengthens and complicates that process. (Although we did hear from at least one wholesaler that for some products it is now cheaper to manufacture in the U.S. And many of the items we sell in our store are made in the U.S.)The wholesalers, just like the retailers, have to predict buying trends before they become trends.

One such predicted trend for next year, we were solemnly assured by one wholesaler, will be octopus. Yes, you read that correctly, octopus. Not to eat, but octopus-themed gifts.

We found that as hard to swallow as the real thing.

Red-tail Hawk in the Canyons of Dallas

The best discovery we made was the Return of the Large (28 oz) Schrodt Hummingbird Feeders. After the first producers of that marvelous hummingbird feeder sold their business, the Schrodt has had more ups and downs than a hummingbird in a clump of wildflowers. And we bought another year’s supply of Best-1 Hummingbird Feeders, another favorite. The hummingbirds returning to our area in a couple of months will find well-stocked feeders for their dining pleasure.

And, courageously ignoring predictions about the popularity of octopi next Christmas, the Fat Finch bought some adorable owl-related products. Owls are popular in our store all the time, not just Halloween and Christmas. Something about owls and representations of owls speak deeply to the human psyche. They are popular on this blog too. Our post about Barn Owls of three years ago remains the most often read post on this blog. Everyone also enjoys reading about their toe dusting.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got to rest.

Backyard Ecology

WARNING: GROSSNESS ALERT – What follows could be considered gross by any rational human being. Feel free to skip this post and come back next week.

________________________

We’ve never had a problem with seed falling to the ground from our bird feeders. Yes, the songbirds drop a lot of it but we have a few pigeons – and we don’t mind pigeons; in fact, we rather like them – and the dogs love to vacuüm the seed.  They eat a lot of the fallen seed, but they don’t actually digest much of it. Most of it comes out from the other end the next day. Still it is a means of collecting the spilled seed that compacts it and makes it easier to pick up.

But this week we discovered that the pigeons don’t want any seed to go to waste. Here is the photographic proof:

The Ecology of Efficiency

Yes. That is what you think it is. A photo of pigeons picking seed out of the dog poop. We warned you it was gross, but you have to admit: It’s efficient.

 

Nyjer

African Yellow Daisies - photo by Mario Franco

The African yellow daisy produces a tiny black seed beloved by goldfinches, redpolls, and siskins. The daisy is grown commercially for its seeds in Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, and Nepal. It is so important to the wild bird feeding industry, that the trade association registered the name “nyjer” as a trademark so we would all know how to pronounce it. (Long “i” sound) First it was known as “niger” but nobody in the United States, the largest market for wild bird seed, knew for sure how to pronounce that.

Nyjer seeds - USDA Photo

The African yellow daisy does not grow well in North America and that is just as well: It would be an exotic and invasive plant here and who knows what kind of ecological mischief it might do. Moreover, many people confuse it with domestic thistle which is an easily spread weed that, left untended, can easily conquer entire fields of beneficial crops. And while goldfinches will eat the seeds of thistle, they prefer the much richer nyjer seeds.

Because it would be an invasive crop in North America – although some is found here, especially in the Northeast – it cannot be imported into the United States until toasted to a temperature of 250 degrees F for at least fifteen minutes, ensuring that the seeds are sterile. That, plus the costs of ocean shipping and import duties, means that nyjer is expensive bird seed. But, even after all that toasting, it remains a high-oil content seed (about 35% fat and 18% protein)and an excellent wintertime bird food for the birds who eat it. Around our house both the House finches and the sparrows also eat it.

Goldfinches and Pine Siskins Eating Nyjer

Because the seeds are so tiny, special feeders with very small openings are necessary. We use wire mesh feeders which also enable the goldfinches to eat upside down, something they like to do. Quail and doves will happily clean up anything that falls to the ground. Best of all, squirrels don’t bother with it. (“Nyjer? We don’t need no stinkin’ nyjer!”)

Until you’ve tried some in a feeder and attracted some birds, it is probably a good idea to start with a five-pound sack, but you can save money by buying it in larger quantities. It’s a good way to increase the bird varieties in your yards and on your balconies.