Citizen Science: Project FeederWatch

Project FeederWatchers are doing their part to unravel nature’s mysteries—simply by sharing information about the birds that visit their feeders from November to April. The new Project FeederWatch season begins November  10, although new participants can join at any time.

People of all ages and skill levels can be FeederWatchers and do their part to help researchers better understand trends in bird populations. Participants count the numbers and different species of birds at their feeders and enter their information on the FeederWatch website at www.FeederWatch.org.

By collecting information from all these feeders in all these back yards, scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are able to track patterns in bird populations and movement from year to year, all across North America.

Here are just a few key findings based on nearly a quarter-century of FeederWatch data:

• Populations of Evening Grosbeaks, once one of our most common backyard birds, continue to decline.
• Many species are expanding their ranges to the north, including Northern Cardinals and Anna’s Hummingbirds.
• The non-native Eurasian Collared-Dove is invading North America at an unprecedented rate – it is now found in backyards from Florida to Alaska.

To learn more about joining Project FeederWatch and to sign up, visit www.FeederWatch.org or call the Cornell Lab toll-free at (866) 989-2473. In return for the $15 fee ($12 for Cornell Lab members) participants receive the FeederWatcher’s Handbook, an identification poster of the most common feeder birds, a calendar, complete instructions, and Winter Bird Highlights, an annual summary of FeederWatch findings. (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

Late Fall Field Trips

Bird Watching at Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison, CT

Sunday, November 25, 2010

8:30 a.m.  –  11:30 a.m. 

Horned larks at Hammonasset

Hammonasset Beach State Park is one of Connecticut’s premier birding spots. After the breeding and migrating birds (and sunbathers) have moved on to warmer places, Hammonasset takes on a somewhat different character during the colder months. Join Nina Levenduski and other Menunkatuck birders as we walk the park to look for wintering shorebirds, ducks, sparrows, raptors and others. Beginning birders welcome! Please bring binoculars and dress in layers for cold & windy conditions. Camera, hand lens, field guides, etc. are also suggested.

Meet outside the Nature Center at Hammonasset at 8:30 a.m.. There is no park admission fee. For questions or to register for this trip, e-mail nina@menunkatuck.org. Bad weather the day of the trip cancels.

Winter Birdwatching at Sandy Point and New Haven Harbor

Saturday, December 15

9:00 to 11:00 a.m.

Greater scaup - USFWS

Sandy Point in West Haven is recognized by Audubon Connecticut as an Important Bird Area (IBA), and a great place to see wintering shorebirds, ducks and other waterfowl.  Join Nina Levenduski and other Menunkatuck birders for a walk on the beaches to look for wintering birds. Beginning birders welcome! Please bring binoculars and dress in layers for cold and windy conditions. Camera, hand lens, field guides, etc. are also suggested.

Optional lunch stop after the walk at a local burger/seafood joint.

Meet at the parking area at the junction of Beach Street and Second Avenue in West Haven.

To sign up for the trip, e-mail nina@menunkatuck.org. Bad weather the day of the trip cancels.

Film Screenings: Green Fire and Living Downstream

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time

Sunday, November 25, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time is the first feature length documentary film ever made about famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. The film explores Aldo Leopold’s life in the early part of the twentieth century and the many ways his land ethic idea continues to be applied all over the world today. 

The film shares highlights from Leopold’s life and extraordinary career, explaining how he shaped conservation in the twentieth century and still inspires people today. Although probably best known as the author of the conservation classic A Sand County Almanac, Leopold is also renowned for his work as an educator, philosopher, forester, ecologist, and wilderness advocate.

Living Downstream

Sunday, December 16, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

Living Downstream is an eloquent feature length documentary that charts the life and work of biologist, author, cancer survivor and cancer prevention advocate, Sandra Steingraber. Living Downstream is based on Sandra’s book of the same name, and, like the book, documents the growing body of scientific evidence that links human health with the health of our environment. Part scientific exploration, part personal journey, the film follows Sandra during a pivotal year in her life: as a biologist and author, speaking to groups across North America about cancer prevention; and as a cancer survivor, when she receives ambiguous results from a cancer screening test. The film captures this movement between the scientific and the personal, which is also a hallmark of Sandra’s work.

Raised in small town Illinois, cancer seems to run in Sandra’s family. Sandra was diagnosed with bladder cancer when she was just 20 years old. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when Sandra was in high school. Many of her close family members have also struggled with the disease, and her aunt died of the same form of cancer that Sandra had.  But while cancer runs in her family, she cannot say that it runs in her genes. Sandra is adopted.  Thus, Sandra asks what else families have in common besides DNA. The answer is all around us: our environment.

The film closely follows the trajectory of Sandra’s life and work, but it also tracks the important progress of scientific investigation on environmental links to cancer and other health ailments. Several experts in the fields of toxicology and cancer research make important cameo appearances in the film, highlighting their own findings on such pervasive chemicals as atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, and industrial compounds, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Their work further illuminates the significant connection between a healthy environment and human health.

The film series is cosponsored by Audubon Connecticut.

Audubon AFI

The Atlantic Flyway Initiative (AFI) lets nature serve as our guide. By following birds’ migratory paths we are letting them help us identify the places so important not just to their survival, but to all our lives. Audubon is then leveraging one of its strongest assets – its vast, grassroots network of people and conservation capability to power conservation on a hemispheric scale. It will succeed because it clearly focuses its conservation priorities around bird habitats within three distinct and prioritized habitats: forests, coastlines and saltmarshes. Birds, those environmental sentinels, will be the lens through which we gauge conservation threats and successes. By expanding and linking Audubon’s string of Important Bird Area pearls, the program will create an architecture for hemispheric conservation.

Snow Bird

Wikipedia

A common winter visitor to local bird feeders, the dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis) observed in our area, is actually one of five subspecies. This subspecies, the slate-colored junco, is found throughout North America, but is the one commonly found in the East. It is affectionately known as the “snow bird,” not only for its winter arrival, but also for its plumage. A small slate-gray bird with a white belly, the junco resembles dark wintry skies over a snowy landscape. It is a species of sparrow and sports a lovely pink bill. White outer tail feathers are revealed when its tail is spread in flight, like hidden panels of fabric in a pleated skirt. Males tend to be dark slate-gray, while females are a lighter brown-gray.

USFWS

Slate-colored juncos breed in Alaska, Canada and many of our northern states. They also breed in the mountainous regions of the Southeast. Breeding populations exist in Connecticut, but mainly in the northwest and northeast corners of the state, where mature conifer forests are found. 

Autumn brings the snow birds southward into the rest of the United States. Those at Connecticut feeders have probably traveled here from Canada and northern New England. They migrate in flocks, usually returning to the same wintering areas every year. The juncos that visited your feeders last year will most likely return this winter. They seek out open areas, such as fields, parks and backyards that offer brushy and shrubby areas for cover. A dense conifer may serve as an overnight roost for the flock. 

It is interesting to note that female juncos tend to winter farther south, so your backyard flock may have a higher proportion of males. A social hierarchy exists within the flock and this “pecking order” dictates that males dominate females and adults dominate juvenile birds. Watch for skirmishes beneath your feeders.

Juncos have also been observed clinging to the standing dead stems of black-eyed susan and purple coneflower as they eat from the seedheads. Allowing your garden to go to seed provides necessary food for juncos and other seedeaters, especially when snow covers seeds on the ground. 

Submitted by Cindi Kobak

Purple martins and tree swallows have another year of successful breeding

Stringent monitoring of the purple martin and tree swallow nest boxes at Hammonasset Beach State Park continue to pay dividends with the number of young birds fledging increasing once again.

For the first year all 31 tree swallow boxes were occupied with swallow pairs producing eggs. After five years of increases the number of fledglings fell slightly last summer. This year there was a 27% increase over last, with 151 tree swallows fledging.

Top line - number of laid
Bottom line - number of fledglings

Purple martins were just as successful. For the fifth straight year, the number of nesting pairs, eggs laid, and fledglings increased. Forty-four of the 48 compartments in the four martin houses were occupied, an astonishing 230 eggs were laid, and the adult martins were able to successfully raise 180 fledglings.

Top line - number of laid
Bottom line - number of fledglings

Again this year DEEP wildlife biologists spent one July morning banding the young purple martins. Using silver Federal numbered bands and colony-specific colored bands, one hundred fifty-seven young were weighed, aged, and banded. Twenty other martins were either too young or too old for banding.

Derrick Hendy (third from left), Assistant Warden at the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary in Belize, participated in the DEEP banding. He spent two months at Audubon Sharon learning banding, bird census, and other monitoring techniques to be used in his staff position with Belize Audubon. The training program is part of Audubon’s International Alliances Program.
More photos of the banding.

John Picard, Menunkatuck Vice-president and Conservation Chair, is responsible for the increase in fledgling success rates. He keeps the nest boxes closed until a number of tree swallows and purple martins have arrived from their winter homes. Neither bird begins nesting when they arrive, sometimes waiting a week or longer. When the birds start to show nesting behavior John opens the nest boxes. He continues to monitor them during nest building and evicts any house sparrows that might try to compete with the swallows and martins. After the birds have laid eggs, John still monitors the boxes – house sparrows can continue to be a problem. The results of John’s persistent monitoring are evident.

With the increased number of purple martins nesting at Hammonasset, Menunkatuck plans to install a fifth purple martin house at the Chase (Swan) Pond colony in Spring, 2013, in time for next year’s breeding season.

Marine Conservation E-Atlas Launched

BirdLife International has launched the first global inventory of important sites for the conservation of migratory  marine species. The new e-Atlas covers 3,000 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) worldwide. It is the result of six years of effort that, to date, has involved the world’s leading seabird scientists in collaboration with government departments of conservation, environment and fisheries, and the secretariats of several international bird conservation conventions. The e-Atlas provides essential information for conservation practitioners and policy makers; for energy sector planners (windfarms, gas and oil exploration and drilling); for fisheries managers; for marine pollution management planners; and for the insurance industry. Like a Google Map, the e-Atlas will be dynamically updated as new sites are identified and new data about them become available. It will be linked to other BirdLife data resources, including BirdLife’s species accounts, IBA fact sheets and State of the World’s Birds case studies. Experience the IBA e-Atlas at www.birdlife.org/datazone/marine. News release about the Marine IBA e-Atlas: http://chapterservices.audubon.org/news-announcements#marine