Division of Bird Habitat Conservation

Birdscapes: News from International Habitat Conservation Partnerships

In an Eggshell

Going Batty

Marvin Maberry has been observing big brown bats at his home in the Pineywoods region of northeast Texas since 1989, when he began designing and testing plastic bat houses. One bat moved in the first year, with improved success coming gradually as he experimented, refined his designs, and added more houses. In 1996, when maternity activity was first observed, 30 to 35 bats inhabited seven houses. A year later 107 showed up, and in 2002, he counted approximately 700 bats in 12 houses, with 500 in one 4-foot wide house, the most big brown bats in any bat house.

Male and female big brown bats typically divide into nursery and bachelor colonies for much of the summer. Males often spend the summer alone or in small bachelor colonies. Males and females start mixing again after the pups are weaned and nursery colonies begin to break up in August. Big brown bats rarely move more than 48 miles between their summer and winter roosts, and they’re extremely loyal to the roosts where they were born. Most big brown bats travel no more than 0.6 to 1.2 miles between roosting and feeding sites at night, though some may travel up to 2.4 miles. Such close-to-home behavior means that attracting this species to backyard bat houses especially benefits neighborhood pest reduction. If you don’t believe me, just ask Marvin.

Mark Kiser, Bat Conservation International
(512) 327-9721, mkiser@batcon.org

WaterWatch Web Site

The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) WaterWatch Web site gives visitors an instantaneous picture of water conditions nationwide in real time. Through the use of USGS WaterWatch maps, the entire Nation’s current streamflow conditions, including high flood-flows and low drought-flows, are depicted on maps with color-coded dots that represent conditions at about 3,000 stream gauges.

WaterWatch features a point-and-click interface allowing users to retrieve maps and graphs of real-time state and discharge data for individual stations. From the national map, you can click on a state to find state data and click further to find near real-time data at an individual gauge. This feature facilitates rapid assessment of both general and specific water-resources conditions. WaterWatch is found at http://water.usgs.gov/waterwatch.

WaterWatch also serves as a geospatial front end to NWIS-Web, the USGS online National Water Information System that provides access via home or office computer to real-time and historical surface-water, ground-water, and water-quality data. Access to data, including real-time streamflow and historical flood peaks, via NWIS-Web is found at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis.

Butch Kinerney, U.S. Geological Survey
(703) 648-4732, bkinerney@usgs.gov

Neotrops Get Millions

Conservation history was made in August 2002: the first grants to be issued under the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act were awarded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Thirty-two grants totaling almost US$3 million (the amount appropriated by the U.S. Congress) went to projects in the United States, Latin America, and the Carribean—26 countries in all. Project partnerships will be conserving bird habitats, conducting research and monitoring, supporting wildlife law enforcement, and conducting environmental outreach and education in communities and schools. Partners are required to match their grant request 3:1, using non-U.S. Federal funds. Total partner contributions for the 32 projects amounted to $13,487,820.

Nearly 300 proposals from 33 countries and 31 U.S. states were received in response to the first Call for Proposals—a clear indication of widespread conservation needs in the Western Hemisphere. Several projects are multinational in scope. The Quercus and Aves Project, for example, has built an international alliance that will conserve oak habitats and their associated birds along the Pacific Coast of the United States, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Another partnership is conserving important habitats for grassland birds of the Great Plains in the United States and Mexico.

A complete list of projects receiving grants is found on the Internet at http://birdhabitat.fws.gov/NMBCA/eng_neo.htm. The 2003 Call for Proposals is also located at that site, along with the grant application. Application instructions are provided in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Doug Ryan, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
(703) 358-1784, neotropical@fws.gov

Canadians Honor U.S. Plan Partners

On Friday, September 20, 2002, Karen Brown, Chair of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative Council (Canada), presented Duane Shroufe, Chair of the North American Wetlands Conservation Council, with the Inukshuk Award in honor of Canada’s conservation partnership with the United States. Several hundred guests attended the “Canada Night” reception held in conjunction with the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ 100th Anniversary Conference in Big Sky, Montana. The 2-hour event honored the generous contributions of 57 state and nongovernmental organizations for their ongoing support of Canadian conservation projects. Through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act and U.S. state agencies and nongovernmental organizations, over US$400 million dollars have been directed to Canada since the North American Waterfowl Management Plan was implemented in 1986.

The reception, hosted this year by the Pacific Coast Joint Venture, is held every 4 years as a tribute to this hugely successful partnership. Guests at the event enjoyed Canadian hors d’oeuvres and beverages, brief speeches, and a video presentation starring Canada’s Minister of the Environment, the Honorable David Anderson. Door prizes added to the fun, and the presence of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police ceremonial guard gave the event a sense of history.

The Inukshuk symbolizes partnership and working together. It represents well the long relationship between Canadian and U.S. conservationists.

Barbara Robinson, Canadian Wildlife Service
(819) 953-9414, barbara.robinson@ec.gc.ca.

Canadian Cattlemen Lead Shrike Recovery

The Canadian Cattleman’s Association (CCA) is leading a multi-year project to conserve the endangered eastern loggerhead shrike’s habitat. The project was initiated in 2001 and focuses on habitat in the Outaouais of Quebec, the Manitoulin-Lake Simcoe area, the St. Lawrence Lowlands of Ontario, and southwestern Manitoba. To date, 3,000 hectares of shrike habitat on private lands have been restored, enhanced, or protected.

To formalize this project, the CCA entered into Partnership in Recovery Agreements with many private landowners. These partnerships are integral to the success of this project. Without landowner support, shrike recovery would not be possible in these areas. The project is funded by Environment Canada’s Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk and matched with additional funds from other sources.

A Teachers’ Aide

Ducks Unlimited, Inc., has developed a “Teachers & Educators” link for its Web site at www.ducks.org. This online resource includes teaching materials for parents and educators and some just-for-fun educational pages for kids.

The site is loaded with information about wetlands, wildlife, and the importance of conservation. The educators’ page has five links geared for the classroom: Puddler magazine in the classroom; Alphabetical List of Topics; Complete Curriculum; Teacher’s Guide; and Fun Zone Activity Booklets. The kid’s Greenwing page is filled with wonderfully interactive activities with animated critters and intriguing sounds. Kids can get their nature questions answered by Dr. Bob, play games, solve mystery puzzles, and print out pages to color.

Whether you are a parent or a teacher looking for educational activities for your kids, you’ll find this Ducks Unlimited site fills the bill.

Chocolate with a Conscience

As if chocolate wasn’t already one of humankind’s greatest inventions, some folks are making it even better by having it made in the shade, so to speak. The Toledo Cacao Growers’ Association, a now 200-member-strong cooperative of Mayan farmers in southern Belize, Central America, is a leader in growing sustainable, marketable, organic, shade-grown crops of cacao.

Long ago, the Mayan culture was the first to domesticate the cacao plant (not to be confused with the coca plant used to manufacture cocaine), which produces the beans used for making chocolate. Mayans today still plant and manage their crops in a way that enhances, rather than replaces, the area’s valuable rainforest vegetation—which hosts some 224 species of birds, 65 of which are migratory.

For participating families, cacao production has become an increasingly viable economic alternative to their traditional slash-and-burn agricultural practices, which deforest and degrade critical bird habitat. British-based Green & Black’s, the first organic chocolate company, has been buying cacao directly from the Toledo cooperative at a guaranteed fair market price since 1994. In fact, Maya Gold, the organic chocolate bar produced with those Belizean beans, was the first such product to be certified by the Fairtrade Foundation and given the Fairtrade Mark. To learn more about this partnership and where you can find Maya Gold and other organic, bird-friendly chocolate products, visit www.greenandblacks.com/filling (click on press releases), and www.fairtrade.org.uk/belize.htm.

Reducing the Environmental Impact of Paper Mills

Every year, paper mills release many undesirable substances into the world's rivers and air. Consequently, the paper mill industry and researchers are keenly interested in finding ways to reduce this ecological hazard. A promising new technology, using polyoxometalate oxidants, produces paper without chlorine, a reagent that results in the formation of persistent, biologically active byproducts when used in the bleaching of paper pulps. The goal of the polyoxometalate research program is to develop a highly selective, effluent-free, closed-mill bleaching process that also produces high-quality paper.

Over the past 10 years, the USDA Forest Service-Forest Products Laboratory has worked with scientists from Emory University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Helsinki University of Technology, and the forest product industry to develop this technology. Based on partnerships with many Finland-based forest product companies and with the help of the Forest Service’s International Programs, the Finnish government has contributed its support to the project. This international group of scientists has developed a new pulping and bleaching technology that is environmentally safe and requires no sulfur in the pulping process and no chlorine-based bleaching agents. The technology uses inorganic compounds, polyoxometalates, which mimic the action of fungi that degrade the lignin in wood.

Rajai Atalla, USDA Forest Service
(608) 231-9443, rhatalla@facstaff.wisc.edu

Indiana Bats in Vermont

Vermont now is home to more Indiana bats than have been recorded since the 1940s, and nobody knows why. Officials with Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department regularly survey bat caves, and in the past, few, if any, Federally endangered Indiana bats were found. But if you would have bet the wildlife officials that their Indiana bat count for 2002 would not increase by more than 3,000 percent, you would have lost. A recent survey of one cave in southeastern Vermont turned up 159 Indiana bats.

Federally listed as endangered in 1967, Indiana bats have declined for a number of reasons, but human disturbance and alteration of caves where bats hibernate are suspected to be the primary causes of endangerment. As with other endangered species that feed on insects, pesticides also may be a problem, and summer roosting and maternity habitat may be affected by unsustainable forestry practices.

Previous radio-telemetry tracking of Indiana bats in Vermont documented roosting within managed woodlots, especially those near openings or wetlands, within the Lake Champlain basin. Wildlife managers are evaluating whether to update forest management guidelines, given the dramatic increase in bat populations. Last year, the Green Mountain National Forest revised its forest plan to better accommodate the habitat needs of Indiana bats.

Courtesy of Outdoor News Bulletin, Wildlife Management Institute.
Scott Darling, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife
(802) 483-2740, scott.darling@anr.state.vt.us

A Hub for Hawks

Can a local non-profit group have an international effect on conservation? The Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association (Association) near Kempton, Pennsylvania, certainly does. Founded in 1934, the Association is the world’s oldest and largest member-supported raptor conservation organization. Its international initiative, Hawks Aloft Worldwide, has identified several important raptor-watchsites and helped establish them as self-sustaining conservation centers. The Association also has published a world directory of watchsites and more than 200 technical papers and has provided raptor-science training to 215 conservationists from 38 countries.

Last fall, the organization expanded its capabilities with the dedication of a world-class facility that will serve as a hub for global raptor-migration science. The three-building complex includes a central 10,300-square-foot Research Center with a teaching lab, a map lab, and an archival room. It also includes conference space and offices for sanctuary personnel and visiting researchers. The other two buildings, 8,200 square feet and 6,400 square feet, provide living space for visiting scientists, graduate students, and interns.

Named for its benefactor, philanthropist Sarkis Acopian, the Acopian Center will provide opportunities for sanctuary staff to collaborate with visiting scientists, conservationists, and students from around the world. “Having scientists from many countries and disciplines in one place allows a multi-disciplinary approach to landscape-level conservation challenges. That’s what’s needed to have an effective, world-wide impact on raptor conservation,” said Executive Director Cynthia Lenhart.

Keith Bildstein, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association
(570) 943-3481, bildstein@hawkmountain.org

Just the Facts: Quaking Aspen

Quaking aspens grow in pure stands but also are a part of a number of larger forest types. It is an early-successional species, meaning it takes over quickly in the wake of a disturbance such as fire, landslides, or land clearing. Today, due to changes in land use and management, for example, the prevention of fires, such disturbances are less common, and early successional species are not as ecologically favored as they once were. Yet the aspen is still extremely prevalent, being found in 27 states. Worldwide, only two other tree species, the Europen aspen and Scotch pine, are more common. Here are a few more interesting facts:

Growth
Heights usually are less than 90 feet and diameters are less than 20 inches; although, aspens in the northern range can reach 120 feet and more than 50 inches in diameter.

Sites
Aspens grow best on well-drained loamy soils with good water-holding capacity.

Range
The aspen’s range extends from Newfoundland to the tree limit in northwestern Alaska, throughout the northeast United States and Great Lakes states, then west to the Rocky Mountains, and south through the mountains of Mexico.

Wildlife Uses
This tree provides excellent habitat for white-tailed deer and ruffed grouse. Elk and moose like to browse young aspen and rub their antlers against the stems. Beaver eat the tree’s tender bark.

Human Uses
Quick to pioneer in places where there is bare soil, aspen used to be considered a weed species, but today it has high value for pulp production. Because its surface does not splinter, it is used in benches and playground structures.

Tree Trivia
It has been claimed that aspen clones may be the oldest living organisms on earth, even surpassing the bristlecone pine in longevity.

Heather Lowe, MeadWestvaco
(843) 871-5000, hsl1@meadwestvaco.com

“Extinct” Fuertes’s Parrot Rediscovered

Once upon a time, way up in the central Andes of Columbia, two bird collectors discovered and named a beautiful, multi-colored parrot that, unbeknownst to them, would not be definitively seen again for another 91 years. In fact, the Hapalopsittaca fuertesi, commonly known as Fuertes’s parrot or indigo-winged parrot, was feared extinct by now, until two young Columbian ornithologists associated with the National University in Bogota and the bird conservation group ProAves Columbia encountered 14 of these parrots this past July.

As part of a larger research effort to find rare and long-lost Andean parrots, team leader Jorge Velasquez and Alonso Quevedo had been combing the high montane forests for months before they finally heard a call that had not been heard for decades. Seconds later, they witnessed an exhilarating display of colors as a flock of these brilliant birds glided through the forest. The team has been closely tracking the flock ever since and have the first photographs, video footage, and audio recordings ever taken of this species. Future endeavors for this project will involve developing an action plan for the conservation of the Fuertes’s parrot and its habitat.

For more photos and information on the project, its funding sources, and partners, visit American Bird Conservancy (www.abcbirds.org), BirdLife International (www.birdlife.net), Fundacion ProAves Columbia (www.proaves.org), World Parrot Trust (www.worldparrottrust.org), and British Petroleum Conservation Programme (http://conservation.bp.com), who presented the team with its 2002 Gold Award for their work.

Bird ID Training Center

Are you just getting started in birdwatching? Want to develop your skills before you head into the field with friends? The Northern Michigan Birding Web site’s ID Training Center (http://www.northbirding.com/idtraining) is a good place to develop your identification skills and then test yourself to see what you’ve learned.

Like any school, the site has a process for learning birding skills. First you have to read a short article, Building Birding Skills: Keeping Field Notes by John Rakestraw. With that under your belt, you click on Bird Topography Glossary of Terms for a mouse-over experience that points out bird-topography terms you need to know and defines them. Now, with that information permanently embedded in your brain, you grab your field guide and start the Bird Identification Quizzes covering seven categories of birds. By the time you have finished the Matching Exercise, the Flash Card Exercise, and the Short Answer Quiz, you will have the confidence needed to head to the field and start a lifetime of listing birds.

Turkey Quiz

Do you know the real history of the wild turkey, its origin, its contributions to American culture and lore? The National Wild Turkey Federation wants to educate the public on the history and ways of its favorite bird. To test what you know, take the following quiz. Who knows. . .you might even learn something new about this magnificent bird. The answers follow the quiz.

1. L. J. P. Vieillot first described and named the eastern subspecies of wild turkey in 1817 using the word “silvestris,” meaning _________turkey?
A: forest B: running C: hardwood D: river

2. How many feathers cover the body of an adult turkey in patterns called feather tracts?
A: 1,100-2,000 B: 3,000-4,000 C: 5,000-6,000 D: 7,125-8,475

3. A turkey’s ________are large and fleshy and engorged with blood during the spring.
A: major curuncles B: toes C: spurs D: ear openings

4. By the 1930s, wild turkeys had been reduced to an all-time-low population of ________.
A: 10,000 B: 15,000 C: 25,000 D: 30,000

5. True or False: Since the founding of the National Wild Turkey Federation in 1973, wild turkey populations have soared from 1.3 million to 5.6 million in 2002.

6. What type of turkey feathers are marked by distinctive white bars that gobblers rub the tips off of with extended strutting.
A: Breast feathers B: Back and body feathers C: Tail Feather D: Primary wing feathers

7. True or False: By the time of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521), turkeys accounted for 10 percent of the meat in the diet of the Aztecs and other people of central Mexico.

8.True or False: The wild turkey was domesticated in Mexico and brought to Europe in the 16th century.

If you get less than three questions correct, you’re a Bird Brain. If you get four to seven questions correct, consider yourself in Full Strut. If you get all eight questions correct, you’re a Wild Turkey Wiz.

Answers

Jonathan Harling, National Wild Turkey Federation
(803) 637-3106, nwtf@nwtf.net