bootstrap analysis

Sign border fence petition

I've long been meaning to write about how outrageous the Texas border fence is, and how harmful to wildlife. I took this photo on my last trip to south Texas in February, a trip in which I once again visited Audubon's Sabal Palm Sanctuary which will be on the "Mexican" side of the fence when the wall is built. You can read about many of the various damaging and misguided aspects of the fence at the No Texas Border Wall web site and blog.

Audubon now has a quick online petition you can sign expressing your objection to the fact that the Department of Homeland Security waived more than 30 environmental and public health laws, including the Endangered Species Act, to authorize construction of this fence. Go do it.

Hat tip to The Birdchaser.

random animal news

• I did not know squid beaks were one of the hardest organic objects in nature. Therefore, I was not mystified by the dilemma of how such rigid objects were efficiently attached to "blocks of jello." Mystery now solved. 


• Bats are dying left, right, and center from a mysterious virus that  may wipe out entire populations and species, and researchers are completely stumped. 


•  China does it again. Tibetan antelopes and the Qinghai-Tibet railroad do not co-exist peacefully. The photo that showed them in harmony was faked. I first read about this in the journal Nature, but Treehugger also covered in very well.

Squid photo by Hexion; bats by Tolka Rover.

bird seed recall

A friend sent me this:

Scott's Bird Seed Voluntary Recall

Major manufacturer of wild bird seed and animal food products, The Scotts Company LLC announced a voluntary recall of certain varieties of Morning Song, Scotts, Country Pride and various private label branded wild bird (Royal Wing from Tractor Supply) and animal food products due to the use of unapproved pesticides.  The store recall is for seed and suet products packaged on or before March 12, 2008.  The Scotts Company replacement of the products at distributors is currently underway.  The company has received fewer than 10 calls in the last two years regarding a possible connection between these products and bird mortalities at feeders.  There is no evidence, however, demonstrating any harm caused to humans, pets, wild birds or other wildlife. The company's Niger Thistle Seed products are not effected.

I think the spin the company statement put on this was, hmm, interesting; bolding is mine:

Dear Fellow Bird Lover,

You might find that your favorite Scotts, Morning Song or Country Pride wild bird or wild animal food isn't available where you normally buy it.

We are in the process of replacing these products because we determined that we needed to stop applying certain insect controls. These controls were used to make sure that our bird and animal food wasn't infested with moths and other problem-causing insects.

The insect controls that we had used are EPA-approved for use on some stored grains, including grains that may be turned into human food. However, the insect controls are not EPA-approved for wild bird food or wild animal food.

We believe that the wild bird food and wild animal food did not constitute a significant health risk to wild birds, small animals or humans who handle the food.

We have discontinued use of the unapproved insect controls.

---

Personally, I don't buy bird seed that is distributed by a company that in 2007 had $2.8 billion in net sales of lawn products and pesticides, especially one that has such an unflattering corporate profile.  I get my seed from a locally owned business or feed store.

And while you are not bolstering Scott's profits via bird seed purchases, check out the Beyond Pesticides web site for a host of reasons not to buy most of the other stuff they push.  They have downloadable fact sheets such as the health and environmental effects of commonly used lawn pesticides. Pesticides and birds don't mix.

concert meme

Belatedly, I'm getting at a concert meme that I was tagged with by my blog-child Clare at The House.

1) What is the first rock concert you ever went to?
I remember this pretty vividly...in a way. My first two concerts were on two consecutive nights, and I can't recall which was first. Anyway, the two were Rod Stewart and Boston, both at Detroit's best concert venue, Cobo Hall. It was Stewart's "Blondes Have More Fun" tour, 1978, so I was 16. That means I was with my first real boyfriend, Ted. And I am pretty sure there were two other friends with us, probably a guy I later dated, Rob, and someone else. (Rob -- do you remember?)

2) What is the best rock concert you've seen?
Oh, crap, this is tough. I had a couple favorite bands that I saw more than once, like Boston and Cheap Trick. The J. Geils Band was really popular in Detroit, and I saw them a number of times; I think the best show of theirs that I saw was their "Sanctuary" tour (also 1978) at our regional outdoor music theatre, which at the time was called Pine Knob (it now goes by the unimaginative, corporate DTE Energy Music Theatre). I saw the Rolling Stones in one of their last U.S. tours, in 1981, at the now defunct Pontiac Silverdome. I don't remember how I scored front row seats for Kansas, but that was pretty cool. Then there was the last concert (until recently) that Detroit's own Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band played at Cobo; I think I got 6th row seats. That was tremendous.

Sorry I can't narrow it down -- it was one of those. I know the crappiest concert I saw was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, when he came out late, not too sober, and played a short set. Disappointing. And the greatest concert that I didn't see: Prince's Purple Rain tour. For some lame reason I passed up going to the show he played at Cobo for his birthday that year, 1986. What a dope.

And the last concert I went to was Sade, in 1992.  It was sometime after that when I sort of had to stop listening to music on a regular basis, due to my worsening ear worm affliction. Due to that little problem, the bands play on, and on, and on...

wall of moths

As I was returning to my office after a bird survey yesterday, I found a number of small gray moths on the cinder block wall of our building. There were at least 30.

The pattern of the individual moths varied a bit, but they blended in really well with the wall. The wavy lines their wings would have been an even more perfect match for tree bark.

I took some photos, but know bettter than to be optimistic about identifying small, bark-colored moths. I wouldn't have bothered, except that I thought that their numbers and early emergence might be more characteristic than their appearance, and enable me to clinch an ID. I figured I might have some luck going to the moth section of BugGuide and browsing recently submitted photos.

I was right. I only had to click through 4 or 5 pages before I hit on a ringer: Phigalia titea, the Half-wing Moth (a.k.a. Spiny Looper, Eastern Oak Looper). It's one of the geometrid moths; the "inchworm" larvae eat a wide variety of hardwoods.



There are two other Phigalias that fly early in the season: P. strigataria (Small Phigalia) and P. denticulata (Toothed Phigalia). I took a second look at the walls today, and there may have been a few Small Phigalias in the mix, which are smaller, often darker, and tend to show less hing wing when perched.

I didn't find out anything really compelling about the natural history of these moths, except it was kind of interesting to learn that they were all males -- females are flightless and have only vestigial wings.

Despite their apparent ordinariness, I'm sure the early emerging adults are a really important food source for insectivorous birds arriving during this period of fickle weather. The eggs the moths are now laying will also provide a welcome protein source for bark gleaning species both resident and migrant, such as Brown Creepers, chickadees, and nuthatches. And of course, the larvae will be out just in time for the big wave of northbound migrants still to come, with some caterpillars left over for hungry nestlings.

On second thought, their role in the forest food web makes these modest moths anything but ordinary.


  

6-word birding meme

Birding Girl tagged me with the 6-word birding meme. I have resisted all the 6-word memes that have been circulating for the last several months because at the keyboard, I am not a person of few words.

How to distill what "birding" means to me in six words? Should I wax poetic? Aim for pointed, sharp wit? Be terse and dramatic? Well, first I asked myself what it is that motivates me to observe and study birds, and why they capture my imagination and heart. It's not the pursuit, or the list, and sometimes it's not even the fact that they are birds rather than bees, bats, or beetles.

Birds: Part of a bigger picture.

I know you all get that.

did your shopping list kill a songbird?

Please read the op-ed piece in the today's New York Times, Did your shopping list kill a songbird? by ornithologist Bridget J. Stutchbury.  In it, she discusses the high levels of pesticides used to grow produce in foreign countries to satisfy the skyrocketing demand for out-of-season fruits and vegetables. While she notes that these foods are three times as likely to violate standards for pesticide residues as the same foods grown in the U.S. (and therefore pose some risk to humans), she emphasizes the deadly toll this pesticide use has on North American breeding songbirds.

Stutchbury recommends organic produce; several months ago I linked to another NYT article that gave a list of the five most important foods to buy organic. Stutchbury also emphasizes two others: bananas and coffee. I am currently reading the book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World and frankly, I'm damn glad I don't really like bananas!  As for coffee, everything you might want to know about eco-friendly, sustainable coffee is over at Coffee & Conservation.

Stutchbury is the author of the recent book, Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them. In it, she discusses these issues and provides a lot of information from the scientific literature and her own field studies. At times it's a little wonky; if you like your facts and actions a little more straightforward and easy to digest, I recommend (again) Laura Erickson's 101 Ways to Help Birds, which I reviewed here.

asides: green edition 6

Asides is an occasional feature in which I post interesting tools and links I've recently discovered. I've started grouping them in categories.  You can find them all by clicking on the category archive for Blogs, links, and the like.

This edition is the sixth collection of green/environment links.

• Having a hard time keeping track of who owns what organic brand of food? Here is an amazing page of graphics showing linkages between major food processors, investment firms, retailers, and organic brands. Each chart is available in PDF format, too. I have had this bookmarked for awhile, and just recently the NYT mentioned it on their Well blog.
  
• I recently registered two sites at Project BudBurst, a citizen science phenology tracking database. There is a pretty extensive list of native plants that you can choose to monitor, and the site will save your information so you can see any changes over the years. This will replace all my stray calendars and spreadsheets where I've tried to keep this data the last ten years.
• In an effort to stay away from conventionally-grown cotton, I've purchased bed sheets and some clothing items made of bamboo, touted to be a much "greener" fabric. Alas, bamboo is not as green as we have been led to believe.
• In a similar vein, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), certifier of sustainable forest products, has been roundly -- and justifiably, in my opinion -- slammed for recently certifying Brazilian eucalyptus monocultures owned by an international company with a dismal environmental record. This is just the latest in a series of situations for which the FSC has come under fire. Can't trust that certification now.
• And to top off the hat trick of it-isn't-easy-being-green news, a scathing and scary summary of the sorry state of salmon farming in Chile. The equivalent of 7 to 11 pounds of fresh fish are required to produce 2 pounds of farmed salmon, along with tons of antibiotics, pigments, and hormones. Further, the farms are killing marine life, spreading disease, and escaped salmon are invading ecosystems. I could eat fish every day, but it looks like a luxury now.

missing stanley

I am completely bummed out. My friend Mark's cat, Stanley, unexpectedly passed away yesterday. I wrote about Stanley a couple of years ago but hadn't actually met him until earlier this month. At Mark's house, everybody had to talk cats for awhile, and their family obviously loves theirs just like we love ours. The bond between Mark and Stanley was obvious, even when Stanley wasn't riding around on Mark's shoulders.

Mark has had a hard year in this regard, and I know there isn't anything I can say to ease his grief, or that of his wife and daughter. They are in my thoughts, and I will give Sophie and Kady a little extra love today in tribute to Stanley.

Stanley (bottom), 1998-2008.

malnourished waterfowl dying in michigan-ontario

Locally, nearly 1000 Canvasbacks and Redheads have been found dead along Lake St. Clair (often referred to as "the sixth Great Lake"). This is a conservative number, considering how many may have died out in the lake that were not detected by shoreline observers. Toxicology reports have been coming back negative. The die-off has been attributed to malnutrition due to a larger-than-usual number of ducks wintering in the lake because it didn't freeze over as early as it usually does. Diving ducks that typically feed on invertebrates or mollusks (Bufflehead, scaup) don't seem to be impacted, while plant-eating Canvasbacks and to a lesser extend Redheads are most effected. My husband took this photo of a dead Canvasback on the Detroit River, where he's seen a few every weekend the past month. This phenomena has been occurring for at least several years, although perhaps not at this scale.

This situation has provoked kind of an odd reaction on the local bird forums, with people saying that they really hope it is malnutrion and not botulism, which also periodically claims a lot of waterfowl in the Great Lakes. I have to say I disagree, since botulism only occurs under certain circumstances and is often self-limiting. On the other hand, if malnutrition is is really due to too many ducks overwintering on Lake St. Clair (and other Great Lakes), we are likely in for a chronic and increasing problem.

A recent paper [1] looked at trends in ice duration in 65 waterbodies in the Great Lakes and found average rates of change in ice freeze and breakup dates were 5.8 and 3.3 times faster, respectively, than historical rates from 1846 to 1995 for the Northern Hemisphere.  The following chart [2] looks specifically at ice trends from the three basins of Lake Erie.

Since around 1990, the central and eastern basins of the lake have not been freezing over until later than they have since the late 1950s. The western basin is much shallower and tends to freeze earlier, and is most comparable to Lake St. Clair.

If migrating waterfowl increasingly encounter open water during fall migration, this may cause higher numbers to overwinter in these areas.  I have heard anecdotal reports to this effect, but was unable to put my hands on much hard data. I produced the chart below using numbers from the annual early-fall survey of Canvasbacks done by the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources [3]. These numbers only represent the Michigan side of the lake, but indicate increasing numbers of Canvasbacks on the lake in early November.

And here's a chart showing the trend of wintering Canvasbacks on a portion of the Detroit River near Lake Erie, from the Rockwood (MI-ON) Christmas Bird Count (CBC). The idea being floated about is that more Canvasbacks (and other waterfowl) are staying in the Great Lakes, and when the lakes do freeze up, they are unable to obtain food and starve to death. This seems to me to be only part of the story. The following chart looks at the number of days Lake Erie stays frozen.

Since the 1980s, the trend for the number of days the entire lake has ice cover has been steadily decreasing. It seems possible to me that the increased number of waterfowl might in fact have ice-free foraging areas, but too much competition for too little food.  Canvasbacks rely on aquatic vegetation more than any other food source in winter -- especially wild celery (Vallisneria americana). This species did increase in the Detroit River (and Lake St. Clair) in the 1990s*.

But something else has been increasing in the region since the wild celery has been recovering -- Mute Swans. The chart below shows CBC trends on the Detroit River CBC. And a little further downriver, the situation is the same on the Rockwood CBC.

Mute Swans also feed on submerged vegetation, up to 8 pounds a day. This added competition for food just compounds the problem, and in fact, some Mute Swans have also been found dead. Mute Swans are resident (although in this area they retreat to inland marshes to nest), and consume submerged vegetation year round, eventually damaging the reproductive capacity of the plants.

This could be a perfect storm of climate change contributing to less ice cover, attracting more overwintering Canvasbacks, combining with a population explosion of non-native Mute Swans to create a substantial alteration in food availability. If that's the case, things will likely only get worse, not better.

let's get to work

Olivia was one of my husband's "helpful" cats.

wtf wednesday: clinton and the michigan primary

Hard to say what pisses me off more: the fact that the Michigan Democratic party screwed voters out of our opportunity to have a say in choosing a presidential nominee, or the asinine machinations to try to un-do that mess. A fine example of how this party can eat their own.

And here's another. Hillary Clinton herself said in January that the Michigan primary, in which she took 55 percent of the vote while “uncommitted” won 40 percent (Obama's name was not on the ballot)  "didn't count for anything." Now she is the major force in trying to get our delegates seated (a dead issue at this point) or for the state to have a re-vote.

She showed up in Detroit today to lay on the heat. She contends that Obama's lack of support for a re-vote violates "a bedrock American principle" that every vote should count. Spare me. This wasn't the general election, it was a primary. Nobody is suggesting our votes won't count in November. Not to mention she opposed Michigan's decision to go ahead with an early primary and agreed to the rules -- that the delegates would not be seated.

"I believe the families of Michigan are just as important as the families of any of any other state," Clinton said. What bullshit. The fact is, even counting the results of the January primary or a new primary, she still can't get enough delegates to clinch the nomination, a fact even her Michigan co-chair admits! 

What Clinton wants is to have the Michigan superdelegates seated.  Superdelegates that she believes should vote their conscience, not follow the will of the people who have given Obama the lead in the popular vote and pledged delegate count. Seven of the eight currently committed Michigan superdelegates are Clinton supporters;19 are uncommitted but many are considered in her camp.  These are the people whose votes she cares about, not mine.

I have a lot to say on the topic of this primary mess (not the least of which is, "State party officials who created this debacle -- I will not vote for you again!"), but I'll let it simmer until the issue is resolved one way or another.

Addendum: On Hardball, Chris Matthews proposed an interesting "solution" to the Michigan re-vote stalemate. Obama agrees to a new primary under one condition: that whoever wins the most votes in all the primaries takes the nomination. No superdelegates, just the people. Obama is currently about 700,000 votes ahead, but it's possible Clinton could squeak ahead. My guess is that despite all her talk, she wouldn't do it.