Tag: birds

Raising Heritage Turkeys

  • John Harnois raises Narragansett turkeys, one of the so-called heritage breeds. He also raises a few Bourbon Reds, another heritage breed. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Eating turkeys to keep them from dying out…


This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.


In honor of Thanksgiving… we’re revisiting a Michigan farmer who raises heritage turkeys. Those are turkeys that have a little bit of a wilder history. Some farmers are trying to keep these older turkey breeds from going extinct.

Transcript

John Harnois has a yard full of turkeys. He says he knows his turkeys so well, he can speak their language.


“The turkeys pip, they bark, they gobble, (Harnois makes gobbling sound and turkeys respond in unison).”


These turkeys are mostly males. They’re trying to look all big and macho as they strut around in front of the hens. These birds are the Narragansett breed.


“They’re old time turkeys, much closer to wild. They don’t have the broad breasts, so proportionally for eating (turkeys gobble, Harnois laughs), they have more dark meat to white meat.”


People who’ve tasted a heritage turkey say the flavor is stronger too.


Sara Dickerman did some turkey taste testing for Slate.com. She tasted everything from the Butterball brand to kosher to heritage.


“When you taste one of these heritage breeds you’re getting more of a… it begins to taste more like a distinct meat and I’m afraid our vocabulary is so ill suited to describing it, except that it tastes meatier, it tastes more intensely and it just has a resonance that you’ll never get in a Butterball.”


She says, still, you’ve got to be pretty committed to buy a heritage turkey. They can cost upwards of a hundred bucks.


Taste and cost aren’t the only things that set heritage turkeys apart from the turkeys you find in the grocery store.


Your common grocery store turkey is a breed called the Broad-breasted White. These turkeys have been bred over the years to produce a lot of meat in a short period of time. As a result, they’re large breasted birds with short little legs.


John Harnois says that means they can’t mate naturally.


“One of the things about heritage birds is they’re small enough to mate as opposed to the broad-breasteds which is artificial insemination. With that big breast they just can’t do the deed.”


But even though heritage turkeys can mate naturally, they haven’t been doing so well on their own.


“These birds, the heritage breeds, were real close to dying out. It’s funny… you’ve gotta eat ‘em to keep ‘em going. To keep their genetics in the gene pool, there has to be a market for them.”


That’s where the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy stepped in. It’s a non-profit group trying to keep rare breeds from going extinct. Marjorie Bender is the group’s research manager. She says just three companies own the rights to the commercial turkey breeds.


“And they’re all very, very closely related and it’s that narrow genetic pool that has been of particular concern to us and what makes the conservation of these other lines of turkeys and these other varieties of turkeys so important.”


(gobbling)


John Harnois says he is earning money from his heritage turkeys, but it’s not easy money. Heritage turkeys cost a lot to raise, and it takes longer to get them to market weight. And unlike the commercial turkeys, the heritage birds can actually fly the coop.


“You’re chasing them, and it’s dark out, and you don’t know if you’re going through poison ivy, if you’ve got shorts on you’ve gotta change your pants to long pants… it’s a pain.”


But he says the late night chases and extra turkey TLC are worth it.


“You don’t want everything being the same, and if you only have one thing and something happens to it, there’s no more. Where are the turkeys going to come from?”


He says he feels like it’s his job to make sure there will always be plenty of different kinds of turkeys to go around.

Happy Thanksgiving!


That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

New Rest Stops for Midwest Birds

  • Ben Preston hunts ducks in Michigan. Duck hunters are worried about what will happen to migratory ducks when they fly to the Gulf. (Photo by Brian Preston)

As the temperature drops, millions of birds are heading south. Biologists are worried the birds will find their usual hang-outs have gone through some serious changes since the BP oil spill, but some people are working to create new habitat to help the birds.

Transcript

The Mississippi Flyway is the most happening route of migration for Midwest birds. It stretches from north of Michigan all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. Species such as blue green teal, herons and egrets, wood ducks, and scaup are already on the move.

Mark Robinson says it’s a long journey south.

“By the time they’ve migrated down to the Gulf they’re absolutely exhausted.”

Robinson is a birdwatcher & zoologist. He says the food birds eat in the Gulf is essential to their survival.

“If they travel on further then they’re gonna need it to cross down into South America. Or to replenish their energy if they just stay in the Gulf to travel back up north in the spring again.”

Robinson and other scientists are worried about the birds’ habitat in the Gulf. He says most of the visible oil has been cleaned up. But there is still a lot of submerged oil in wetlands and soils that can’t be seen. And the fish, plants, and insects that birds eat could be affected for years to come.

That’s why along the main cruising strip, biologists from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Ducks Unlimited are creating new pit stops, so migrating birds can rest up and fuel up.

Bob Dew is with Louisiana’s Ducks Unlimited. He’s about 15 miles from the open waters of the Gulf.

“Just off in the distance there’s a ridge with a lot of old live oak trees. In between where we’re standing is an old rice field.”

They’ve flooded what used to be a rice field and turned it into a wetland.

“You see flocks of blue winged teal of 50 to 100 to 150 birds flying around the fields and know that they’ve made a journey of over 1000 miles to get here. That’s very rewarding and very encouraging as well. Because we know that we have a very large fall flight this year and we’re expecting a lot of birds to be here.”

Dew says birds are flocking to these rice fields turned wetlands because they can find great things to eat. Like leftover rice grain and plenty of bugs.

Hundreds of farmers are getting paid to allow their fields to be flooded in the off season. These projects are funded in part, by BP.

The money is coming from the profits BP is getting from selling the spilled oil.

Organizers hoped to flood around 20 thousand acres this fall. But the response from farmers has been huge. More than 75 thousand acres have been turned into bird friendly wetlands.

But we won’t know until next spring if the project’s successful. Scientists will have a better idea after they count the birds returning home.

But if fewer birds and ducks return from the Gulf next year, it could impact Michigan’s conservation efforts. That’s because the bulk of conservation dollars comes from hunting related fees.

Brian Preston is a duck hunter in Michigan. He says his family spends their extra money on hunting. He says a lot of other duck hunters do the same.

“Buying gas, getting restaurants, buying hotels so they can sit in a marsh in the UP for two days. Then they’ll come home, go to work, and do the same thing again the next weekend.”

He says if the duck populations decrease or if the birds return unhealthy, his family might have to find new hobbies until things improve. Project organizers along the Mississippi flyway hope they’ll continue to see large numbers of birds stopping by.

Nikki Motson, The Environment Report.

New Homes for Chimney Swifts

  • The almost-finished tower awaits its new residents on the grounds of the Orono School District's nature center next to Lake Claussen. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

There’s one American bird that has an unusual habitat problem. Chimney Swifts have adapted in the past as humans encroached on their territory. But now changes in human behavior are presenting new problems for the birds. And some people are trying to help them adapt again. Stephanie Hemphill reports.

Transcript

There’s one American bird that has an unusual habitat problem. Chimney Swifts have adapted in the past as humans encroached on their territory. But now changes in human behavior are presenting new problems for the birds. And some people are trying to help them adapt again. Stephanie Hemphill reports.

In his dad’s window-and-door warehouse in the Minneapolis suburbs, Derek Meyer is supervising the boys in his scout troop as they build a wooden tower for Chimney Swifts.

They’re using rough plywood to build a narrow box twelve feet high with an opening about a foot square.

Derek is doing this project to earn the rank of Eagle Scout. In the process, he’s learned a few things about the lives of Chimney Swifts.

“They originally lived in hollow trees but when the settlers from Europe came over they started destroying the trees, so they decided to live in the chimneys, and then people started putting wire over their chimneys, so over the last 40 years they’ve lost half of their population.”

Not just wire, but rain caps and other devices to keep moisture and critters out of chimneys.

The new home these boys are building for Chimney Swifts is destined for the nature center next to a nearby school. The school district was planning to tear down an old brick chimney as part of a remodeling project. Rebecca Field found out about that, and she tried to stop it.

“I said, wait a minute, I’m sure there are Chimney Swifts in there and they’re really good birds because they eat about 2,000 insects a day, each of those birds. And their favorite insect is the mosquito.'”

Field is on the board of Audubon Minnesota, and she’d been watching the swifts hanging around the chimney in the evenings. Individually they look like fat cigars with wings, but when they get ready to swoop down into the chimney for the night, there are so many of them, they look like a funnel cloud.

“How they communicate I have no idea, how they put the brakes on when they dive into that chimney so quickly, it’s a mystery but it’s a fun thing to watch.”

In the end the school district decided to leave the chimney up.

So now, a few weeks later, and just in time for the Chimney Swifts to fly back up from the Amazon, the tower is standing on a concrete pad at the school’s nature center.

School naturalist Marleane Callaghan has already brought all her classes, grades three-through-five, to check it out.

“We’ve talked about the bird, what it looks like, the dimension of it, I’ve invited them to come back with their parents to watch in the school parking lot in the evening up at the high school where they’ve left the chimney, and then to walk on down, to be able to identify them.”

This project is part of an effort by Audubon groups all over the country to raise awareness of Chimney Swifts and their need for homes.

In Minnesota, project director Ron Windingstad wants to convince homeowners to make existing chimneys more welcoming. He says people can take the caps off their chimneys during the summer, or just raise them high enough so the birds can fly in from the sides.

Soon these school kids will be able to see the amazing acrobatics of the Chimney Swifts. Windingstad says they hardly ever stop flying, from morning til night. They’ll even sip water and take a bath in a nearby pond, without stopping.

“They’ll scoop down, lower their bill, and fly across it and drink in the water. They’ll use some of these shrubs around here to break off little twigs about the size of a wooden matchstick or toothpick actually, and use that to build their nests, and they do that while flying as well. They are marvelous creatures.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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More Oceanic Garbage Patches Found

  • Marine researcher Marcus Eriksen says the plastic packaging that wraps nearly all consumer products is killing some marine animals.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA Marine Debris Program)

A giant field of plastic debris is floating in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean. Now researchers are finding more of these garbage patches in other Oceans. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A giant field of plastic debris is floating in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean. Now researchers are finding more of these garbage patches in other Oceans. Mark Brush has more:

Researchers say there are ocean currents that sort of swirl around like water in a toilet bowl. There called oceanic gyres.

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation was one of the groups that documented the problem in the North Pacific Ocean. This year they sailed to the gyres in the North Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean.

They found miles and miles of plastic fishing line, milk crates, spoons and forks, and bits of plastic bags.

Marcus Eriksen is with the group:

Eriksen: I challenge you to walk into Wal-Mart or a K-Mart and find a product that’s not made from plastic, packaged or labeled with plastic. And we’re finding more and more of this debris being lost onto the ground washing down rivers and streams out to sea.

Eriksen says the plastic is killing some marine animals. Fish, birds, turtles, and whales get tangled up in the mess – or they mistake it for food.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Trial of Insecticide Used on Food

  • The EPA has been trying to stop the use of the carbofuran for four years,but corn, sunflower and potato farmers say they need the chemical to produce their crops.(Photo courtesy of thebittenword.com cc-2.0)

The future of an insecticide used on food is on trial. The Environmental Protection Agency wants to stop the use of the chemical. Rebecca Williams reports the pesticide company and some growers’ trade groups have been fighting the EPA:

Transcript

The future of an insecticide used on food is on trial. The Environmental Protection Agency wants to stop the use of the chemical. Rebecca Williams reports the pesticide company and some growers’ trade groups have been fighting the EPA:

For four years, the EPA has been trying to stop the use of the insecticide carbofuran.

The EPA says there are a couple problems. First, it’s toxic to birds. Second, the agency says carbofuran residues on food are not safe for us.
FMC Corporation makes the chemical. It’s been fighting the EPA for years. Now it’s before a U-S appeals court.
Corn, sunflower and potato farmers say they need carbofuran.

John Keeling is the CEO of the National Potato Council.

“Would there be potato production next year in the U.S. without carbofuran? Absolutely. Will it make decisions much more difficult for a lot of growers? Yes.”

The trial for the use of the insecticide is expected to last for months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Birds Threatened by Warming Climate

  • Rising sea levels are infringing on the habitats of coastal birds. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife service)

Wildlife researchers say that many coastal birds and birds that live around the oceans are threatened by a warming climate. Mark Brush has more on the State of the Birds report:

Transcript

Wildlife researchers say that many coastal birds and birds that live around the oceans are threatened by a warming climate. Mark Brush has more on the State of the Birds report:

The report was put together by the US Fish and Wildlife Service along with state wildlife agencies and other researchers. It finds birds that rely on low-lying islands and other coastal habitats are most at risk from a warming climate. The researchers say these birds are in danger because of rising sea levels. And because the birds are having a tougher time finding the creatures they feed on. They say these kinds of birds would have a hard time finding new places to live.

Ken Salazar is the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The agency was in charge of publishing the report:

“For too long, in my view, we have stood idle as the climate change crisis has grown. I believe that what this State of the Birds report indicates is that we are at a point in time in our history in America where there is a call to action.”

The report adds to research that shows a third of the nation’s bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Parrots in Brooklyn

  • The parrots build nests around transformers for warmth. But the nests can catch fire and cause people to lose their electricity. (Photo by Steve Baldwin)

Think ‘city bird,’ and you probably
think ‘pigeon.’ But in some cities,
another kind of bird is thriving –
the bright green monk parrot. Some
people love them; some people hate
them. Samara Freemark
went to Brooklyn to find them:

Transcript

Think ‘city bird,’ and you probably
think ‘pigeon.’ But in some cities,
another kind of bird is thriving –
the bright green monk parrot. Some
people love them; some people hate
them. Samara Freemark
went to Brooklyn to find them:

No one really knows just how the parrots got to Brooklyn. But the best guess is they were shipped here from Argentina in the 1960s. They were supposed to go to pet stores. But somewhere along the way someone opened a shipping crate and the parrots escaped. Now there are thousands of the birds in colonies across Brooklyn.

“They’ve reinvented themselves as a north American species.”

That’s Steve Baldwin. He’s a tall, white haired native New Yorker and, I think it’s fair to say, a parrot fanatic.

“It has probably something to do with the peculiar person I am. I think I probably regarded myself as an outsider for most of my life. And so the idea you could have these creatures who really don’t belong here, somehow make the transition and now they belong here. I just found that a personally inspiring story.”

Steve started a website about the parrots. He leads monthly parrot tours. He even wrote a song about the parrots.

“I got some news for you baby and it might not be so good. There’s an avian invader in the neighborhood. Well, they’re little green parrots from the Argentine…”

I met up with Steve as he was starting one of his tours of the parrot colony at Brooklyn College.

“I’ve been following these little green guys for about 5 years. One of the things that endears it is that it’s very smart. In fact the monk parakeet is the second best talking parrot. Next to the African gray, the monk parrot is number two. Are there any particularly Brooklyn sounds that they… well, occasionally you’ll find one that’s imitating a car alarm.”

We head over to the college’s soccer field.

“Sometimes when we come out here we’re lucky and the parrots are down on the ground, eating the grass. But I don’t see them today. So we’re just going to keep moving. Uh! Here they come! There they go! We got a good group.”

There are probably 50 parrots living in the Brooklyn College colony. But it’s one of many colonies across New York. There are about 450 parrot nests in the city. That’s according to numbers from Con Edison, New York City’s energy provider.

Con Edison tracks the nests because for the company, the parrots are actually a pretty big headache. A couple of days after the tour I met up with Chris Olert. He’s Con Edison’s point man for dealing with all problems parrot-related.

“What happens is, these birds build nests around our transformers, because of the warmth. And these are not little hold in your hand nests. Some are three or 4 or 5 feet tall, and 3 or 4 or 5 ft wide. They’re huge. And they do catch on fire. And those fires have resulted in customers losing their electricity.”

Con Edison has been trying to figure out what to do about the parrots for years now. They tried knocking the nests down – but the parrots came back and rebuilt. Last year they even installed some mechanical owls with rotating heads to frighten the parrots away.

“The owl was – some of our people who work in the overhead in Queens spotted these owls in a hardware store and put them up on the equipment, but the parrots pretty much laughed in their faces.”

Nothing has really worked. Olert says Con Edison’s numbers show the New York parrot population growing by 10% every year.

At that rate, in a couple of decades they could be as ubiquitous – and as hated – as that other New York bird – the pigeon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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Interview: Sesame Street

  • Elmo is surprised when he and Rosita find a baby bird as part of Sesame Street's 40th season. (Photo by Richard Termine, courtesy of Sesame Street)

Sesame Street is going green.
The children’s program will
focus on nature education during
its 40th season with the “My
World is Green and Growing”
project. Lester Graham talked
with Carol Lynn Parente.
She’s the Executive Producer
of Sesame Street:

Transcript

Sesame Street is going green.
The children’s program will
focus on nature education during
its 40th season with the “My
World is Green and Growing”
project. Lester Graham talked
with Carol Lynn Parente.
She’s the Executive Producer
of Sesame Street:

Lester: Letters, numbers, social interaction, all things we’d expect from Sesame Street. Why nature?

Parente: We learned by having our academic research advisors that by giving love and exposure to the environment was the best way to hopefully create citizens that will want to take care of it.

Lester: What kind of things will kids be able to pick up from this effort?
Parente: Well, we want to just get them out and exploring the environment and nature in general. And that can be in whatever their environment is. So nature doesn’t necessarily have to be a camping trip, although Elmo does go on one of those in our season 40, but it can be out experiencing what is in their environment, whether it be urban or rural and –

Lester: yeah, I wanted to note that. I mean, Sesame Street is an urban setting for kids whose lives are more about concrete and asphalt than flowers and grass. How will you relate to them?

Parente: Well, when you talk about noticing your environment, those environments and habitats are all around us. So, grass for a child in a suburban big wonderful meadow or field might be what their version of grass is, but there is also grass that pops up between the concrete of the sidewalks in an urban setting. And there are habits of wildlife in every environment you’re in and getting kids to understand that is part of the fun.

[Clip from Sesame Street Episode]

Lester: Some of these environmental issues are complicated, a little scary, take global warming for example. So where do you draw the line on Sesame Street?

Parente: When we talked about how the environment affects our audience, some of the messages that are common with environmental conservationist messages like “Save the Earth” and that’s a really scary concept for very young children because it implies something is wrong and something is going to happen and you don’t what that is and what needs saving. So we really stayed away from those kinds of messages. It’s really about having fun interacting with the environment and I think for our audience, that’s where we really put the focus.

[Clip from Sesame Street Episode]

Lester: So, how often in a typical show will we hear about nature and how long will this nature education effort last on Sesame Street?

Parente: It’s definitely has a presence in every single show in season 40, which is great because it’s a really thorough, um, jump into the curriculum. We’re definitely dealing with it through all of season 40 and the science part of the environment, which it really what it is, a science and nature curriculum, will extent into season 41 as well.

Lester: Carol Lynn Parente is the executive producer of Sesame Street. Have a sunny day!

Parente: Thank you, you as well!

[Clip of Theme Song]

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Scavengers in Dire Straights

  • Vultures can eat 20% of their own body weight in one sitting. And they have digestive systems with special acids that will dissolve toxic bacteria and viruses. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

For most people, the slow spiral
of airborne vultures means that
some unlucky animal has died. Now,
in some regions of the world, vulture
populations are dying. An American
scientist is part of an international
effort to save these massive scavengers.
Ann Murray has the story:

Transcript

For most people, the slow spiral
of airborne vultures means that
some unlucky animal has died. Now,
in some regions of the world, vulture
populations are dying. An American
scientist is part of an international
effort to save these massive scavengers.
Ann Murray has the story:

It’s hard to get too excited about an ugly bird that eats dead, rotting flesh. Let’s face it, vultures don’t have a good rep. But vultures are amazing animals. They can eat 20% of their own body weight in one sitting. And they have digestive systems with special acids that will dissolve toxic bacteria and viruses. Meaning, vultures prevent the spread of killer diseases like rabies and anthrax when they scarf down the carcasses of sick animals.

“With the meat goes the disease.”

That’s Todd Katzner, Director of Conservation and Field Research at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. Katzner says, sadly, with all the good vultures do, many species are in big trouble.

“Vultures are in dire conservation straits in much of the world because of things like habitat loss, poisoning and now these new problems like diclofenac.”

Diclofenac is a medicine given to sick livestock in central Asia. Vultures that eat livestock carcasses with traces of the drug almost always die of immediate kidney failure. It took scientists some time to figure that out. Katzner’s friend Vibhu Prakash, an Indian ornithologist, recognized the beginnings of this vulture die-off.

“This was almost 20 years ago that Vibhu started seeing vultures near Barrackpore, India. They were sitting in a tree with their heads hanging down .Eventually they’d just fall out of the tree and die on the ground.”

Since then, Indian white-backed vulture numbers have plummeted from 30 or 40 million birds to just thousands. This massive decline has left scientists scratching their heads about how many vultures are left in central and south Asia and other parts of the world. Because vultures move around a lot, it’s been hard to keep track of individuals. There’s never been an accurate total population count – anywhere. That’s where Katzner and the National Aviary come in.

For several years, Katzner and his field team have been traveling to mountainous grazing lands in Kazakhstan and the northern plains in Cambodia . Katzner says the one place vultures reliably congregate is at feeding sites.

“We ask people if any livestock have died .We drive up to those sites . Usually the vultures have been there. When vultures feed on the carcass they leave feathers everywhere. And when we go to the carcass, we’re able to pick up sometimes 500 or 1000 feathers.”

Once the feathers are collected, Katzner’s team extracts DNA from them to identify individual birds. The scientists will use this information to create population models. This new counting method is faster and more reliable than capturing, marking and recapturing birds.

Katzner expects researchers will use his feather- based system to count endangered vultures in other places. That includes here, in the United States, where California Condors are dying from lead poisoning.

(sound of a vulture eating)

Before I leave the Aviary, Katzner points out an American black vulture. She’s gobbling a breakfast of chick pieces and mice. Katzner hopes his work will help to keep other vultures happy and hungry. He says we all need ‘em on the job as nature’s cleanup crew.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Murray

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Not the Colonel’s Drive-Thru

  • Economists say locally produced chicken can be pricey because there's not enough competition in the slaughterhouse business. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

There’s a trend toward locally-grown
food, but when it comes to locally-raised
chicken, there’s a kink in the supply
chain. Small chicken farmers can’t afford
to process a few birds at big slaughterhouses.
And there aren’t many independent slaughterhouses
around. Shawn Allee reports
there’s an effort to change this:

Transcript

There’s a trend toward locally-grown
food, but when it comes to locally-raised
chicken, there’s a kink in the supply
chain. Small chicken farmers can’t afford
to process a few birds at big slaughterhouses.
And there aren’t many independent slaughterhouses
around. Shawn Allee reports
there’s an effort to change this:

One idea’s to bring the slaughterhouse to the chicken farm.

The Whole Foods grocery chain could try out small, mobile slaughtering units next year. It might help Whole Foods offer more locally-raised chicken at its stores, but no one’s sure whether it will work.

Economists say the slaughterhouse pinch is a problem for consumers.

Wes Jarrell studies farm markets for the University of Illinois. He says locally produced chicken can be pricey because there’s not enough competition in the slaughterhouse business.

“In order for that farmer to stay in business, they have to charge more and we would certainly like to lower that price to make it available to more people.”

Jarrell says Whole Foods is not the only group to consider mobile chicken slaughterhouses. He says a few state governments, like Vermont’s, are revving up their own portable slaughterhouses, too.


For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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