Tag: migration

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.

Monarchs Flying South

  • The shorter days are a signal to Monarch butterflies to migrate south. Some travel more than 2,000 miles to winter in Mexico. (Photo by Marty Davis courtesy of Monarch Watch)

Right now, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies are making an incredible journey south to Mexico for the winter. They’re flying through Michigan for the next couple of weeks so you have a really good chance of seeing one if you’re outside. Steve Malcolm is a professor of ecology at Western Michigan University and an expert on monarch butterflies.

More about Monarchs

Monarch migration map

Transcript

Professor Malcolm, how on earth do monarch butterflies find their all the way to Mexico?


Steve Malcolm, PhD: Um, that’s a good question, we’re not absolutely certain how they do it. It may be that the very fast rates of decreasing day length change trigger physiological changes that cause them to move to the south. But quite how they orientate to Mexico we’re not absolutely certain.


RW: And these butterflies are famous for covering thousands of miles as they’re going on this migration. Is it just one insect making this journey?


Steve Malcolm: In the autumn, the adults that have bred in the Great Lakes region, southern Canada, as they’re flying south will be exploiting nectar resources so they can really build up their fat so by the time they get to the Gulf Coast they’re these huge, obese butterflies. They continue their migration to Mexico and spend five, even six months in Mexico and then they fly north in the spring, and maybe get as far north as central states like Kansas or even Iowa. Then they’ll basically die and it’ll be their offspring that continue the migration back to the Great Lakes region.


RW: There are some butterflies that look like monarch butterflies. How can you tell them apart?


Steve Malcolm: In the Great Lakes region, the viceroy is the only butterfly that looks very like a monarch. But the monarch has this typically lazy flight. It’s sort of a bold butterfly, you know, it just flies around and does its own thing. The viceroy it’s got the same basic coloration of being orange with black wing veins, but it has a more flick-y flight, it looks like a more nervous butterfly. It’s a little bit smaller than a monarch. If you look at it end on, it looks very flat somehow. Monarchs tend to look more like a flapping V if you like when they’re flying around in the environment.


RW: Where are the best places in Michigan to go if you want to see monarchs heading south?


Steve Malcolm: I personally like going to the Wickham music festival which was on this last weekend in the middle of Michigan, and lying on my back listening to the music watching the monarchs flying overhead. Typically you can lie there and watch a monarch flying over every minute. But also going to the shores of Lake Michigan is very good. Anywhere on the west side of Michigan, along Lake Michigan, if you walk on any of the beaches there you can usually see monarchs. They’ll arrive at the water’s edge and then they’ll pretty much fly south down the lakeshore.


RW: What can we do to help the butterflies out?


Steve Malcolm: I think it’s really good to do some butterfly gardening, particularly this time of year, to have nectar plants. It’s really helpful for the butterflies to have lots of food resources so they can build up their fat. Having a patch of milkweed, like common milkweed, or butterfly weed or the swamp milkweed. But I think it’s important to make sure they’re native milkweeds that belong in Michigan rather than some of the exotic milkweeds that are easy to grow.


RW: Well, thank you so much for your time.


Steve Malcolm: You’re very welcome.


RW: Steve Malcolm is a monarch butterfly expert at Western Michigan University.


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

Whooping Cranes Not Hatching

  • One of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young in the wild, but so far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and gone on to migrating. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

Transcript

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

It’s not easy to get whooping cranes to reproduce, but here in Baraboo,
Wisconsin, researchers have had success at getting captive cranes to produce
chicks.

For the last ten years, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has created a
flock of more than 100 whoopers. Researchers hatched the birds
– and trained them to migrate by flying behind ultralight aircraft ….or to
follow adult cranes. The birds now fly between the upper Midwest and
southeastern U.S.

But one of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young
in the wild. So far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and
gone on to migrating.

Jeb Barzen is with the International Crane Foundation. He says they can’t
keep supplying the flock with chicks hatched in captivity:

“It’s expensive. it’s expensive in time, expensive in money…expensive in overall conservation effort, because what you put into whooping crane reintroduction you can’t put into other conservation projects at that time. so to be fully successful …you want that population to be
able to survive on it’s own.”

So far, about 16 million dollars has gone into re-introducing whoopers to
the eastern u.s. More than half of that money came from private donors.

The birds’ main summer home is here at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge
in Wisconsin.

It’s not that the cranes don’t get close to each other. If you watch the cranes here, you can spot single cranes and the occasional couple.

Jeb Barzen pauses to watch two tall white cranes having a territorial dispute:

“Ooh! these birds are threatening each other. that’s a preen behind the wing
threat…that the second bird is doing…so these are not birds of the same
pair.”

Researchers don’t know why the birds are not raising more wild chicks. But
they do have some theories. Even when cranes do make nice and produce an
egg – the relatively young cranes may be too inexperienced to be patient
parents. Black flies may drive the birds off their nest. Or the parents
may be low on body fat and take off to find food.

The crane researchers are gathering data to find out what cranes need for a
successful nesting site. They’re using tracking radios to follow some of the
birds.

Anne Lacy is with the International Crane Foundation. Today she’s driving
around southern Wisconsin listening for the whoopers.

“it’s important to look at what choices they make as a young bird
before they breed…to know how they choose those areas….they need for
water for roosting at night…they need that eventually for nesting.”

This kind of research is being ramped up this spring. That’s because an
independent report raised some concerns about the crane recovery effort.
The report was done by consultants hired by the Whooping Crane Eastern
Partnership. It mentions problems with financial oversight, scientific
coordination, and whether the birds’ main summer home – at the Necedah
wildlife refuge – is the best place for them.

Louise Clemency is with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And
she is a co-chair of the eastern partnership. She says the crane recovery
effort won’t make any big changes overnight.

“We’re trying to the time to draw the right conclusions so we can
take the right next step.”

Clemency says decisions on the whooping crane experiment could come next
year. In the meantime..she hopes that some crane eggs laid this spring at
the Necedah refuge will hatch.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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The Great Blue Heron

  • An island in the Upper Mississippi, not far from downtown Minneapolis, is home to many Great Blue Herons.(Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

Some people say robins are the first sign of spring. But there’s another bird that makes a dramatic entry in northern states. The Great Blue Heron soars in to make a nest… and guard it:

Transcript

Some people say robins are the first sign of spring. But there’s another bird that makes a dramatic entry in northern states. The Great Blue Heron soars in to make a nest… and guard it:

On an island in the Upper Mississippi River, a stand of cottonwood trees is silhouetted against a gray sky. The bare branches are festooned with big nests, made of twigs and branches. Next to the nests, like sentinels at the castle gate, stand Great Blue Herons. These birds are four feet tall. More than a hundred of them are claiming their domain in these trees, just upriver from downtown Minneapolis. When one takes off and glides away, its six-foot wing span dwarfs the ducks and songbirds sharing the island.

It’s hard to tell the males from the females because they’re the same blue and gray. Birder Sharon Stiteler is leading me on a tour of this rookery.

“The males arrive first, and they work out who’s going to take which nest. Where you see one bird standing up, that is most likely a male. He’s hanging out there because the other males who are still waiting to attract a female could come by and steal sticks out of his nest to make his nest look better.”

On some nests, you can see females already sitting on pale blue eggs the size of small mangoes. But Stiteler says herons are not always good parents.

“If the chick falls out of the nest and lands on the ground, that chick is toast: the parents will not continue feeding it. And oftentimes you’ll see turkey vultures hanging out at rookeries, and they’re waiting for the young to fall and starve, and then they’ll have a whole bunch of food.”

But at least on this island, there won’t be many predators like coyotes or foxes.

These birds were once threatened by humans. Their cousins the egrets were hunted for their beautiful white feathers, and both suffered disastrous population loss until the pesticide DDT was banned.

Now you can see them in streams and lakes all over. They breed in Canada and the upper midwest. They spend their winters wherever they can find food. Herons literally stalk their prey.

“They have a lot of patience, and they just stare at one spot for long time, and then they jab down and grab the fish. Their beak is shaped like a pair of super-sharp chopsticks. Sometimes they catch a huge fish and they have to juggle it around, especially if they have it perpendicular with their beak, they have to jostle it around, and the fish is wiggling, and eventually they get it just right so it’s straight in line with the bill, and you can watch this huge thing slide down that long slender neck.”

Sharon Stiteler is a part-time naturalist with the National Park Service, and she writes a blog called bird-chick-dot-com.

Today the herons are pretty quiet. But Stiteler has a Blackberry loaded with their sounds, including the prehistoric squawk they make when they’re startled.

And Stiteler says it can sound really strange when the young are clattering for food.

After the young are raised — at least the ones that survive — the herons will stay here on the river, until it freezes over and they can’t fish anymore. Stiteler says the birds decamp all at once.

“One day we have Great Blue Herons, and the next day they’re gone, and they migrate at night.”

They tuck back their long necks when they fly, forming an S-shape and hiding their true length.

Stiteler says the recovery of Great Blue Herons, along with pelicans, eagles, and other birds near the top of the food chain is a sign of a healthier ecosystem.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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The CIA Is Watching Climate Change

  • Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park. The top photo was taken in 1940, the bottom in 2006. (Photo courtesy of the USGS)

The Central Intelligence Agency will
keep an eye on climate change. Lester
Graham reports the spy agency plans to
open a climate change office this month:

Transcript

The Central Intelligence Agency will
keep an eye on climate change. Lester
Graham reports the spy agency plans to
open a climate change office this month:

The CIA is still choosing staff for the climate change office.

A spokesperson for the agency, Marie Harf, declined to be recorded. In an email she stated, “Examining the impact that the effects of climate change can have on political and social stability overseas is certainly part of the Agency’s mandate.”

There’s concern that climate change will cause expanding deserts and rising sea levels. That could lead to huge population migrations in search of water and food, threatening world stability.


In a statement, U.S. Senator John Barrasso calls a CIA climate change office “misguided.” Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, asks whether CIA staff will be taken off monitoring terrorists to watching polar ice caps. The Senator says other agencies can monitor climate change and share data with the CIA.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Bringing a Fish Back From the Brink

  • The American Shad became so rare that hatcheries had to help restore depleted populations (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-Achour explains:

Transcript

A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s
capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-
Achour explains:

I bet you can’t recognize this sound.

It is the sound of a female shad – it’s a type of fish – having its eggs squeezed out into a metal
bowl.

“In the bowl, it looks like applesauce.”
That’s biologist Catherine Lim. We are on a boat in the middle of the Potomac, 20 miles south of
Washington DC, harvesting and fertilizing shad eggs. Lim picks up a male shad and gives it a
squeeze.

“Yeah, he sprayed out there.”

She mixes the brew around and adds water.

“We’ll bag them up and send them to the fish hatchery.”

This is all part of an effort to restore the population of the American Shad. For millions of years,
the large silver-iridescent fish have swum in from the Atlantic and up the rivers of the East Coast
every spring to spawn. They return to the same place where their lives began, guided by a
unique geological odor that seeps from the earth and mountains that feed each river.

Once upon a time – only a century ago – these fish were so numerous they turned the water silver
and made rivers move.

At least that’s what Jim Cummins says, he’s a biologist.

“On the Susquehanna, there were so many of them they created a wave as they came up the
river, a standing wave.”

On the Potomac they fueled entire industries. According to newspaper reports, Washington DC
exported 4 million barrels of salted shad every year in the 1840’s.

“The wagons would come into Georgetown were so heavy that they crammed up the city – I think
it’s the first report of gridlock in Washington.”

The fish fed more than just commerce – they nourish everything from crabs to dolphins. Bald
Eagles actually evolved to time their egg laying early, so their chicks would hatch just as the Shad
and their relatives appeared in the river. And then came overfishing, dams, and pollution.

“In the 1960’s, there were times when the migratory fish came up to spawn in the area and met
that pollution, and hundreds of thousands of them died and made a stinking mess.”

The clean water act was passed in 1972, but by 1980, the fish were almost wiped out. A
moratorium on fishing at the time was too little too late. Water quality gradually improved as
waste water treatment plants were upgraded and aquatic grasses returned. But still, no Shad.

So Cummins began the Shad restoration project.

They had to use several nets – each hundreds of feet long – just to catch one fish. They got help
from fisheries and even elementary schools. Dams were fixed to let fish go around them. The
Shad population exploded.

At a boat house just outside of DC, anglers Steve Bocat and Louis Covax are enjoying success
that up until recently, few alive have seen here.

“It was great we had incredible fishing. I mean, between the two of us, we had, what, 50-60 fish
up to the boat?”

Another sign of success, a pair of Bald Eagles recently returned to the area following the fish –
the first in decades.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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New ‘Deer Crossing’ Technology

  • The Colorado Department of Transportation is trying out a new system to detect deer about to cross the highway (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Every year there are about 1.5 million
deer-car accidents. Now highway officials are
testing a new system to cut down on those
accidents. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Every year there are about 1.5 million
deer-car accidents. Now highway officials are
testing a new system to cut down on those
accidents. Rebecca Williams has more:

There are some animal detection systems that use lasers or infrared motion
sensors. But those systems can be tripped by tumbleweeds or small animals.

In Colorado, highway officials are testing a new device.

Nancy Shanks is with the Colorado Department of Transportation. She says
they’ve buried cables along each side of the highway. The cables emit an
electromagnetic field. When an animal crosses a cable a warning sign with a
picture of a jumping deer lights up.

“It will detect a change in the field to the tune of a large animal. The system
will not pick up a smaller animal – a skunk or a rabbit, mouse.”

This cable system isn’t cheap. The pilot project costs 1.2 million dollars.

But Shanks says if this system works out, the price should come down a bit
over time.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Planting More Trees on Coffee Farms

  • Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. (Source: MarkSweep at Wikimedia Commons)

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

Transcript

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

A few decades ago, coffee growers in Latin America were given incentives to clear the
shade trees on their plantations. More sun equals more coffee beans. They also found
more sun meant more weeds. So they had to spray expensive herbicides.

Now a new study published in BioScience shows cutting down those shade trees has
also left the coffee plants more exposed to damage from bad weather. Ivette Perfecto
at the University of Michigan is one of the authors.

“The vulnerability of the farms are much higher if they eliminate the shade. The shade
trees provide like a buffer against extremes.”

Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. The added
benefit is the trees provide habitat for wildlife, including those migrating birds that spend
their summers here and travel south to that region.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Fcc to Reduce Bird Kills?

Scientists have found that millions of birds are killed each year when they crash into communication towers. Now officials at the Federal Communications Commission are thinking about making companies change the way they build the towers. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

Scientists have found that millions of birds are killed each year when they crash into communication towers. Now officials at the Federal Communications Commission are thinking about making companies change the way they build the towers. Mark Brush has more:


The explosion of cell phones has meant an explosion of new communication towers, but when these towers are built using guy wires, and use traditional lighting systems, they can end up really hurting bird populations.


Steve Holmer is with the American Bird Conservancy. He says the steady red lights on these towers can confuse birds that use stars to migrate at night.


“The birds are actually attracted to these towers, kind of like a moth to the flame, and will actually circle around them and strike the towers, or strike the guide wires, or actually just keep circling until they exhaust themselves.”


Holmer says that simply replacing these lights with white strobe lights would help a lot.


The FCC will be seeking public comments on whether or not they should require that new communication towers be bird friendly.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Watching Wild Birds for Avian Flu

The US government is testing wild migratory birds for a deadly strain of avian flu. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports, so far, no wild birds have tested positive:

Transcript

The US government is testing wild migratory birds for a deadly strain of
avian flu. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports, so far, no wild birds have
tested positive:


Researchers have tested 13,000 wild birds in Alaska. They’re worried
that wild birds could carry the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu as they
migrate from Asia to North America and infect other birds in Alaska. The
virus has killed more than 140 people in Asia, Europe and Africa.


Gale Kern is with the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services
Program:


“We still don’t know how effective wild birds are at carrying the virus long
distances. I think we need to remain diligent and really keep up our
surveillance efforts because we just really don’t know a lot about this
particular strain yet.”


Kern says biologists will now focus on testing birds in the lower 48 states
as fall migration south begins.


Agencies also consider poultry imports and smuggled pet birds ways the virus
could get into the States.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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