A test flock of whooping cranes is winging its way north from Florida to Wisconsin this month. That makes wildlife officials who are trying to restore the flock very happy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A test flock of whooping cranes is winging its way north from Florida to Wisconsin this month.
That makes wildlife officials who are trying to restore the flock very happy. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership is setting up the only migrating flock of whoopers in
the Eastern U.S. Almost two dozen birds are taking part and wildlife officials hope to teach
flying skills to another 20 crane chicks this summer.
Beth Goodman is whooping crane coordinator at the Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources. She says the numbers show the experiment is on track.
“It underscores we set a goal that seems reasonable, and our goal is establishing 25 breeder pairs
and 125 migrating birds in the eastern migratory flock by the year 2020.”
The whooper was at its greatest danger of extinction sixty years ago when there were only 15
birds counted in the wild. The new flock already has exceeded that number. Goodman says one
of the tougher tasks this year will be raising enough private money to keep the project going
strong.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.
A recent study in the scientific journal Nature suggests the effects of global warming can be seen in people’s backyards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
A recent study in the scientific journal Nature suggests the effects of global warming
can be seen in people’s backyards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
The study compiles data from scientific papers on climate change and from personal
nature recordings from people all over the world. It finds that plants and animals
appear to be changing their behavior in response to increases in the average global
temperature over the past century.
Michigan State University researcher Kim Hall contributed to the report. She says
for many species, spring events are happening about five days earlier every ten years.
“Those include things like the first arrival dates of birds when they’re migrating into
their summer habitat. Also, sounds, like the first calls of frogs and toads when they
begin the breeding season in the spring. And there’s a lot of different things
related to the timing of plants, such as the first time they bloom in
the spring or when fruits arrive.”
Hall says it isn’t known how earlier springs will affect the environment. But she says they
could spell trouble for many species if food supplies and habitats are not protected.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
The small flock of whooping cranes being reintroduced in the eastern U.S. may have a safer time at their winter home in Florida this year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach explains:
Transcript
The small flock of whooping cranes being reintroduced in the eastern U.S. may have a safer time
at their winter home in Florida this year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
explains:
Last year, bobcats killed two of the migrating whooping cranes that were staying at the
Chassahowitzka wildlife refuge in Florida.
The cranes like to roost in a certain amount of water, but when the tide level inside their pen
wasn’t right, the birds went to an unprotected area and the bobcats attacked. This year, refuge
managers have taken steps to help the 20 or so cranes roost inside their pens.
Whooping crane Eastern partnership spokesperson, Heather Ray, says many tons of oyster shells
have been dumped into a protected area where the tide flows in and out.
“As the tide goes out, the birds can, you know, move down on this oyster bed and still be in water
and as it comes in move up on it and still be in water, so they will hear predators approaching.”
It took about 300 helicopter loads to build the oyster reef. The whooping cranes will stay in
Florida until February or March, then are expected to head back toward Wisconsin.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach reporting.
In the last three decades, Mexican produce workers have become more important to the economy of the Midwest than ever before, but most of the people who buy and eat fruits and vegetables rarely hear about them. Now, researchers in the region are beginning to take a closer look at the lifestyles of some of these workers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has more:
Transcript
In the last three decades, Mexican produce workers have become more important to the
economies of the Great Lakes region than ever before, but most of the people who buy
and eat fruit and vegetables rarely hear about them. Now, researchers in the region are
beginning to take a closer look at the lifestyles of some of these workers. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty reports:
Many of the workers who pick and pack tomatoes in the Great Lakes region aren’t from
the region. In Canada, thousands of them are workers brought from Mexico as part of
Canada’s Foreign Agriculture Resource Management Services program. These workers
come from Mexico for 4 to 6 months a year, and can make in an hour what they would
make in a day at home, but the work in Canada is hard, and the days are long.
Deborah Barndt is a professor of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto:
“Often it’s an 11 hour workday, 6 and a half days a week because they’re here primarily
to make money to support their families back home, and they have no other responsibilities,
no other commitments, no community or family connections.”
Barndt says that workers in Canada make minimum wage. They get
insurance and Canadian pensions, but don’t qualify for unemployment. She also says that
their numbers have increased, as Mexico’s economy has worsened.
For the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium, I’m Nora Flaherty.
Each fall, thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
Transcript
Each fall, about thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles
in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand
people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer
look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:
“Those of you haven’t found the osprey, it’s over there at owl’s head, naked eye here to
the right.”
On a clear day, the view from atop Hawk Mountain stretches for more than fifty miles.
But on this particularly hazy Saturday afternoon, bird-watchers are pushing their
binoculars and telescopes to the limits.
“Well, we’re making them out there, they’re coming in. It’s like you just gotta wait ’til
they get a little closer than what they typically do. They’ve been popping out of clouds
and haze all day for us.”
Doug Wood is a volunteer at Hawk Mountain in Eastern Pennsylvania. This afternoon,
he’s the official bird counter.
“We’re basically taking a lot of field information. Wind, weather, temperature, cloud
cover, wind direction. And then we’re basically monitoring the birds’ species, age, sex,
and recording it every hour.
“Look! An Osprey! And then fade to scene change.”
Researchers at Hawk Mountain have been keeping records of osprey and other migratory
raptors for more than seventy years, making it the oldest monitoring station in the world.
In the early twentieth century, hunters would shoot thousands of birds from the
mountainside each year. Today, people travel from all over the world to shoot birds with
their cameras.
Matt Wong came all the way from New Zealand to study at the sanctuary.
“Hawk Mountain is internationally renowned as a hawk watch site. And also a place
where big research actually happens. Now, not many of the locals around Pennsylvania
actually realize this, but it’s actually huge on the international scene. It’s world
recognized, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here.”
In Wong’s country, there are only two species of raptors. In America, he’s had a chance
to study dozens of varieties.
But even with so many different species populating North America, many people still
think of them as strangers or sometimes even as monsters.
“I still get, amazingly to me, a lot of people that think that these birds are out to get us.”
Volunteer Bob Owens has spent the last 20 years doing education programs at Hawk
Mountain.
“If you intrude into their territory when they have young in the nest, or something like
that, yeah, they’re probably going to chase you. As far as them killing babies and taking
them from baby carriages, this is all old wives tales. This just does not happen.”
Owens runs a small farm for a living, where he says hawks and barn owls help keep
rodents under control. But in a larger sense, Owens says there’s a lot people can learn
from these birds.
“Any three and a half pound bird that can apply four hundred pounds of pressure with its
talons is built to do what they’re doing. They are at the top of the food chain. And that’s
the other big thing that it shows us. It just opens up a door here as to all the reasons the
birds are either dropping or rising in population. What are we doing?”
Owens says in the seventy years researchers at Hawk Mountain have been counting birds,
they’ve seen populations rise and fall. Hawks and eagles are hardy birds. But even the
most successful predators can fall victim to environmental change.
Keith Bildstein is the sanctuary’s director of conservation programs. He says raptors are
like sensitive tools, telling researchers when something’s wrong with an ecosystem.
“Birds of prey are excellent biological indicators. In the middle of the last century they
told us that we were having a problem with our misuse of organochlorine pesticides,
specifically DDT. Today, they’re leading us in explorations of the spread of West Nile
Virus.”
Bildstein says because raptors are at the top of the food chain, when their numbers fall
it’s a pretty good sign that their food source is dwindling, their habitat could be
disappearing, or air quality might be suffering.
But for most of Hawk Mountain’s visitors, the birds are more than barometers of a
healthy ecosystem. According to birder Judy Higgs, they’re beautiful creatures,
especially when viewed from a great height.
“These birds are just majestic. And the other thing is that they go so far. You know,
some of these birds are going to South America!”
Higgs first climbed the mountain in 1970, when she was a student at nearby Kutztown
University. Before moving out of state, Higgs used to come to Hawk Mountain daily…
she stills visits on weekends whenever she can.
“I used to do work in the morning, come here in the afternoon, go home, and finish my
work at night so I could be here.”
By day’s end, Higgs and her fellow birdwatchers count more than 600 raptors. During
the fall season, as many as 70-thousand predatory birds, from vultures to falcons might
pass by on their way to distant points.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.
Ornithologist Bill Evans has been
tracking down avian night flight calls for 17 years.
Many North American birds are in serious decline. But scientists aren’t sure what’s wrong because birds are hard to count. The problem is partly that birds often migrate long distances between wintering sites and summer breeding grounds. Usually, they fly unobserved at night, and in many cases scientists don’t know what route they take. However, a new technique promises to solve this problem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has our story:
Transcript
Many North American birds are in serious decline. But scientists aren’t sure what’s wrong because birds are hard to count. The problem is partly that birds often migrate long distances between wintering sites and summer breeding grounds. Usually, they fly unobserved at night, and in many cases scientists don’t know what route they take. However, a new technique promises to solve this problem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has our story:
(Sound on dock, with Evan’s whispering out bird names fades up under intro.
Continues under Grossman track, then heard in clear.)
It’s a warm spring evening on the south Texas coast. Ornithologist Bill Evans sits on a dock, listening for birds.
“Grey-cheek thrush.”
Grossman: “That high one?”
“Yeah. (makes sound). Moor hen calling behind us on the ground. Oh sorry, that’s a black-necked stilt.”
Evans has been listening to and studying these night calls since he had an epiphany at a Minnesota campground in 1985. Then a recent college dropout and avid birder, Evans was adrift, unsure what to do with his life.
“I was getting back to a campsite about two in the morning and heard an incredible flight.”
Hundreds of birds were passing overhead in nocturnal migration, including what appeared to be about 100 black-billed cuckoos.
“If you go out and look for black-billed cuckoos during the day you may see two or three. And I’m thinking, ‘wow if I had a tape recorder and could somehow document this on audiotape, I might have a pretty powerful conservation document.'”
Bill Evans got a recorder and soon was making tapes of flight calls. But his recordings were of limited use because no one knew which birds made which sounds. The melodious tunes birds perform during the day are well known. But, according to Cornell Professor Charles Walcott, the calls they make during night flights are another matter.
“If you out on an evening and listen to these birds migrating overhead you’ll hear all these twitters, most of which don’t sound anything like what a normal bird sounds like at all.”
Walcott is the former director of the Cornell Ornithology Laboratory. He says night calls may help birds keep from colliding with each other. For decades, researchers hearing these calls were frustrated knowing there were birds in flight, but unable to determine which ones.
“And to be able to recognize individual species by their calls was a dream that many people have had. And Bill is the first one that’s been able to do it on any substantial scale.”
Evans spent the next 17 years prowling migration routes to match birds with their calls. Often his only chance came in the wee morning hours, when sometimes night migrants make a single night call before settling down to eat and rest. Gradually he cracked the code.
“The herons. Amazing squawks. Black-crowned-night heron is a sort of (makes sound). Green heron is a (makes sound). Barn owl. It’s a [makes sound]. Except it’s about ten times louder than that. The dickcissel is actually a sparrow and it’s got sort of a buzzy note (makes sound).
(Sound of truck door closing and truck starting up)
The small, colorful dickcissel is why Bill Evans is here, just north of Brownsville, Texas. He’s set up a network of 15 computerized monitoring stations that listen for dickcissels in flight. It’s the first large-scale effort to track birds using night calls. The network is stretched out along a line he believes these birds cross on their way between Venezuela and the U.S. plains.
Each station has a roof-mounted microphone, connected to a computer. Most of them are at high schools – their large, flat roofs and spacious grounds reduce traffic noise – and they’re generally in a science class. And while Evans does stay up late to listen for pleasure, it’s these computers that are actually doing the work. Each day he collects the past night’s results, in a marathon drive, station by station.
(Sound of high school PA System making announcement cross fades with truck under previous track. Also mixed in sound of crowded high school corridor with students changing classes. Cross-fades with sound of classroom.)
Evans: “Come on over guys. My name is Bill, this is Dan.”
Peter: “Bill and Dan?”
Evans: “What’s your name?”
Tate: “Tate.”
Peter: “Peter.”
Bill: “Nice to meet you guys.”
Some curious students pay Evans a visit at La Ferria High School.
(Evans fades up underneath Grossman. Then heard in clear.)
Evans (to students): “…So anyway the sound comes down this audio cable into this computer. We’re just checking the data from last night…”
(Computer keyboard sounds in actuality fades under track.)
The computer has a program that distinguishes the call of the dickcissel from other birdcalls and extraneous noise. The machine records the call, and saves a picture – or spectrogram – of it. Evans trouble shoots his stations and collects data daily. First he winnows out false positives, sounds that tricked the computer, by inspecting the spectrograms.
Evans (to students): “I’m going to set up one folder to put in the dickcissels’ calls and the other I’m going to put in the noise, the false detections. So now I’ve just classified the detections from last night. We had 28 here that we classified as dickcissels…”
After checking the computer and collecting its data the researcher says he has to run. Each of the 15 stations in his network needs a checkup because this weekend might be the climax of the dickcissel migration, bringing a huge flight of birds.
Evans (to students): “…And this weekend we think there are thousands of them just in Northeast Mexico. They’re going to take off. ‘Cause last year in one night, we had over 3,000 detected at McAllen High School…”
In the end, the big flock didn’t appear until the following week. Though the arrival was delayed for several days compared to the previous year, Evans now has proof that by monitoring night calls he can predict the timing and migration route of an individual bird species.
(Sound of truck door closing and truck starting up.)
Walcott: “It’s really an extraordinary accomplishment.”
Cornell professor Charles Walcott says the migration information Evans is discovering can’t be collected any other way. It’s all the more extraordinary because Bill Evans, who once worked for Walcott, has neither a college nor any other degree.
Walcott: “With Bill’s scheme you can now say, well, this was an evening when we had a huge migration of warblers and they were of the following species. And this is very useful and very interesting information. And it gives you a sense of where the migratory paths for each species of birds might be.”
It’s detailed information like this that conservation specialists need to design plans to protect the most threatened species. In the future Evans hopes several large-scale computer networks of the sort he’s testing in Texas will monitor many species throughout the United States. He hopes the listening posts could help solve the mystery of why so many North American species are in decline. This spring, in an important first step, Evans and collaborator Michael O’Brien released a compact disc with night flight calls of most eastern land birds. Now anyone can learn the secrets Bill Evans has unlocked.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Daniel Grossman.
A high-profile flock of whooping cranes may be winging its way back through the Midwest in the next few days or weeks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
A high-profile flock of whooping cranes may be winging its way back through the Midwest in the next few days or weeks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The cranes would be the first migrating flock of whoopers in the eastern U.S. The birds have left their winter home in Florida, and wildlife biologists hope the cranes are on their way to a summer nesting site in Wisconsin. The whoopers are flying on their own this spring, after having followed ultra light aircraft on their southerly migration last fall. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Charles Underwood says one of the biggest dangers on the northbound journey is from predators.
“Both bobcats and coyotes and as they get further north the possibility of wolves taking one of the birds is always of concern to us.”
Underwood is also urging people not to get to try to get too close to the whooping cranes. He says wildlife officials are trying to keep the huge birds as wild as possible. Two web sites will track the cranes’ progress.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach reporting.
Small wetlands such as the one pictured above often dry up during the summer. These 'ephemeral wetlands' are home to all kinds of frogs, salamanders, reptiles and aquatic life that depend on this specific kind of habitat for their survival. Photo by Lester Graham.
Biologists are becoming concerned about the disappearance of a habitat for wildlife that can be found in rural areas, in sprawling suburbs, and even in big cities. The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to get city planners, farmers, and developers to stop draining small marshy areas that biologists call ephemeral wetlands. The EPA says in the rush to save big areas of wetlands these small temporary wet spots have been overlooked at the expense of some unique wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:
Transcript
Biologists are becoming concerned about the disappearance of a habitat for wildlife that can be found in rural areas, in sprawling suburbs, and even in big cities. The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to get city planners, farmers, and developers to stop draining small marshy areas that biologists call ephemeral wetlands. The EPA says in the rush to save big areas of wetlands these small temporary wet spots have been overlooked at the expense of some unique wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:
(Frogs sound)
There’s still just a bit of ice along the edges of this little pool, but it’s a warm day, the ice will soon melt, and the frogs sound as if they’re rejoicing. In the coming weeks, this shallow little pond will become a chorus of different kinds of frogs and host a dance of mating salamanders. Many kinds of amphibians and reptiles are drawn to wet spots like this one to mate and reproduce. And. there’s a bit of a rush to their reproductive activities. More than likely by middle or late summer, this little pool will be all dried up. Actually, that’s good because it means fish can’t survive here, fish that would eat the young of many of these species. So a lot of these frogs and salamanders and other creepy-crawly things do really well here while its wet.
Ed Hammer is a biologist with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says these temporary, or ephemeral, wetlands are usually pretty small… most under two acres in size…some so small you could jump across them. But they’re really important to aquatic life such as fairy shrimp and clam shrimp, which can survive, and even need dry periods. And certain species of frogs and other amphibians who use the wetlands for breeding.
(Frogs fade out)
“They’re extremely productive. We have some of these smaller wetlands in our area in the Chicago region that in a quarter acre of size can produce hundreds and hundreds of salamanders and leopard frogs in a good year when the water holds out. They really depend on those habitats being there every few years at the very least.”
And Hammer says the productivity of the ephemeral wetlands helps other species.
“Salamanders and frogs are fed upon by a multitude of other organisms like turtles and snakes and on up the food chain and then, you know, owls will feed on them. Raccoons and skunks and fox and all up the food chain they’ll be fed on. So they’re an extremely important food source.”
The temporary wetlands are also important to many migrating birds such as pintail ducks and little green herons. Paul Zedler is a professor of environmental studies and scientist at the University of Wisconsin arboretum.
“Imagine you’re a bird, a shore bird, looking for habitat in which to forage. Then ephemeral wetlands, while they’re there, can be an excellent place for resting and feeding.”
Zedler says the ephemeral wetlands are amazing to him because of the wet then dry cycle to which so many animals have adapted.
“It’s like instant ecosystem. Like, add water and you get an ecosystem. People who, once it’s pointed out to them, invariably think it’s pretty darn neat.”
But a lot of times, the people who own the ephemeral wetlands don’t realize that area that gets swampy in wet years is a thriving habitat. Ephemeral wetlands are often drained to plant crops, or bulldozed deeper to build storm water retention basins for housing developments, or the surrounding woodlands are cut down eliminating the habitat where many of the frogs and salamanders live the rest of the year.
They’ve disappeared so quickly that some species that depend on ephemeral wetlands are in danger of disappearing too. Gary Casper is with the Milwaukee Public Museum. He’s been studying a certain turtle called Blanding’s turtle to see why its numbers have dwindled so much.
“Blandings turtles look kind of like those old German helmets from World War II and they have a really bright yellow chin and throat with a real long neck. They’re a threatened species in Wisconsin and threatened or endangered in several other states.”
Casper has been watching Blanding’s turtles to see what makes them tick, where they like to live and eat.
“And after looking at the data from seven years of radio tracking, it’s quite clear that they strongly prefer these seasonal, isolated wetlands probably because they provide much more food for them.”
And so they join a host of other critters such as gray tree frogs, marbled salamanders, fishing spiders, wood ducks and others who heavily depend on the ephemeral wetlands.
The EPA is publishing pamphlets and holding seminars to teach state and local officials and those folks interested in preserving wildlife habitat…hoping they’ll spread the word about the value of the seasonal ponds, or mud puddles so that private landowners will keep them around.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Related Links
Download a brochure on ephemeral wetlands by the Conservation Foundation. Acrobat Reader required to open file.
Changes to our world – and to our environment – have been a matter of course throughout history. But knowing that offers only limited comfort to Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Mike VanBuren:
Transcript
Changes to our world – and to our environment – have been a matter of course throughout history. But that knowledge only offers limited comfort to Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Mike VanBuren.
Many years ago, when I was a rookie newspaperman working in northern Michigan, I often drove from my home in Mancelona to Whitefish Point on Lake Superior.
Whitefish Point was a glorious place to visit – particularly during the spring and fall, when raptors, waterfowl and songbirds were migrating through the Great Lakes region. Hundreds of thousands of birds funnel through the Point each year, thanks to land and water features that create a natural flight corridor.
I enjoyed going there to walk the beaches, watch the birds and see the giant freighters pass by on their way to and from the busy locks at Sault Ste. Marie.
Whitefish Point was a peaceful place in those days. And I was often alone, as I stood on the shore with my face against the invigorating Superior winds.
But something unsettling has occurred in the two decades since I made those pilgrimages. The Point has been discovered by large flocks of tourists. And the narrow road that reaches north from Paradise is sometimes clogged with cars, SUV’s and tour buses.
I returned to the Point recently, hoping to find the same peace and serenity I’d enjoyed there as a young man. I was pleased to discover that the old lighthouse – first lit in 1849 – had been carefully restored, along with a handful of whitewashed outbuildings.
That would have been enough for me.
But developers apparently thought the Point needed something more to attract visitors. They built a new facility to house the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, along with a large gift shop – complete with meeting space and flush toilets. Wooden walkways had also been laid across the sandy dunes to allow greater access to the surrounding forest and beach.
I didn’t see many birds that day, although the folks at the tiny Whitefish Point Observatory could probably have told me where they were. I did see a lot of people, though.
“All things must change to something new – to something strange,” said Longfellow.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now – that I’d no longer be surprised by change. But I am. It always leaves me feeling a bit disoriented.
In my more lucid moments, I know the Great Lakes region will continue to evolve. And I know I’m as much a part of this process as real estate developers and gift shop proprietors.
Some change is even good – although the definition of “good” varies from person to person. Life itself is an uncertain migration – with constant shifts in our needs, attitudes and relationships to the outdoors.
I think it has always been that way.
As I retreated that day from the Point and drove south toward the Mackinaw Bridge, I thought about the Native Americans who lived beside Lake Superior long ago. Like me, they probably watched earlier generations of hawks, eagles and owls cross Whitefish Bay – and marveled at their beauty and grace.
I can imagine their ghosts, skirting the shores of the bay in birch bark canoes on cool moonlit nights – searching for some familiar landmark that will lead them home.
Perhaps one day mine will do the same.
***Mike VanBuren is an environmental writer who lives near Richland, Michigan. ***
Some Florida bobcats are threatening the reintroduction of migrating whooping cranes to the eastern U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
