Date Night in Durham! March 23, 2009

For our anniversary, Chris got tickets for us to see Fiddler on the Roof in Durham at the new Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC).   I don’t get to Durham often enough considering how many good places to eat (and great people!) there are there.   The city has created this amazing American Tobacco Historical District project right in downtown,  featuring places to eat, the Durham Bulls stadium, WUNC studios, and now the DPAC.  Its really quite amazing.

We started off the night by checking out Toast, a “paninoteca” in downtown Durham.   It was amazing!  Small, bistro style, with all kinds of wild panini, bruscetta, and crostini options  (warm goat cheese, local honey ancracked pepper anyone?) .   Not expensive either, so go check it out.

The musical was amazing.  I loved all the songs, and the star, Topol, was amazing.  Dpac has comfy seats and great sound.  All the ushers were really super friendly too, which was nice.

Beyond that, I was not that impressed with Dpac.  At the intermission the line for the ladies room was, no joke, 75 people deep and cut into the line for the concessions.  There’s a design flaw!

In addition, there is the new light sculpture out in front of Dpac.   Created by Jaume Plensa, the renowned Spanish artist responsible for Chicago’s Centennial Park, it was originally destined for downtown Raleigh.  Raleigh city council didn’t want it so it was donated to Durham.  The main feature is a beam of light that shoots up in the air.  This feature, combined with the fact that the Dpac  building itself is a glass cube makes this a migratory bird death trap.

From American Bird Conservancy:  “The intrusion of light into migratory bird flyways poses added danger to an already perilous journey. The interior and exterior lights on tall buildings and bright uplights used for decorative illumination of monuments, government offices, parking garages , and other structures of all heights, emit light fields that can entrap birds. The birds are reluctant to fly from a well lit area to a dark one, particularly during periods of low cloud cover or inclement weather when views of the stars and moon, which serve as navigational aids, are obstructed. The birds circle repeatedly within the light field, and as more and more birds are drawn into the light, they collide with each other and the building, or fall to the ground from exhaustion. If they are not killed immediately by the collision, they are at risk for death from injuries they have incurred, predation on the ground, and collisions with windows during the following days.”

Its really too bad, because Durham so far has done such a nice job with the revitalization.  I am not sure that folks are going to be so thrilled about finding dead and dying birds everywhere.   Most discouraging is that there is a movement now to have the sculpture lit 365 days a year (currently it is only lit on show nights).   Hopefully this will get shot down.  At my job we have already written letters to the Durham City Council and the Durham paper about this (we did this before it was installed).  You know what would be really great, is if they could shut down this light sculpture during migration (like NYC and Toronto do with skyscraper lights).   A chance for conservation and education!

Final score?  Toast yes, Fiddler on the Roof yes, Dpac no.  This Friday we head back to Durham, to the Carolina Theatre to see the Gondoliers.  I am already wondering which of the fabulous Durham Restaurants we should eat at.   Cake, perhaps you can help us choose?

Nica Highlights March 15, 2009

Now that I have explained the how and why of the trip, here is a quick rundown of some of the highlights!    In total, we saw over 200 species of birds and 12 mammals and a handful of herps.

Day 1:

-3am wake up to get to the airport, painless flights to Managua.

-3 1/2 ride to Finca Esperanza Verde, located at 4000 feet.  Its so beautiful, with great views and amazing birds seen on our first short hike.

-We all go to bed early, I share a cabin with the 3 female students and Mariamar.  The beds are super comfortable and we sleep like logs.

-Best birds:  Yellow-throated Euphonia, Yellow-winged Tanager, Blue-crowned Motmot.

Day 2:

-Long morning hike on a finca trail over hill and dale, come back to the farm for lunch and relaxing, and then a hike through the coffee gowning area in the afternoon.  A night hike reveals a possum and some alarmingly large spiders.

-We see both 2 and three toed sloths on our hikes.

-Best birds: Bat Falcon, Violet Sabrewing, Rufus-winged Tanager

Day 3:

-Start banding!  We catch Wood Thrush, Black-headed Nightingale Thrush, and a Cocoa Woodcreeper among others.  I have done a lot of banding but this is the first time I hear Howler Monkeys while opening nets in the morning.

-Lunch today is a masa ball soup, and like all the food here at the finca is fabulous: rich broth overflowing with veggies and meat.  The vegetarians have their own meat free version and indeed they eat well the whole time we are in Nicaragua.

-After lunch Lynn gives a lecture about Tropical Ecology, and Pasqual, the coffee manager, explains how coffee is grown, harvested and roasted.

-At night Cesar, a local former Sandinista soldier,  gives us a great talk about the history of Nicaraguan government and Nica/US relations.  Suffice to say, the US has never been very nice to Nicaragua.  Its a very interesting, non biased talk.

-Best Birds: Slaty Antwren, Brown Parrots,  and I want to mention that every day we had many Swallow-tailed Kites soaring overhead.  I never get tired of those birds!

Day 4:

-Banding in the morning.  We catch a Bright-rumped Attila that I still bear scars from: a lovely feisty bird with a hooked bill that it repeatedly bites me with.   We also catch a Long-tailed Hermit (we can’t band hummers but record data about their health and status before release).

-We leave the finca for a field trip to “General Nestor’s land” a nearby finca at as lower elevation.  A creek with an amazing swimming hole runs through the middle, so we all swim and enjoy a great barbeque lunch.  After lunch we bird the lowlands.

-Its worth mentioning that the road into the General’s land is sort of like driving on the surface of the moon, if it was at a 45 degree angle. I have never been on a road like that before!

-Best birds: Common Tody Flycatcher, Turquoise-browed Motmot, Collared Trogon, Emerald Toucanet.

Day 5:

-Last day of banding.  We band all day, and at this point the students are really getting the hang of handling birds, putting the band on and recording data.

-At night the finca has a fiesta for us; a local band comes to play and we dance around the bonfire for hours.  The full moon makes the night so lovely and bright, a very special time.

-Best birds: Pale-billed Woodpecker, Chesnut-headed Oropendula

Day 6:

-We leave the finca (sadly) and head to Selva Negra, another private preserve. We search here for Three-wattled Bellbird and Resplendent Quetzal but are dissapointed.  The very windy conditions make birding more difficult, but we stumble upon huge flocks of neotropical warblers as well as an army ant swarm that has attracted the attention of woodcreepers and Grey-headed Tanagers, among others.

-After a long ride back to the lowlands, we go to Las Isletas, an archipelago of tiny islands created when Mombacho Volcano erupted millions of years ago.  On an sunset boat ride through the canals, we spot almost 40 bird species.

-At night we stay in the pretty town of Granada, in a hotel right on the main square.

-Best birds:  Limpkin! Bare-throated Tiger Heron, Northern Jacana and White-necked Puffbird.

Day 7:

-In the morning we explore Domatila Private Preserve, the largest Dry Tropical Forest Preserve in the country owned by the amazing Dona Maria Jose.  The forest is amazing, and so different from where we have been.  We get a prehensile tailed Porcupine snoozing in a tree, as well as one of my nemasis birds, the Green Kingfisher.

-After a delicious lunch and nap at the Domatila, we head up to Mombacho National Park.  This high elevation cloudforest is amazing!  Trees covered with epiphites, orchids, and bromiliads.

-The road up to the top is extremely steep: here in the US mountain roads tend to hug the contors, but in this park the road goes straight to the top.  We ride up in huge former military troop transport vehicles.

-Best birds:  Mountain Elania, Purple-throated Mountain Gem, Black-headed Trogon, Ferruginous Pygmy-owl and did I mention that I finally got my nemasis bird, the Green Kingfisher?

Day 8:

-We go to Montibelli Private Reserve and spend the day birding.  Its another habitat type, similar in elevation to the finca but a little less humid.  I like the veranda, where you can sit and see all kinds of birds.

-In the heat of the day we go to Masaya Volcano, which is actively spewing out all kinds of fumes.   We do not see the parrots that live in the inside of the crater, but there are tons of black vultures around which cause us to speculate that they come from the volcano instead of being born in nests.

-The rooms at Montibelli are so nice, its like staying in a treehouse! The food is amazing, too.

-Best birds: Long-tailed Manakin, Collared Aracari, Canivet’s Emerald.

Day 9:

-Another 3am wake up to catch our flights back to the states

FOR PHOTOS, GO HERE

Nicaragua!! March 15, 2009

I just returned from a week in Nicaragua, helping lead an EcoQuest Travel trip for Guilford College.  It was amazing!  I wanted to share a few things about it.

The focus of this trip is birds, bird banding (where we catch songbirds in mist nets, give them a USFWS ankle bracelet and then release), and shade grown coffee.  EcoQuest offers the trip to various educational groups (Currently, NC State and Guilford College alternate years along with a few other schools) as a sort of spring break alternative.  The first 4 days are spent living on at Finca Esperanza Verde, a shade grown coffee farm banding birds and then rest of the trip is spent exploring habitats around Nicaragua and learning about (and seeing) the flora and fauna.

Our group consisted of 6 students and Lynn Moseley (“La Profesora”) from Guilford,  Juanita, an NC Audubon board member and proponent of Nicaraguan ornithology, Darren and Julie from the Rouge River Bird Observatory in Michigan, and trip leaders Curis, Mariamar, and Dave (owner and zoologist of EcoQuest Travel), and myself, leader-in-training.

The bird banding part of this trip is really neat, and really important.   Coffee can be grown in two ways: in an open field like any crop (“sun coffee”) and in the shade under a canopy of trees.  Shade grown coffee allows the native vegetation to stay which is home to many species of birds, both neotropical species that breed in the US but winter in the tropics as well as residents.  When you grow sun coffee and you remove the canopy, there is no habitat for birds.  In addition, sun coffee tends to be treated with pesticides and contributes to erosion (one of the reasons Honduras had such terrible landslides when Hurricane Mitch went through).  There is tons of information on the web about the benefits of shade grown coffee, so I won’t regurgitate it here but instead send you over to the Seattle Audubon Site, one of the biggest proponents of shade grown coffee.

Finca Esperanza Verde has a direct NC connection, and not just with the Kentucky Warblers, Black-throated Green Warblers, Wood Thrushes and many other species that spend summers here and winters there.  The coffee from this farm is bought and roasted exclusively by Counter Culture Coffee in Durham NC.  In addition, the nearest town to the finca is San Ramon, which is a sister city to Durham.  The finca and sister city relationship has put the coffee profits into San Ramon in many ways, from being able to pay its harvesters a good wage to building schools and improving city infrastructure.

The reason why we band birds here is twofold. For one thing, there are many holes in known habits of wintering neotropical migrants.  This project, through the capture/recapture of birds gives us some baseline data about the birds (we had a Louisiana Waterthrush recaptured in the same net as the original capture 4 years apart!) as well as giving the finca information about its resident birds.

Another One… December 2, 2008

Another odd question today at work, from the general public:

“What kind of bird existed in NC 4-6 million  years ago?”

I didn’t know, so I had to go bug the paleontologists.  The answer, just so you know, is Auks.  Not sure what kind of Auk.  And a few albatross bones have been found too, and some sort of prehistoric turkey.

Bird Detective December 1, 2008

Part of my job is to answer questions from the public about birds.  People get my number, or they email me, and I give them information.  Usually the questions are pretty straight forward, for example: every time Duke Gardens adds a new exotic duck species to its menagerie, the same Durham resident emails me a photo so that I may identify the bird for him(note to Duke Gardens: maybe some signage is a good idea).  Anyway, recently I got an interesting request:  I got contacted by a Christian Research Investigator asking me to identify feathers that had fallen during a service inside a church, and were believed to be angel feathers.

Now, first I would like to make the disclaimer that there are feather experts in the world, and I am so not one of them. In fact, I am probably at the opposite end of the spectrum of all those folks, but apparently all had said no to his request for identification.  However, I agreed to take a look at the feathers because I figured I could at least tell him what they were not.

This made me think, though, about the person’s intention who dropped the feathers in the middle of church. It seems like a cool device to encourage the parishioners to think about God’s ability to do amazing things.  If this is the case,  it seems sort of like wrecking the moment by spending all this time trying to figure it exactly what happened.  Or maybe it is just someone playing a prank?

Anyway, I should say that I am getting  feathers to identify in the mail, and that the researcher guy is really very nice.

Madame President October 26, 2008

I apologize for the scarcity of post these days, but I am about to take over as the new President of the Wake Audubon Society and we are having some cash flow issues.  I have been knee deep in writing a fundraising letter (oh, quit snickering, I have multiple editors on that project, thank you) and reading up on all sorts of interesting things like membership (how to expand) fundraising ideas (besides the letter) and getting ready for our annual board retreat (I sort of don’t like calling it a retreat because really, its just an all day meeting).  After next weekend I promise, more posts!

And now, the Bonner Bridge September 27, 2008

While we are on vacation on the Outer Banks, we had a storm that caused the roads to flood, then get closed, and as a result we were stranded on vacation.  Though this was OK for us, as we were doing nothing and had plenty of provisions (and the house until Saturday) I imagine that for a resident trying to get to Nags Head, or really anywhere on the Northern NC Coast, or Hwy 64 (main route across NC to Raleigh and points West) or the regional hospital it is annoying.  These road closures are common.

Which brings me to my pet peeve of the moment.  The Bonner Bridge.  For those of you who are not familiar with the NC Outer Banks (you should go Google earth it now) they are a serious of very narrow sandy islands between the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds and the Atlantic Ocean.  There is one highway that runs the length of the southern outer banks, and this is Highway 12.  The Bonner Bridge is a large bridge of Hwy 12 that connects the town of Nags Head with all the towns to the south of it.

The very nature of  barrier islands is that they move and migrate as the various storms move the sand around.  The islands grow and shrink depending on where the inlets are, and the sand of the beaches has a natural southward migration.  For more information and details about barrier islands and their dynamics, check this out.   Orrin Pilkey is a Duke Professor who has spent a lot of his career on this subject, so for some FAQs read this.

In an amazing moment of doing the right thing for the environment, the State of North Carolina has banned all hard structures on beaches, which means, no seawalls, no jettys, no sandbags.   This is a very good thing, because all of those man made structures interrupt the natural flow of the sand and can lead to massive erosion issues around them.   A quick look at Edisto Island in SC from the air will show you this: when you have a jetty sticking out into the ocean, it causes the sand north of it to pile up and the sand south of it to quickly recede.  You may have a large patch of sand in front of your house, but your neighbor to the right is pretty upset!  I won’t really get into the eroding of homes into the ocean, because that is a whole different ball of wax but suffice to say that barrier islands being as dynamic as they are probably are not the best place to build homes right on the ocean.

Anyway, the Bonner Bridge.  This bridge needs desperately to be replaced. Its old and unsafe and has lived long past its expected lifespan.   It goes over Oregon Inlet, which is an important passageway for folks getting to the ocean by boat and the fishing industry depends on it.  Like all inlets on barrier islands, it moves around and is moving about 75 feet a year south. which leads to a constant dredging operation and hundreds of thousands of dollars of maintenance on the bridge (being built on moving sands, you know, not the most easy to maintain).  Oregon Inlet and the Bonner Bridge  also have the only seawalls in NC which have led to extensive erosion south of the bridge on Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, and as a result Hwy 12 is now so close to the ocean through Pea Island (and it was moved about 20 years ago further inland) that every storm, like the one last week, causes sand and water to wash over the road.  Did I mention that Pea Island is a mecca for Birdwatchers?  Its amazing the diversity there.

There are two options on the table right now to replace the bridge.  One is to replace it exactly as is (aka the Short Bridge [I couldn't find a link for this, sorry]).  The other is to build a much longer bridge, essentially an elevated highway that will go over the entire Pea Island refuge (aka the Long Bridge) for 17 miles until it gets to the first set of towns: Rodanthe, Waves and Salvo.  The difference is the cost in the short term.  The Long Bridge is much more expensive to construct but will require no future maintenance.  The short bridge is not as expensive to build but requiring millions of dollars in maintenance and clearing of sand and water from the road, bridge safety, etc, etc as it has since 1964 when the bridge was first opened.  So, of course, what does the state plan to do?  Build the Short Bridge.

Anyway,  if the Short Bonner Bridge is built,  Hwy 12 will continue to strand residents and cost the state a ton of money in upkeep.  Though getting stranded was not a big deal for us, as we were on vacation and had plenty of booze, I would hate to think of anyone who needed to get anywhere in a hurry.

If you want to do something click here, but I think its too late.

My Storm-tossed Vacation September 27, 2008

Back from a week of serious sloth at the NC Outer Banks.  The weather was a mixed bag,  frequently  very windy so we couldn’t go on the beach without getting micro-derm abrasion on our ankles.  That’s OK, since we had a hot tub and heated pool to amuse ourselves with in the meantime.  We did have a storm on Wed and Thurs, that “low pressure system” off the NC coast which kept us mostly inside, with the in home theater (seats 12, don’t ya know) and playing massively long card games.  Let it be known for the record that I really am terrible at Spades, though I like playing very much.

Friday was a truly gorgeous day, sunny, no wind, I even went swimming in the ocean!  (The rip current warnings, for once, were not in effect).

So, what birds did I see?  Well, like I said it was a week of sloth.  So not much.   Though, what with the storms and whatnot I had high hopes for maybe some pelagic birds to get pushed to the coast.  I did see a very very sweet Semipalmated Plover, the usual Sanderlings and Willets, a Merlin, and a juvie Parula Warbler.

We had great company in the folks who were with us, ate great food, and drank many tasty drinks, including lots of Mimosas, Old fashioneds and Bloody Cesears (a Bloody Mary with clamato, which is actually quite tasty, not as heavy as the usual Marys).  I can hardly wait until next year!  Thank you Outer Banks!

FYI, Chris and I are now drying out, and there are no plans to drink for at least a week….

Offshore drilling: not an issue for compromise September 12, 2008

Ok everyone, I apologize for another polically minded post but this is an issue very much on my mind, and being a bird person I feel like I do have some insight most might not.

Offshore drilling on the SE US coast is a bad idea.  Its bad anywhere, and I hate to see the Dems “compromise” on this.  I feel like they wouldn’t do this, but its an election year and gas is expensivo.

- Off the coast of NC we have a unique situation.  The warm Gulf Stream mixes with the cold Laborador Current and creates a temperate body of water.  In addition, the continental crust goes extends quite a bit, and then drops suddenly.  So you have this unique body of water, combined with a geologic feature that allows it to expand to different depths.  In short off the coast of NC the ocean is just teeming with life.  Probably one of the reasons the fishing is so renowned.

- All these fish attract a whole lotta birds.  Pelagic species, which means the birds spend most of thier lives on the water, flying and swimming and sleeping.  These are birds that only go to land every year or so when they breed.  Most breed on remote islands around the world, and they have low productivity (one egg) and are slow to reach sexual maturity (in Northern Gannets, a common winter bird, its 8 years).  This means that if they have a bad year, i.e.  an oil spill that seriously effects the total population numbers.

-Some pelagic birds that breed in the Caribbean come all the way to the NC gulf stream area to get food for chicks!  That is a long round trip.  But that is how important this area is

-Other birds use the gulf stream as a migration flyway. Studies have shown that Cory’s and Greater Shearwaters (among others) fly to the UK, down the European coast to Africa, and then back across to Latin America.  These birds have migration patterns that segregate the males and female and sometimes adults and young.  So, if we have an oil spill while the females are coming though?  Thats it.  Thats all she wrote.  there are no more females to come through.

-I only know about birds, but there are also pelagic fish (tuna, for example, and the billfish) and whales that migrate here.  Lots of turtles, too.

-Once you get out to the Gulf Stream, you have the Saragassum Sea. Saragussum is floating seaweed mats, home to lots of critters:  baby sea turtles,  saragassum crabs, fish, all kinds of critters depend on this ecosystem.  Having been out there I can tell you it is already full of trash, but we don’t need it to get oiled.

-Drilling for oil off our coast is an uncertain gamble.  It is not going to make the price at the pump go down, even if they do discover reserves out there, for about 20 years.

-(my opinion here, not a fact that I know) the drilling ban has only been in effect for about 20 years.  If there was the chance for large reserves out there, I think they would have been explored before the ban went into place.

Thats all.  Thanks for reading!  Now, if you want to make your voice heard about this issue, here is an Audubon Petition to sign.

What happens to birds during a hurricane September 6, 2008

I know I will get asked this a bunch this month, so I am writing this to satiate everyone’s curiosity.  During a hurricane, most birds like your feeder birds, hawks, owls, etc just hunker down on a branch close to the center of a tree, where the wind will be lessened.  Now, here is the thing: birds don’t have to think about gripping the branch….its like breathing for us, totally involuntary.  As the bird “relaxes” its claws tighten around the branch or whatever it is sitting on.

Now, there are some bad sides of hurricanes for birds: one being loss of habitat.  After Katrina many, many trees fell down.  The gulf coast is a major flyway for migrating songbirds, so you can bet a lot of birds didn’t make it that year. Plus many, many species of birds nest in cavities (natural holes in dead/dying branches) and lots of those branches come down, meaning loss of nesting space for the next spring.  Many birds, like chickadees, titmice, bluebirds, and nuthatches, use the same cavities every year so they may be in trouble the next spring.  In addition, pelagic seabirds (shearwaters, tropicbirds, and storm petrels, for example) sometimes get caught in hurricanes and deposited far inland in a weakened state and they usually do not make it.

Ok, now you know!!