Sooty Shearwaters Have Longest Migration

According to new research, sooty shearwaters make the longest known migration. The birds travel close to 40,000 miles each year from their breeding grounds around New Zealand to their wintering grounds in the North Pacific. That way, the birds can take advantage of the summer in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Scientists were able to track this route using electronic tracking tags.

Between January and March 2005, 33 birds at two breeding colonies in New Zealand were fitted with tags weighing 6g, allowing researchers to track their journey.

In the autumn of that year, 20 of the tags were recovered when the birds returned to their burrows at the breeding grounds; 19 of the devices had successfully recorded the bird's movements.

Data showed that some birds travelled up to 910km (565 miles) in a day, and dived to depths of 68m in their search for food.

One interesting result of the study is that individual birds do not travel around the circumference of the Pacific, as previously thought. Instead they travel quickly to one of the winter feeding grounds, located near California, Alaska, and Japan, and then return quickly to their breeding grounds at the end of the southern winter. Below is a map showing the travels of the 19 shearwaters with working tags.

Blue = Breeding season activity
Yellow = Flight north
Orange = Wintering activity and flight south

Chimney Swifts are Coming!

I encourage you to check out this web site reported below and to report any Chimney Swifts you see this spring. Your report might be the first report of swifts for the area. Local reports have noted Tree Swallows are moving through now. I look forward to the electrical cheery chirps of my insect eating friends.

Since Chimney Swifts thrive in urban areas, the DC Metropolitan area is a prime location to see them. Keep your ears and eyes altert for them.
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The first Chimney Swifts of 2006 have been spotted on the Gulf Coast. Once again this year we will be plotting the swifts' movements northward over the next few months. Please let us know when you see the first ones in your area. The results will be posted on our web site at:

www.chimneyswifts.org

You can help us get the word our by passing this message along to any groups or organizations who might want to contribute.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Best Regards,
Paul and Georgean
Driftwood Wildlife Association1206 West 38th, Suite 1105Austin, TX 78705

Please visit our web site.

Thanks to our friends at Travis Audubon Society for sending out this message for us.

Twas A Swift Night Out

A SWIFT NIGHT OUT is a continent-wide effort to raise awareness about and encourage interest in Chimney Swifts and Vaux's Swifts. The project was originally inspired by John Connors with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As summer draws to a close and the swifts have finished raising their young, these aerial acrobats begin to congregate in communal roosts prior to their migration in the fall. Some roosts may consist of an extended family group of a half a dozen birds or so, but the larger sites can host hundreds or even thousands of swifts!

Here is how it works: Spotters kept their eyes to the skies at dusk in late July and watched for areas where swifts were feeding. They looked for a tall shaft, chimney or similar structure to locate where Chimney Swifts (central to east coast) or Vaux's Swift (Pacific coast) go to roost in their area.



On one night over the weekends of August 12, 13, 14, and / or September 9, 10, 11 spotters observed the roost starting about 30 minutes before dusk and estimate the number of swifts that enter. They sent their numbers in to the North American Chimney Swift Nest Site Research Project.

The DC Birding Blog spotted a swift site around the corner of Massachusetts Ave and 3rd St, NE read here.

* Chimney Swift Webcam
* More on The Chimney Swift

Mexico Bound Monarchs Picks Up Ultralight Hitchhiker

(By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

Many may say that Butterflies have no business on a bird blog, but these butterflies behave like birds; they migrate, they winter in a temperate climate, and now they have their very own entourage complete with Ultralight. (see also Whooping Cranes)

Every autumn, an estimated 300 million monarch butterflies head south from Canada and the northern United States to winter in California and Mexico. The journey of up to 3,000 miles can last three months. One of the major routes takes them over the Washington area.

This year, for the first time, the monarch's transcontinental migration is being tracked and filmed by a crew, using an ultralight plane to make a one-hour documentary about the butterflies, their migration and the challenges they face.

The plane, named Papalotzin, which means "little butterfly" in an Aztec language, is painted to look like a monarch butterfly. It weighs about 397 pounds, has a wingspan of about 33 feet and carries a crew of two -- one to fly and one to film.

Peak migration for the monarch occurs in late September and early October and follows a route over Maryland and the District. Monarchs usually have a life span of four to five weeks, but those that migrate live seven to eight months.

Monarchs are the only butterflies in the world that make such an arduous annual migration, a journey that the World Conservation Union has declared "an endangered migratory phenomenon," according to the World Wildlife Fund.

In winter, they live in colonies that cluster on fir trees in the pine and oyamel forests of central Mexico. But that habitat is being threatened by illegal logging and other human activities that are thinning the forests, despite the creation in 2000 of the 130,000-acre Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

* Read more from The Washington Post
* Tracked the journey at http://www.papalotzin.com

Photo: Cathy Plume of the World Wildlife Fund and pilot Francisco "Vico" Gutierrez talk about the monarch-colored ultralight, the Papalotzin, being used to film the butterfly migration.

Red Flag For Red Knot

The Red Knot has one of the longest migration patterns, traveling from Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of south America to the Arctic to nest during the brief summer months. Every year, millions of shorebirds including Red Knots, Sanderlings, and Ruddy Turnstones, stop off on the shores of the Delaware Bay on their way to the Arctic to breed, where they come to feed on the eggs of horseshoe crabs that spawn on the beaches at the same time of year. It is one of nature's great migration spectacles.

The Delaware Bay is their final "re-fueling" stop on the way north, where they beef up for the long flight ahead and put on extra weight for nesting, the birds need the crab eggs to sustain them through the remaining leg of their long migration north, some 4,000 miles.

Overharvesting of the crabs for use as bait in conch and eel pots has meant a less bountiful take for the birds which longterm could be detrimental to the species. A study conducted by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection predicts the Red Knot could face extinction in 5 years, read the Reuter's story.

* Act now to help save the Red Knots
* Audubon calls for emergency action
* More info on Red Knott

* Help the count

The Bird Fest Begins At The National Zoo

Bird Fest At The National Zoo (April 30-May 5th)

Come Celebrate International Migratory Bird Day

Saturday, April 30 to Thursday, May 5

Weekend family festival:
Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Highlights:

• "Superbirds!" special, live theatre program for school groups on May 3, 4, and 5.
  Showtimes 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., daily.
• Book signing and lecture by David Sibley—May 2, 7:30 p.m. Lecture will be "Birdwatching in the 21st Century" where he will talk about illustrating and writing the Sibley Guides to Birds and the joys and challenges of birding and bird conservation.
• Flying WILD Teacher Workshop, Saturday, April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon
• DC Audubon Society will be and exhibitor
• Links for more information on event and to volunteer.
  

She Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along

Spring is here at last. The Cherry Blossoms are painted pink across the Tidal Basin and Dawn is full of the songs of the American Robin. The National Wildlife Federation has a nice website dedicated to this harbinger of Spring.

Its name in Spanish is "mirlo primavera" which means spring blackbird. The robin is one of the first birds to sing in the morning and is one of the last to be heard at night. The male is most vocal, usually singing from high points in the morning and during courtship.

An Evening With The Mother Goose Of The Whooping Cranes

Photo courtesy CBS News

It takes an unusual type of person to help teach a flock of birds to migrate. Flying in ultralight aircraft, that's exactly what Operation Migration pilots are doing by leading rare and endangered birds on their migration from wintry northern climes to warm southern locales. The organization's latest endeavor, working jointly with government agencies and other non-profit organizations, is to teach whooping cranes a migration route from central Wisconsin to the west coast of Florida.

Hope Takes Wing - A Journey To Save A Species is a 56-minute film chronicling the history of the Whooping crane and details their 2003 southward ultralight-guided journey, finishing with the cranes' somewhat different return trip north in the spring of 2004. A Lecture follows the film at 8 p.m. Joe Duff, one of Canada's leading commercial photographers, is Co-Founder of Operation Migration and was a key player in the production of the 1995 movie, "Fly Away Home."

General Electric Aviation Lecture
An Evening with Joe Duff
Wednesday, April 27
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Lockheed Martin IMAX® Theater Gallery
115 National Air and Space Museum, National Mall

Related stories on Blog: Whooping Crane Killed By Bobcat

Crane Cam Captures Nebraska Homecoming

Source: National Geographic

The Platte River Valley comes alive with the songs of the sandhill crane every spring. From late February to early April half a million cranes pass through the Platte on their northern migration to breeding grounds in Siberia, Canada, and Alaska. Coming in overlapping shifts, they stay for about three weeks at a time—creating the largest gathering of cranes in the world. National Geographic has set up a live Crane Cam on the Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary so you can eavesdrop in on their fun.

*Audubon Magazine story on the Platte River Party

*Highlights from 2004 migration

Whooping Crane Killed By Bobcat

(AP) An experimental flock of whooping cranes has lost one of its youngest members to a Florida bobcat but could be on the verge of producing chicks in the wild for the first time.

Six older cranes in the five-year effort to establish a migratory flock of the endangered birds between Wisconsin and Florida have formed into pairs and are being monitored closely for signs of nesting and breeding behavior, according to Operation Migration, the nonprofit group that has helped coordinate the project.

A Web update on the flock posted by Heather Ray, the group's director of operations, said a bobcat killed one of the cranes that were raised in Wisconsin last year -- just as some of the other cranes have been beginning their flight north.

Remains of the male crane were found not far from a winter pen at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Tampa, Florida, she said.

Researchers expect the surviving 12 young cranes to soon begin their flight north, reversing the 1,200-mile route they followed when led by ultralight aircraft from central Wisconsin to Florida in the fall.

*AP story can be read on CNN.com
*60 Minutes Weekday's Charlie Rose profiled the effort in early March

*More on Operation Migration

The Flight Of the Albatross And Other Frigatebird Tales

Source: Natural History Magazine

Albatrosses and frigatebirds spend most of their long lives soaring over the sea. Now miniature electronic trackers and sensors are telling the tales of their adventures. Natural History Magazine ran the story last October.

Frigatebirds live for decades, but albatrosses hold the record for seabirds, reaching ages of sixty to seventy years and continuing to reproduce into their fifties. The studies of the wandering albatross have repeatedly brought the writer to two of the most remote islands in the Southern Ocean, Crozet and Kerguelen, where the birds breed and nest.

The trackers found that during a single foraging trip, which typically lasted between ten and fifteen days, the birds flew more than 1,800 miles from their nests and covered as much as 9,300 miles. They traced huge irregular loops, and made smaller-scale zigzagging movements within the loops that added substantially to the total length of the trip. To save energy, they soared on tailwinds or side winds. When the winds died, they alighted and drifted on the sea until the winds picked up again.

Heart-rate monitors showed that albatrosses' heart rates during flight are only 10 to 20 percent higher than they are when the birds are at rest. In contrast, the heart rates of other birds in typical flapping flight can rise to as much as 200 percent higher than the baseline level.

The patchy distribution of prey requires long-distance foraging. Long-distance foraging means the chicks are fed at long intervals, and so they develop independence slowly. The nine months between hatching and fledging forces the adults to skip a year between breeding attempts. All in all, the bird's slow-paced life probably contributes to its lengthy life span. And perhaps the decade it takes an albatross to reach reproductive maturity is time spent learning how to find the right winds and ride them while keeping a weather eye out for prey.

Source: Natural History Magazine

For more on the mythical Albatross revisit Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

An early Common Nighthawk

DC AUDUBON SOCIETY

Recently, a Common Nighthawk was seen very clearly in town. Would anyone have an idea why this nighthawk may be migrating so early?

Birds Breathalyzed But Not For Drinking And Flying

According to the Washington Post migrating songbirds stop periodically to eat and store energy for the next leg of their journeys. Now, thanks to a tiny, three-valve "bird breathalyzer," scientists can figure out what they're eating, and it's not always what seems obvious.

Working on Block Island off the Rhode Island coast, Brigham Young University ecologist Kent A. Hatch led a team that sampled the breath of migrating white-throated sparrows and yellow-rumped warblers that stopped, ostensibly to feed on bayberries, before continuing south to the Caribbean. The research was reported in the current issue of the journal Oecologia.

Hatch uses his breathalyzer, which shows what a bird has been eating.

The team caught the birds with fine-mesh nets, put the mask on and let them breathe and re-breathe the oxygen before releasing them. They drew off the breath sample with the syringe and analyzed it for isotope content in a mass spectrometer.

Hatch said the warblers ate bayberries exclusively for the previous 12 hours, the period covered by the breathalyzer. But the sparrows' diet also included corn, millet or sorghum -- probably from bird feeders, he said, because Block lsland is not known for agriculture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58849-2005Feb27.html

Bird Fest At The National Zoo (April 30-May 5th)

Bird Fest 2005

Celebrate International Migratory Bird Day at the National Zoo

Saturday, April 30 to Thursday, May 5

Weekend family festival:
Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Highlights:

• "Superbirds!" special, live theatre program for school groups on May 3, 4, and 5.
  Showtimes 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., daily.
• Book signing and lecture by David Sibley—May 2, 7:30 p.m. Lecture will be "Birdwatching in the 21st Century" where he will talk about illustrating and writing the Sibley Guides to Birds and the joys and challenges of birding and bird conservation.
• Flying WILD Teacher Workshop, Saturday, April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon
  

Links for more information on event and to volunteer.

Songs Of Spring Are In The Air

As the end of February draws near our feathered neighbors are getting more vocal.

In the National Geographic article John Hanson Mitchell says, "These are all winter birds. It's still winter, but the light, the changing light, has a hormonal trigger, and that starts the birdsong." He is an editor with the Massachusetts Audubon Society in Lincoln and author of A Field Guide to Your Own Back Yard.

The singing of the winter-resident birds is among the first signs that spring is around the corner.