About Those Birds

I’ve just finished reading the book A Shadow and a Song: The Race to Save an Endangered Species by Mark Jerome Walters. Here’s the Amazon link.

Was that race won? No, it wasn’t. This book chronicled the extinction of the dusky seaside sparrow. That species had such a tiny range, which meant it was extremely specialized. It’s story starts with the building of the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida. However, that wasn’t what started their decline – it was Mosquito Control. Mosquito Control built dikes, which turned the water fresh. Ducks then moved in and ducks brought money, so there was no real incentive to take the dikes out. The Merritt Island population dwindled. Then a large population was found up near the St. John’s River, but a highway was put in shortly after. It seems that this small, highly specialized bird could never catch a break. Backbreeding with another close species was forbidden by the Fish and Wildlife Service and by the time it was out of their hands the four remaining male sparrows were too old to produce viable offspring. The species went extinct in the mid-eighties.

That’s a short summary of what happened, but the book is not something to miss. I thought it was very well written and told a great story of how the newly enacted Endangered Species Act failed this bird. People just viewed it as some unassuming, non-important sparrow – just something to look passed. That was the non-caring attitude, which forced this bird to fade away. If you have a chance one day – you should read this book. It’s not a scientific book, but it is a good, tragic story.

Today I did a presentation about two parts of the State of the Birds Report, the coasts and the oceans. I’m studying the oceans in school, so those two subjects were appropriate. My major is ocean and coastal resources and I have a seminar in marine sciences class. This class meets once a week and each student gives a presentation. This week was my week.

I had found the State of the Birds Report a few months ago and it is a fascinated, albeit, saddening report. Most everybody else in the class did scientific reports from magazines like Science, but I decided to do something I was passionate about. I was not able to do the entire report because it is long so I focused just on the beginning, coasts, oceans, and the end. It was great fun to put together the presentation because this is something I like to do, not just some assignment I had to do.

I have posted my presentation here in pdf format. You’re welcome to take a look at it!

Click here to see the presentation.

Also, I haven’t been posting too much lately because of school. I had three tests last week, another test this week, a project this week, a presentation this week, a presentation next week, another test next week, a huge presentation due in two weeks, a huge semester long project to work on, and a 10 page paper to write. It’s rather stressful, but I have not forgotten to post and I will when I get a chance. One more thing – if any of you are Aggies that read this – I get my ring this Friday and its very exciting!

Here’s an amazing video of a hummingbird that I came across a few weeks ago. I just don’t know how that hummingbird let that guy do that. Just wow.

Click here to see the video (I was unable to embed it in the post – sorry).

I love kingfishers and I find it rather unfortunate that there aren’t amazingly colorful kingfishers here in North America. They are rather mundane in coloring, but that’s ok, I still love to see them. Last week, I found this awesome picture of a diving kingfisher. I don’t know how the photographer got this picture, but it’s awesome.

Picture: credit National Geographic

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Hi and welcome to About Those Birds.

This site is designed around birds, especially news about birds. It will focus on the conservation and news side of the avian world. I will later add an information page about birds that you can see around North America, but let’s focus on news first.

I will aim to post nearly everyday, so please check back frequently. There’s so much information and new things happening in the birding world, that there’s fresh information everyday. That means no redundancy, which is good and what you want.

Thank you for visiting and I sincerely hope you come back soon!

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Ethics is not usually the word that comes to mind when thinking of photography, but it should be when thinking of live subjects, especially wary subjects like birds. In an article about wildlife photography the author details how some photographers will go to the extremes to get a shot. Not because it’s a great shot, but for the money that it will make them. This includes putting birds in cages with some foliage to simulate a natural habitat. Extremes like this are most prevalent in other countries, where photographers may lose all inhibitions just to get that money shot. This is sad because it can affect species that may be endangered, but the photographer didn’t know or didn’t care.

When using a hide to watch nesting birds, it is important to respect them and their space. Removing foliage from around the nest can cause predators to catch the babies and that’s not good. Also, don’t crowd the nesters, for they may leave because they may feel threatened. Its very important to respect these species even if the photographer is trying to get a great shot. Its better to lose a shot than it is to push a species more towards extinction.

The birds’ welfare should come first, above all else. How else will we be able to save them?

Image by Slim Sreedharan

‘Till next time – enjoy!