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Playing “Jenga” with nature

Ecosystems are like the game of Jenga...take one piece away you don't know what will happen.

Ecosystems are like the game of Jenga…take one piece away you don’t know what will happen.

You never know what will happen when you remove one piece of the puzzle.  Can it survive for a little while longer, albeit in a weakened state?  Or will it all come crashing down when that one piece gets removed?

Yes, I could be talking about the game of “Jenga”, something many of us have played.  But in this case I’m talking about nature.  In the journal Science Advances, research was just published that discusses a link between hawk populations in the southwestern U.S. and breeding success of Black-chinned Hummingbirds.  One wouldn’t immediately think there was much of a link between the two species.  Hummingbirds are far too small and quick for most hawk species to deal with.  They likely couldn’t capture them, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be more than a mouthful.  So how are the species linked?

As the paper discusses, there are actually three bird species who interact to affect nesting success of the hummingbird.  In addition to the Black-chinned Hummingbird, the study looked at Cooper’s Hawks and Mexican Jays.  What they found was that nesting success was much higher for the hummingbirds when they nested very close to Cooper’s Hawk nests.  The Cooper’s Hawks don’t feed on the hummingbirds, but they ARE a threat to Mexican Jays, and Mexican Jays will readily eat hummingbird eggs and young if they get a chance.  In one case, after Cooper’s Hawks left one nesting location, the researchers immediately saw Mexican Jays move in and decimate all hummingbird nests in the area.

Jenga…ala Mother Nature.  That’s what so scary when human beings start to interfere in natural systems.  One of the most publicized impacts of the removal of one species from a system is the Yellowstone ecosystem, before and after the reintroduction of wolves.  It was expected that the reintroduction would impact ungulate populations in the area, but it soon became apparent just how far-reaching an impact wolves have on the ecosystem.  Without wolves, elk and deer browsed freely in lowlands, resulting in nearly all young aspen trees to be browsed to the ground.  Aspen habitat all but disappeared in the park, but with the reintroduction of wolves, that habitat is now being reborn.  With increased aspen came more beavers.  With more aspen habitat and beaver ponds came an influx of more songbirds and other species that use those habitat.  With more wolves, there were fewer coyotes, which meant more small mammals and an increase in numbers of red fox, eagles, and ravens.

All due to the removal of one species.

Be it hawks in the Southwest or wolves in Yellowstone, the removal of one key species can have cascading impacts on the entire ecosystem.  The same certainly can be true in the “reverse” case, where a new, exotic species is introduced into the system.  As a scientist, it’s fascinating to see the incredible impacts humans have on ecosystems, both through how they manage the landscape, and in how they manage the wildlife within that landscape. As just a human being…it also can be pretty depressing to see how we negatively impact so many ecosystems.

Hummingbird perspective

Photo of Rufous Hummingbird in FLight

Drink up little Rufous Humminbird! One flower down, 1,163 cans of Coke (hummingbird equivalent) to go!!

From Slate.com, there’s a nice feature today about the “fierceness” of hummingbirds:

Hummingbirds are Fierce, Deadly Gods of War

I can relate to this.  Pop (hey, I’m from the Midwest, it’s “pop”, not “soda” or anything else) is my downfall.  I don’t drink coffee, and especially during the week, a can of pop somehow makes it into my office.  Mostly it’s Coke.  If I’m really having a bad, tiring day, a Mountain Dew has been known to slip into my office.  But having an occasional can of Coke is nothing, if you read this story.

Given the metabolism of a hummingbird, they consume half their body weight in sugar every day.  As the article notes, an equivalent would be a human being drinking 1,163 cans of Coke a day, or 1,106 cans of Pepsi (Pepsi has more sugar).

Therefore, I have determined my occasional can of Coke isn’t bad.  It may actually be a health food, based on this comparison.  Not only am I drinking the “right” pop in Coke (the less sugary one), but I’m only drinking 0.09% of my daily allowance of sugar, in hummingbird terms.

It’s all a matter of perspective…

Hummingbirds “trapped” in garages and other structures

Ruby-throated Hummingbird at honeysuckle

Hummingbirds are easily attracted to brightly colored objects. To them, a dangling red object in your garage may represent flower and food! Hummingbirds can easily get “trapped” inside a structure like a garage, and its imperative to help them find their way back outside before they become exhausted.

A beautiful South Dakota summer evening, and thus I was out doing yard work last night.  As I typically do when I’m outside, I had the garage doors open, even as I worked in the backyard.  After cleaning up some branches from a tree I’d trimmed, I came in the back door of the garage and immediately saw a hummingbird hovering in the garage, near the door.  As I approached he (a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird) was a little confused as to the way out, but fortunately he did manage to find the door and head out.

The timing of this was interesting, in that just yesterday I came across this story of a hummingbird “trapped” in a fire station, with the firemen rescuing it and feeding it sugar before sending it on its way.  Unfortunately it’s not that rare to have a hummingbird trapped in a garage or other structure.

A couple of years ago, I again was working outside, returned to the garage, and saw a hummingbird flying around.  Our garage roof is rather high, perhaps 15 feet to the ceiling.  However, the doors themselves are the standard 7-8 feet high.  Hummingbirds seem to have difficulty with structures such as this.  They become attracted to something in the garage and come in the open door, but their first instinct to get out seems to be to head upwards.  Once they do so and get above the height of the garage opening themselves, they seem to get “stuck”, and aren’t able to understand the way back out through the garage door.

In the incident two years ago, it was very disheartening to watch the hummingbird (again, a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird) quickly wear itself out as it flew madly around the garage, trying to find a way out.  All my efforts to “shoo” it out through an opening failed, as did efforts to lure it to a lower height with a hummingbird feeder and flowers.  “Out” for it seemingly meant “up”, and it soon became so tired that it perched on a wire going to my garage door opener, refusing to move. It was my wife who saved the day.  She got a very long feather duster with a long extendable handle, and moved the feathery end up towards the hummingbird.  The exhausted hummingbird was so tired it didn’t want to fly, but it did eventually cling to the feather duster.  Very slowly and carefully, my wife lowered the feather duster and moved outside through the garage door.  The hummingbird was still so tired it didn’t want to move, but after resting for perhaps 10 minutes on the feather duster, it finally did fly off…hopefully to find a nectar source to feed on.

Having a hummingbird trapped in your garage or other building definitely isn’t a rarity!  It can be disheartening and frustrating to try to make the hummingbird understand where “outside” is.  One thing you can do to prevent a “trapped” hummingbird is to remove any attractant within a open structure.  Do you have a cord that dangles down from your garage door opener, a manual release?  Chances are the end of that cord has a red ball or other such component.  My garage door openers both had red plastic balls on the end, and to a hungry hummingbird, such a dangling device potentially means “flower” and “nectar”.  I removed the red balls from my garage door openers and replaced them with large plain weights in the hopes of lowering the chances of hummingbirds flying into the garage.

You’re not alone if you have a hummingbird “trapped”in your garage!  If it happens to you, don’t wait for the bird to find its own way out, do everything you can to “assist” the bird in finding the way outside.  It doesn’t take long for a trapped hummingbird to burn through its energy supply and become exhausted, and without help, a trapped hummingbird can easily (and quickly) perish.

Hummingbirds in the U.S. Virgin Islands!

Green-throated Carib - Eulampis holosericeus

A Green-throated Carib, hanging out on their favorite tree with the pink tubular flowers. As always, click for a larger view.

I have quite a few bird (and other) photos from our trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and am just starting to go through and process them.  From a birding standpoint, it was certainly a blast to see a number of new species!  However, as a rule, the smaller the island, the fewer the number of species are found, and St. John’s isn’t a very big island.  Over 430 bird species have been found in South Dakota, quite a few for a location over 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean.  St. John’s, on the other hand, hasn’t had many more than 150 species.

While the number of “new” species for me wasn’t high, there were certainly some very cool birds that you’re not going to find in South Dakota!  A highlight for me as a birder is finding and photographing new hummingbird species (one reason why I love Arizona so much!).  While other species have visited one or more of the islands on rare occasions, but the U.S. Virgin Islands only have two regular hummingbird species, the Green-throated Carib and the Antillean Crested Hummingbird.  I’ve never been in the Caribbean, and neither is found in the United States, so both were new for me!

The U.S. Virgin Islands are experiencing quite the drought right now, and one thing that shocked me upon arriving was just how dry and brown much of St. John’s was.  Most of the island is a dry scrubland forest anyway, but from what the locals told us, it was quite unusual to see things as dry as they were on our visit.  Despite the drought, however, there were a few species of trees and plants that were blooming profusely, including on the property of the beach house.  It didn’t take long to see both species.  We arrived on a Sunday afternoon, and within an hour of arriving at our beach house, I had seen both species.

An Antillean Crested Hummingbird, one of the few relatively clean shots I was able to get of the species.  Despite seeing them at close range multiple times, they were much more difficult to photograph, as they seemed more active and more likely to perch in heavy cover than the Green-throated Cariibs.

An Antillean Crested Hummingbird, one of the few relatively clean shots I was able to get of the species. Despite seeing them at close range multiple times, they were much more difficult to photograph, as they seemed more active and more likely to perch in heavy cover than the Green-throated Cariibs.

I don’t know the name of the tree, but there were a number of large trees with tubular pink blossoms that both hummingbirds seemed to really love.  The first hummingbird I saw and photographed was a Green-throated Carib feeding on nectar from blossoms in this tree.  In sunny St. John’s, it’s hard to miss the brilliant flash of green when you see a Green-throated Carib!  They’re also a relatively large hummingbird species, making them even more noticeable.  Unlikely pretty much every hummingbird species I’ve seen in the United States, they also have a very strongly decurved bill that’s quite noticeable.  I also came across a few other Green-throated Caribs on other locations on the island, but every time I saw one, it was hanging around one of these pink-blossomed trees.

Green-throated Carib - Eulampis holosericeus

Another Green-throated Carib, this one hovering right before heading to a pink bloom to feed.

The Antillean Crested Hummingbird is the more highly sought species from what I was told by birders familiar with the area.  They’re not hard to find on St. John’s, but they do have a pretty small range overall in the Caribbean, making them a nice addition to a birder’s checklist.  The Antillean Crested Hummingbird is quite small hummingbird, very noticeably smaller than the Green-throated Carib.  Perhaps it’s because of the size difference, but there were obvious behavioral differences between the two species.  While the Green-throated Caribs around the beach house were seemingly quite aggressive, attempting to chase away Bananaquits, Lesser Antillean Bullfinches, and other birds using their favorite flowering trees, the Antillean Crested Hummingbirds seemed to stay closer to the ground in more hidden locations.  They too really liked the pink-flowered tree, but would only use it if the Green-throated Caribs weren’t using it at the time.  They also seemed to stay closer to the ground, visiting blooms lower in the tree canopy and generally staying closer to thicker cover.  There were a number of times when I would walk around the pink-flowering trees and I would see an Antillean Crested Hummingbird perched in a thicket nearby.  They tended to stay there most of the time, flying out on occasion to feed, but immediately returning to thicker cover once they were done feeding.

That first day I was just THRILLED to see both species at very close range, and didn’t even try to photograph them.  At one point, while standing next to another tree with gorgeous orange flowers, an Antillean Crested Hummingbird began feeding on blooms a mere 3 feet away!  It was such a thrill to watch this gorgeous male Antillean Crested Hummingbird at such an extremely close range.  Given how easy they were to see that first day and how close they would feed to my position, I was quite excited for the rest of the week, anticipating many good photo opportunities!  However, as it often works with bird photography, things didn’t exactly work out as planned!  I continued to see both species throughout the week, but frustratingly, I couldn’t get nearly as close as I did that first day!  I’m not complaining much however, as I continued to get great looks through my binoculars, and did manage to get enough decent photos of both species to keep me satisfied.

Green-throated Carib - Eulampis holosericeus

And one more Green-throated Carib and the favored tree. Gives you a better look at the tree…anybody that can tell me what those trees are?

One aspect of the trip that did NOT work out as planned…I had brought along a small hummingbird feeder in my bags, anticipating setting it up and enjoying close range action not only from the hummingbirds, but from Bananaquits and other species that feed on nectar on the islands.  I set up the hummingbird feeder near one of the pink-flowering trees that first day, and waited for the heavy hummingbird action!  I waited…and waited…and waited…and not ONCE did I see a hummingbird even approach the feeder, much less start feeding on the sugar water I had put within it.  Very strange, given that both species are known to visit feeders. The Bananaquits (an ever present species on the island!) also showed no interest.  The only species that visited the hummingbird feeder? Interestingly, it was “Swabby and Captain”, the pair of Pearly-eyed Thrashers I had discussed in a previous post.

A real treat seeing both hummingbird species at close range and getting some decent photos!  I’ll post more photos of other species from the trip as I get them processed.

The perfect mother’s day gift?

Lego Bird Kit - Robin, Hummingbird, Blue Jay

Lego bird kit! The perfect gift for mother’s day! Well, maybe if your wife is also a bird nut…

For Mother’s Day, my son and I went old school for my wife.  We bought a very big outdoor flower/plant arrangement to put by the front door.  I also bought a beef tenderloin (definitely not an every day item, given the cost!), which I’ll make for dinner.

Alas, now I see I made a mistake. The PERFECT Mother’s Day gift clearly is a lego kit where you can build your own Blue Jay, or Hummingbird, or Robin.

OK, maybe not.  Something tells me that wouldn’t have gone over well, given that my (very wonderful!) wife doesn’t quite appreciate (or understand) my obsession with birds and bird photography.

Ant Moat! What a great idea!

Just came across this product:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/Droll_Yankees/Ant_Moat/prweb12685768.htm

What a great idea!  Every year, late April, we start to see ants in the house.  We spray outside around the foundation and it ends, but they are ALWAYS an issue around my hummingbird feeder.  I usually put some pesticide around the base of the pole that holds the hummingbird feeder, but that only seems to help for a day or two.  The solution? This ant moat may just do the trick!  I do believe I will have to order one….

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