How Far Can a Junco Hop?

Caption: Dark-eyed Junco photographed in Michigan by Don Virgovic and used courtesy of the USDA Forest Service Find-a-Photo.

Everyone’s familiar with the characteristic hopping behavior of Dark-eyed Juncos as they search the ground for food. How far does a junco normally hop when looking for food, and how far can they hop when they really want to get somewhere fast? Neither of those questions had ever occurred to me until earlier this afternoon.

Marjorie was standing at the patio door looking out on the snowy winter landscape when she muttered something about “birds on snowshoes.” That caught my attention. Wandering over to where she was standing, I discovered junco footprints in the freshly-fallen snow that covered the patio. One set, in particular, was particarly noticeable because of the length of the “stride.”

The scientist in me required that I take some measurements. The tracks were in soft, fluffy snow that was about 1.5 inches deep. Intervals (in inches) between successive paired footprints (as measured from the “palm” of the left foot for consistency) were as follows:: 6.2 - 7.3 - 7.6 - 8.0 - 6.1 - 6.7 - 10.2 - 9.6 - 10.5 - 9.5 - 5.0. This bird covered 86.7 inches in 11 hops before taking flight, or an average of 7.9 inches/hop, pretty impressive for a species that averages about 6 inches in length!

I also learned one other interesting piece of information: this bird always landed with the left foot slightly ahead of the right foot. What was particularly interesting about this is that other tracks in the snow clearly showed birds who hopped with the right foot slightly forward. Are there left-footed and right-footed juncos? Do individual birds consistently favor one foot over the other? Or do they switch sides?

Steve Kress on Bird Feeding

Kress, vice-president of the National Audubon Society for bird conservation and an acknowledged expert on bird feeding, was interviewed recently by Joe Lamp’l of Growing a Greener World. The interview begins at about the 5 minute mark of this podcast and runs for about 9 minutes.

Fact or Myth? Birds become dependent on your feeders and will suffer if you suddenly stop feeding them.


And the answer is . . .


Myth: Birds are mobile and adaptable and will quickly seek out alternative sources of food (natural or artificial) . Bird feeding benefits people as much as it does the birds, if not more so.

Impacts of Tar Sands Development on Birds

From the executive summary of a report issued jointly by the Boreal Songbird Initiative, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and The Pembina Institute:

The projected strip mining of 740,000 acres (300,000 hectares) of forests and wetland in the tar sands [beneath Alberta, Canada, North America’s No. 1 source of oil] will result in the loss of breeding habitat for for between 480,000 and 3.6 million adult birds. The corresponding impact on breeding will mean a loss of between 4.8 million and 36 million young birds over a 20-year period, to between 9.6 million and and 72 million birds over a 40-year period.

For additional information, read independent reactions to the news here, here, and here, and view an 8 and 1/2 minute video about the impacts here.

Hornworts of Berrien County, Michigan, and Vicinity

The hornworts (Class Anthocerotopsida) are believed to be the most ancient of the non-vascular plants. Lacking roots, stems, and typical leaves, the hornworts are easily overlooked by the casual observer.

The hornworts constitute a relatively small group of primitive plants: 180 species are recognized worldwide, 17 are known from the U.S. and Canada, and 4 have been verified from Michigan.

The two species known from southwestern Michigan (i.e., an area within 70 miles of Berrien Springs, Michigan, encompassing the counties of Allegan, Barry, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Kalamazoo, and Van Buren) represent 1 order, 2 families, and 2 genera.

The following list is based on Howard Crum’s (1991) Liverworts and hornworts of southern Michigan. Michigan counties within a 100-mile radius of Berrien County with confirmed records are listed in brackets. Habitat descriptions in quotations are from Crum.

ORDER ANTHOCEROTALES

Family Anthocerotaceae:

Anthoceros laevis – “on wet soil in harvested corn and soy bean fields and also in fields of winter wheat” [Kalamazoo]

Family Notothylaceae:

Notothylas orbicularis – “on heavy, wet soil in old fields, often at the corners of corn, soybean, and wheat fields, in ruts and tractor tracks, in pastures trodden by cattle, and on muddy footpaths” [Kalamazoo]

Acknowledgment: I thank the librarians and staff of the Buchanan District Library for their help in securing a copy of Crum (1991) from the Michigan e-Library.

Ghost Bird—The Movie (Trailer)

Here’s a little something to wet your appetite:



Ghost Bird, the long-awaited documentary by Scott Crocker, will be premiering in early 2009. Featuring interviews with David Sibley, Nancy Tanner, David Luneau, Jerome Jackson, and many others, including folks from Brinkley, Arkansas, and the curators of ornithology at Yale and Harvard, this may prove to be the definitive documentary on the enigmatic Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Precipitation Summary for November 2008

Precipitation totals were recorded daily at our home (Station MI-BN-3) on Crescent Lake near Buchanan, Michigan, following protocols established by CoCoRaHS (the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network).

Precipitation Summary:

Totals.—Measurable amounts of precipitation (i.e., ≥0.01 inches) in the form of rain or snow fell on 47 percent (14) of 30 days, with a total accumulation (water equivalency) of 2.78 inches (0.09 inches/day, or 0.20 inches/day with measurable precipitation).

Rainfall.—Moisture in the form of rain or a rain/snow mix was recorded on 9 days with a total accumulation of 1.25 inches.

Snowfall.—Precipitation in the form of snow was recorded on 8 days, with measurable accumulations on 5 days (first on the 17th) totalling 16.6 inches (0.55 inches/day, 1.84 inches/day with snow, and 3.32 inches/day with measurable snow); the water equivalency from new snow was 1.53 inches as measured from the rain gauge (0.09 inches/1.0 inch of snow) versus 1.30 inches as measured from a core sample taken from a snowboard (0.08 inches/1.0 inch of snow). The highest 1-day total was 8.5 inches on the 21st.

Snow Cover and Snow Depths.—The areal extent of snow cover was 50 percent or more on 11 days. Average snow depths on those 11 days ranged from 0.5 to 11.0 inches (on the 21st), with a median of 4.0 nches. On average, each inch of snow on the ground (new and old combined) yielded 0.11 inches of water (range 0.06 to 0.42).

Comparisons:

At CoCoRaHS stations elsewhere in Berrien and surrounding counties, measurable precipitation was recorded on 56.0 percent (375) of 669 reporting days, with values ranging from 53.0 percent in St. Joseph County (n=251) to 63.2 percent in Cass County (n=38).

Snowfall was recorded on 11.7 percent of reporting days, with values ranging from 7.7 percent in La Porte County (n=287) to 18.4 percent in Cass County.

Precipitation totals at 10 other CoCoRaHS station in Berrien and surrounding counties with 30 consecutive days (or equivalent) of measurements ranged from 1.41 to 2.51 inches (median 2.08 inches), while snowfall totals ranged from 0.0 to 15.2 inches (median 8.25 inches).

At the official weather station in South Bend, Indiana (located 12 miles SE of this station), the precipitation total for the month (1.95 inches) was 41 percent below the norm. By contrast, total snowfall (16.2 inches) was 109 percent above the norm, establishing November 2008 as the sixth snowiest November on record at that locality.

Temperature, Relative Humidity, and Dew Point (at 7:00 AM):

Temperature.—High (55 on 3rd), Median 34, Low (10 on 23rd). Freezing or sub-freezing temperatures were recorded on 12 days.

Relative Humidity.—High (99 on 27th & 29th), Median 74.5, Low (45 on 16th).

Dew Point Temperature.—High (42 on 14th), Median 22.5, Low (4 on 22nd).

Previous Reports: October 2008

Sparrow Wars

If (like me) you enjoy attracting wild birds to your yard by providing food and shelter for them, and if (like me) your enjoyment of this activity has been diminished by the arrival of noisy and quarrelsome (and non-native and invasive) House Sparrows, then I may have found the solution to your (and my) problem. It’s the Deluxe Repeating Sparrow Trap offered by Blaine Johnson at SparrowTraps.net. I just sent away for one. I plan to test it out and will record my results in a later post. Meanwhile, check out Blaine’s Web site. It’s very educational, plus, you may find something there that you like.