July 2008 - Posts
Back in 1987 Audubon bird conservationist Jesse Grantham was driving around Rockport, Texas with some friends when they noticed over 200 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds coming to some hummingbird feeders. Jesse turned to his friends and said:
"Boy, you know. That's an absolutely amazing
thing to see. That’s a natural history phenomena taking place, you can’t
see anything like that on the Discovery Channel on TV and here it is,
live and up front and right in your face. What an experience for people
to be able to witness this kind of thing going on...We ought
to create some kind of an event out of this, using the hummingbird as—as
a vehicle, as a leverage to—to bring awareness to that bird and—and the
habitat needs of that bird."
The next summer they went to the Chamber of Commerce, got a little bit of money to get started, and held their first Hummer Bird Celebration in September 1988. Its been going strong ever since, with thousands of people coming each year to celebrate the birds. For more information on the history of the festival, see the transcript or video of an interview with Jesse Grantham on the Texas Legacy Project website (There is a lot here about Jesse's involvement with bird conservation and Audubon At Home themes including invasive species; the part about the festival starts at 00:37:28).
Later, when Jesse took a position in Mississippi, he started a similar festival at the Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs. The first year they had about 300 people show up. A couple years later, when Madge Lindsay invited Bob Sargent to come and band hummingbirds at the festival, the crowds started really showing up. Last year, over 8,000 people came out to see the birds. For detatils on the upcoming 2008 festival, see the Audubon Mississippi website.
Since then, festivals have sprung up elsewhere across the country (see listings here). As Jesse Grantham notes, hummingbirds are one of the top three most charismatic birds in North America. If you live where hummingbirds congregate, consider having your own festival. For more information on how to help hummingbirds, see fact sheets on Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Anna's Hummingbirds, and Black-chinned Hummingbirds on our Birds to Help website
Audubon Mississippi's Harry the Hummingbird mascot photo by Bruce Reid.
This time each year, thousands of Purple Martins gather at large communal roost sites across eastern North America as they migrate south. Many of these roost sites are in urban areas, and some roosts contain over 100,000 birds. It is quite a spectacle to see the birds swarm to the roost site at dusk, and depart at dawn. You can watch a video of birds swirling around one such roost at the Highland Mall in Austin, TX here, and see more photos here.
If there is a roost in your community, you can help protect it by registering it with the Purple Martin Conservation Society's Project Martin Roost. If your roost is already registered, it is still important to report how many birds are using the roost so researchers can track the size of the roosts from year to year. For more information visit the Project Martin Roost website.
In some areas, birds at roosts are killed in large numbers by passing cars. At other roosts, the birds may be considered a nuisance by property managers. Several groups around the country work to protect local roosts. If you have a local roost that needs additional protection, you can see what others have done to help out by visiting some of the following websites:
Coastal Carolina Purple Martin Society (NC)
Lake Pontchartrain Causeway (LA)
Lunch Island (SC)
Roanoake Island Purple Martin Festival (VA)
Perhaps the best thing you can do to protect martin roosts is to promote martin viewing as a natural spectacle. When the management of a farmers market in Richmond, Virginia wanted to cut down trees where martins were roosting, the Richmond Audubon Society and others mobilized to change public perception and celebrate the birds. Last week, the farmer's market and the local neighborhood association hosted a "Gone to the Birds" Festival, complete with free raspberry sherbert and door prizes to entertain local martin fans.
Photo of Lewisville, TX martin roost courtesy of Kenny Crawford.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service, a longtime supporter of Audubon At Home, has a collection of wildlife habitat management leaflets produced in collaboration with the Wildlife Habitat Council (of which Audubon is a member).
Many of these are geared towards species and habitats found in more rural or agricultural areas (such as Long-billed Curlew and Mountain Plover), but many are useful in a suburban context as well. The leaflets are usually 12 or more pages of detailed information on topics including how to help:
American Kestrels
Bats
Butterflies
Eastern Bluebirds
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds
Wood Ducks
There is also a great 31 page guide to artificial nesting structures. A complete list of the 47 leaflets available for downloading is on the NRCS Agricultural Wildlife Conservation Center website.
American Kestrel photo: Larry Umthun
As reported recently in the OC Register and High Country News, in response to fires in coastal California which have destroyed thousands of acres of Cactus Wren habitat, David Olson and colleagues at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy are installing artificial cactus made from PVC piping and metal spikes as potential nesting sites for the birds.
The first fake cholla were installed a couple weeks ago, and several more are going up shortly. Over the next three to six months, biologists will check the structures to see if the wrens build nests on them. Since each pair of wrens may build several nests in their territory, they'll have to monitor any nests to see if the birds actually lay eggs in them.
If the wrens do adopt these artificial nesting sites, more will be installed in the area. The first installations were in or adjacent to active wren territories. If they work, future artificial nest sites may be placed in areas where wrens have disappeared, or in areas that can link occupied wren habitats.
As seen in these photos, the artificial cholla nesting sites are nine feet tall, made from painted PVC pipe and wire, mounted on steel rebar with baffles on each leg to protect the nest site from climbing predators. A second experimental design (shown being installed here at left) has more wire and looks less like a cactus to human eyes. Only time will tell if either of these may be used or preferred by nesting wrens.
While artificial nest sites may not be an ideal permanent solution for helping Cactus Wrens, this innovative approach is a great example of trying to see just how far we can help these birds in an area where human-caused fires and habitat loss due to urbanization make it necessary for us to take extra experimental steps.
For more information on this project, contact David Olson at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy.
Cactus Wren photo: Charles Farmer Other photos courtesy Irvine Ranch Conservancy.
A number of Audubon chapters conduct annual wildlife garden tours. One of the longest-running is Tulsa Audubon's Wildlife Habitat Garden Tour and Plant Sale, now in its 15th year. You can see a map of this year's route, along with photos of some gardens on their website.
A few other Audubon chapters and organizations with web pages highlighting their garden tours include:
Audubon Society of Northern Virginia (see news story here)
Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (see news story here)
Fort Collins Audubon Society (see news stories here and here)
For info on putting together a similar event in your area, see How to Organize a Garden Tour for Charity and additional guidelines from Canadian Gardening Online.
Barred Owls are one of Audubon's potential Birds to Help in wooded rural areas, but they may also nest in heavily wooded suburban areas. Professor Rob Bierregaard and his students at UNCC have been studying radio-tagged Barred Owls living in suburban Charlotte, North Carolina since 2001. You can read about their work on their Ecology of Barred Owls pages. These pages include maps of dispersing young owl movements across the suburbs (the farthest recorded so far moved 11 miles) and other interesting observations. Unfortunately, they are finding that many suburban owls they track end up being hit by cars. Ongoing studies will hopefully reveal how significant this problem is, and how safe suburban neighborhoods are for owls compared to more rural forested areas.
Among the resources on these pages are detailed instructions for building and installing easy to build (but heavy!) Barred Owl nest boxes.
For more information about what Barred Owls need and what you can do for them, check out Audubon's How to Help Barred Owls factsheet.
(Photo: Nicolle Balders-Kaune)
According to a recent Audubon analysis of Breeding Bird Survey data, Chimney Swift numbers have declined by 48 percent over the last 40 years, probably due mostly to people capping their chimneys so the birds don't have as many places to nest. Fortunately, experimentation over the last decade has shown that swifts are fairly easy to attract to small towers built as nesting structures. These towers can be placed in a yard or local park or other public space--the one on the left is at the Center for Environmental Research at Hornsby Bend in Austin, Texas. It features a roofed kiosk around all four sides, and serves as a mini nature center.
A more simple structure, lacking the kiosk, also at Hornsby Bend, is shown below. These towers were originally designed and constructed by Paul & Georgean Kyle as part of their Driftwood Wildlife Association Chimney Swift Project. Their 15 acre Chaetura Canyon Bird Sanctuary, complete with 16 towers on site, is now jointly owned and managed with the Travis Audubon Society in Austin. In addition to their websites, the Kyles have published two books--Chimey Swifts: America's Mysterious Birds above the Fireplace and the useful construction guide Chimney Swift Towers: New Habitat for America's Mysterious Birds.
Several Audubon chapters and other groups have started placing swift towers in local parks--sometimes surrounded by a small native plant demo garden. These towers provide habitat for the birds, as well as public information and visibility for the chapter. As a small sample, check out these towers placed by Audubon chapters in Houston, Maine, and North Carolina.
In addition to the more complete construction plans available in the Kyle's book, brief info on tower construction is online here.
For more about what swifts need and how to help them, see Audubon's printable How to Help Chimney Swifts handout.
Photos courtesy of the City of Austin's Center for Environmental Research.