Leps and birds increasing at Trout Brook Valley

Lepidoptera are now back to being seen across Connecticut in many forms. I found this and more Eastern Tiger Swallowtails at the Trout Brook Valley Conservation Area of the Aspetuck Land Trust during a recent survey.

I actually recorded over a dozen species that day without too much effort. Subsequent surveys have uncovered dozens of migrant and potential breeding bird species as well. This was one bird of a pair of Tree Swallows already on to nesting in the orchard.

During a few hours there today I tallied 59 bird species in only a small section of the massive preserve. I will list off more of some of our cool finds soon, but "Ovenbird city" was the theme of the day as it was the most frequently heard (and seen!) warbler species of the 14 that I was able to find at this early enough date of May 3.

Their ringing song is a classic one, but it was so great to be able to see so many of them as well. The Ovenbird is a species nearly anyone should be able to find in abundance there, let's hope, throughout the spring and summer. I hope the same can be said for the Louisiana Waterthrush and the Worm-eating Warbler, two species I heard only today but would be thrilled to mark down as confirmed breeding birds. All of these discoveries and potential findings do and will have an impact on our management planning and habitat recommendations.


Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician

All photos © Scott Kruitbosch and not to be reproduced without explicit permission

Spring Bird Walk with Michelle Eckman

With all of this migration talk here is another great upcoming event in the prime of spring movement. I plan on joining Michelle for the walk detailed below and I hope some of you can as well. She is a fantastic birder and extremely knowledgeable, and I am so glad to have her with us at CAS.

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It’s that time of year when our feathered friends are making their journeys back north towards their breeding grounds. Fortunately for us, many of them find our Larsen Sanctuary to be a wonderful stopover site for rest, food and water. Some may even decide to call the sanctuary home for the summer.

Join long-time birder and CAS Director of Education, Michelle Eckman, who will lead you on a beautiful walk through our sanctuary while helping everyone observe birds by sight and sound. Our Chiboucas Trail is stroller-accessible and birders of all levels and ages are welcome.

The program is on Saturday, May 19 from 9-11 a.m. Meet at the covered trailhead at the Connecticut Audubon Society’s Center at Fairfield’s Larsen Sanctuary. Bring your binoculars, note pad and field guides. Identification books are also available in the Nature Store.

Program fee: $5/person for CAS members; $8/person for non-members. All proceeds support Connecticut Audubon Society environmental education programs. Register in advance by calling 203-259-6305 ext. 109.

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Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician

Name this April migrant answer

So do you have the answer to this quiz yet?

Here is that photo again...

 

To me, this is an odd look for a bird that never stops moving and flitting about through the trees. To see it perched in a (seemingly) stationary position is strange, but it was actually moving around quite a bit outside of this photo. You cannot see the eye but it has a white eye-ring and a white-edged tail.

Any thoughts now?

 

Take your guesses because the answer is in the next line!

That is a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. We see them migrating both north and south at Stratford Point. 

 

 

They are diurnal migrants, moving through most often one at a time during warm days with a nice southerly flow in April, and then sometimes in small groups heading through our trees and out to Long Island Sound in the late summer.

This bird had a few snacks and kept moving, calling away with it's classic wheeze. We are little more than a fast food restaurant for dozens of birds each day.

Scott Kruitbosch

Conservation Technician

All photos © Scott Kruitbosch and not to be reproduced without explicit permission

Falkner Island volunteers needed ASAP

Wildlife Biologist Kristina Vagos of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service asked me to send out a request for volunteers for Falkner Island this week - either Wednesday (May 2nd) or Thursday (May 3rd) - to finish building their productivity plots and do some other work. She would love to have 2-3 volunteers come out with her and thought our readers and volunteers may be interested.

Here are some details:

•     Volunteer must be able to navigate tricky surfaces as much of the island is rocky (very rocky) and be physically able to get onto a boat, walk long distances, and work outdoors doing manual labor - digging, moving things, lifting buckets of gravel.
•     Work will happen from 9am until about 3pm.
•     Volunteers must bring lunch, water, wear sturdy boots, and be willing to work in an environment where they might encounter poison ivy (more often than not).

This is a great opportunity to see Falkner Island and visit the second oldest lighthouse in Connecticut. She will bring the lighthouse keys so that volunteers can climb to the top. The group will be leaving from Guilford, CT.

Anyone who is interested should contact Kris at (860)399-2513 or by email at Kristina_Vagos@fws.gov by Tuesday (May 1st) at 4pm.



Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician

April Stratford Point bird walk results

I pushed back the April bird walk at Stratford Point one week because of the anticipated foggy conditions for the 21st. It turned out that yes, the fog did roll in right when the bird walk would have been happening, and we would not have been able to see much that was not right in front of us. I did not expect that we would still be dealing with cooler than average weather after a wet week right now.

Even more strange was the fact that the coast has been without many migrant birds whatsoever due to the weather conditions keeping nocturnal migration to a minimum. Birds have been evenly distributed across the landscape and not in any "hotspots", making some trips through extensive forest productive with low numbers of a variety of species, but any visits to smaller locations that typically have budding trees dripping with warblers and vireos rather quiet.

Despite that, here is what the visitors and I were able to come up with at Stratford Point today.


Brant 
Canada Goose 
Mute Swan 
American Black Duck 
Red-breasted Merganser 
Common Loon 
Double-crested Cormorant 
Great Egret 
Osprey
Black-bellied Plover 
American Oystercatcher
Sanderling 
Dunlin 
Laughing Gull 
Ring-billed Gull 
Herring Gull
Great Black-backed Gull 
Mourning Dove 
Northern Flicker 
Blue Jay  
American Crow 
Fish Crow 
Northern Rough-winged Swallow 
Barn Swallow 
American Robin  
Northern Mockingbird 
Brown Thrasher 
European Starling 
Chipping Sparrow 
Savannah Sparrow 
Song Sparrow 
Northern Cardinal 
Red-winged Blackbird 
Common Grackle 
Brown-headed Cowbird 
House Finch 
American Goldfinch 
House Sparrow 


By Tuesday morning we should have more normal conditions with birds covering all of the expected areas en masse after being held back actually beyond their typical return dates. We are all prey to the weather at this point of the year. Look for more bird walks coming up very soon.


Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician

Chimney Swift decline and possible answers

The Chimney Swift is declining throughout its range in North America, as are many of our aerial insectivores, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Certainly, habitat loss in terms of breeding and migration enters into the equation in many cases, but this is not the complete answer for why the drop has been so precipitous. This article discusses a fascinating find that may help answer some of the reason why this particular species is in trouble: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/clues-to-species-decline-buried.html?rss=1

In 2009, while searching for ways to help endangered birds, research technician Chris Grooms heard that a chimney on his university campus used to host a migratory species known as the chimney swift. When he investigated, he found a pile of bird excrement 2 meters deep. The poop lay at the bottom of a five-story-high chimney and had been deposited over 48 years by the birds, which had roosted there until the top was capped in 1992.

This was actually a treasure trove of information! All of that waste is a pile of insect remains that could be shifted through to see what the birds had eaten over time, possibly providing clues as to what may have changed to accelerate their significant decline.

As DDE increased through the lower layers of the deposit, beetles showed up less often in the birds' diets and true bugs became more common, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. This result agrees with other reports that DDT is hard on beetles, while true bugs can evolve resistance quickly. The change in diet may also help explain why chimney swifts have declined so precipitously, Nocera says.

Canadian surveys have found that the number of chimney swifts dropped 95% between 1968 and 2005. Some researchers have suggested that part of the reason is that chimneys like this one, swifts' preferred habitat, have been capped or redesigned, making it harder for birds to get in. But the new work suggests that the decline may be diet related. Beetles generally contain more calories than do true bugs. Swifts need a ton of energy—they spend a lot of time on the wing, looking for food. A change in their diet, like substituting less-nutritious true bugs, could have a big impact. DDT was banned in the 1970s, but the beetles never seem to have gotten back their original place in the food web, Nocera says.

Nocera thinks DDT and other pesticides may have effects far beyond their well-known impacts on the eggshells of large birds, such as taking away the foods that chimney swifts, barn swallows, flycatchers, and other insect-eating birds relied on.

That is a lot to consider and takes a couple liberties, but it makes a great deal of sense. While more research is definitely needed in this area perhaps there will be more discoveries of such, well, chimney piles that can yield similar results. At some point, a large effort for bird conservation may end up involving the restoration of the natural chain of insect life on the continent, a monumental task. We may have stopped putting DDT and some similar chemicals into the environment (certainly not all like we should) but remediation may be necessary to undo all of the damage it caused.


Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician

Name this April migrant

Take a look at the bird in the photo below - hey, can you name this April migrant?

The bird was seen at Stratford Point on April 25. It is only seen there in migration. It is a species that anyone should be able to see any given spring in Connecticut. Take a look at the bird, the position it is in, where it is placed in the tree, and consider the date. That should be plenty of information for you to work from. The answer will be coming to you in a few days.


Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician

All photos © Scott Kruitbosch and not to be reproduced without explicit permission