Of odd birds and windmills

Al Batt, Nature's World

Published Saturday, October 3, 2009

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Everything is nearly copacetic. I’m exhausted. My electric toothbrush is in the shop and I had to brush my teeth manually this morning. I was the wave of the future and now I’m a whiff of the past. I’m like a computer. I started out with lots of memory and drive and then I became outdated and eventually will have my parts replaced. I would think more clearly, but I tore all the ligaments in my brain playing football. At least I had the sense to sell all of my old remote controls in that Cash for Clickers program.”

“Lack of ambition should cause your under-utilized parts to last longer,” I counsel.

“Ha! Your brain is as empty as a campaign promise. When it comes to hard work, some people turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and I don’t turn up at all. Here, I thought you might want to buy this stuff. Make me an offer.”

“A cardboard box filled with oily parts is tempting. What are they?” I ask.

“These are the parts left over from when I put the old John Deere tractor back together.”

“Does it start without these parts?” I wonder aloud.

“No, but it didn’t start when it had those parts either.”

Nature lessons

Soybean aphids overwinter as eggs on buckthorn. The eggs hatch in the spring into wingless types, which live on buckthorn for two generations. The third generation emerges, produces wings, and migrates to soybean fields. A soybean aphid can produce up to 15 generations during a summer.

A juvenile red-headed woodpecker has a gray-brown head.

An odd bird

Someone asked me what the oddest bird I had ever encountered. There are a number of candidates for that title, but the one that came immediately to mind was one I saw in Israel. It was peculiar in appearance, behavior, and sound. It was a hoopoe. The bird is colorful and clownish with a pink head, zebra striped wings, and pink feathers tipped in black and white as a party hat. It has an erratic flight that is more like that of a butterfly than a bird. Its song is a repeated “hoop.” Its fetid nest is lined with the birds’ droppings. This discourages predators. Folklore says that King Solomon took advice from a hoopoe. It is the national bird of Israel.

Q and A

“What kind of fish do ospreys eat?” Ospreys don’t care what kind of fish they catch and eat. Ospreys are found on every continent except Antarctica and even catch small sharks. I love watching an osprey catch fish by hitting the water with its talons extended, nearly disappearing below the surface. The osprey is a fish-eating specialist, with live fish accounting for about 99 percent of its diet. An osprey carries the fish headfirst to make it as aerodynamic as possible; barbed pads on its feet helping grip slippery fish. The osprey is so good at fishing that bald eagles will steal its catch. An enterprising osprey couple might not feed only their family, but an eagle family also. After more than 150 years, ospreys were found nesting south of the Twin Cities. In the spring of 2008, an osprey pair attempted to nest in Le Sueur County on a power pole near the DNR fisheries facility at Waterville.

This is the first documented case of an active osprey nest in southern Minnesota in modern times, although there have been several unsubstantiated reports. The nest was unsuccessful. For a bird that had nearly disappeared as a Minnesota breeding species by the mid-20th century, the osprey has made an impressive comeback. Habitat loss, shooting, and pesticides were major factors attributing to the population drop.

“Do house finches drive away house sparrows?” According to data from Project FeederWatch and the Christmas Bird Count, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology found a pattern consistent with the hypothesis that house finches do outcompete house sparrows. Sparrow numbers declined during the years when finch numbers were increasing. When the finches encountered conjunctivitis and their numbers declined, house sparrow numbers increased.

Tilting at windmills

This is from Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” “Just then they came in sight of 30 or 40 windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, ‘Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, 30 or 40 hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.’

“‘What giants?’ asked Sancho Panza.

“‘Those you see over there,’ replied his master, ‘with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.’

“‘Take care, sir,’ cried Sancho. ‘Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.’”

Top wildlife scientists have agreed on some of the highest research priorities to help America’s rapidly growing wind energy industry produce needed alternative energy — while providing safe passage for birds and bats. This coalition of scientists from industry, government, nongovernmental organizations, and universities sees great potential in wind energy for addressing global climate change and reducing America’s reliance on fossil fuels, but believe that it’s critical to understand the interactions between wind energy installations and animals. A small percentage of wind turbines may cause the majority of bird and bat deaths. For example, Altamont Pass, east of Oakland, Calif., is in an area used regularly by raptors, and only a fraction of the 5,000 turbines there is responsible for the majority of the raptor deaths. Conducting research helps the wind industry make informed, science-based decisions about where wind energy projects should be built and operated to minimize the impact on wildlife.

Thanks for stopping by

“I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” — William Penn

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else!” — Lawrence “Yogi” Berra

DO GOOD.

  Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.

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