Know THIS Christmas tradition?

There was a time when Americans celebrated Christmas with what was called a “side hunt.” Groups of men got together, chose sides and then marched into the woods to take aim at absolutely any animal that moved.  Whichever team returned with the greatest number of pelts and feathers earned bragging rights. 

It’s not hard to imagine the results of such attitudes and endeavors.  At the turn of the 20^th century, American wildlife was in a wide scale decline.  Even whitetail deer, so numerous today, were down to an estimated 300,000, a sliver of their former numbers.  Conservationists and, yes, hunters decried the loss of wildlife and a number of regulations, fees and laws were put into effect that have had profound benefits for wildlife, ecosystems and Americans.

In 1900, Frank Chapman, an officer of the then-new Audubon Society, turned the Christmas tradition on its ear and proposed that outdoors men gather to count, rather than shoot, birds on Christmas day. It must have been mocked by many at the time but his idea took hold has grown into the world’s largest “citizen science” survey. Well over 60,000 people are expected to participate in the Audubon Society’s 2012-2013 Christmas Bird Count, or “CBC” as it’s known to insiders.

Novices and experts alike will gather at chosen locations and dates (any time from December 14 to January 5 in case you want to spend Christmas day indoors) and count every bird they see and hear for a 24-hour period. If you live within one of the designated survey areas, you can just tally the birds that visit your feeder from the warmth of your home but, really, getting outside with your friends and family is part of the experience.    

Frank Chapman (click image for more)

Don’t underestimate its importance either; the project is of immeasurable value as a scientific study.  The data collected over the past 111 years are “at the heart of hundreds peer-reviewed scientific studies,” according to Audubon’s chief scientist Gary Langham.  “Because birds are early indicators of environmental threats to habitats we share, this is a vital survey of North America and, increasingly, the Western Hemisphere.”

The information has, among other things, documented northward range expansion of 177 bird species in response to climate change and has helped identify changes in species’ populations, such as the bobwhite quail’s recent decline and the recoveries of bald eagles and peregrine falcons.    

 So this holiday season, why not give a little gift to the earth and spend a day counting our feathered friends? Novices are most welcome and will benefit from working with the experienced birders that will lead each census.  Visit www.Audubon.org to find a chapter near you and see when and where the nearest count is.

Here’s to the foresight and audacity of Frank Chapman! Because of him, thousands head into the woods with binoculars instead of firearms in their Christmas “hunt” for birds. Ho! Ho! Ho!

A-oooooo, Where wolves in Yellowstone?

Back in 2005, I wrote a tune called “A Deer In My Cadillac” about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park (join my mail list and get it free in 11/2012!). This effort was, to say the least, controversial.  How would you feel if someone released a couple packs of large predators into a park near you?  On the other side of the issue, if wolves can’t live in Yellowstone where can they live? In the end, pro-wolf forces prevailed and, in the winters of 1995 and 1996, a total of 66 wolves left tracks in the Yellowstone snows that hadn't been seen in decades.

 Why did they disappear in the first place? The early 1900s saw deer and many other “game” animals in steep declines due to unregulated hunting.  Wildlife officials decided that controlling predators was part of the solution and promoted indiscriminate hunting of wolves until 1926. Some unknown time thereafter, the last Yellowstone wolf disappeared. 

In the wolves’ absence, elk populations exploded and, being especially fond of the tender shoots of aspen,willow and cottonwood trees, elk grazed upon them to the point that these forests were failing to regenerate.  

For scientists, reintroducing wolves was about much more than the thrill of seeing a dominant predator surveying  its kingdom again. They hoped the predators would restore balance to the Yellowstone ecosystem and foster the return of other species that had declined or disappeared in the wake of the ravenous elk. 

Within ten years, scientists were noting signs of recovery in aspen forests and the wildlife they support. With the return of cottonwoods and willows, the slap of a beaver’s tail, once nearly unheard in the park's 3742 square miles, echoes again with renewed vigor and frequency.

In  a 2010 study, however, scientists found that, despite the fact that wolves had reduced elk populations by dramatically, elk were still gobbling up aspen shoots and preventing forest regeneration.  A greater population of wolves would be required, they felt, to bring the restoration so many had hoped for.

Unfortunately, wolves are now battling microscopic nemeses in addition to local ranchers: parvovirus, canine distemper, mange and more. Their population, once up to 170, has dropped to  about 100.    

The story of Yellowstone continues to unfold and wildlife managers are now working tirelessly to make sure that wolves are a part of it. Scientists, for their part, are documenting the cascade of effects that ripple through the Yellowstone ecosystems that will inform other efforts to reintroduce top predators.  

With continued time and support I, for one, hope that Yellowstone can support wolves, aspen, beavers, eagles, foxes and all the other species that have called it home for countless years.

Bats? I say "Yahoo!" not "Boo!"

Photo by John Abbott, used by permission

Halloween makes me shudder but it’s not the goblins, ghosts, and zombies thumping on my door. It’s the rubber bats on elastic strings with painted-red mouths agape and fangs bared.

The singing zoologist afraid of bats? Nope. It’s that I can’t stand the way SOME people use images of bats to creep folks out! In an effort to counter the season's bad bat PR, here are some bat FACTS  that might change your perspective. 

Bat fact #1: Bats are the second largest group of mammals. Of the 5,700 mammalian species, about 1,240 of them are bats--nearly 22%!  Rodents are the biggest group with nearly 2,300 species.

Bat fact #2: A bat’s wing amounts to a webbed hand with super-long finger bones.  Many bats can manuever better than birds and have specialized sensory cells in their wings that can feel when they’ve trapped an insect. 

Bat fact #3: Bats are divided into the fruit bats (usually bigger) and insectivorous bats (usually smaller). We have mostly the latter in the US but we do have some fruit bats in the deserts of the southwest.

Bat fact # 4: Fruits bats are thought to be primary pollinators and seed distributors in many tropical rainforests.  If we lose fruit bats, we’ll lose huge numbers of rainforest trees and other plants!

Bat fact # 5: The large flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus), from southeast Asie, boasts the greatest wingspan: nearly 5 feet!

Bat fact #6: San Antonio, Texas, is home to the world’s largest colony of bats: up to twenty million in the summer!  That’s also thought to be the largest colony of mammals anywhere in the world! While more famous, Austin’s Congress Avenue bats number “only” about one and a half-million. They're the largest urban colony of bats. 

Bat fact #7: Some bats can eat more than their own weight in bugs each night. Thus, the mass of bugs those 20 million bats in San Antonio consume would be equivalent to the weight of 93 elephants. Thanks, bats!

Bat fact #8: bats are NOT blind. Many do, however, depend primarily on their hearing to find their ways through the dark. Note, however, that most fruit bats do not echolocate; hence those big-eyed, fox-like faces. 

Bat fact #9: Bats will NOT get caught in your hair. Insectivorous bats navigate by echolocation and the system is so precise that they can easily detect even the poofiest of hairdos.  When a bat flies close to me I like to assume that it’s snagging a bug that was about to feast on ME!

Bat fact #10: You should NEVER handle a bat. Rabies is truly scary and bats, like all mammals, can carry the virus. Skunks and racoons actually carry the virus and transmit it to us more commonly than bats but, still, there’s a risk.

I once had a student show me a bat that they had found on the ground, put in a shoebox and passed around their kindergarten class! Fortunately, no one was harmed but, my goodness, this shows the importance of educating folks about wildlife!

Ready to host a monarch?

I saw a few monarch butterflies on the move this weekend so it seems their southern migrations have begun. Monarchs east of the Rockies head to forested mountains in south central Mexico and those west of the Rockies journey to a number of locations along the California coast. The monarchs that start in eastern Canada migrate nearly 3000 miles--pretty amazing for an animal with a brain the size of a pinhead!

A tagged monarch--hope it gets found!

With this year’s record-breaking heat and dry conditions across much of North America, monarch watchers will be taking a keen interest in their population. While it’s always tempting to make your judgment based on your individual experience (“I saw a lot fewer monarchs in my garden this year”), collecting hard numbers from a large number of people across their range is much more helpful. This is the way science works and monarch specialists invite everyone into the process!

In one of the world’s biggest “citizen science” initiatives, scientists,students and monarch enthusiasts of all ilks have been counting and tagging monarch butterflies for decades now. Want to get involved? JourneyNorth.org is a phenomenal monarch resource and provides lots of monarch information, the latest findings, and ways to report the monarchs you've seen. They even have an app to make submitting your sightings as easy (and COOL) as possible!  

Ready for the next step? Order monarch tags from another great site, www.monarchwatch.org. “How does one tag a butterfly?” you ask. First, catch a butterfly (HINT:nets come in very handy) and then put the little tag, which is basically a round sticker, on the butterfly’s hind wing (in about the middle). While you need to get your catching and handling skills down, it’s pretty much as simple as that.

I know what you’re wondering: “Doesn’t it slow them down or make them fly in circles?” Scientists love monarchs at least as much as you do and they’ve made sure that the little sticker doesn’t harm or slow the insects down. As long as you handle your little insect friend gently they’ll be just fine. 

Children as young as four year olds are known to participate. As a matter of fact, they say that children’s little digits may better suited to the task than big, grown-up fingers. Something like 2,000 schools and 100,000 children participate in this effort every year but the more the merrier.

Fewer than 1 in a thousand tagged monarchs are recovered so finding one is like winning a science lottery. If you’re the lucky one, make sure you contact the scientists with the date, location, weather conditions and any other information you think is important or interesting.

One more easy way to help is to create a “monarch way station,” a collection of plants the monarchs need during their life cycle. Native flowers will provide them with nectar, the sugary fuel adults need to energize their flights and some milkweed plants where mamas can lay their eggs. I hear mixed things about what they’re SUPPOSED to do in the fall but I have personally seen a lot of eggs left on my milkweeds in the fall so I say go ahead and put some out for them!

I know we’re all looking forward to the cool fall days ahead after the summer heat so get out there and look for those monarchs. If you’d like to try your hand at tagging them with me, I’m at Balcones Canyonlands Nat’l Wildlife Refuge between Austin and Marble Falls on October 13. I’ll play some tunes and help folks catch and tag monarchs. Come on out!