Night Light Pollution Affect Songbirds' Mating Life, Research Suggests

Image via Wikipedia

"Researchers investigated the effects of artificial night lighting on dawn song in five common forest-breeding songbirds. In four of those five species, males near street lights started singing significantly earlier in the morning than did males in other parts of the forest.

Further study of the effects of that behavioral shift on blue tits based on comparison of their reproductive behavior with and without street lights over a 7-year period showed real consequences. Females near street lights laid their eggs on average a day and half earlier. And males near lights at the forest's edges were more successful in attracting "extra-pair mates," meaning that they more often sired offspring with females other than their primary social partners." You can read the rest of the article HERE.

Rare Bird Alert

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Dial-a-Bird is a service provided by your Buffalo Museum of Science and the Buffalo Ornithological Society. Press (2) to leave a message, (3) for updates, meeting and field trip information and (4) for instructions on how to report sightings. To contact the Science Museum, call 896-5200.

Highlights of reports received October 29 through November 5 from the Niagara Frontier Region include NORTHERN GANNET, SABINE'S GULL, EVENING GROSBEAK, PINE SISKIN, SNOW BUNTING and NORTHERN GOSHAWK.

November 1, a watch over Lake Ontario reported 24 species passing the Town of Wilson, highlighted by a juvenile NORTHERN GANNET, plus TUNDRA SWAN, WOOD DUCK, GADWALL, AMERICAN WIGEON, AMERICAN BLACK DUCK, MALLARD, NORTHERN PINTAIL, GREEN-WINGED TEAL, GREATER SCAUP, LESSER SCAUP, SURF SCOTER, WHITE-WINGED SCOTER, BLACK SCOTER, LONG-TAILED DUCK, BUFFLEHEAD, COMMON GOLDENEYE, HOODED MERGANSER, COMMON MERGANSER, RED-BR. MERGANSER, RED-THROATED LOON, COMMON LOON, RED-NECKED GREBE, HORNED GREBE, DUNLIN and an unexpected NORTHERN HARRIER.

The November influx of gulls to the Niagara River has started. October 31 and November 1, juvenile SABINE'S GULL in the Niagara Falls gorge, with 3 LITTLE GULLS and L. BLACK-B. GULL, plus COMMON GOLDENEYE and PIED-BILLED GREBE. Another LITTLE GULL on the upper river a Beaver Island State Park on November 3 and 4, and 2 LITTLE GULLS on the lower river at Lewiston.

Other arriving winter visitors across the region - one EVENING GROSBEAK at a feeder in the Town of Colden. PINE SISKIN with AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES in Holland. Three SNOW BUNTINGS on Housington Road in Cherry Creek. AMER. TREE SPARROWS in the Iroquois Refuge, and a NORTHERN HORNED LARK in the Town of Yates.

November 1, on Wolf Run in Allegany State Park, a passing NORTHERN GOSHAWK, plus NORTHERN SHRIKE, HERMIT THRUSH, EASTERN MEADOWLARK and flocks of EASTERN BLUEBIRDS and DARK-
EYED JUNCOS. Also, a MERLIN at Holt Run in the park.

From East Aurora, October 28 and 31, a reported NORTHERN GOSHAWK on Reiter Road, one mile south of Route 20A.

Also this week, MERLIN at Shirley and Bailey Avenue in Buffalo. FOX SPARROWS still at several feeders, along with RED-BELLIED WDPKRS., TUFTED TITMICE, WHITE-THR. SPARROWS and WHITE-CR. SPARROWS. At Fort Erie, Ontario, numbers of SURF SCOTERS and BLACK SCOTERS. And at the Robert Moses parkway viewing area in Niagara Falls, New York, 10 CANVASBACKS and several RING-NECKED DUCKS, with GREATER SCAUP and LESSER SCAUP.

Red-breasted mergansers on Lake Ontario

from New York Outdoors Blog by newyorkoutdoors

By ELIZABETH KELLOGG, Northunberlandtoday.com, link to original post
On and on they came, flying low over the water. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand -until 15,000 had passed the observer on the west beach in Port Hope. This week, red-breasted mergansers have arrived in large numbers on Lake Ontario.

Red-breasted mergansers are a fish-eating duck. They dive to catch their prey. When they surface, the opportunistic gulls will swoop in and try to steal a fish.

Often, large flocks of red-breasted mergansers can be found because of the gulls swirling around above them. Most of the thieves are herring gulls, although today, there were a number of great-blacked gulls in the flocks.

All mergansers have a bill with a serrated edge. The serrations point backwards to help them hold onto their slippery prey.

The red-breasted merganser male has a green head with a pronounced crest which gives it the look of a punk hairdo. It has a white collar and reddish brown breast. White wing linings and speculum with dark primaries make it easy to identify in flight and even at a distance. The female has a brown head and whitish throat, grey body and white belly. The female has a similar pattern of white and dark on the wing as the male. Young birds and males in eclipse plumage have similar plumage to the females.

The red-breasted merganser breeds throughout the northern hemisphere, in Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and Russia as well as northern Canada and Alaska.

The species is widely distributed in Ontario Canada, breeding mostly in Northern Ontario, although there were many records in the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario 2001-2005 from around Georgian Bay and Lake Huron.

In southern Ontario, most records were from Prince Edward County and the Thousand Islands.

They typically nest close to water along lakeshores and forested riverbanks. They also like inland and coastal islands. The nests are built in a depression on the ground and are usually sheltered by trees, stumps, driftwood or shrubs.

Most of the red-breasted mergansers which are being seen on Lake Ontario now are passing through en route to wintering grounds on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Populations from further west winter on the Pacific coast.Along with the thousands of red-breasted mergansers are other diving ducks — a few common mergansers, scoters (black, surf and white-winged).

As the seasons passes, the mergansers will be replaced with scaup, long-tailed ducks, common goldeneye and bufflehead. These species are all fish eaters, although some also eat invertebrates such as zebra mussels.

Also in the mix are many common loons, often a few red-throated loons and grebes, most commonly red-necked and horned grebes. Like the mergansers, these species have just begun to arrive in numbers. Cormorants in the flocks will soon be departing for the Gulf of Mexico.

If you want to see the passage of the mergansers, you should be at the shore fairly early in the morning. By mid-morning, there are many fewer birds to be seen. Two years ago, several northern gannets, a bird of the Atlantic Ocean, turned up on Lake Ontario in these swirling masses of diving du

What is That?

Winged Magellans

It's so clear to me. A six-mile section along the Niagara River Gorge rim where having it all is showcased by a gift of natural scenic wonder, a waterfall landscape so botanically unique that not protecting it is a living global nightmare.

It’s a restored old growth forest, an urban forest of ancients: oaks, hickories, and stunted gorge wall cedars, some 500 and 1,000 years of age. Unique calcareous cliff botanicals, rare blue asters included. It’s standing at the floor of time, the gorge walls a story, a geological slice of earth beginning. It’s glacial identity and diversity engraved by relenting, rushing water, a fall, cascading from four great lakes.

In this recognized globally significant migration zone, bald eagles soar on gorge thermals with migrant songbirds, winged Magellans, on the way back or to other-side-of-the-world locations.

It’s a six-mile walk, a careful, humbling Tubman trek, an experiential wild-eyed glimpse into fear and courage, prodded in the back by her rifle, a duel jeopardy reminder, mind-change flight versus the death of freedom.

It’s Native American sacred ground covered by Moses, his irreverent black pavement smear, the war of ongoing prejudice.

It’s so clear that non-motorized is a vision filled with unlimited possibility, the way Tesla first viewed Niagara’s raw water power turbulence. It’s the masses with head lifted, faces sprinkled by mist, tears, and rainbows.

Despite four years of research documenting hundreds of thousands of new jobs, tourist revenues in the billions, and an informal survey of millions supporting a vision, the remaining undeveloped landscape that makes Niagara Falls unique is almost extinct.