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Kill Russian Olives! Elk? Frogs.



Hi Carolinabirders,

Not much new bird-wise; did get some new amphibians last night, as my 
folk-singing naturalist friend Tracy Feldman had a cookout at his place. 
Heard my first Bullfrog of the year booming from his pond, and found a 
Gray Treefrog (didn't call, so no telling which of the two species) 
clinging to a brick wall. Have noticed that the Durham Yellow-rumps are 
finally singing, not just chipping, and are gaining some breeding 
plumage... Frank told me earlier today that he had heard something last 
night near South Square Mall in Durham, and described pretty convincingly 
the call of a Chuck-Will's Widow! 

On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Russell Lay wrote:
> 
> Waxwings continue to descend on our Russian 
> Olive's, usually 25-50 in a flock; this has been going on since 
> mid-March.

I saw something similar this morning; the Olives were growing along the 
route 147 overpass where it crosses Erwin Road in Durham. Sorry to say, 
these things should be ripped out of the ground, no matter how much (or 
maybe because) the waxwings like them. It's an ecological threat of the 
first order. While a handful of bird species feed on the fruits, 
virtually none nest in the dense monocultures it forms, and it also wipes 
out native plants and the butterflies and other insects that depend on 
native plants. Irvin Farm, where I'm leading a Duke Natural History 
Society trip this weekend, is being overrun with the stuff; one of the 
Triangle Land Conservancy's top priorities for the site is to spend lots 
of money eliminating this botanical plague.

For more details about just how nasty Russian Olive (and its cousin 
Autumn Olive) really is, and why it should be removed no matter how many 
Cedar Waxwings eat it, see the following websites (especially the first 
one, which has an animation sequence showing how it spread across 
Massachusetts):
http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~conne/jennjim/elangust.html
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/elan1.htm
http://www.cwma.org/russ_olive.html
http://www.dcr.state.va.us/dnh/fselum.pdf
http://infoweb.magi.com/%7Eehaber/factoliv.html
http://www.mdflora.org/publications/invasives.htm

If you want to attract birds to your yard, use native species, not exotic 
weeds like Russian Olive! The Cedar Waxwings have been all over the Duke 
campus for weeks attacking the Yaupon Hollies, which are native to the 
coastal plain. There are some other native hollies to this area, 
like Inkberry and American Holly and Possumhaw (a deciduous species). Will 
Cook has some great information on his web site in this vein, and I 
recently gave my fiance a big list of native plants for Valentine's Day 
which she is using for her own yard now. I'd be very happy to share this 
with anyone who promises to destroy all their Olives, Privets, Multiflora 
Roses, Japanese and Bush Honeysuckles, English Ivy, Bamboo, Purple 
Loosetrife, and other non-native weeds...

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Connie Ward wrote:
> 
> My girlfriend and I went to Cataloochee Valley (Haywood Co., NC) today
> to see the newly released elk.  (snip)
> we saw two herds of 9 elk each.  

Okay, this sounds like another bad idea in the making. Elk used to live 
in this part of the country, but back then there were also Eastern 
Cougars and Red Wolves here too, right? The Red Wolves at Alligator River 
won't be expanding to Haywood County anytime soon, and the Cougar is long 
since extinct; what's going to control the populations of these elk? The 
NC mountains are full of rare plant and amphibian species that could 
disappear if big herds of massive ungulates trample their habitats into 
bare mud, as generally happens with herbivores that have no carnivores. 
The birds won't fare well either; just look at what happens to forest 
interior birds anywhere that White-tailed Deer can get at them, and I'm 
not sure whether Elk are restricted to "edge" habitats the way White- 
tails are. And after that, we either have Elk starving to death, or the 
government hiring sharpshooters to keep the population down... anybody 
got a few dozen mountain lions they can set loose up there?

Sorry about the rant, but if you spend enough time studying invasive/ 
exotic species, you get really tired of all the dumb things people and 
their governments do, and wonder if they'll ever learn...

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/