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Re: Kill Russian Olives! Elk? Frogs.



Please pardon this non-birding question.
Can anyone recommend to me a CD or audio tape that has frog calls with their
identity announced?  Where can I purchase it?  I want to learn to identify
frogs when I hear their call. I am not always successful locating the calling
frog.

Steve Cox
Fountain Inn, SC

Joshua Stuart Rose wrote:

> 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/