Re: Swift in the house; Wildathon

[John Connors <John.Connors@ncmail.net>]

Hi all, and thanks for thinking of us Josh. As some of you know,a group of us
in Wake County, particularly members of Wake Audubon, inventoried all the
school chimneys in Wake County for roosting chimney swifts last September. We
looked at nearly 100 schools...26 had chimneys with roosting swifts ranging
from a few dozen birds to some with several thousand. Some sites that had been
hosting roosts in year's past had had their chimneys capped, others had
renovations which incorporated heat pumps and demolished their existing
chimneys. New schools all use heat pumps and are designed without chimneys. A
number of the older schools with existing roosts are also slated for
renovations.
Wake Audubon, in association with the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, is
offering to provide a guided program at each of the 26 schools during this
fall's Swift Night Out weekend...in hopes that the schools will recognize the
roost as an educational opportunity and a resource, rather than something to
remove. The Museum is putting together education resource Topic Boxes for use
with these schools and can use any unfortuneate chimney swifts, like the one
in Josh's house, as display specimens. Thanks Josh, and anyone else who
happens to find a swift who ain't so swift anymore. Thanks, John Connors @ NC
Museum of Natural Sciences

Joshua Stuart Rose wrote:

> Hi Carolinabirders,
>
> Spent Saturday at Howell Woods, and had a great time. High point was
> probably a pair of Mississippi Kites swooping and wheeling over the big
> meadow by the visitor's center, and hearing a couple of very late Pine
> Siskins calling from above the very busy feeder area.
>
> My wife told me over the phone that she had come home from a few days in
> SC and found a dead bird under an end table in our living room! Her theory
> was that one of our cats had somehow gotten ahold of one. She stuck the
> body in the freezer. I got home, looked in the freezer, and found a
> Chimney Swift! Doubt our cats could have caught one of those, even if we
> let them out unattended! Must have somehow slipped into the house, maybe
> the seal in the fireplace has come loose, and either starved or (more
> likely, since we never saw it alive) crashed into a window and broken its
> neck. John Connors, want the specimen for the museum? It's still in my
> freezer...
>
> On Sunday I joined with buddies from the Duke Natural History Society to
> make our contributions to the Wildathon, the Chapel Hill SBC, and the site
> inventory for the TLC's Irvin Tract all at once! I won't include a
> complete species list here: identifications are still being made, we had
> close to 100 animal species and 140 plants, plus a fungus or two. I
> started alone around 5:00 AM with a few Song Sparrows singing in the
> artificial lights around a Hillsborough Road, DUrham gas station (those,
> of course, counted for the WIldathon but not the other two counts). I
> managed to reach Irvin and hear Whip-poor-wills before the sun came up. No
> owls then, but the sky was gray enough that I managed to hear an Eastern
> Screech-Owl calling in the woods well after daybreak! I also heard a
> Northern Bobwhite calling before dawn, but had to take it off the list
> when the farmer next door told me he raised them in captivity and released
> them on his property.
>
> Bird totals were not bad, 55 species, given that I heard virtually no
> migrants. One Blackpoll singing across Jones Ferry Road from the Burger
> King (again, counted only for the Wildathon), and a Black-throated Blue
> Warbler singing halfheartedly at Irvin, that was about it. The only new
> diurnal bird species I added to the Irvin list was Louisiana Waterthrush,
> I heard and then saw one along the creek there. Briefly left Irvin to
> cruise the rest of my CH SPC assignment: best moment came when I parked by
> the intersection of Carl Durham Road and the Old Greensboro Highway to
> observe the pond there, and a male Orchard Oriole appeared on the fence
> about 5 feet from my open car window and sang! Alas, he saw me moving and
> flew off before I could get my camera out... Saw a female nearby too.
>
> Then met up with Craig Armstrong, Roger Rittmaster, and the rest of the
> DNHS volunteers for the day. We didn't add many new bird species to the
> list after that, possibly because we were paying a lot more attention to
> plants, insects, and other critters at that point. But we did have a
> fantastic time watching a pair of Scarlet Tanagers beginning to nest! The
> male mostly posed nearby, the female repeatedly flew back to one
> particular branch with twigs and bits of dried grapevine tendril; they
> must have just started, as we couldn't see the nest at all. And a little
> later in the day, Craig found an Ovenbird nest with at least six eggs in
> it!
>
> In non-bird discoveries, Craig also spotted a Red Fox briefly. We saw
> three skink species (Five-lined, Ground, and a huge female that Roger was
> sure was Broad-headed), and heard at least four species of frog (Bullfrog
> and Green before sunrise, Cricket and Cope's Gray Treefrog later). Saw six
> dragonfly and three damselfly species, plus a Jumping Bristletail, a
> big predatory firefly (Photuris versicolor), and a mating pair of
> bee-mimicking robberflies (Laphria sp.). At one point I even stumbled
> across the colorful and odorful Dog Stinkhorn (Mutinus ravenelii)!
>
> Good birding,
>
> Josh
>
> Joshua S. Rose
> Duke University
> Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)
>
> jsr6@duke.edu
> http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/