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odds and ends



Hi Carolinabirders,

My only migrant today was American Redstart; at least two, in a mixed 
flock with titmice and Brown-headed Nuthatches, on the Duke main quad 
near the Med Center end. There's really nice habitat just north of the 
Med Center entrance here; it attracts scads of White-throated Sparrows in 
winter, and I keep checking for other species here. No luck so far.

About the Kaufman guide: I read commentary from Ken on one list or other, 
maybe even here. He proclaimed that his guide was intended for beginning 
birders, as an update to the Peterson guide (which he felt was getting 
out of date). As such, he *intentionally* left out extreme rarities 
(stints, etc.) and pelagic specialties, feeling that no general field 
guide can afford the space to treat these adequately, and that anyone 
serious enough about birding to go after such species will have either 
(a) a far more advanced book or (b) a human guide to help them identify 
these species. So he isn't trying to compete with the NGS guide; Sibley, 
on the other hand, is probably going to blow NGS out of the water in all 
aspects except portability...

On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Elaine Corvidae wrote:
>
> Er, Josh, correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that humans have
> been in this country for at least 12,000 years.  I'm not a
> palaentologist, but it seems reasonable that the Pleistocene flora and
> fauna were probably quite different.  [I know that you didn't mean
> "humans" to equate only with white Europeans, right? :-) ]
> 
> As for human interference, there is a lot of evidence that Native
> Americans deliberately set fires to clear out underbrush and alter the
> habitat, which probably helped promote certain specialized bird species
> (while of course probably edging others out).  Active maintenance of   
> this sort seems unlikely to happen in this day and age, however, for   
> obvious reasons.

Actually, I *did* mean "white Europeans" when I said "humans". I think. 
It's silly to argue that our treatment of the land, with reduction of 
habitat into smaller and smaller fragments divided by highways, malls, 
parking lots, etc. is truly analagous with prior Americans' setting 
fires. As for evidence of this, these previous inhabitants coexisted for 
over 10,000 years with Carolina Parakeets, Passenger Pigeons, 
Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, Bachman's Warbler - and those are just the 
species in the Carolinas! We wiped all those species out in under 1000 
years, with hunting playing a role but habitat alteration playing a much 
greater one.

As for active maintenance seeming unlikely, it is happening now! 
Unfortunately, most of it is happening in the wrong direction: fire 
suppression, even-age timber management, promotion of Loblolly Pine 
monocultures. We're lucky to live in the relatively moist East; evidence 
is mounting that the massive, catastrophic fires in the west over the 
past 3 years or so has resulted from the timber industry repressing fires 
and creating overly dense stands of trees which are all the same height 
(and not from accumulation of deadwood, as they are trying to claim).

Meanwhile, some active maintenance is going the other way: prescribed 
burns to benefit Kirtland's Warbler (and note, no catastrophic fires in 
Michigan!); trapping cowbirds to help Golden-cheeked Warblers and Black- 
capped Vireos; mowing grasslands to keep them open for Henslow's and 
Grasshopper Sparrows and other species of the same habitats; removal of 
exotic plant species from the Everglades.

Finally, about Lisa's snake; it sounds like a Red-bellied Snake, Storeria 
occipitomaculata, a species that usually dwells under dead wood and other 
detritus. Wish I could have seen it, I've only seen photos... Totally 
harmless. They flip over their tails and expose the brightly colored 
underside to startle predators, supposedly, or maybe to advertise that 
they taste bad. The smell was probably a secretion, common to many 
colubrid snakes; virtually every Garter Snake I've ever handled has 
squirted stinky white or clear fluid out on my arm. For a few photos of 
this and related snake species, visit http://www.snakesandfrogs.com/scra/

Good birding,

Josh



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

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