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Re: Big day interpretation, amazing blooms



Hi Carolinabirders,

Before getting to some other people's questions, a couple of my own:

Has anyone been up to Roan Mountain (I think it was there) to see if the
Mourning Warbler has returned to its spot for a third year?

Has anyone else noticed that the fruit-eating birds haven't been this
year? The fruit on our backyard mulberry has been falling to the ground
and getting stepped on; the swarms of Cedar Waxwings that were cowing down
last spring are nowhere to be seen this year. And all along Ellerbe Creek,
there is a similar oversupply of ripe mulberries, the people actually get
to eat some! Maybe with the unusually cold winter, the fruit ripened
later, and the Cedar Waxwings left before it was ready to eat?

On Sun, 8 Jun 2003, Leah Campbell wrote:
>
> Anyone else having an incredible year for certain blooming plants? Last year
> I had a patch of bee balm that MAYBE reached a foot in height. This year it
> is as tall as me -- and covered in blooms! The tiger lilies are taller than
> me. My butterfly weed has nearly tripled its number of stems, each one heavy
> with plump bloom clusters. I have a leafy spike of monkshood nearly 4' tall.
> The daylilies are spreading like weeds. The coneflowers are blooming madly.
> My spirea appears to be covered in pink flames.
>
> The only plants that appear to be struggling are the lantanas. A reasonable
> tradeoff, I think.

Durham is, not surprisingly, a bit behind in phenology. The Butterfly Weed
(Ascelpias tuberosa) has only buds, not flowers yet, here. Our Bee Balm
(Monarda didyma) doesn't even have buds yet, nor our coneflowers
(Echinacea, I forget the species). On the other hand our Buddleias are
profusely flowering and popular with the hummingbirds, as well as numerous
Syrphid flies, moths, all kinds of other nectar-feeding critters. And a
funny coincidence: our Lantana never even came up this spring! I would
guess that (a) the cold winter abused the Lantanas, which I think are
Mexican (though so are the Buddleias and they're very happy); and (b) the
flowers are rebounding from last year's drought and enjoying this year's
wetness with a banner flower year. One site where I've been rescuing
wildflowers in Durham recently has a dazzling Yucca show going on!

On Sun, 8 Jun 2003, Shantanu Phukan wrote:
>
> N.Carolina has roughly the same number of species as Illinois and Virginia.
> No big surprise here, but the discrepancy is in the number of birders
> whose individual state lists approach the total number of species accepted
> from that state. Here in NC we have an official list of 440 species and
> four of us have seen more than 400. TO take a random number, the 25th
> "seeded" birder in our state (Cliff Comeau) stnads at 310. BY comparison
> Virginia has 430 species and Illinois the same number of total species
> seen in the state. Hoever, the highest "seeded" birder in VA has only 364
> species and the 25th seeded only 270 (which in NC would put one in the
> 38th position). The topmost birder in Illinois has 405 species and he is
> the only one from Illinois to break the 400 mark. The 25th seeded Illinois
> birder has 284 species. It is clear from this that an NC is an unusually
> "competitive" state and that you have to work harder here to get on the
> list than you would in a state with a similar avifauna.
>
> Now my question is about how to interpret this discrepancy.

Anyone who is not an ABA member and has no idea what SHantanu, Robin, and
I are talking about, can read this stuff on-line if they have Adobe
Acrobat Reader, see
http://www.americanbirding.org/publications/miscbdlrep.htm

My first thought is in the opposite direction: it's not harder, it's
easier to get on the list. I have not birded Illinois, but from what I've
heard in talking to a birder from that state, it's pretty trashed. THe NC
Piedmont and inner coastal plain has been heavily abused, but we still
have some wonderfully preserved habitat in the mountains (though the
unprotected parts are going fast), and along the coast we have an amazing
collection of NWRs (Alligator River, Pea Island, Mattamuskeet, Pocosin
Lakes/Pungo) together with national seashores, state parks, and private
preserves. It sounds like habitat, especially for breeding landbirds,
especially in the southern parts of the state, is hard to come by in
Illinois. So I would guess that a greater percentage of the IL list
consists of vagrants and rare breeders, while more of the NC list consists
of regularly occurring species.

Of course, I'm saying this without having looked at the IL list to compare
it to ours.

With respect to Virginia, I'm stumped! Their e-mail list seems at least as
active as ours. They have a single statewide birder's guide, as opposed to
our piecemeal approach. And it seems like the distance from mountains to
shore seems shorter up there, though not from mountains to open ocean, but
the Chesapeake seems like it would get most of the gulls, terns,
shorebirds, etc.

I might also think that individuals and competition might have something
to do with it. The fraternity of Fussell, LeGrand, Wright, Carter, Davis,
Dean, etc. seem to push each other pretty hard, and I suspect has led to
at least a few additions to the state list, and lots of rarity chases. And
I think their rarity chases have inspired the rest of us to get out after
a few critters, such as the Thick-billed Murre this past March, or the
Green-breasted Mango a couple of falls ago; really motivated early chasers
confirm that a bird sticks around, which then gives the rest of us
confidence that if we drive a couple of hours, the bird might still be
there. I don't know the folks at the top of the VA rankings, but the
distance between 1 and 2 is much wider than here, and perhaps there isn't
the same chemistry up there?

Good birding,

Josh


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

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