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September 18 Birds in the City: Conservation Needs, How to Reduce Threats, and How We Can Improve Urban Habitats

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September 18 Birds in the City: Conservation Needs, How to Reduce Threats, and How We Can Improve Urban Habitats Volume 30, Issue 1 September, 2018 Vol. 30 No. 1 Owashtanong Islands Audubon Society-far flowing water September, 2018, Pg. 1 Grand Haven, Michigan September 18 Birds in the City: Conservation needs, how to reduce threats, and how we can improve urban habitats Presented by Linnea Rowse, Conservation Program Coordinator, Michigan Audubon Linnea is an avid birder, and though she doesn’t like to pick favorites, her unofficial favorite group of birds are warblers (maybe you can twist her arm and get a specific favorite bird someday!). Linnea grew up in Minnesota, and feels lucky to have parents who encouraged her to get outdoors and got her involved with birding (i.e., participating in Birdathons!) at an early age. Though Linnea was generally interested in birds as a young adult, her passion for bird conservation and birding grew after a college semester abroad in New Zealand, and grew again with her first seasonal bird job after she graduated; she has been working in the avian conservation field now for the past 10 years. Linnea is very excited to join Michigan Audubon, as the core mission aligns with her own values – to connect birds and people, and to do so by employing sound conservation science, research, outreach, and education. Everyone is LOUTIT DISTRICT LIBRARY welcome to Bee Fly/Tiger Bee Fly 2 407 Columbus Avenue OIAS’s Dangerous Fishing Line Grand Haven - Humans and Wildlife 6 programs. Extremely Unexpected Yard Bird 4 Visit OIAS: Other Entanglements 7 • Homepage: http://www.oias.org Semipalmated Sandpiper 5 There’s an app for that! 3 • Like us on Facebook: This Season’s Programs 2 www.facebook.com/OwashtanongIslandsAudubonSociety Vol. 30 No. 1 Owashtanong Islands Audubon Society-far flowing water September, 2018, Pg. 2 This Season’s Programs October 16 – Wildlife Rehabilitation Allyson Swanson, a Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitator with Wildlife Rehab Center LTD November 20 – Black Terns in MI, Caleb Putnam January 15 – South Texas Whirlwind, Curtis Dykstra, Naturalist and Avid Birder February 19 – The home energy savings pyramid: reducing bills and increasing comfort! Brett Little, Green Home Institute March 19 – Ottawa County Parks Update, John Scholtz, Ottawa County Parks & Recreation Director April 16 – A trip to Belize: Mayan ruins, Mot-Mots, and more, Dr. Michael Lombardo, Professor of Biology, GVSU May 21 – Business meeting, member slides, and potluck Bee Fly Judi Manning Bombylius spp. One sometimes sees furry insects in spring hovering just above the ground. These native flies, resembling a bee, belong to a large family of flies, Bombylidae, known as bee flies. They imitate bees and are found throughout the northern hemisphere. A high-pitched sound is produced when they fly. They are very agile and can change directions very quickly, probe flowers for nectar and are moderately good pollinators. They differ from bees by having two wings instead of four, large eyes, skinny long legs and very short antennae. A long and stiff tongue is used to sip nectar while hovering. They avoid hidden predators (crab spiders) by not landing on the flower. Their larvae act as parasite feeding on immature (larva and grub) stages of various insects. References: Bee Flies (Bombylius spp.), A Pollinator with a Bad Reputation, By Beatriz Moisset, https://www.fs.fed.us/ wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/bee_flies.shtml, Seeds of Diversity, Bee Flies, https://seeds.ca/pollination/pollinator-profiles/flies/bee-flies Tiger Bee Fly Judi Manning Xenox tigrinus This is a large fly! It has a beautiful black pattern that resembles tiger stripes! We spotted this insect at Stu Visser Trail in August and had no clue what it was. iNaturalist identified it for us. (See Page 3) Females lay fertilized eggs in Carpenter Bee nests. Carpenter Bees bore a round one-half inch hole up to 10 inches deep into wood. If eggs are already laid when the female visits the bee nest, it will add some eggs. The Tiger Bee Fly larvae hatches and consumes the living Carpenter Bee larvae. Reference: Insect Identification, https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Tiger-Bee- Fly, Urban Wildlife Guide, Sunday, August 28, 2011, Julie Feinstein at 6:17 PM, The Carpenter Bee and the Tiger Bee Fly http://www.urbanwildlifeguide.net/2011/08/carpenter-bee-and-tiger-bee-fly.html Vol. 30 No. 1 Owashtanong Islands Audubon Society-far flowing water September, 2018, Pg. 3 There’s an app for that! Carl Manning In only a few short years, smartphones have changed the way we bird by bringing field guides, cameras, and citizen science apps to our pockets. There are a wide variety of apps, some useful, some less so; so, I thought a short review of some of the useful ones could be helpful. Beginning this month, I will try to shed some light on a few of what I have found to be useful. iNaturalist is a photo-based app for iPhone or Android that allows you to identify and log sightings of any living thing – birds, fish, trees, insects, butterflies…. The most exciting feature is the app’s uncanny ability to identify most anything you can photograph. You simply take a photo with your phone, start the app, transfer the photo to the iNaturalist app and ask it to identify. The app will present the top 10 choices, and I have found it to be accurate almost every time. If you open an account (not necessary to use the app) you can realize the real power of the app by joining the community of other users. You can upload your photos, which then become part of a global database available to the research community, and visible to anyone so they can assist and confirm an ID for you. Currently, the database contains over 12 million entries provided by over 900,000 users. iNaturalist.org began as the Master's final project of Nate Agrin, Jessica Kline, and Ken-ichi Ueda at UC Berkeley's School of Information in 2008. In 2015, the app took a major leap when machine learning was added, similar to face recognition. In 2014 iNaturalist became an initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and a joint initiative with National Geographic Society in 2017. I’ve been using iNaturalist for about a month, mostly on moths, insects and butterflies, but have also added some birds, and the accuracy is astounding. Instead of looking through hundreds of pages of a moth field guide, a single photo can provide an ID in about five seconds! You can get more information at www.inaturalist.org. Next month, we’ll look at another app that uses machine learning and recognition specifically for bird ID. Merlin, developed by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is another free app that all birders will want in their arsenal of field guides. Reference: https://www.inaturalist.org/ Unusual Bird Behavior Hank V had three Tree Swallow nest boxes in his yard. He noticed some unusual behavior at one of the boxes in June. One day when he saw the mouths of the young birds in the doorway he watched a Gray Catbird with a big yellow caterpillar go up toward the birds to feed them. The adult Tree Swallows did not like this and did their best to chase the catbird away repeatedly. The catbird was persistent. Another time the catbird flew to the door and no mouths appeared because the adults were doing their warning call so the youngsters stayed away from the door. Hank checked the box and verified it contained four young Tree Swallows. The catbird did feed some food to the young swallows over a three day period. Has anyone else noticed any behavior like this? Bird Counters Needed!! The Christmas Bird Count is coming up in December. Two participants have moved out of Michigan and now there are two sections in need of two birders each. Email Carl at oias(at)oias.org if you know of anyone who would like to participate. Vol. 30 No. 1 Owashtanong Islands Audubon Society-far flowing water September, 2018, Pg. 4 Extremely Unexpected White-winged Dove Judi Manning Zenaida asiatica Yard Bird Judi Manning This seasonally migratory large, semitropical dove is Why am I writing about this species? Expect the found from the southernmost U.S. and Mexico through unexpected!! About 5:25 PM on June Central America and the West Indies. They 20th, I was sitting on the couch and breed in the southwestern U.S. and northern glanced out the window. I saw a dove Mexico and now into Oklahoma. The with some white on its wing land on northward expansion is probably due to the feeder. Brain said must be increased agriculture and ornamental trees. Mourning Dove with partial albino Individuals can be found wandering across the tendency. It very soon showed me its continent from Alaska to other side. Wow – it was identical to Maine and places the first side. Grabbed handy between. binoculars which confirmed as I exclaimed to Carl “White-winged Adults are brownish/gray Dove”. Carl replied “What?” It ate a above and gray below and little more and when birders arrived, Range Map: White- is the only dove with white wing bars on the it was no where to be seen. We winged Dove (Zenaida edge of the wings. They have blue, featherless asiatica), In skin around each eye, red iris anxiously wandered around the inside Neotropical Birds of the house hoping to spot it. and a black ear spot behind each Online (T. S. eye, red legs and feet and square Eventually we went outside where it Schulenberg, Editor). was spotted in a pine tree on the west Cornell Lab of tail.
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