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Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds | Book suggestion
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
BIRD LOVE: THE FAMILY LIFE OF BIRDS
Wenfei Tong | Princeton University Press | 2020
The following text is excerpted from an article in Natural History Magazine June 2020 (from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City), The Family Life of Birds: Why some individuals of species make more faithful partners. Written by the book’s author Wenfei Tong and itself excerpted from the book. This is another book I have not yet read, but looks really good. So many books, so little time!
Natural History Magazine
More than 90 percent of birds appear to be monogamous, in that males and females form pair-bonds and raise chicks together….Males and females don’t always want the same thing out of a reproductive relationship, and mating systems are the outcomes of a battle of the sexes to leave the most descendants, played out in individual lifetimes and over generations of evolution. Mating systems are defined by the number of partners each sex has – monogamy for one female and one male, polyandry for one female mating with multiple males, polygyny for the reverse, and polygynandry for reciprocal promiscuity.[M]ajor groups of birds tend to be more monogamous if their chicks require more care. A young eagle or albatross cannot survive without the care of two parents, who are part of a stable, long-term relationship. In contrast, ducklings are so independent they can feed themselves from the moment of hatching, and we see little parental investment by most male ducks. Closely related birds from the same genus have different mating systems largely because of what they eat and where they live. For instance, forest-dwelling weaverbirds are generally insectivorous, and remain in monogamous pairs that guard territories all year round. It takes two adults to catch enough insects to feed a hungry brood.
Author Wenfei Tong is a research associate in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a faculty member of the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She runs nature tours from her hometown of Missoula, Montana.
All photos in this blog are from her Big Sky Safaris website.
NHBS.com readers gives Bird Love a 5-star rating
More than 90 percent of birds appear to be monogamous, but beneath the surface there is a huge variety of mating systems in play, from temporary monogamy and extra-pair mating to multiple partners for either sex, with some species switching between these as their circumstances change.
Discover the amazing array of courtship techniques employed by birds around the world:
Male bowerbirds construct extravagant galleries to attract females
Ospreys bring gifts of food in exchange for sex
Male skylarks perform simultaneous aerial and vocal acrobatics to impress females
The practice of lekking, where males in a species such as grouse gather to display to females, who then complete reproduction solo, from nesting to raising chicks
Wenfei Tong is interviewed by Mark Bekoff in Psychology Today
I recently read a fascinating, comprehensive, and beautifully illustrated book about numerous aspects bird behavior called Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds, and I’m pleased to post this interview with its author, Wenfei Tong. A summary of the book can be seen here. Wenfei is a biologist with a passion for understanding and conserving the natural world. She went to Princeton and Oxford as an undergraduate, and has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Harvard, where she is currently a research associate.I wanted to know more about Wenfei and her outstanding book and I’m pleased she could take the time to answer a few questions….
Review from Good Reads
A video conversation with author Wenfei Tong. 48 minutes
The Glitter in the Green | Book Suggestion
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds
By Jon Dunn | Basic Books | $30 | 352 pgs | ISBN 978-1-5416-1819-0 | Released 4-20-21
The following comments are from Natural History Magazine, March 2021 (from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City). I haven’t read it yet, but it looks like a good book about this wonderful family of birds.
In a garden on Isla Robinson Crusoe — a shred of volcanic land thirty-three degrees south of the equator and several hundred miles west of the coast of Chile — wildlife writer Jon Dunn stood transfixed. The object of his attention: a tiny hummingbird that few readers of this effusive travel memoir will ever behold in the flesh, “my first Juan Fernández Firecrown [Sephanoides fernandensis], ablaze with fiery colour. He seemed to glow from within, like a hot ember, a rich, burning umber…He stared evenly back at me, his head slightly cocked…For a fleeting instant his forehead caught the sunlight and went supernova, an intense dazzle of searing orange.”
There are plenty of backstories to add grace notes, sometimes in a minor key, to Dunn’s hymns of praise. At a public market in Mexico City, Dunn finds a stall offering husks of dried hummingbirds as love charms. “They are good for love,” the vendor tells him, “but also for your health if you are ill. You can eat their hearts in a soup.” Attempting to visit Bolivia’s Madidi National Park, Dunn winds up in the midst of a post-election uprising, and after a scary encounter with armed men at a rural roadblock, leaves the country amidst tear gas and gunshots, “even though I had not set eyes on a single hummingbird.”
Author’s Bio from Bloomsbury Publishing
Author Jon Dunn is is a natural history writer, photographer and tour leader based in Shetland, who travels worldwide searching for memorable wildlife encounters. A childhood exploring the water meadows and abandoned orchards of the Somerset Levels, and the droves and ancient woods of Dorset’s Blackmore Vale spurred a lifelong passion for all things natural history based. His Shetland home features otters on his doorstep, and summer evenings watching porpoises from the kitchen window. Once stalked by a Mountain Lion in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental, he generally prefers experiencing wildlife on his own terms and not as part of the food chain.
Publisher’s description from Basic Books
An acclaimed natural history writer follows the trail of the remarkable hummingbird all over the world.
Hummingbirds are a glittering, sparkling collective of over three hundred wildly variable species. For centuries, they have been revered by indigenous Americans, coveted by European collectors, and admired worldwide for their unsurpassed metallic plumage and immense character. Yet they exist on a knife-edge, fighting for survival in boreal woodlands, dripping cloud forests, and subpolar islands. They are, perhaps, the ultimate embodiment of evolution’s power to carve a niche for a delicate creature in even the harshest of places.
Traveling the full length of the hummingbirds’ range, from the cusp of the Arctic Circle to near-Antarctic islands, acclaimed nature writer Jon Dunn encounters birders, scientists, and storytellers in his quest to find these beguiling creatures, immersing us in the world of one of Earth’s most charismatic bird families.
There is a short video of the author on this site.
Praise from Others
“Jon Dunn’s book is an adventure-filled, continent-spanning travelogue. It is also meticulously researched. By carefully peeling back layers of history to find shimmering hummingbirds hidden within, Dunn has created essential reading to understand human obsession—past and present—with these remarkable creatures.” — Jonathan C. Slaght, author of Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl
*****
“Glittering gems of the Americas and nowhere else on Earth, hummingbirds lure Jon Dunn from Alaska to Chile in this whizzing travelogue of hummer natural history. In an adventure replete with pop culture and literary references, Dunn treks deserts and jungles, investigates a slaughter of hummingbirds for love potions, unmasks the real James Bond, and in Colombia sees an otherworldly hummer, ‘like some enameled god fallen to earth.’ The book is that exquisite.” — Dan Flores, author of the New York Times bestseller Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History
*****
“More than just an observant birdwatcher, Jon Dunn is a talented traveler and writer, capturing just the right details of people and place to make his hummingbird odyssey come alive. The Glitter in the Green is a vivid exploration of a dazzling subject.” — Thor Hanson, author of Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees
*****
“This is more than a bird book, but still, it is. It combines one person’s adventure with arguably the most spectacular group of birds in the world: hummingbirds! The immensely talented writer Jon Dunn follows these highly diverse jewels from Alaska, down the Americas to Tierra del Fuego, and weaves an environmental and cultural dialogue around these hummers and the human-dominated world they live in.” — Joel Cracraft, Curator in Charge, Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History
*****
“Natural history writer Dunn takes readers on a wondrous globe-trotting pilgrimage to seek out hummingbirds as their populations are threatened… Dunn’s vivid prose, balanced with just the right amount of detail, will captivate birders and non-birders alike.” — Publishers Weekly
Breeding Shorebird Atlas | Gyorgy Szimuly
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
If you like shorebirds, you may find this project interesting. As Gyorgy points out below, it’s as useful to know where particular species are not found, or not breeding, as knowing where they do breed and are found. One of the important discoveries of the January 2001 Western Snowy Plover Winter Window Census of the U.S. Pacific Coast was that Snowy Plovers spend the winter at very localized roosting locations and the birds are rarely seen away from these roosts. As the years went by, we also learned that the same roosting locations persist from year to year. Without learning where the birds weren’t, we wouldn’t have been able to confirm this phenomenon.
Hi All,
The Shorebird Conservation Society has recently announced the launch of the Breeding Shorebird Atlas program aiming to map the abundance, distribution and threats of the shorebirds of the world. The registration for the program is now open and we encourage everyone to book a preferred spot. We not only need data where shorebirds breed but knowing where they don’t breed is equally important. During the 5-6 years of field work volunteers survey 1×1 km UTM squares.
Please find more details about the program here: https://www.shorebirdconservation.org/shorebird-atlas
To find out more about the community please visit: https://www.shorebirdconservation.org/
Membership fee doesn’t exist at the moment. To join us, please fill out the form at https://www.shorebirdconservation.org/membership>
Best wishes, Szimi
Gyorgy Szimuly
Shorebird Conservation Society
gyorgy.szimuly@MAC.COM
https://www.shorebirdconservation.org
https://www.facebook.com/ShorebirdConservationSociety
https://www.facebook.com/EurasianShorebirdSurvey
https://twitter.com/shorebird_soc
[Posted by Chuck Almdale. Thanks to Prof. Karen Martin of Pepperdine U. and Lu Plauzoles for this.]
As the sun sets, hordes of tiny crustaceans called beach hoppers –– also known as sand hoppers –– emerge from underground burrows to frolic and feast. They eat so much decaying seaweed and other beach wrack that by morning all that’s left are ghostly outlines in the sand.
[Note: Two of the things I learned from this video: why they deserve the name “hopper;” why Say’s and Black Phoebes spend so much time on the beach.]
NOTE – Link to how this film was made: Article on Patreon.com
Night falls, and the beaches come alive with sand hoppers – hungry, jumping shrimp-like creatures that look a lot like giant translucent fleas. No, it’s not a horror movie, and these animals “don’t bite or suck your blood. They’re much more than fleas,” says Jenny Dugan of the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara. Through her research on sandy beach ecology, Dugan has spent years developing a respect for beach hoppers and their under-appreciated ecological role.
The small crustaceans, sometimes as large as two inches, are remarkably in tune with the tides. The mature adult beach hoppers only emerge from their burrows at night when the tide is retreating – which is the best time to find fresh kelp, and less of a risk being seen by predators.
This is another installment of the PBS Deep Look series. If no film or link appears in this email, go to the blog to view it by clicking on the blog title above. If the film stops & starts in an annoying manner, press pause (lower left double bars ||) to let it buffer and get ahead of you. [Chuck Almdale]
Wild birds: Salmonella, conjunctivitis & feeders
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
Tufted Titmouse eats snowman head (US FWS photo)
The following information appeared in an email from Pasadena Audubon Society.
Salmonella outbreak affecting songbirds.
News has been circulating about a salmonella outbreak affecting our songbirds in California.
Here’s what you need to know.
- Pine Siskins are the most affected by the current outbreak, followed by their close relatives, goldfinches. The outbreak is more centered on Northern California, though some deaths have been reported around the Los Angeles area.
- Salmonella is primarily transmitted through feces.
- Crowding at feeders increases the rate of transmission.
- Birders can help reduce disease transmission by removing all feeders and baths that Pine Siskins and goldfinches are using. These outbreaks typically end when Pine Siskins migrate out of the area usually around late March or April.
- Hummingbird feeders can stay up as long as the finches don’t use them.
- Feeders and bird baths should always be kept clean. This will also limit the spread of conjunctivitis in House Finches (CA DFW which is also being reported. A thorough weekly cleaning is recommended.
- Report any sick or dead birds to CA Fish & Wildlife so that they can continue to monitor the situation.
- Read more on salmonellosis from CA Fish & Wildlife.
The best way to feed wild birds is by planting native plants!
Consider buckwheat, sages and bush sunflower. The birds will visit your yard but will be maintaining a healthy social distance. Your garden will not only provide seeds for our birds, but will also allow native insects to find their host plants and produce the caterpillars which are essential food for nestlings.
Visit Hahamongna Nursery or Theodore Payne for advice and a wide selection of native plants.
Here’s a useful article from US Fish & Wildlife on feeding wild birds.
SANTA MONICA BAY AUDUBON SOCIETY BLOG 