...what must surely be one of the last Kill Devil Terriers in existence -- a dog made famous by Orville and Wilbur Wright.
The first Kill Devil Terrier was acquired by Orville and Wilbur in 1902 at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina while they were waiting out the weather to test their second big glider.
the babies. The coon came back. he found his first way foiled, but he was still able to get a claw in through he wire and rip the leg off another baby.
North Carolina’s coast is considered particularly vulnerable to climate change because it is so long and flat. A 2008 study by the University of Maryland identified North Carolina’s coast as one of the country’s most vulnerable areas to climate change.
Brian seems like a good guy who knows his way around wetlands. Hopefully, they'll be able to find ways to slow down the loss of this important ecosystem. For more information, check out the Nature conservancy.Rising sea levels have already changed the area, which is valuable habitat for an array of wildlife, including black bears, red wolves and migratory songbirds. Peat soils are degrading, and plants and trees have died as saltwater has pushed into the area. If nothing is done to adapt the area to rising sea levels, researchers estimate that one million acres could be lost within 100 years.
The Conservancy’s climate change adaptation project will make the fragile shoreline more resilient to encroaching seas.
A story last week in the Telegraph, a British paper, describes how the city of Flint, Mich., a former industrial powerhouse now facing depopulation and plummeting home values, is dealing with vacant housing.
The solution? Bulldoze entire districts, returning the land to nature, and concentrate the population in the urban core.
The Telegraph’s Tom Leonard reports that the idea is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.
He said: “The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there’s an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they’re shrinking, they’re failing.”
But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.
If the city didn’t downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.
The article reports that the city has already demolished 1,100 abandoned homes, and that Mr. Kildee estimates that another 3,000 will need to come down. Overall, local officials believe that the city will need to contract its area.
More and more people are moving to the urban centers and leaving the 'burbs behind. Apparently, per capita, it is cheaper to live in the city.
The rest of the article can be found here.
I don't personally think I could do it. Too many people all squished together. Oh, and where would the chickens live?
But bulldoze unused suburban sprawl and returning it to green space, capital idea!
books written about it. Some researchers claim that crows may be more intelligent than primates or dolphins. They are capable of complex thought, projection, they have self awareness. Additionally, they are capable of misdirection. In other words, they try to trick each other when hiding (caching) food.
Savage's book, Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World (October 2005), explores the burgeoning field of crow research, which suggests that the birds share with humans several hallmarks of higher intelligence, including tool use and sophisticated social behavior.
The shared traits exist despite the fact that crows and humans sit on distinct branches of the genetic tree.
Humans are mammals. Crows are birds, which Savage calls feathered lizards, referring to the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
"I'm not positing there's anything mythological about this or imagining crows are in any way human," she said.
"But whatever it is that has encouraged humans to develop higher intelligence also seems to have been at work on crows."
They go on to talk about how crows make and use tools, how they are spontanious problem solvers, and how they use trickery to fool one another.
Savage also discusses Swiss zoologist Thomas Bugnyar's research showing how a raven named Hugin learned to deceive a more dominant raven named Mugin into looking for cheese morsels in empty containers while Hugin snuck away to raid full containers.
"This shady behavior satisfies the definition of 'tactical', or intentional, deception an
d admits the raven to an exclusive club of sociable liars that in the past has included only humans and our close primate relatives," Savage writes in her book.
Another area of crow research that may indicate higher intelligence is how crows learn and use sound. Preliminary findings suggest that family groups develop their own sort of personal dialects, according to Savage.
If you are interested in crows and their complex social interactions, it is worth the read. It does make me think twice car hawking them with the harris' hawks.
Read the rest here.
A lone male wolverine arrived in northern Colorado earlier this month, making him the first confirmed wolverine in the state since 1919.
In December, conservation biologists had outfitted the young wolverine, which is part of a reintroduction program farther north, with a tracking collar and watched him make the 500-mile (805-kilometer) journey from the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, crossing rugged landscapes and even busy Interstate-80, reports the Denver Post.
A 2,500-year-old bird's nest has been discovered on a cliff in Greenland.
The nesting site is still continually used by gyrfalcons, the world's largest species of falcon, and is the oldest raptor nest ever recorded.
Three other nests, each over 1,000 years old, have also been found, one of which contains feathers from a bird that lived more than 600 years ago.
Read the rest here.
Last year, one of the world’s most aggressive island restoration projects was launched to poison all the invasive rats on Alaska’s Rat Island, located in the western part of the Aleutian islands. But the extermination project may have taken an unexpected toll: a recent survey of the island recovered the corpses of 41 bald eagles and 186 glaucous-winged gulls – raising the possibility that the birds died after consuming poisoned rats.
“When you go to an island after a winter, it's not surprising to find bird carcasses,” says U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Bruce Woods, “but not these numbers.” There were only four breeding pairs of the federally protected bald eagles residing on the island last year, but the population in the Aleutians numbers 2,500.
Norway rats—the global pest of subways and sewers—first arrived on the island known to the Aleut people as Hawadax in 1780. A rodent-infested Japanese sailing ship ran aground and rats spilled onto its rocky shores, devastating populations of ground-nesting seabirds by feeding on their eggs, chicks, and even adults. When Captain Fyodor Petrovich Litke visited the island in 1827, he named it Kryssei, which means rat in Russian. The rats have kept bird numbers low ever since.
In 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation began testing out rat eradication strategies in small areas in other parts of the Aleutians using cakes of grain laced with a rodent-killing blood thinner called brodifacoum. During the trial, 88 percent of rodents perished in their burrows where they would not be exposed to scavengers like eagles or gulls, according to an environmental assessment of the project. Scientists concluded that “some bald eagles may be exposed to brodifacoum residues but are unlikely to die.”
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In late February eight years ago I decided to take my son hunting with my Red Tailed Hawk, Shihan, and myself. My son, four at the time, had never been hunting with me before and had been pestering me to take him for months.
We drove out to a field not too far from my house. This particular area was a great place to find bunnies because there was a large selection of food for them, and large tracts of briars that the bunnies love to hide in divided the whole area.
When we got there, I got the bird out of his box and cast him up into a nearby tree. He landed on a low branch and started moving his head back and forth, peering into the bushes. I got out my walking stick and waded into the waist deep briars, smacking at the branches hoping to get a bunny to run out of his hiding place. Dolan was too small to come along with me into the briars, so he followed along on the edge, hoping to see the bunny run out.
It was a great day for hunting, overcast and a little warm. I took off my glasses and stowed them in my hunting vest. I usually wear these when hunting squirrels to keep the falling bark and leaf debris out of my eyes, but today we were looking for rabbits and I wouldn’t need them. I took off my coat and tied it around my waist. I was already working up a sweat.
“How you doing over there?” I called out to Dolan.
“Good. See anything?” The excitement in his voice was infectious.
“Not yet.
After a few minutes I heard some rustling in the bushes off to my left. I couldn’t see what it was since the shrubbery was blocking my view, so I moved towards that area beating at the thorny vines with my stick. I knew I had hit pay dirt when Shihan launched himself from his branch and plummeted into the briars. I couldn’t see where he landed but I heard the shrill shriek of a rabbit. He’d scored!!
I yelled to my son that we’d gotten one. He still couldn’t get to where the hawk was so that he could see. I could see him jumping up and down, pumping his arms, and yelling, just as excited as if he’d caught the rabbit himself.
I fumbled over to where the hawk had grabbed the bunny. It was in a small clearing between two clumps of briars. The bird was holding down the bunny by the rump and head. Perfect! Just like he was supposed to do.I moved in close and grabbed hold of the rabbit.
We’d only been here a couple of minutes so I thought, maybe, after I dispatched this one, we could go for doubles. Dolan wanted to wade in and see what was happening, but he just couldn’t get past the briars, which were almost up to his head. There was a small path he could have followed back, but I told him to stay where he was. I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be when I dispatched the rabbit.
I reached in below the hawk and grasped the rabbit by the hind legs wrapping my gloved hand around his neck. I started to pull on him, but I couldn’t get a good enough hold. The rabbit’s fur kept sliding around in my hands and my attempts to keep him from further suffering weren’t working. I decided that I needed to get a better grip on the bunny. Throughout all this Shihan was doing great. He waited patiently with both his talons still clutched to his prey, wings outstretched to hide the rabbit from any unwanted intruders.
I leaned in closer, wrapping my hands around the rabbit, and in so doing I bent my head forward, towards the bunny, whose struggles had diminished. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I believe that the hawk must have thought that I was trying to take possession of his catch and would begin feeding. Abruptly, before I even saw any movement, Shihan had detached himself from the rabbit. I saw the lighter bottoms of two huge talon feet launching themselves directly at my face. Before the image had registered in my mind, I felt the searing pain of inch long nails sinking into my face and eyes. I don’t think I screamed; I don’t think I moved, but the image of my deflated eyeball swinging against my cheekbone inserted itself in my head.
I dropped the rabbit in shock, surprise, and a little bit of fear. The bird let go and dropped back down on its prize as if nothing had happened. I let him have it. I tore off my gloves and went to touch my face, but I was afraid that the images in my mind would be true. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt no pressure of a ruptured eyeball, and I could see with both eyes, but blood was pouring down the front of my hunting vest.
I had to see what happened, but I couldn’t leave my bird there. So I tied the bird to my belt while he began plucking the fur from the rabbit. I tentatively probed around my eye with my fingers, feeling to be sure none of the structure had been damaged. My face felt a little tender, but otherwise it seemed okay.
In the meantime, Dolan was calling from the briar’s edge. “Dad, are you okay? Can I come see?” “I’ll be out in just a minute,” I replied. “But, uh,” my voice was shaking just a bit. I hadn’t realized what a shock of adrenaline had traveled through my system and was now only beginning to wear off. “Daddy’s face is bleeding a little.
I got to my feet and transferred the bird off his kill. He hadn’t even had time to break into it yet, but at this point I really didn’t care. I picked him up and waded out of the bushes.
Dolan was gazing up at me. I was expecting shock or fear but it looked like he wanted to laugh. I was surprised.
“Daddy, you look ugly.”
That one sentence brushed aside all my fears that I had been really maimed by my own hawk. I felt a grin spread across my face.
“Can I see the bunny?” Dolan asked excitedly. “Yeah, let’s put up the bird first.” I replied. We walked back to the truck and I put Shihan back in his giant hood. I crawled into the front seat to inspect my face in the mirror. Rivulets of red had streaked down my cheeks and some had pooled in my bottom eyelid, but once I wiped it all off with a wet napkin from the glove box, I looked pretty good. Hell, we could go for doubles.
I showed Dolan the rabbit we’d caught, and then got the bird back out, and tromped back into the woods. This time we were looking for squirrels. After about an hour without flushing a thing, I could tell Dolan was getting tired and my eye was starting to feel a little funny. There was tightness about it and my vision was getting fuzzy around the edges. We headed back to the truck and got ready to go home.
I looked at myself again in the rearview mirror and was shocked. My left eye was slowly filling up with what looked like blood. The entire white of the eye was almost gone, now it was a glistening crimson. I called my wife from the cell phone to let her know I was stopping at the doctor’s office on the way home.
I found out later that the hawk’s talon had actually pierced my eyelid and had scratched my eyeball, but the blood and the swelling was due to blunt force trauma. In other words, it wasn’t the scratch that turned my eyeball red, but the force of his foot hitting my face. I had to wear sunglasses every day at work for the next month as my co-workers couldn’t look at me without becoming nauseous.
Probably going for doubles that day wasn’t the brightest idea, but what I really learned was that you never know what can happen in the field, and it’s important to be prepared for it. So now, when I leave the house I make sure I’ve got a spare of everything with me, and I always wear some type of protective glasses.
Men should not relieve themselves when hunting with hawks, as the hawk will see your, er, appendage as prey. According to Shaun, a falconer at the English School of Falconry in Bedfordshire, this rule was introduced after an actual incident. Ouch. I’m delighted to meet Shaun, mainly because I think “falconer”—along with “spy”, “explorer” and “I play guitar in U2”—is one of the coolest answers you can give to the question “What do you do for a living?”
