Switchgrass Biofuel--sink or swim?

This month's Audubon has an article about prairie-grass biofuels: Brewing a Better Ethanol. Producing native grasses is obviously MUCH better for the environment than corn, which requires a lot of pesticides, fertilizers, and irrigation and provides zero habitat for virtually all wildlife except raccoons, blackbirds, and other species that eat corn--animals which farmers spend a lot of time and chemicals trying to eradicate.

But depending on how often and when they harvest switchgrass to produce ethanol, we could be providing deathtraps for native birds. Just like when we cut hay early, destroying nests and nestlings of Bobolinks, Eastern and Western Meadowlarks, Upland Sandpipers, Le Conte's Sparrows, and other grassland species, cutting crops for biofuels early could turn what appear to be splendid grasslands into ecological sinks. Karen Rowe, Nongame Migratory Bird Program Leader for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and a landowner in Arkansas Co. where she has 30 acres of restored native grasses wrote on the Arkansas listserv:

My concern about using prairie grass or encouraging the planting of switchgrass for biofuel is the timing of cutting/harvesting/haying. Financial profit is a heavy motivating factor, and if the grass is harvested for fuel before the end of the nesting period for grassland birds, these fields will become “sinks” for grassland nesting species. Will grassland farmers delay haying til the end of July to benefit birds and lose a profit – probably not.

It will all depend on the date of haying/cutting as to the benefits of grasslands as an ethanol fuel source.

Karen is looking into the number of harvests per year proposed for growing grass for biofuels, and will get back to us. Meanwhile, I discuss the timing of mowing grasslands for hay production and other purposes in 101 Ways to Help Birds in the chapter "Manage Land Wisely." Number 27 is "Cut hay and alfalfa as late in the breeding season as possible." That section reads:

One June morning I came upon a newly mowed hayfield in northern Wisconsin. Even though the machinery was gone, I could hear that it had been mowed before I saw it--a dozen crows and five ravens were scouring the ground and squabbling over food. What were they picking at in the rows of drying meadow grass and flowers? The mangled bodies of baby birds. This field had held nesting Savannah and Le Conte's Sparrows, Sedge Wrens, Eastern Meadowlarks, Bobolinks, Upland Sandpipers, and Northern Harriers. In much of North America, June is the month when most ground nests hold eggs or helpless nestlings. Unfortunately, it's also the month when young hay has the highest protein content.

Fortunately, beef cows and horses don't require the high amounts of protein that dairy cows do. And many people who own pastureland don't raise livestock at all--they have it cut for aesthetic purposes or simply to prevent it from becoming shrubland. Changing the haying schedule can be an inconvenience for the landowner, but that usually pales in the face of all the lost eggs and nestlings when haying happens in May, June, and even early July. Marge Gibson, founder of Raptor Education Group, Inc., writes, "Many years ago hay was cut only twice per year. The first cutting was about July fourth, but now with the cutting coming in late May or early June there is no way ground nesters can pull off a brood with success." The farmers know they see fewer Meadowlarks, Bobolinks, grassland sparrows and of course Northern Harriers and Short-eared Owls, but often do not realize that they are the cause of the failure with early hay cutting.

How can you tell whether it's safe to cut hay or alfalfa? Meadowlarks often sit on exposed branches or even sing while holding insects in their mouths when they have nestlings. And Gibson notes, "When male Bobolinks are sitting on telephone lines or fence lines the female is still on eggs. The male will begin to make himself scarce once the young are hatched as he is doing most of the hunting for food as the female protects the young from predators. The young go from hatching to fledging in 10 to 14 days. Fledging means for Bobolinks that they leave the nest but still hide in the high grasses in the field until they are flying well which is in about 18 to 20 days. So when the male begins to be 'absent' for most of the day on the fence posts/ telephone lines you have about 20 days until you can cut the hay. Give them more if you can."

When a delay in hay cutting represents a significant hardship to a farmer because of time or financial constraints or because the high protein content of early hay is important for livestock, the farmer should cut early. But if farmers are aware of the presence of nesting birds, fewer pastures will be cut while vulnerable eggs and nestlings remain. Farmers with relatively small pastures can scythe their fields, but that's not feasible for most farmers. Before cutting early with heavy machinery, the farmer or a birder should try to scout the field first and flag nests so that they can be given a wide berth.

Recent Arkansas Ivory-bill News

Check this out.

We did it!

When you google "Laura Erickson blog" the first two links now go to my blog! Thanks so much for the clicks and links.

Ivory-bill Comments

Back in the 80s I called the National Audubon Society asking for support when I was first working on a cat leash law in Duluth. Their only response was that "cats kill individual birds, not populations--what hurts populations of birds is habitat." When Stanley Temple started amassing data that established that cats indeed affect whole populations of birds in Wisconsin, he was subjected to serious questioning by scientists. EVERY scientific study is, and rightly should be, exposed to careful scrutiny and additional studies, which prove or disprove the hypothesis. That's what science is all about.

But Stan was also subjected to personal attacks and even threats by non-scientists who felt personally affronted and aggrieved by the thought that if his studies' conclusions were generally accepted, these people might be expected to keep their own personal cats indoors. The subject of cats is fraught with controversy because so many people either love cats or hate them, and in this case the scientific study might have in the long run affected people's personal behavior, so there was a bizarre emotionalism connected to the very subject. This is exactly what has happened with the issue of global warming--people with a financial or personal stake in the issue are weighing in emotionally rather than looking carefully at the body of studies and supporting data.

For whatever reason, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker seems to have sparked a bizarre and profoundly unscientific emotionalism, too. Some top-notch birders and ornithologists who checked out areas where the 2004 reports had been made and didn't see or hear an Ivory-bill themselves spoke out about and/or published their results and opinions, which is the way science works. Some of them were heated in speaking out against the original reports, which is the way scientists, all too human, work. Some on the other side became heated in defending their study, again the way human scientists work. We're none of us perfect, or robots.

But like the cats-and-birds issue, this one sparked a shockingly emotional response from non-scientists. Most--maybe close to all--of us when we first heard the news releases in April, 2005, were not just delighted--we were elated. Those of us who had for decades looked longingly at pictures of Ivory-bills in our field guides had been heartbroken as we came to accept that such a beautiful and charismatic species could truly be extinct. The news of a credible birder actually having seen one was thrilling beyond measure.

As with all rare sightings, this sighting was seriously scrutinized. And, because the species was more than just "rare"--it had been considered extinct--the scrutiny of the sighting and the birders making it was justifiably more intense and public than most bird reports ever are subjected to.

But in this case, the scrutiny went far beyond scientific skepticism to emotional and personal attacks. When a handful of credible birders and ornithologists first questioned the reports, some people not only instantly took sides but went off the deep end into bizarrely unfair personal attacks. Naturally, the most vociferous of these weren't ornithologists or top-notch birders. They were like those children who, when first told there's no Santa Claus when they desperately want to believe, get furious with their parents for having tricked them in the first place. In this case, though, the Ivory-bill isn't a fictional character made up out of whole cloth. And Tim Gallagher wasn't a parent lying to his children about Santa Claus. He's a credible birder whose own experienced and trained eyes told him he'd seen an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Every birder who has ever reported a rarity to a good state committee knows the cruelly impartial way that a good committee operates. For example, last autumn I reported seeing a Kirtland's Warbler in Florida. The state committee has asked me for additional information, and that was the last I heard--they very well may reject the sighting. Meanwhile, the Kirtland's Warbler recovery team did accept the sighting. I KNOW I saw a Kirtland's Warbler--I'm familiar with the species, which I'd seen in Michigan on two earlier occasions, and I'm very familiar with every species which could be confused with Kirtland's Warbler. But autumn sightings are extremely rare, the species is critically endangered, and my sighting was justifiably scrutinized.

What does it mean if the sighting is accepted? Nothing more than that the state committee includes an October, 2006 sighting at Lake Kissimmee State Park in its official ornithological records. If in subsequent years, other birders report the species at that location, the park may ultimately be considered a migration stopover spot, which may have implications for habitat management in the park. (I saw it in excellent scrub habitat.) If no one ever sees it there again, it was just a fluke.

If the sighting is not accepted, that does not imply that I didn't actually see the bird. It does mean that the data I provided--a sight record with no photographic or sound recording support--wasn't enough to merit inclusion in the official ornithological records of the state.

When lifelists are personal, as mine is, it's not a big thing. Our lists can bear scrutiny or not, as we prefer. When my own lifelist reached 200 or so, I went back and scrutinized it myself--in my inexperience when I first started birding, I included a Red-necked Grebe in winter plumage that, even though I probably saw it, I was no longer CERTAIN about, so I dropped it and waited to see it again before I put it back on my list. Right now my Minnesota list includes one Mississippi Kite from Duluth that I reported in 1986. That sighting was rejected by the MOURC. If the vote had been unanimous, I'd have not included it on my personal list, accepting that maybe I didn't know what I was looking at. But the vote wasn't unanimous, and Kim Eckert, whose identification skills are among the finest in the state, voted for inclusion, so I decided to keep the sighting. I know what my eyes saw. But the very fact that most committee votes on reports are not unanimous makes it clear that sight records, and even photographic records, are to a certain extent more subjective than we'd like to believe.

The truth is that eyes CAN be wrong. I bet more than one of us has made a daily list of fall warblers that had at least one of them misidentified. I bet more than one of us has taken a quick look at that woodpecker and checked off Downy or Hairy for the day without carefully scrutinizing the bill-length/head-size ratio or the outer tail feather pattern. We're none of us perfect, which is why we need records committees in the first place. I put Kirtland's Warbler on my Florida list because I saw enough of the bird to be completely satisfied--100%, not even just 99%. I love warblers, and so I spend a LOT of time studying them in the field and in books, and my level of experience with them gives me an added sense of certainty.

But my own eyes and judgment can be terribly suspect when it comes to gulls and shorebirds. If a committee rejects a report of mine with these birds, there's no way I'll include it in my own personal lists, because I don't trust my judgment when it comes to them.

If I were contributing my state list to any Florida list compilation, or to the ABA, my Kirtland's Warbler would NOT be allowed if the state committee ultimately rejects it. And that's precisely the point where the sport of birding crashes into the science of ornithology.

The point of competitive listing is to get as many species on our lists as possible. The point of record-keeping in ornithology is to ensure that the official state checklist is based entirely on credible data. Most of us, most of the time, manage to negotiate the difficult waters where the two disciplines meet. But a few people get emotionally overwrought about it. They whine, criticize state committees, and hold lasting grudges when a sighting of theirs is rejected. And they apparently get overwrought when a bird is reported that they personally don't believe was sighted. Is it because someone has added it to a list and they know they'll never be able to? Is it somehow conjuring that sense of betrayal they felt when they found out the truth about Santa Claus, even though the Ivory-bill is not the stuff of myth, but is or definitely was a living, breathing species? It's hard to say why anyone is taking this so personally, and ridiculing our birding colleagues and calling then names. But that's the point where skepticism ends and emotionalism begins.

Charley!

Back when I had a full-time job, our son Joe told us he needed a car and was looking for an affordable used Prius. We priced them, and they sure don't lose value very fast compared to most cars. Meanwhile, I was about to pass the 100,000 mile mark on our 2004 Prius. It's been a great car, averaging just over 5o miles per gallon and hasn't required a speck of work, but northern winters are hard on cars. We figured it would probably last a lot longer in Orlando than it would up here. So we offered to sell him our car for not very much money and we'd be the ones who bought the new one.

That was before I was unemployed, but we decided if we cut back on expenses we could still probably swing it, now that Katie's done with college. And our new car arrived on Friday. She's beautiful. Her name is Charley, after John Steinbeck's dog--we'll have our own "Travels with Charley" experiences. But to save money and natural resources, I'm not going to do any quick trips in her--I'll walk or bike to the post office, grocery store, or anywhere else within 2 miles. I'd bike up to Hawk Ridge if Seven Bridges Road was open--it's not as steep riding up from that direction as it is going up the hill on Glenwood Street. But I should even be able to do that within a few weeks if I work at it. Charley is not going to be allowed to go over the speed limit, and I'll do my very best to always live up to what I recommend in my book, "drive at the slowest speed that is safe, courteous, and convenient." And I've decided I'm not going to take her on any bird-chasing adventures unless I'm carpooling with at least one other birder.

She's been on two trips now--to Brimson for a program I did as part of their Petrell Hall Centennial celebration on Saturday, and to Port Wing to see Russ's mom and go to the town's annual Fall Festival on Sunday. We're averging about 54 mpg so far. And she seems to have great bird karma. My first bird while riding in her was an adult Bald Eagle. So far I've also seen Osprey, Broad-winged Hawk, Turkey Vulture, Ruffed Grouse, Common Raven, Gray Jay, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and American Goldfinch. And that's without specifically taking her birding yet!

New cars are like a new year--filled with promise about the lovely adventures ahead. And like the resolutions we make at the new year, I'm hoping I can keep my resolutions with Charley. And I'm hoping that even with trips like the one I'll be making to New Mexico next month, I'll be able to cut back on enough extraneous driving to keep the odometer from hitting six digits for at least five or six years instead of three. Charley looks like a great car, and I'm hoping to keep her for a long, long time.

Really worth a read

No matter what you think about Al Gore, this is an important read. It would be lovely to think that the press will never again be able to distort and skewer a candidate for sport like that, but things don't look hopeful.

• Vanity Fair-- The Media: Going after Gore
  

My new theory about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Why do the Ivory-billed Woodpeckers give only a handful of people a glimpse, never long enough to photograph? They apparently invented an invisibility cloak long before J.K.Rowling created the concept for Harry Potter. Once in a while they've been caught without it on, but the moment they sense a birder is about, on it goes!

Is an invisibility cloak possible? Researchers are working on it.

King Lear of the Insect World

Howl, howl, howl, howl!

When I was in high school, I fell in love with William Shakespeare's plays. I got to see James Earl Jones perform as Othello in 1967 when I was a sophomore--he had me sobbing at the end, and I so treasured the experience that I kept the Playbill, which I still have. When Star Wars came out, something about Darth Vader was driving me nuts, and finally it came to me and I blurted out, "It's Othello!!" Russ elbowed me and shushed me, but I waited through the credits just to make sure. The credits said Darth Vader had been played by David Prowse, and so the moment we got back to our apartment I pulled out my program to PROVE that David Prowse played Othello. But he didn't!!! I was so bummed out, so certain that I'd recognized that voice, but months later Parade magazine had an article about James Earl Jones and how he'd done the voice work for Darth Vader--David Prowse had been the actor under the famous suit and mask. James Earl Jones didn't ask for a screen credit on the first theatrical release, but the situation was corrected later. Anyway, I was vindicated!

What has to be one of the greatest Shakespeare productions for the theater EVER is happening right now. Ian McKellen, one of my favorite actors in the universe, is playing King Lear, in what is my absolute favorite play of all. The play will be in New York at the end of the month, and in Minneapolis from October 5-14. If I weren't unemployed, I really would have figured out how to get to London to see it, or New York. In Minneapolis, all the tickets were sold out before they even went on sale to the general public, since the Guthrie gave first crack to their members. My sweet husband tried getting me a ticket on eBay for our anniversary, but when he looked they were charging a thousand dollars for two tickets. That might be in someone's ballpark, but not in mine.

So I'm obviously not going to get to see this play--I'll have to imagine it all. But I have a pretty good imagination. When I saw the above photo of that little bee, shaking his tiny fist at the universe like Lear raging on the heath, I felt encouraged. Sure, he's no Ian McKellen. But he's as naked as Lear on the heath, that bare, forked creature who doesn't even need words to carry a sting. I may not see the play, but I'd be a fool to ignore the real life dramas all around me in the natural world.

But speaking of the natural world, my favorite lines in King Lear pretty much sum up why I'm happy to spend my life working to protect little birds:

That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
But I will tarry; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly:
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The fool, no knave, perdy.

Hooray for all the Red-eyed Vireos!

I can't get over how many Red-eyed Vireos I've seen this late summer/early autumn. I took a walk with my dog Photon up Seven Bridges Road last week (sadly, the very last bridge on each end is being replaced, so for the duration you can't take that route to Hawk Ridge). It was a lovely walk, and everywhere we looked there was another Red-eyed Vireo. I think they must be pigging out on grasshoppers because I saw them on the ground and in low branches in open areas where there were a lot of hoppers. And when I was counting at Hawk Ridge on Friday, a couple spent the day feeding around the main overlook, two were singing (with a Mourning Warbler joining in a couple of times!), and several moseyed through. What excellent company!

Roger Tory Peterson once estimated that at the time, Red-eyed Vireos were the most abundant songbirds in North America. Now they don't have as much suitable habitat--they're heavily parasitized by cowbirds in forest fragments, and a lot of what used to be quality forest is now developed. But they're doing pretty well despite their problems.

Almost two decades ago, when my daughter Katie was five and I was a licensed bird rehabber, a woman up the shore somewhere dropped off four baby Red-eyed Vireos at my house the Thursday before the Fourth of July Weekend. She told me she was "teaching my kids how to raise baby birds," but "I know they always die--I didn't want them to see that part and we're having company this weekend."

She'd been feeding the babies nothing but canned dog food, and not cleaning up after them. Each of the little babies was totally caked in dried feces and dog food--one of them had enough dried stuff around its mouth that it couldn't even beg. It took hours to get them cleaned up enough to detect feathers at all. I could only identify them because of the distinctive vireo beak.

The poor things had literally been entombed in all that dried crap, so their growth was stunted. I knew that at this point they really didn't have a chance, but did my best to at least ensure they'd die comfortably. Except the one who was in such a weak state to begin with, who died within a few hours of arriving, the others grew and preened and seemed to at least feel pretty good, but they were clearly deformed--their bills full size but their heads and bodies were pitifully stunted.

I don't think I've ever been so angry at someone in my life. What on earth did she think she was teaching her kids?? That baby birds only live for a matter of days? That they should eat canned dog food? That they're filthy? Did they have a clue that parent birds, or foster parents in an emergency, must provide them with a balanced diet high in protein and Vitamin D-3, keep them clean, and when they're ready to jump out of the nest, lots of space for excercizing and learning about the big world. She'd had these little birds for over a week, and acted like every day they survived was an amazing triumph even as each day she drove another nail into their coffins. The confidential way she told me she was bringing them to me so her own children wouldn't have to watch them die made me even angrier. No, she was leaving it to MY children to watch them die.

That summer, Katie wrote a little book about the right way to take care of baby birds, and why it's illegal, and should be illegal, for untrained people to even try. She brought it to kindergarten that fall. Meanwhile, those poor babies are buried under our lilac bush.

Anyway, it's lovely to see healthy vireos this fall, birds raised by their natural parents and apparently doing splendidly.

Of Kirtland's Warblers and Eskimo Curlews

Oh, wow--yesterday the new issue of Birder's World came in the mail, and it's a great one! The cover story is about the three Kirtland's Warbler pairs with active nests in Wisconsin last year. When I first heard the news, I was thrilled, and seeing such a vivid photo makes it even more exciting and joyful for me. An inside photo shows a singing male from behind, with leg bands clearly visible--he had been banded not in Michigan but on his wintering grounds in the Bahamas in November, 2003, and was seen again there in 2004. This is even more exciting news!

Then there is another article, "Another Grail Bird Spotted" by Randy Hoffman. On September 24, 2006, in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, Randy was hiking with his wife when he came upon what he's certain is an Eskimo Curlew! As a top-notch birder, past president of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology, natural-areas management specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, author of Wisconsin's Natural Communities (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002) and author of several bird/habitat relationship articles regarding the state's breeding birds, Randy has huge recreational birding and professional ornithological credentials. He knows how difficult and controversial this kind of sighting is, and notes:

Scientists consider sightings of extremely rare species to be only hypotheses that require rigorous examination. My observation is scientifically weak evidence that the Eskimo Curlew exists, but when combined with a long list of other reports (the sightings are listed at the bottom of the article), it forms a hypothesis that the species is not extinct. Only true scientific endeavor can reject or accept the hypothesis.

Nonetheless, in good conscience in the fall of 2006, I took a pen and carefully made a check on my life list by the Eskimo Curlew. Hope does remain for the species. My observation has motivated me to press for continued investigations. I encourage searches, especially extensive work in Labrador in August and September, to gather more conclusive evidence of the long-sought bird's continued existence.

I happen to know Randy Hoffman. When I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, I birded a couple of times with him--as a matter of fact, he showed me my lifer Barred Owl and my first Wisconsin Yellow-crowned Night-Heron on May 7, 1978, at one of his favorite spots in Columbia County. I loved being out in the field with him--he knew every sound and detected not just movement but found that perched Barred Owl amid the shadows even though the bird didn't blink an eye. He was also pretty unassuming and friendly for a genuinely great birder. So I'm glad he saw the bird, and I sure hope that someone is inspired to get out there with a camera and find again this magnificent ghost. Meanwhile, Randy's article in Birder's World is well worth reading. Heck, the whole magazine is!