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Loose Feathers #242

A Cattle Egret after being cleaned and released / US Coast Guard photo

Birds and birding news

• Over 60% of the world's penguin species are threatened or endangered. In most cases their population declines have been caused by overfishing, which depletes penguins' food supply. At least one species in Africa has suffered from oil spills.
• Mountain-dwelling birds are at a higher risk of extinction due to climate change if they occupy a narrow range of altitude. 
• An appeals court upheld the critical habitat designation for Mexican Spotted Owls.
• Two pairs of endangered Least Bell's Vireos are nesting in a California development's habitat restoration area.
• A wind farm in Ontario has killed 602 birds and 1,270 bats. Nature Canada argues that the deaths could have been avoided in the turbines were not built in an Important Bird Area.
• A biologist in Washington has been studying the effects of wind farms on birds. She finds that the mortality rate is generally low, but raptors are at a particularly high risk. She estimates that wind farms in Washington and Oregon kill about 6,500 birds and 3,000 bats per year.
• Cliff Swallows in California appear to have abandoned Capistrano for a country club.
• NatureInstruct has a new website for identifying birds. Its name somehow sounds  familiar.
• Falcon chicks discovered in Queens have been relocated to a nest on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Birds in the blogosphere

• WorldWaders: Hunting in Myanmar is probably the main cause of the decline of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper
• Great Auk or Greatest Auk: Triumph and Almost-Triumph and Not-Triumph and Dog Ticks
• Today in NJ Birding History: Atlantic City Bird Names
• NeuroKüz: The neuroscience of birdsong
• WildBird on the Fly: Two Audubon groups cited among worst charities
• burdr: Birdwatcher Finds Poachers While Birdwatching

Oil Spill

• Government scientists have revised their estimate of the oil spill's size. They now think that 20,000 to 40,000 barrels, and possibly as high as 50,000 barrels, have been spilling per day from the broken riser pipe. 
• Living the Scientific Life: Oiled SeaBirds: To Kill Or Not To Kill? What Is The Ethical Thing To Do?
• IBRRC: Post release survival of oil affected sea birds
• Bridget Stutchbury writes about the dangers the oil spill poses to migratory birds, particularly shorebirds.
• A journalist dove into the oil spill to see how the slick looked underwater.
• Here is video of a low-altitude flyover of the spill site.
• The Drinking Bird: The Oil Conservancy
• Daily Dead Birds tracks how many animals have died from the oil spill based on US Fish and Wildlife Service reports. 
• Some oiled birds are being released on the Atlantic coast of Florida after being cleaned.

Environment and biodiversity

• Insects can develop resistance to pesticides, so it is more effective to find other ways to control insect pests in your garden. Currently there are over 1,000 insect/insecticide resistance combinations.
• Alaska is using Tasers for controlling wildlife in dangerous situations. Wildlife officials argue that a Taser would be less harmful than a gun or tranquilizer.
• This week, a court convicted eight people for the Bhopal link but sentenced each to only two years in prison.
• A humpback whale washed up on a beach in New York.
• Wear Calvin Klein cologne if you want to be stalked by jaguars.

Blog carnivals

• I and the Bird #127
• Scientia Pro Publica #32
• Circus of the Spineless #51

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I and the Bird

I and the Bird #127 is online at The Drinking Bird.

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Flies in the Backyard

With over 17,000 species on this continent alone, flies (order Diptera) come in many shapes and sizes. Here are a few that I recently found in the backyard.

On warm days, one can usually see tiny metallic-colored flies flitting among the leaves of vegetation. Many of these are long-legged flies (family Dolichopodidae). These are predatory flies that eat smaller insects like aphids. The individual below is probably from the genus Condostylus.

Here is another long-legged fly. This one is smaller, and its color is gold instead of green, but it has the same basic body shape.

Other flies that frequent vegetation include the dance flies (family Empididae). I believe that this fly is part of that family, though I am not sure of the species or even genus.

Finally, my favorite of the recent group is this insect, which was attracted to the light at the back door. This is a midge, probably in the genus Chironomus. The plumelike antennae are especially striking at such a small scale. The grid lines on the paper form one-eighth-inch squares. Though they superficially resemble mosquitos, Chironomid midges do not bite people.

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A Much Larger Oil Spill, and Underwater Plumes Confirmed

A USFWS employee rescues an oiled pelican in Barataria Bay / US Coast Guard photo

The last few days have seen some developments in the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP claims to be capturing 10,000 barrels of oil per day with the containment cap that it installed on the riser last week. However, video of the riser pipe has shown little discernible reduction in the amount of oil flowing out of the pipe from around the cap. This has led some experts to argue that oil is flowing through the riser at a rate much closer to the 100,000 barrels a day predicted in BP's worst-case scenario than to the 12,000 to 25,000 barrels per day estimated by government scientists.

Leifer said that based on satellite data he's examined, the rate of flow from the well has been increasing over time, especially since BP's "top kill" effort failed last month to stanch the flow. The decision last week to sever the well's damaged riser pipe from the its blowout preventer in order to install a "top hat" containment device has increased the flow still more _ far more, Leifer said, than the 20 percent that BP and the Obama administration predicted....

The oil was not freely flowing before the top kill or before they cut the pipe, Leifer said, but once the riser pipe was cleared, there was little blocking the oil's rise to the top of the blowout preventer. Video images confirm that the flow of black oil is unimpeded.

"If the pipe behaved as a worst-case estimate you would have no visual change in the flow, and I don't see any obvious visual change," Leifer said. "How much larger I don't know but let's just quote BP."

Second, government scientists confirmed that there are subsurface plumes of oil, something that independent researchers had already discovered.

Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said oil in "very low concentrations" was found at varying depths 40 miles and 42 nautical miles northeast of the well and also 142 nautical miles southeast of the well....

Dispersed oil "is not in a form that's easily removed," said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia at Athens during a briefing she held on Tuesday about her latest research cruise in search of submerged oil.

Joye was one of the first scientists to discover submerged layers of oil, reports of which Lubchenco attacked in mid May as "misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate."

The full extent and ecological effects of the oil plumes are not clear yet, but it will certainly have some effect on marine life.

In her separate conference call with reporters, Joye said that on her most recent research mission, a two-week cruise on the vessel F.G. Walton Smith that ended on Sunday, her team found a plume of oil from the leaking well that was about 15 miles long and three miles wide. Its thickness ranged from 600 feet close to the well to 1,600 feet farther out.

Joye said the researchers found unusually high levels of methane in the water. The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig burst into flame on April 20 when a jet of methane exploded up the well's pipe and enveloped the rig.

Joye said the presence of so much oil and methane is depleting oxygen in the water, and that the amount of methane in the water increased after BP engineers severed the well's twisted riser pipe last week to fit a "top hat" containment device over it....

"We have no clue what these dispersants do to phytoplankton, to microorganisms," Joye said. "We know that they are toxic to many larvae. It's impossible I think to know what the impacts are going to be and what the repercussions for various fisheries are going to be."

Meanwhile, BP continues to deny the presence of large underwater oil plumes.

Regarding the ecological consequences, see this interview with a marine scientist who studies pollution in mollusks.

BP plans to donate profits from the oil captured in the containment cap to a wildlife restoration fund. Once royalties and other fees are subtracted, that could amount to $582,470 per day.

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Two More Moths

Here are two more moths that came to the porch light recently. The first is one of the largest moths I have seen so far this year. This is a Pearly Underwing (Peridroma saucia) from the family Noctuidae. The distinctive patterns on this moth are rather difficult to see without looking closely. Thanks to Seabrooke for help with identification.

One of the things I really like about noctuids is how cute they look from the side.

The second moth is very small, less than 10 mm long. This is a Bidens Borer Moth (Epiblema otiosana). The name refers to a genus of plants that host the moth's larvae. In addition to Bidens, the caterpillars will feed on ragweed or smartweed. I suspect the latter hosted this moth in its larval stage, as there is quite a lot of smartweed around the house.

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Some Recent Moths

With the return of warmer weather, moths have been more active. Here are a few that I have encountered recently, starting with two that came to the back door. Above is a Thin-lined Owlet (Isogona tenuis), which has a striking pattern even if it appears to be mostly brown. Below is a Speckled Renia Moth (Renia adspergillus).

I have a few more moths from the back door that I may post here once I have them identified. Some, like this plain micromoth, will probably stay unidentified for the time being.

There were a few moths active at Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Preserve on Saturday; I was able to catch up with two. Above is a Common Gray Moth (Anavitrinella pampinaria). I never would have noticed it flush against the side of a tree if it had not flown in front of me. The second appears to be a Metarranthis moth. For now, I am calling it Common Metarranthis (Metarranthis hypochraria), but it could be one of the other species in that genus as all are variable in appearance.

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