Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2016 i Audubon Magazine

FLIGHT PLAN PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY ROUSE Most migrating birds find their way by instinct. Even among species that travel in flocks, each individual is born with an innate sense of its migratory route and direction and distance. For a few kinds of birds, however, navigation is a matter of tradition, not instinct. In these species, the older birds remember where to go, and younger birds follow their parents to learn the routes, stopover points, and destinations. That’s the case with the tens of thousands of Snow Geese and Ross’s Geese that migrate from breeding grounds on the Arctic tundra to the Rio Grande Valley of central New Mexico every fall. Many of them settle for the winter in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, which has become a magnet…

Birds create the opportunity for Americans to come together to make real and lasting change. “Your children watch what you do.” That’s the powerful advice I got recently from a faith leader who also happened to be an Audubon chapter head. Fair enough. Here’s what I want our children to see when they watch Audubon in their communities and their lives: respect and compassion. Those enduring Audubon values have worked for 110 years and they can help guide us in the run-up to November’s election. Every four years, people say, “This is a pivotal election.” I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this one is more consequential than most. I believe it is. In an election season filled with nastiness and division it can feel like the world is…

Tiny, rare, and rich in color, Gouldian Finches are called “jewels of the outback” for good reason. With fewer than 2,500 remaining in the wild, the once-common Australian bird is a stunning sight—for anyone so lucky to find it. The Gouldians’ range is largely bound to the Kimberley, a spectacularly rugged region that marks Australia’s final frontier. Historically, Aboriginal tribes set small, prescribed burns to prevent late-season wildfires there. But when colonists displaced the tribes in the early 20th century that practice died out, and eventually infernos began to decimate the entire landscape. Many seed-dependent birds began to starve—especially Gouldian Finches, which rely on a seed that grows solely in areas untouched by fire for at least three years. In 2013, British ecologist Alex ander Watson learned that Aboriginal Kija…

MOST RAPTORS TEND TO maintain distance from humans—but not kestrels. With their coppery cloaks, streaky faces, and aerial antics, they can be a backyard spectacle. But loss of nesting habitat has helped send the bird into serious decline. To bolster the population (and your birding) consider hosting a kestrel family. Madison Audubon’s Brand Smith, coordinator of one of the largest kestrel-nest-box programs in the country, offers simple tips for making your property friendlier to the birds year-round. Provide Shelter Kestrels nestle into natural and artificial cavities, whether trees in rolling grasslands or concrete pockets in major cities. They tend to perch on power lines while hunting, and so in Smith's experience, boxes near those are more actively used. Building the boxes does take a bit of handiwork; blueprints can be…

California naturalist joseph grinnell brought down the second owl with a single shot. The first had not been so easy. It was the evening of June 18, 1915, and Grinnell had been working with a team of field assistants in Yosemite National Park to trap, shoot, catch, and catalog every creature they could find for the University of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. One of the men, Charles Holliger, had spotted the owls that morning near Ostrander Rocks, a knobby ridge of granite protruding out of the thick forest. But the owls—species yet unknown—proved uncooperative. As Grinnell and Holliger worked their way through a “fine forest of fir,” the anxious call of a Ruby-crowned Kinglet cut the evening air. Following the sound, the men flushed a large owl, which landed…

BIRDERS TRAINED TO ID BIRDS by their plumage are typically mystified by their first hawkwatch—from a distance, raptors may be near impossible to tell apart. To succeed, you’ll need to rethink your concept of a “field mark.” Focus on the traits that you can make out, such as size, shape, overall color or tone, and the manner and cadence of the bird’s wing beats. Distant IDs aren’t made instantly—they’re built, by piecing together multiple clues that favor one species over another. Take your skills to new heights. After all, that’s where the raptors are. Size and Shape Most birds of prey fall into four major categories. (Northern Harrier, Osprey, and kites are a few exceptions.) These core attributes will help you choose the right clique: • Buteos are large, broad-winged,…

HAWKS, EAGLES, AND FALCONS tend to be solitary most of the time. We encounter them mainly as isolated pairs or lone individuals, hunting widely dispersed prey. But during fall migration, geography concentrates them in certain areas, allowing birders to see dozens, hundreds, or even thousands in a day. Migrating raptors save energy when they can, so they’ll glide on updrafts along north-south ridges. Most avoid crossing open water, so they pile up on coastal peninsulas or clump together where they have to detour around large lakes. Follow the birds to these key concentration points to catch the spectacle this fall. —Kenn Kaufman Grail Bird Northern Goshawk Powerful predators of northern and montane zones, goshawks are often hard to see because they hunt by stealth inside the forest. As migrants they…

LEGS An eagle’s remarkable gripping strength comes from its legs. Muscles anchored to leg bones close the talons by contracting tendons, which have ridges that interlock, allowing the raptor to maintain a firm hold on prey for long periods of time without putting intense strain on its muscles. EYES Keen vision enables an eagle to spot small prey from almost a mile away. Each eye has two foveae, or centers of focus, allowing for simultaneous forward and lateral vision, and a sliding, translucent inner eyelid called a nictitating membrane wipes away debris every few seconds, like built-in windshield wipers. BEAK The beak sharply tapers at the end into a hook that snags and tears up prey. Nares, or openings, on either side of the beak enable breathing while diving at…

Big Brother The bird bots [“Rise of the Avianoids”] are truly magnificent feats of engineering. Once they’re made available to police to “stream information about criminals’ movements,” however, they will inevitably—and very soon—be used to spy on anyone the government considers suspicious: activists, political protesters, environmentalists, and a long list of law-abiding citizens. It may take years or decades before courts rule that warrants are required for this spying, as they finally did in the case in Vermont of a GPS secretly mounted on a suspect’s car that tracked him for weeks. This is not an objection to the bird-bot research, just a reminder of the law of unintended consequences.—Linda Sleffel, Columbus, OH Please forgive me for raining on the parade, but these bird-like drones will create havoc in two…

While a human observer might perceive the eagles’ actions as lazy, they’re maximizing caloric intake and minimizing energy output. It may not be the kind of impressive behavior we’d like to see, but it’s clearly effective. IN A BATTLE BETWEEN A BALD EAGLE AND A chicken, the chicken is definitely the long shot. And yet you can’t help but root for the eagle. It is a magnificent creature, precision-built to do two things that reliably fill humans with awe—fly and kill—and it looks completely at ease doing both. Swooping down, the eagle unfurls its hand-like claws, scoops up a chicken, and sweeps up to a tree, whereupon the larger bird lays the smaller bird on a branch to allow for easy consumption. It’s unclear exactly when the chicken dies, but…

MOST BIRDS ARE SMALL AND DART ABOUT—NOT RAPTORS. Find a Red-tailed Hawk perched on a tree limb or light post and you’ll wonder why you ever wasted time chasing a Blackburnian Warbler with a camera. But raptors also provide photographers with a unique and addictive challenge, especially during migration. To get the best shots, learn what ridges or coastlines the birds follow and in what weather conditions. And if you’re just starting out, here’s a hot tip: Practice on gulls. Grail Bird Gyrfalcon Native to the Arctic barrens, this majestic falcon is a rare fall migrant in the Lower 48 (so rare, in fact, it’s also known as the “Holy Grail Bird”). Try your luck on the famed Kittatinny Ridge out East; winter will offer better chances in Michigan, the…

THE CALIFORNIA CONDOR BECAME A CELEBRITY AFTER ITS BRUSH WITH EXTINCTION in the 1980s, and it has continued to make headlines as populations have recovered since then. So Joe Ciardiello’s regal portrait of North America's largest bird is a natural fit with his life’s work: caricature-like portraits of the world’s most famous figures, from Charles Darwin to Yogi Berra. Ciardiello, 63, rarely uses pencil in creating his portraits. He prefers to warm up with several ink sketches until he’s distilled an organic likeness, and then adds watercolors sparsely to capture the essence of his subject. When depicting the California Condor, neither Ciardiello nor John James Audubon worked from a live bird: Audubon sketched from a specimen in London in 1838, while Ciardiello drew inspiration from photos of the condor, as…