Whooping Cranes at the their new home in AL

Weather, obscure FAA regulations and bird preference have conspired to make Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge the winter home to about a dozen endangered whooping cranes this year–and maybe for their lifetime. Nine whooping crane chicks–raised in Wisconsin by humans in bird costumes and led down south by an Operation Migration ultralight–ended up stopping near the refugeon January 5 to settle a dispute over FAA rules. Operation Migration got a waiver within a week, but then weather delayed the trip, a couple of the birds wanted to change direction. Eventually biologists gave up crated the birds and brought them to Wheeler, which a few other cranes had found three years ago.

Since they never made it to Chassahowitzka NWR in Florida they may think of Wheeler as their winter home. Joe Duff, one of Operation Migration’s co-founders, says that he suspects they’re go back and forth between Wisconsin and Alabama, but you can never tell. Whooping cranes (Grus americana) pair off about age 3, then mate at 5, usually in the male’s territory. The class started out with 10 birds, but now has five males and four females. Another four birds, including two raised in Wisconsin and released up there to learn to fly with adult birds, were already at the refuge.

Staying in Alabama throws off the plan to get the cranes to re-establish an old migration route down to Florida.  ”Once we get past the short-lived self pity and look objectively at the situation, we see that it doesn’t matter much that we didn’t make it all the way to Florida. The birds will still migrate north. They may need a little assistance but they will still be a part of the population,” Duff wrote on the operation’s blog.

The only passengers on the Operation Migration ultralights.

But, it’s not the first time the cranes have messed up human plans to help them. Some birds just decide to stop over before Florida. And this year’s warmer weather seems to have really left them uninspired to make the long trip. More migrating whoopers wintered in Indiana than Florida. Two of the birds in the class of 2011 tried to revolt against their ultralight mother. They tried to turn the group north and nipped at the ultralight when the pilot tried to retake the lead of the formation.

Duff wanted to stress that the FAA wasn’t to blame for their delay or unexpected home. “They didn’t ground us, we grounded ourselves,” he said.

The agency was just investigating the complaint of a former worker. In 2008 the agency started enforcing rules that ultralight pilots couldn’t be paid. After a complain last summer, the group and FAA agreed that they met the requirements because flying is a small part of the work done by the bird trainers. Plus, the rule was meant to protect the public from dodgy carnival rides; the only passengers on the ultralights are stuffed animals from Disney (a sponsor). But a new complaint from the same former worker left the FAA wondering. So, Operation Migration stopped their work until they got everything cleared up.

The group got a temporary waiver and hopes to work out a permanent one.

Wheeler has a viewing area and lots of other migratory birds. (Including sandhill cranes, which could be a problem since hunters are allowed to shoot the gray sandhill cranes but not the white whoopers.)

In recent years Texas and Louisiana tangled over where a new, non-migratory population would live; the birds just moved to Louisiana. But the birds themselves (along with the migration specialists) may have just made Alabama is a new site to see them.

Check out the 16th Annual Whooping Crane Festival in Texas this coming weekend

Help Out Operation Migration

The history of hunters shooting whooping cranes

Where to SEE WEIRD BIRDS (All the interesting birds: pelicans, puffins, prairie chickens, vultures, hummingbirds)

Operation Migration likes to keep the public involved–as long as they don’t bother the birds. This year they found a new spot for birders to see the crew take off in Piatt County, IL. Here’s how the blog describes it: “The new flyover viewing site is on 1000N about 500 yards east of where it intersects with 300E.Directions: South on #32 from the town of Cisco; turn left/east onto 950N; at the ‘T’ in the road turn left/north onto 300 East, then turn right/east onto 1000 north. After about 500 yards there is a little rise in the road that will offer a bit of an elevated view.”

Courtesy of Journey North, which tracks all kinds of migrations

Toronto Photo courtesy of Michael Gil

The city of Toronto is trying to brush off the title “Raccoon Capital of the World” that the PBS show Nature bestowed on it this week. I called the See Toronto 800-number and asked where animal tourists could see raccoons. The Toronto travel expert tried to dissuade me that they even have any. They clearly have seen the documentary “Raccoon Nation,” and don’t want to be known as some kind of planetary dumpster that draws masked nighttime scavengers.

“Actually we don’t have a raccoon infestation,” the operator tells me quickly. “I’ve lived in Toronto all my life but I’ve never seen a raccoon.”

Oh, they’ve seen the stories. The  documentary premiered on Canadian TV last year and highlights the York University research tracking urban raccoons, which shows they live 150 per square km–50 times the density of rural raccoons. Researchers found that, like human city dwellers, urban raccoons just get used to living in a smaller space and don’t stray outside it, even if there are green pastures nearby. They’re like Manhattanites with a mental barrier that keeps them from the attractions of Brooklyn and the suburbs.

Sadly, there is no official raccoon census to gauge whether Toronto deserves the title or just happened to get it because they have raccoon scientists. If you’ve ever walked in Central Park’s north woods at dusk you will be amazed how many raccoons just pop out of the trees.

Toronto doesn’t seem to like the attention. Search the tourism site and you’ll find no mention of raccoons. I asked the guide about the show and the title. “People like to use a lot of misnomers,” he says. I ask where I can see them when I come to Toronto. “Probably the suburbs.”

The documentary points out that Kassel, Germany, is the raccoon capital of Europe. They don’t mention that they are sometimes called “Nazi raccoons” because they were released with permission of Hitler pal Hermann Göring, who figured he could improve on the genetic diversity of German wildlife and make the forest more fun for hunters. Japan imported them as cute pets in the 70s. Guess how that worked out. They’re now turning ancient temples into dens. Russia also has a runaway raccoon population.

Toronto has some competition as the raccoon capital. Florida’s Hugh Taylor Birch State Park in Ft. Lauderdale had a documented population of 238 raccoons per km. Well, it did before people caught and moved them–though the park still notes that it’s a good place to see them. Out Walking the Dog has estimated the raccoon population of central Manhattan’s parks is north of 400. Odds are, someplace in the world has a greater density of raccoons than Toronto. If they want to shirk their title, they should try figuring out what that place is.

Where to SEE ODD LITTLE ANIMALS Coait, Prairie Dog, Otter, kangaroo, skunk, porcupine, salamander, snake, squid, pretty much anything rare

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Tigers shot dead

Both Esquire and GQ came out with big stories this week on the horrible Zanesville zoo incident four months ago. Exotic animal hoarder Terry Thompson killed himself just after unleashing about 50 large predators on exurban Ohio on October 18, 2011. To Esquire, it’s a gory action-adventure movie (they even released a movie trailer). GQ’s Chris Heath actually bothers to try to figure out how it happened, which makes his story a lot more interesting.

The Observer chronicled how both reporters stayed at the same hotel and the magazines jockeyed to make a splash. The most incredible part of the dueling stories is that it’s a silly but standard practice for monthly magazines to kill a feature if they know a rival is covering the same topic. Editors don’t want the public (or, more importantly, their peers) to think they are using ideas from each other (not  possible, given the lead time) or just doing the obvious.

I’m glad GQ still went ahead because their piece is so much more nuanced and haunting.

Not that I wasn’t gripped by Esquire’s story, which treats the incident like a rollicking horror film. Lots of gore and men pissing, swearing and doing what they had no choice to do. You learn minute by minute how the cops shot the tigers, lions and bears, but get no sense of how the animals or their suicidal owner got to this point. Writer Chris Jones employs the dopey animal rights strawman to provide the only conflict. At one point the cops see “several” lions in open cages and bravely risk attack to lock the cages so they don’t have to shoot them. But then one cat slips out a hole and the suddenly realize all the cages have holes. Since no lion survived, it’s clear the cops shot the other (mostly) caged animals, but the details are skipped. That’s the conversation I want to hear.

Chris Heath not only covered the minutia of the animal slaughter, but also at least tried to figure out why it happened. Heath looked at the absurd lack of laws about owning dangerous predators, the economics of exotic ownership (cubs can be purchased for a few hundred bucks, but nobody wants to buy an adult, which are dangerous and expensive to keep). And he goes a lot further into figuring out Thompson, whom friends say changed after fighting in Vietnam and had received an anonymous letter the day before saying his wife had been cheating on him. Even thought it’s a whopper of a story, I could have read more from Heath, like how did Thompson and his wife get the money to buy and feed all these animals in the first place. (His wife claimed she spent $30,000 on the macaques and Heath calculates the animals would have needed 600 pounds of meat a day).

Heath also explores one of the odder mysteries of the case: how and why did Thompson cut open all the cages and not get attacked till after he shot himself. The exotic animal owners point to conspiracies involving animal rights activists. But, it may raise doubts about whether the quick carnage was totally necessary. Were the cats, which Health discovered were declawed, going to rush out to eat people? These animals could never have been released to the wild precisely because they wouldn’t have known how to hunt.

Jones lets the cops describe the typical animal lover’s critique as everybody just thinks they were a bunch of rednecks. I’m an animal person and I don’t think so. They did what they thought was right when they were faced with a group of unpredictable animals that should never have been in suburban Ohio. The cops made decisions under extreme pressure and you can always look back and wonder if something could have been done better. Since the incident, has anybody come up with a plan for the next exotic animal collection gone wild? Could they lure the hungry predators to a pile of drugged meat? The assumption is that this will never happen again. Yet we’ve got a country full of backyard exotic predators,  owned by people who feel embattled and under financial stress. We didn’t think Columbine was going to keep happening, but it does. The scariest part of the story is that it could happen again.

SEE ANIMALS IN THE MIDWEST (IL, IA, IN, OH, MI, MN, WI)

Where to see BEAR or BIG CATS not in somebody’s yard

B&K Universal lab animals

Ricky Gervais, Brian May (from Queen) and 28,000 petition signers blocked what would have been the biggest breeding facility for laboratory beagles in the UK last week.

May, who now campaigns against animal experiments through his group SAVE ME, said on his site that the farm in Grimston would have been “breeding of thousands of beagles to be used in experiments both in the UK and overseas.”  The local planning committee said no. But that’s not the end of it. Bantin & Kingman Ltd., which produces all kinds of lab animals, is appealing.

British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) lead the campaign against Bantin & Kingman Ltd. B&K says it has a “core business of breeding laboratory animals” and offers “a range of complementary products and services…contract breeding, management and commercialisation of transgenic strains… international animal transportation services (Biologistics)….”

Ricky Gervais tweeted his congratulations to the BUAV, which mentioned him in their thanks.

In the US the laboratory animal situation is more scattershot. As of 2009 the USDA licensed 3,898 Class A animal dealers (which breed animals specifically for research) and 1,031 Class B dealers, who get the animals from all kinds of places. However awful the Class A guys are (and, my own beagles came from a gross place in NC), the Class B are worse. They’re the ones driving around in vans, snatching pets. The biggest in the US is Charles River Laboratories in MA, which had 736 dogs last year, down from 3247 in 2008. PETA says 75,000 dogs are in research labs in the US. So this is one small step, but a good one.

Read about former laboratory beagles

Where to go See Goofy Dog Events

Where to See Animals in the Northeast

simitar oryx hunting

Laura Logan thanked hunters on 60 Minutes for saving endangered species by paying thousands of dollars to shoot them on canned hunts in Texas.* She gulped down the game ranchers’ argument that they are the only ones keeping animals like the scimitar-horned oryx, which is listed by the IUCN Red List as extinct in the wild, from disappearing from the planet.

That will surely come as a surprise to the other 199 institutions around the world that have been carefully breeding Oryx dammah since the 1960s.

Logan walks five miles to make critics of canned hunts look insane. But even then she doesn’t deliver. She lays a trap for Priscilla Feral of Friends of Animals, asking if it would be better if they were extinct than hunted. Feral doesn’t fall for it.

Logan; So, if the animals exist only to be hunted…

Feral: Right…

Logan: …you would rather they not exist at all?

Feral: Not in Texas, no.

She sidesteps the obvious ploy and says she’d just rather not see them in Texas. Not insane. If I said I’d rather not have the scimitar-horned oryx in my living room, does that mean I’m getting in the way of real conservation? No. Having a scimitar-horned oryx on my sofa or on a hunting ranch in Texas is completely irrelevant to its conservation. If hunting the oryx were really the only way for the species to survive, of course I’d support it. But it has nothing to do with species survival.

Logan lets the hunters conflate surviving and living in Texas. On the show and in online comments, they practically shout Gotcha! I just bagged a crazy animal person!

Logan lets hunters claim that they have the numbers on their side. They say the number or oryx will be cut in half –in Texas–by a new law that makes them illegal to hunt.

But just the raw numbers of oryx aren’t as important as the number in the international studbook. Texas ranchers thousands of oryx (how many nobody says). Only 110 are part of the international effort to save the species. They make up less than 10% of the studbook, a directory of breeding animals biologists keep to save the species. (Typically, individuals aren’t listed if they were too much like ones already in there or genetics are unknown.) The Texas population is so insignificant that the IUCN barely mentions them in its species assessment. There’s another 4,000 in private hands in the United Arab Emirates, where the Al Ain Wildlife Park and Resort (AWPR) is actually working with biologists, hosting conferences to figure out how to save the species. This giant family zoo in the desert, founded by Sheikh Zayed, who founded the country, is the real unsung hero in oryx conservation.

It’s amazing to see CBS News just take up the hunting ranches’ fight. In Australia, where hunters are doing the same thing, reporters are at least asking questions about ethical hunting. ”For me, to see these beautiful animals shot by these madmen is a tragedy. They are extinct in the wild. It’s like shooting a Sumatran tiger or a white rhino. It’s disgusting,” said tycoon Warren Anderson, who bred them.

Logan doesn’t even bother to question the canned hunting ranch assertion that they employ 14,000 people in Texas or the bizarre claim that “Texas has more exotic wildlife than any other place on earth.” First off, that’s not something to be proud of. Second, it’s unprovable and vague propaganda. Are we talking individual animals? Species? The hunted animals are on fenced, ranches, not running wild. So then do farm animals count, too? Or pets? If we’re talking individual animals, then the number or starlings and sparrows alone in New York or many states would eclipse Texas’ antelope numbers.

Here are some other numbers Logan doesn’t bother to bring up. Wildlife watchers spend more more than hunters. Even in Texas. According to the last Fish and Wildlife Survey, animal tourists spent $2.9 billion wildlife watchers (table 69) compared to just $2.2 billion by hunters (table 59).

Again, animal lovers are happy to talk about the real numbers.

	Where to SEE BUFFALO, Bison and Wisent
	Where to SEE DEER (and anteloope and reindeer)

* Think I’m exaggerating? Logan actually said: “How did thousands of Texas ranches become home to the largest population of exotic animals on earth? It’s thanks to trophy hunters like Paul, who come here in the thousands to hunt these animals every year, sold on the idea of an African hunting experience in Texas.”

Bobcat preening at Holtsville Ecology Center Long Island, NY, by Stuart Fawlty128

New York now has 5,000-some bobcats and hopes to double the number currently killed by hunters and trappers. The Department of Environmental Conservation’s new five-year plan plan calls for expanding the hunting season and region–right down into what it calls the the “New York City Transition Wildlife Management Unit.”

That’s Cold Spring or Woodbury Commons outlet mall to you and me.  Bobcat trapping and hunting will happen in NY’s region 3P and 3N, Dutchess, Putnam, Orange and Rockland counties. Only a handful of bobcats have been seen there in since 2006. Actually Westchester County–where nobody can shoot bobcats–has seen more. There’s no hunt on Long Island, where they don’t think bobcats live anymore.

The population of bobcats (Lynx rufus) is growing across the east and sightings of New York bobcats are up in the last decade–though nobody knows for sure how much or why. From 1977-1994  hunters took about 100-150 of the small, spotted cats a year. Then numbers starting climbing. By 2004, they hit 400 and have stayed in the 400 to 500 range since. One biologist estimated in 1990 that 20% was the upper limit of what the state could safely eliminate through hunting each year. And that’s where the DEC would like to take it.

The DEC acknowledges lots of people would love to get a chance to see these elusive, sneaky cats. But in their new five-year plan, they don’t take into account how to please wildlife watchers, as the blog Coyote, Wolves and Cougars points out. Instead they worry about whether the price of bobcat pelts on the international market will dip too low to push more guys into the woods to trap. Yeah, some guy might make $50 to $200 selling a bobcat coat to the Chinese. But imagine how much money would be made if a tracker could bring people to try  to see a bobcat on a tour you could reach by a Metro North train from Grand Central.

Where to SEE BIG CATS: Cougar, Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Tiger

 

SEE ANIMALS IN THE NORTHEAST (NY, NJ, MD, MA, ME, NH, VT, CT, RI, PA)

Great horned owl in Prospect Park, Brooklyn

A pair of great horned owls is checking out Park Slope to raise a family. The pair is in the central woods of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. In this climate, these big owls start building nests right about now, in January or February, so they may be moving in for the year.

I’ve been seeing them regularly come out at dusk from the same tree, but can’t make out a nest.

I got a tip about the owls from a couple birders–with the caveat I couldn’t pass on their exact location. It’s some kind of code among urban owl watchers, who want to protect the birds from harassment. (Though, it always seems just a little bit like keeping the owl to themselves.)

I’m not sure if the woman who gave me vague clues involving Center Drive, a blue spruce and a body of water was trying to throw me off or what. But I was way off. I went out with a neighbor who also had heard rumors of the owl. Turns out even the New York Times has printed rumors of an owl in the Ravine area in a spruce tree.

We wandered from the Long Meadow to the lake, flirting with every evergreen. We were about to give up when we hit the jackpot: two women with binoculars. In New York City, you don’t have to be a good enough birder to spot the owl. Just good enough to spot the birders watching the owl. But once you’re in the right spot at the right time, finding the owl is pretty easy because she’s chatty and huge. I’ve gone back since and heard the big girl great horned owl (Bubo virginianus) talking back and forth with her much smaller mate (who I didn’t see).

I don’t want to piss off the birding heavyweights of Prospect Park, so I’ll keep the owl code and not point out its exact location. But if you put in a little effort, let me just say that the rumors are true and you can find them.

How to find the snowy owl near you

Where to SEE HAWKS, OWLS & OTHER RAPTORS

SEE ANIMALS IN THE NORTHEAST (NY, NJ, MD, MA, ME, NH, VT, CT, RI, PA)

ebird snowy owl sightings for January, 2012

Snowy owl stands on Wisconsin brush, by Bely Medved

The northern half of the country has gone snowy owl crazy. An enormous generation of the spooky white birds has migrated as far south as Oklahoma looking for food to replace the temporary boom of lemmings they were raised on. To see if one is spotted near you, check out the eBird sightings because they’re showing up at airports and downtown waterfronts everywhere.

Owl watchers tend to live by a Mason-like code. They won’t tell you exactly where their owl. They fear a crowd will annoy the bird or some idiot might shoot it. But, they may tell you the general area if you talk to a serious birder in person. If you don’t know any, join eBird, the birding site run by Cornell and the National Audubon Society that lets citizen scientists track and map each species.

You sign on (for free) and look for snowy Owl–known formally as Bubo scandiacus and informally as Harry Potter’s Hedgwig–near you. Sort by this year only to see the recent sightings. You won’t get that precise of a location because of the code. The key thing to remember with a spectacular bird like a snowy owl is that you don’t have to be a good enough birder to spot the owl. You just have to be observant enough to spot the people watching the owl. And persistent enough to show up.

Unlike many North American owls, snowy owls hunt in the daytime. Many of the sightings have been mid-afternoon. ince the owls down here are desperate for food, they may be willing to hunt outside normal business hours and eat just about anything–mice, ducks, fish, roadkill. Still, dusk and dawn, the animal rushhour, is a great time to look. These birds prefer open meadows to forests, so that make it a bit easier, too.

Here are some of the highlights of snowy owl watching from around the country:

Boston: Boston birders can go on several organized owl watches, including one MassAudubon holds this weekend at Duxbury Beach. eBird also shows a one at Logan Airport and one in Sommerville

Chicago: Montrose Dunes of Lincoln Park, right on the waterfront.

Denver: The airport is the hotspot–as well as the area of Harvest Road and Barr Lake State Park north of there.

Milwaukee: In the morning people have been seeing a snowy owl on the downtown South Shore, especially the yacht club.

New York:  Jones Beach and Fire Island (especially Shinnecock County Park) are the closest to the city this month. But in November Gothamist reported one seen near the Verazzano Narrows Bridge.

Ohio : A dozen birds have been seen around the state, but one in the exurbs of Columbus starved to death, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Oregon: Salishan Spit, about 30 miles northwest of Eugene, is the farthest south one appears on the West Coast this year.

Philadelphia: Snowy owls are hanging around between the runways at Northeast Philadelphia Airport–not the big international one.

Where to SEE HAWKS, OWLS & OTHER RAPTORS

Where to SEE EAGLES

SEE ANIMALS IN THE MIDWEST (IL, IA, IN, OH, MI, MN, WI)

Some love seeing them, others fear they are taking over. Best  line in the show: “It’s like most stories of kangaroo attack stories, critical elements have got left out,” the researcher Don Fletcher says, debunking some anti-kangaroo hysteria.

What’s fascinating is what it says about how we universal the drama of an overgrown native species is. It’s nearly identical to our deer issue. Suburbs ate the animals’ habitat and now the animals are eating the suburbs. The population is only checked by car accidents because hunters wiped out their only predators–in Australia, dingos.  The once rare  creatures have grown  into a nuisance. Officials started shooting them in the name of saving the environment. Animal tourists protested. In Canberra they wear adorable kangaroo masks and costumes and in one case a baby in a Bjorn. The government started working on contraceptives.

Maybe we humans are just destined to play out this drama. The only character missing is the American hunter who yells about why we really need to shoot all these horrible deer/kangaroo–while quietly pushing to keep up their numbers so there will be more  shooting fun.

Where to see wildlife in Australia

What’s odd about this movie is that it was seen as idiotic even in its time. Burl Ives plays Cottonmouth, the head Irish hobos in a gang that shoots birds to sell their feathers and wrestles for which hut they get to sleep in.  Christopher Plummer is the idealistic newcomer who gets hired by the Audubon Society to go after turn-of-the-century poachers. Trouble–and romance–ensue.

The movie was so implausible that it effectively ended writer/producer Bud Schulberg’s career, Turner Classic Movies says. Clearly, Schulberg had hoped this would be spectacular–with Nicholas Ray as director–would have some impact. But Ray showed up under the influence of drink or drug or a suicidal woman whose bra he wore to a meeting. So Schulberg eventually fired him.

At the time the conservation theme was controversial and you can imagine this movie could have been an environmental To Kill A Mockingbird.

But you can hardly notice the conservation issues behind all costumes and characters that would have fit right into Gilligan’s Island. A then-famous clown Emmett Kelly and a stripper Gypsy Rose Lee played parts. I swear, there’s a guy who wears a sailor’s dress uniform and drinks booze from a coconut. Some raw nature footage is dropped into the film–as if the righteous Christopher Plummer character  rows a canoe past a flock of roseate spoonbill, a swordfish, an otter, then frowns as he sees an alligator chomp down an egret. Heck, if wildlife so abundant we wouldn’t need to save it.

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