My flew into Edinburgh, Scotland, a few weeks ago and immediately took a cab to Dalhousie Castle and their falconry program. For a 9-day trip this was the one activity I went to the trouble of arranging beforehand. It was the thing my daughter was most excited about before and after the trip. And it was totally worth it.

Falconry Scotland offers you a chance to handle falcons, eagles, hawks and–get this–owls land on your gloved hand. We ended up showing up early, had coffee in the castle then came out to see the two falconers getting 37 birds out of their cages and boxes for the day. What was most delightful was how well the women knew each of the birds. Some birds wanted a cuddle, some keep-away from the keepers.

My daughter Ginger, 7, was particularly fascinated with a talkative barn owl. I mean, this bird chatted non-stop. I asked one of the falconers, Allie, if the bird was just hungry or what. No, she explained, that owl, named Jeanne, just likes being with people.

Eventually four of us went out in the field to do falconry. Again, the most amazing thing about this place is how much our falconer Allie knew of each bird and the back-and-forth she had with them. Allie explained the tail-swishing meant the bird was ready for flight. The Harris Hawk would easily–ever so delicately–land on each person’s gloved hand to eat the meat held between the fingers. Except when it came to Ginger. For Ginger the bird swooped around, every once in a while trying to steal the meat. Ginger laughed but held steady.

We gave up on Ginger doing falconry with that particular bird, who is sometimes afraid of children. Instead, Ginger got a fabulous consolation prize: she got to hold and feed the friendly owl Jeanne. I cautioned Ginger to keep her fingers away from Jeanne’s mouth, but Allie corrected me. This is a gentle bird and would only nibble affectionately. Which she did.

Americans don’t get to do a lot of hanging out with owls. Every once in a while you might see one at a falconry display (probably not flying) or, more likely, in a wildlife rehabilitation center. Birders have a self-important etiquette code of not revealing the location of owls in the wild.  But people are constantly wanting to see and even touch owls. (Japan meets this need with their peculiar owl cafes. Animal advocates say they’re skeevy because owls don’t want to hang out with humans or in cafes.)

Other places nearby like Elite Falconry actually go hunting. (They are mainly targeting game birds because rabbits are in trouble. Also, Elite Falconry breeds owls.) And there are even a few places in the U.S. where people can go do falconry (also usually at luxury hotels). But to get to become a falconer in the U.S., you have to go through many levels of training, permits and nonsense. So it is going to be a much stricter atmosphere. If you want to befriend an owl, best go to Scotland.

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Fire Island Deer in Contraceptive Program

The National Parks Service seems to be marching closer towards killing off an enormous portion of Fire Island white-tailed deer. Deer lovers on the barrier island off New York have feared since 2012 when the federal agency announced it was coming up with a plan to “manage” the deer population that there was only one way this was going to go.

The Parks Service announced on December 31–talk about a late night news dump–that despite years of deliberation and 400 pages of public comment, they are planning to kill off one-third to two-thirds of the deer population. And then come back and do it again. And specifically target deer that approach humans, which seems especially cruel. It’s also a way to interfere with the natural evolution of a species in an world that is dominated by one species, humans.

It didn’t need to happen at all. Much of the comments are angry at the idea the Parks Service is going to kill wildlife in the name of protecting the grounds of an historical estate and to try to recreate an exact moment in the natural history of the island–after humans had killed off the large predators, but before deer and other prey species thrived in their absence. In the parks service view, a natural environment and balance that require constant human intervention and shooting is preferable to whatever happens naturally.

There’s a last ditch change.org petition to try to stop killing the deer, though that seems hopeless. The Parks Service decided a long time ago they wanted to shoot the deer on Fire Island and that’s what they’re going to start doing.

Bat alert and ready to go after warming up.

Bats in New York City are falling wearily onto sidewalks in our recent sudden cold spell. This morning I found one–at first mistaking the gray fur for a dead mouse. I got sticks to move it out of the pathway chopsticks-style. And then the poor thing started hissing at me. A completely empty threat as it was still too weak to get up. I picked the bat up in a plastic bag–as a dog owner, I always have plenty–and brought it to warm up in the sun. Still nothing.

I carried the bat home in one hand and pushed the stroller and held the beagle leash in the other. I was afraid to put the bat bag in my pocket because I could either suffocate the bat or end up having to reach into a pocket with a bat. In New York bats are a rabies vector species–meaning they potentially carry the disease. I would need a higher grade wildlife rehabilitator license to take care of one, but that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to foist it off on someone qualified or get instructions on a quick release. I reached out to some wildlife rehabilitators.

Seemingly dead bat. Don’t pick one up with your bare hands.

Meanwhile, I warmed up the bat under an incandescent bulb. I went looking for bugs, lacking mealworms, the preferred food of captive bats. My daughter Ginger, 4, eagerly helped me hunt for spider webs and then, failing that, collect acorns to soak to find weevils. No luck. My poor cleaning habits paid off: inside a light fixture I found dead bugs. I added them to warm honey water and served them up on a straw. The bat grabbed and licked the straw. And then she or he started to feel better, began climbing around.

Right now I’m reading the educational and entertaining book The Secret Life of Bats by Merlin Tuttle, the bat man of Austin. He tells of learning to become a professional-level photographer to get pictures out of bats that weren’t terrifying. As the tiny bat hissed and chomped its tiny teeth, I thought of his difficulties. I would need a lot more time to get to see this bat’s sweeter side, but it’s best to move the wildlife back to the wild quickly.

Marty Bast, effectively the game keeper of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, offered to release her properly once she warmed up. He said this was the third bat found in this sleepy, cold torpor on the ground in the last two weeks. People often think they’re dead and go to pick them up with bare hands, then get bit. That leads to these bats getting euthanized and the person getting preventative rabies vaccines. Not only does the cold slow them down, it reduces the number of insects out there for them to eat.

New York has nine bat species. I’m not sure if this one was a little brown bat (which hibernates in caves) or a silver-haired bat (Lasyionicterius noctivagans) which migrates.

If the bat hits a tree and falls, they can’t take off again from the ground. So, you release them on a tree, not on the ground. Bast found a sunny tree near where I’d found the bat a couple hours earlier. He removed her from my cage with special bite-proof gloves. She quickly but awkwardly climbed up the tree to safety. When he gets calls for a live bat not moving on the ground, he warms them up and lets them go.

The dead bear cub placement comes just two weeks after another hunting advocate dream come true:  the NJ first fatal bear attack in NJ since 1852. I’ve been to the meeting in New Jersey over bear hunts as a journalist. Hunters scream that they need to shoot bears lest some naive suburbanite get killed. They claim that anyone who is against hunting is naive and if liberals should have to live with them in their backyards. (The bears in New Jersey tend to be in the more rural, conservative areas.)

What many New Yorkers may not realize is how frequently a wild predator released in Central Park comes up in the fantasy and arguments . Here’s a satirical post satirical post about petitioning the Wildlife Service to release wolves in Central Park since that was part of their natural habitat. But both Wyoming and Alaska lawmakers have seriously considered the joke proposal.

The NYPD Animal Cruelty Investigation unit was on the scene, the New York Post reports. The bear had blood in its mouth and was probably dragged to its location, the New York Times says. 

Who has access to a bear cub to plant in Central Park? Hunters and people who try to keep bears as pets. Hunting season in New Jersey isn’t until December–which is timed so pregnant females aren’t killed, which, by the way, is the opposite of what you would do to cut a population. It’s entirely possible that someone who kept the bear cub as a pet dumped it there. But why? If you don’t want to draw attention to a dead animal, then Central Park should be your last choice to dump it.

Fire Island Deer in Contraceptive Program

The National Parks Service has come up with a surprisingly illogical new plan for the deer of Fire Island: they want to kill most of them off with sharpshooters, hunters and by capturing and “euthanizing” them. The population of deer has been falling for years, but somehow the Parks Service and New York State have concocted a goal to “reduce negative deer-human interactions” and protect natural and cultural resources.

Locals think it’s all just a political plan to appease hunters that has nothing to do with serving the people of  Fire Island. Most people who live there or visit love their deer visitors. When I’ve visited people get excited to see them in the dunes and eating berries from bushes–despite their habit of eating landscaping. Unless the deer charged into bars wearing anti-gay slogans and stealing the booze, I’d say the culture of Fire Island is pretty much secure. The public has until October 10 to comment on the bizarre plan.

What’s particularly odd about the proposal is that even chronology of the deer saga on the island they’ve had two programs that worked before–telling people not to feed them and Humane Society of the United States’ PZP birth control program.  By the National Parks’ Service’s own account both worked great. Fire Island is where the Humane Society first tested and proved its contraceptive program. The academic study published from the experiment showed that within four years the calving rate fell by 80%. The population density went up slightly, then fell dramatically. Overall the estimates of the deer population went from 500 to 700 at the peak down to about 300-500 now. 

The plan says that deer are hurting native plants and they in particular jeopardize the maritime holly forest of the Sunken Forest, one of the most underwhelming natural wonders of the world, which consists mainly of trees short enough to live between dunes. The Parks Service cites the New York Natural Heritage Program. But even that says the bigger threats are the erosion of the whole island and people walking off the boardwalks. The plant is question is American holly (Ilex opaca)

Gates’ point, however, is that it’s really mosquitoes, which he says kill 725,000 people a year versus just 475,000 humans killed by humans. It’s a fun chart that gets people to think about malaria and realize that sharks and wolves aren’t so bad. But the numbers are pretty off, making some already downtrodden animals (like wolves and sharks) look worse than they are. And it makes humans, which are really the worst, look better.

If you just take the way mosquitoes kill–as a disease vector–humans kill 3.2 million through respiratory infections, 1.9 million from diarrhea and 1.6 million a year through AIDS–for a total of 6.7 million just from the top contagious diseases. Car accidents add 1.3 million and I’m not sure how to count all the other drowning, hunting and other kinds of accidents. And if you add in smoking related illnesses, which the WHO says is responsible for one in 10 adult deaths globally, you add roughly another 4 million. You might say that’s controversial, so, to make up for it, I’m not going to count diabetes.

For the human-caused human deaths, Gates might have been using the global homicide rate, which was 468,000 in 2011, according to  this UN report, plus deaths from war, which average about 55,000 per year. But, all tolled, I’d say humans kill about 12 million humans a year.

We’re way worse than mosquitoes. We’re still #1!

Some minor animal quibbles:

Sharks: Gates: 10 Reality: 4.2 according to Oceana

Wolf: Gates: 10   Reality: 2.3, according to a Wikipedia list (yeah, I know, not exactly the New York Times) of wolf attacks .

To Americans this is maybe the most controversial animal on the list, what with ranchers spreading rumors of wolves marauding our western plains and the first documented wolf-caused human deaths. But the number is really low. And now wolf haters are going to be using this official-looking chart for years.

Hippo: Gates 500. Reality: nobody knows, but that’s probably way too high

Lacking an international protection group, a western phobia or even a Wikipedia page, hippo attacks are really hard to track. Huffpo believes it’s an even more implausible 3,000. The problem is that if you’re hippo territory you’re probably not in internet news gathering territory. Or even accurate government mortality territory. The IUCN says there are maybe 125,000 to 148,000 hippos in Africa, decreasing by about 1% a year. If the 3,000 were true it would mean that over the course of a decade hippos would kill 30,000 people, so 25% of hippos on average killed somebody. (Unless the whole trend is the work of a few hippo serial killers, a theory the delightful Animal Review has toyed with.) And since hippos have a lifespan of 40-50 years, statistically every single one could have killed a person.

And then there are all the animals that Gates totally let off. Cows trample 100 American farmers to death a year. Deer kill cause about 200 American fatal car crashes. We’re probably talking in the hundreds, maybe thousands, worldwide.

So if you did stand up and say “humans! humans!” you were right.

Bill Gates’ chart of world’s deadliest animals, which defames a lot of species.

Sharks: 4.2 according to Oceana.http://oceana.org/en/our-work/protect-marine-wildlife/sharks/learn-act/shark-attack-statistics

This capuchin monkey pees on himself to show how sexually mature he is.

I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to look at those cute little capuchin monkeys the same way again after reading Zombie Birds, Astronaut Fish and Other Weird Animals by Becky Crew. My daughter and I watch their playful antics all the time at the Prospect Park Zoo.

But Crew goes into the latest monkey brain imaging research and explains that the boy little pink faced-urchins like to cover themselves in their own urine. And the girls dig it. The MRIs show the sexual part of the female brain lights up when she smells sexually mature male pee. And it’s not just some oddball fetish. The primatologist who reported the results, Kimberly Phillips of Trinity University, tells Crew: “Every capuchin I’ve seen–in the wild and in captivity–has engaged in this behavior at some point.”

Crew then tells the story of the behavior as if from the voice of each perverse animal. In the case of the capuchin, he’s giving dating advice: “In a club. Shots, pee on yourself, shots, repeat.”  These sections go on a bit too long and can be cloying in their attempt to simplify the science, but let me tell you, they stay with you.

The zombie birds in the title refer to great tits, which have recently been found to eat the brains of pipistrelle bats who are just waking up from hibernation.  They seem to have taught each other to listen for the sound of the bats waking up–or, at least after harsh winters when the tits are hungry. Here, Crew has two tits conversing with one just interrupting to say “Brains…” over and over.

Either this is a new development in bird behavior or people are just getting around to noticing. The research was only done in 2006. The stories that make up Zombie Birds are mainly based on recent academic research. Crew turns the data into entertaining sideshows. And in doing so, shows what interesting things we are still learning about how complex and freaky animals are.

Cathy and Bobby Horvath taking Mickey the squirrel.

UPDATE: The Horvaths struck a deal with the town and get to stay. 29,000 people signed the online petition.

Found a scared coyote in Central Park? Does your university’s star hawk have a bad foot? Did you just arrest someone with an inappropriate animal in their bathtub? Or have you just stumbled on a pelican, owl or baby fox that’s going to die if you don’t figure out what to do? Who you gonna call? For New Yorkers the answer for two decades has been Bobby Horvath, a fireman and wildlife rehabilitator. But now the town of Oyster Bay wants to shut down their federally licensed facility, claiming that the animals are “dangerous.”

The word came down Friday and now Bobby and Cathy Horvath have just two weeks to change the town’s mind (there’s no official appeal process) or find new homes for all their current residents. Frederick Ippolito, a the town’s planning and development commissioner, told the Horvaths they had gotten anonymous complaints about their animals. Ippolito himself is the subject of discussion on his restaurant’s failure to pay taxes.

There is no one around who could handle all the difficult cases the Horvaths do. New York City and Nassau County could each be paying a small staff to handle the weird emergencies that the Horvaths handle in their free time at their own expense. New York City now finally, thankfully, has the Wild Bird Fund, which handles an enormous volume of wildlife emergencies (and not just birds). Most of their patients, however, are birds that are manageable enough for a New Yorker to bring in, likely by subway. What makes Bobby Horvath uniquely helpful is not just his expertise, but that he’s willing and able to be a fireman and climb ladders and lean over rooftops to get some scary, frightened birds.

Horvath has permits for handling migratory birds, showing the animals (they give tons of free educational talks), handling potentially rabid animals and falconry. They handle a lot of owls and hawks. They also have a compassionate way of handling all the people who call in distress and confused about what to do for a wild animal they fear will die. I’ve called them on a few occasions and gotten good advice and the offer to take in animals. And just because they handle the glamorous cases in the area, they don’t shun the more pedestrian animals in need like starlings, pigeons, skunks, squirrels and possums.

If you’ve ever dealt with a bird rehabber you have probably not had a great experience. They’re typically curt and overwhelmed with calls, with too many people picking up perfectly fine baby birds, with dying pigeons and squashed sparrows. But the Horvaths are actually pleasant and seem to love both the animals they help and the people they deal with. I remember once seeing a post from Kathy on Facebook about how they’ve gotten so many calls from people saying they have a pelican that turns out to really be a seagull or pigeon that she was shocked when someone showed up and had an actual pelican. Many bird rehabbers are older women who handle the birds if people can manage to deliver them. So Bobby Horvath is especially useful because he’s brave and skilled enough to climb ladders and lean over rooftops to rescue birds.

Back in 2010 Oyster Bay adopted one of those boilerplate city codes, which goes into stunning detail about which animals are considered dangerous and therefore prohibited. Here are just some of the animals Oyster Bay goes out of its way to ban: “order Marsupialia, such as kangaroos and common opossums (Didelphis marsupialia); order Chiroptera (bats); order Edentata, such as sloths, anteaters and armadillos; order Proboscidea (elephants)…”My guess is they were trying to do the right thing after Travis the chimp mauled a CT woman’s face off in 2009. But it’s just silly to act like captive possums are going to be as big a problem as chimps.

It looks to me like the form letter code that Oyster Bay adopted specifically exempts the raptors as being covered by a federal permit. Oddly, if the Horvaths were using the animals to experiment on them or farm them, Oyster Bay would be fine with it. Which would you rather have nextdoor, a rooster and cows or a possum and some owls? The other exemption in the code is for a “recognized educational institution.” I’m pretty sure that their group Wildlife in Need of Rescue and Rehabilitation would qualify since they regularly give educational talks and demonstrations all around the area. And if not the town could add a few words specifically exempting wildlife rehabilitation facilities and do the Horvaths–and all New Yorkers–a favor.

Here’s a petition you can sign to ask Oyster Bay to help the Horvaths.

You can also write to: Frederick P. Ippolito, Commissioner or John Venditto, Supervisor, Town Hall West, 74 Audrey Avenue, Oyster Bay, NY 11771.

Mountain lion has a place to hide at Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary.

The Yellowstone Sanctuary, the only real place for damaged wildlife to live in Montana, may have to shut down because of some undisclosed animal violations, the Missoulian reports.

The Missoulian says director Ellie Marion told them the center isn’t meeting certain accreditation standards of a federal agency, but she wouldn’t say which one. “Basically, we are in a tough spot,” Marion told the newspaper, saying they could be fined up to $50,000. “The federal agency has the power to close us down. If we can’t meet the most basic needs, we won’t be able to keep our doors open.”

I got to visit the Sanctuary, then known as the Beartooth Nature Preserve, a few years ago after a trip to Yellowstone and it seemed totally well-meaning and clean. The animals had fun things to do and the people who worked or volunteered there knew them all individually. I didn’t hear back from the sanctuary when I called to ask what is up. On their website the only mention is a meeting that went down on Feb. 2 that promised to answer the question “What the heck is going on up there?”

I don’t really see what all the secrecy is about. Zoos and sanctuaries that exhibit animals are governed by the Animal Welfare Act. That’s enforced by APHIS–the same branch of the USDA that goes out and kills wildlife at the bidding of ranchers. So it would certainly be ironic if the agency that normally shoots and poisons wildlife gets to fine a non-profit that takes in wolves, bears, birds and all other kinds of animals that have been injured,  abused or taken in as ill-advised pets.

So far the USDA shows the sanctuary as having a completely clean record with no violations, either direct or indirect, over the last four inspections. APHIS can exempt some sanctuaries from regulations–as long as they meet another set of regulations, including not using the animals in fundraising. Which would seem hard for an animal-saving charity to do.

One of Yellowstone Sanctuary’s residents has a celebrity friend. Ted Turner gave them his former pet, a magpie named Harry, when the bird turned aggressive, the book Gifts of the Crow reports. The bird now answers all queries with no, no, no. Maybe he can help them out.

If you ever visit Yellowstone National Park, it’s worth the side trip, especially since it’s in Red Lodge, MT, which has the Montana Candy Emporium, easily the best candy store I’ve ever visited.

Wild ravens often steel from this captive raven.

Two young bears at what used to be called the Beartooth Wildlife Sanctuary lived in a chain-link enclosure with lots of toys and interesting things to eat.

Donkeys have an expansive view.

You’ll definitely be hearing more about both crowdfunding and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs, better known as drones) to help wildlife.

Crowdfunding–where somebody asks the public to fund a project that isn’t likely to get big money elsewhere–is better known for art and design projects that use kickstarter. But Kickstarter has all kinds of rules: the project has to be art and can’t be for a charity. So Ol  Pejeta went to another  crowd-funding site Indegogo. Ol Pejeta has raised about $27,000 (as of Jan. 7) out of $35,000. It’s like the Obama campaign strategy: the donations are small, but there are a lot of them.

They want to buy a custom drone, which will pick up the rhinos’ GPS locations via RFD chips and livestream the video, allowing the 120 local armed guards to patrol the 140 square miles much more efficiently.

Everyone is a little confused about how many northern white rhinos survive in the wild, largely because of the horrific epidemic of poaching Africa has seen. Since 2006, no one has seen the herd (or crash) of rhino that used to wallow in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Southern Sudan might have some,  but biologists are too scared to check.

Biologists are also arguing over whether they are really all that different from the southern version. It’s the lumpers v. splitters argument: should slightly different, geographically separated, animals be lumped together or split into separate species. In 2010 Australian archeologist Colin Groves argued they are totally different species because of their genes, tooth size and angle and skull growth.

But not everybody is so sure. The IUCN Red List says it is undecided on whether to separate the northern white or lump it with the southern and expects more research to rebut Groves.

Either way, these rhinos aren’t from Kenya, which hasn’t had rhinos in the last 200 years, the IUCN says. Rhino specialists just picked Ol Pejeta Conservancy as the rhino’s last, best chance. The rhinos wouldn’t have survived if they weren’t in the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic.

If these rhinos aren’t the most rare kind of rhino, then they are the least rare. About 20,000 southern white rhinos lived in 2010, according to Some rhino specialists think it’s just too late for the northern white rhinos anyway, since the four known survivors would have to interbreed  too much to recreate a stable population. Aside from the white rhinos, there are four species of rhino left–three (Sumatran, Black, Javan) are critically endangered and one (Indian) is vulnerable.

So these four individuals at Ol Pejeta are either the rarest of all rhino species–or just a handful of the most populous rhino species left (which itself was saved from extinction in the last century).

Help out Ol Pejeta on Indegogo

Where to see animals in Africa