falconspace

no longer at this location

2006-07-19T19:08:00.000-07:00

Join us in progress at blogFALCONSPACE. Blogger got to be too much of a hassle so I moved.

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2006-04-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

mex0171
Originally uploaded by bpx.

Wild animals stencil

2006-04-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Wild animals stencil
Originally uploaded by Robyn Gallagher.

"More stencils on Ponsonby Road next to the fruit shop. This time it's two wild animals."

Tiger stencil on Ponsonby Road.

2006-04-18T17:42:00.001-07:00

Tiger stencil on Ponsonby Road.
Originally uploaded by Robyn Gallagher.

"A tiger stencil on the side of a building on the corner of Ponsonby Road and Pollen Street."

Bird stencil on Ponsonby Road

2006-04-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

Bird stencil on Ponsonby Road
Originally uploaded by Robyn Gallagher.

"A mighty bird stencil takes flight behind a neighbouring fruit shop's flower display. It's a bit bogany."

horny lady sticker

2006-04-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

horny lady sticker
Originally uploaded by Hutch1000.

winged creature

2006-04-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

Nina
Originally uploaded by Mateus Reis.

Nina

playmate

2006-04-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

Detanger Germain "Nu Masculin Avec Faucon"
Originally uploaded by Mamluke.

Detanger Germain (1846-1902)

"Nu Masculin Avec Faucon"
oil on canvas
Private Collection

aliens among us

2006-04-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Meet the Neighbors
Coyotes have moved into the Washington area.
The disturbing reality: They are here to stay.

Among Us
By Mary Battiata
Sunday, April 16, 2006; W06

As coyotes settle into the Washington suburbs, they provoke awe, anxiety and a fundamental question: Do they have to adapt to us, or we to them?

In the meticulously planned community of Fallsgrove, there are six homeowners associations to gavel through disputes over fence heights and the proper color for window shutters. A property management company oversees most of the raking and mowing. Nature has been trimmed and shaped into a tidy border for narrow streets of tall townhouses and cluster homes. Most days, the only sign of wildlife is the squirrels that race around the community pool.

So it was with some astonishment that Cheryl Hays looked out her kitchen window at about 8 one morning last fall and saw what looked to be a large dog in the yard, about five feet from the back door. For a moment, still groggy with sleep, she thought: "Why is that dog in my back yard?" Then she remembered. Three weeks earlier, at about 6 a.m., she'd heard barking and looked out her bedroom window to see a pair of coyotes trotting purposefully down the middle of Long Trail Terrace, toward Jersey Lane. "They were walking up people's driveways, sniffing around the houses!" Hays said. She heard a third coyote barking from a grove of trees on the other side of the house, and when she ran to look there, she saw not one but three coyotes. That meant there were at least three, and possibly five, coyotes sniffing around her house that morning. "They were in driveways, front yards and brazenly on the street!" she e-mailed a neighbor.

As most of Fallsgrove already knew, coyotes were afoot in Rockville. A trapper hired by the Fallsgrove property management company had already caught and killed at least 12, and possibly 14, around the 252-acre subdivision before a lawsuit by the Humane Society of Montgomery County temporarily shut him down. Two more coyotes had been hit by cars nearby.

And, although coyotes had not attacked anyone, their mere presence had provoked volleys of alarmed e-mail among community residents. Coyotes had circled one prominent Fallsgrove homeowner, J. Thomas Manger, the county's chief of police, and his kids on a walking path. (Since confirming the incident, the chief has declined further public comment about it.) One of Hays's neighbors phoned her to report that she, too, had been followed by coyotes, while walking her toddler and two border collies.

Hays, a real estate agent with a determined air, petitioned her homeowners association to raise the fence height limit from four to six feet, arguing that the extra two feet might make it harder for the coyotes to move around. She called the trapper to ask if he planned to return. (He didn't.) And she called the Rockville city manager to request that the city encircle an eight-acre green space in the middle of the development known as the Preserve with something even higher -- an eight-foot cast-iron fence.

Neither the city nor the homeowners association thought drastic fencing measures were needed. "The homeowners association seems to think that I am the only concerned person in the neighborhood," she e-mailed a neighbor. "It is appalling to me that the homeowners association and the city refuse to acknowledge the public safety issue to family and pets." Instead, Hays complained, local officialdom seemed set on a wait-and-see approach.

Hays, 34, stood in her tiny side yard on a recent evening and peered out into the dark corridor of grass between her house and the one next door. "They come through here and head to the shopping center dumpster," she said of the coyotes. "It's just like they're commuting!" Eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child, Hays wondered out loud how she was supposed to share her world with wild coyotes. "It's crazy! These are the most expensive homes in Rockville, and we're like hostages! We bought here for the walking paths. Well, how am I going to deal with a coyote on the path when I'm out there with an infant in a stroller, a toddler and a dog on a leash?"

Hays shook her head. "I don't think people should kill them -- I'm an animal lover. But it's just frightening."

A few blocks away, one of Hays's neighbors was having similar misgivings, but from the opposite point of view. Aubrey Bursch, a 27-year-old accountant and multimedia specialist, a newlywed who spends her spare time volunteering at a wildlife hospital, was less worried about the coyotes than about her neighbors' reaction to them. Things already seemed so charged -- trapping, the lawsuit and more than a dozen dead coyotes. And the coyotes hadn't even attacked anyone. Eyewitness reports of coyote encounters were sketchy and adrenaline-tinged. The fact was that no one in Fallsgrove, none of her neighbors, and not Bursch herself, knew very much about coyotes. The trapper had retreated angrily to his house on Maryland's Eastern Shore and wasn't talking publicly.

Bursch had joined the Humane Society lawsuit that put a temporary stop to the trapping. To her, the trapping seemed something of a rush to judgment. Everyone knew that Fallsgrove, only a few years old, had been built on the old Thomas Farm, a rare large parcel of agricultural land in the lower county. It was not far from two parks. Which made Bursch and others wonder: Wasn't it possible that Fallsgrove, not the coyotes, was the intruder? Wasn't it possible that Fallsgrove owed the coyotes some degree of accommodation? Or at least a thorough investigation of the problem before eradication began?

And what about the rats? Everyone in Fallsgrove knew there was a rat problem in some sections of the development. People stepped over them getting out of their cars. Wasn't it possible that this rat buffet had something to do with the proliferation of coyotes at Fallsgrove? And, if so, didn't it make sense to clean up the rat problem before wholesale killing of coyotes began?

There was a paradox in all this. Over the past 20 years, residents of suburban Washington had become accustomed to living amid ever-growing herds of azalea-stripping deer, flocks of lawn-fouling and territorial Canada geese, as well as raccoon and squirrel populations far more dense than they would be in rural areas. But coyotes were something different: medium-size predators, with a wolf-like appearance and a reputation for wiliness, who seemed to stir a primal fear of wolves that came to this continent with European settlement.

Hays said the coyotes of Fallsgrove could be heard at night singing along with the ambulances that arrived at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, just across the road. The sound they made, high-pitched yips and barks that culminated in long yodels, wasn't exactly a wolf howl. It was shorter, less haunting maybe. But it was thrilling and beautiful all the same. It was also anxiety-making, Hays said. It sounded like a whole lot of coyotes. What was going on out there in the dark? Whose subdivision was it, anyway?

ACTUALLY, THE COYOTES AT FALLSGROVE WERE ALMOST OVERDUE. Washington is the last major metropolitan area in the country to be colonized by coyotes. They arrived in Maryland and Virginia about 20 years ago, after expanding their range into every part of the continental United States except the southernmost tip of Florida. (They showed up there about five years ago.) By 2004, when coyotes first were sighted in Rock Creek Park, large populations already were ensconced in suburban Westchester County, outside New York City, as well as Boston, Nashville, Phoenix, Houston and elsewhere. Last month, a coyote on the loose in Central Park, at the latitude of 66th Street, made headlines -- "Beep! Beep! Wily Coyote Captured." It was the second coyote to show up in Manhattan in recent years. In downtown Chicago, coyotes have been spotted trotting back and forth across Michigan Avenue. Outside Boston, the presence of coyotes has provoked a fierce debate in the state legislature about reintroducing leg-hold traps, currently banned as cruel and unnecessary. In California, coyotes have been a fact of urban life for decades. On the beaches of Santa Barbara, when bathers go into the water, coyotes come out of the brush to sniff beach towels.

The coyote -- biological cousin of the wolf, fox and dog -- has roamed the Plains states for at least 15,000 years. The coyotes' outward migration began about a century ago. They moved east and west, filling the ecological vacuum left by human efforts to eradicate wolves from the lower 48 states. Coyotes expanded west first, toward California. Eastward expansion began a few decades later, along two routes, one due east and southeast, through the Gulf States, and the other northeast, into Canada, and eventually down into New England and along the East Coast. Wildlife biologists believe that the coyotes now showing up in the Washington area may be part of both eastward migrations: the smaller, Western coyotes -- 20 to 35 pounds -- of the due-east migration; and larger coyotes from the Canadian migration. Coyotes in this second group weigh 35 to 50 pounds, because of interbreeding with Canadian wolves.

Wildlife trappers in Washington's outermost suburbs -- Virginia's Fauquier County and Maryland's Washington County -- say coyote numbers have grown slowly but steadily. Coyote density in Western Maryland is now estimated to be about that of the American West.

Trappers have a saying about coyotes, said Fauquier County trapper Sam Poles. "The only thing that will survive a nuclear war is cockroaches and coyotes. Best thing I can tell you about coyotes is: Learn their habits, and be prepared to live with them. 'Cause once you get them in the suburbs, you're not getting rid of them."

But living with them may be easier said than done. "Coyotes are canids, and people have always had a love-hate relationship with canids," said Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist and director of the Cook County Coyote Project in suburban Chicago. "A lot of our wolf control was done more out of fear more than any damage they did. Wolves just made us uncomfortable."

Coyotes seem to have a similar effect. Around the country, the presence of coyotes seems to divide the human population into two groups: pro-coyote people, who advocate benign co-existence, and those who think even one coyote around is one too many. "Usually, for people to consider an animal to be a nuisance, that animal has to cause damage or cause inconvenience," Gehrt said. "But coyotes are the one species that can be considered a nuisance simply by being fleetingly seen. The question is: Can we adjust our level of tolerance to them as we find out more about them?"

COYOTES HAVE BEEN SEEN IN THE DISTRICT -- crossing Massachusetts Avenue in Rock Creek Park, running along Arizona Avenue, as well as on suburban lawns in Silver Spring and at Dulles International Airport. For all that, however, it isn't easy to conjure up a coyote on demand here -- not yet, anyway. But there is another city, clear across the continent, where a sighting of an urban coyote is almost guaranteed. That is Vancouver.

Vancouver is 10 years ahead of Washington on the coyote curve, biologists say. In 1995, coyote sightings in Vancouver were a novelty, as they are here today. But within five years, coyotes had become a public safety issue. In 2001, there were at least six reported coyote attacks on small children. The city's tabloid newspaper took enthusiastic note of each one. "Coyote Savages Baby Girl in City," screamed one headline. "Vicious Coyote Sunk Its Teeth Into Baby's Cheek," blared another. "Baby Ruth's Beastly Bite."

Public reaction was polarized. "The best way to get rid of coyotes is to shoot them," said one letter to the editor. Others held the opposite view. "Before our emotions get the best of us, and we go ahead with a coyote cull, we might consider the dire consequences," said another. "We'll be up to our ears in cats and rats." Others pointed out that dog bites, an average of 250 a year within the city, far exceeded coyote bites, and no one was calling for the mass eradication of dogs.

Before mass poisoning or any other measures could be proposed, however, a local wildlife biologist came up with a plan that quickly reduced the number of coyote bites to zero, where it has remained since. The plan, known as "Co-Existing With Coyotes" and run out of a small, one-man office on the grounds of Vancouver's huge Stanley Park, has been so successful that city managers from across North America phone regularly for advice and information.

Looking out over an audience of wriggling school kids at the General Brock Elementary School on Main Street in downtown Vancouver, Robert Boelens asked, "Okay, who knows how to tell a dog from a coyote?"

As Vancouver's point man for coyote management, Boelens has seen hundreds of urban coyotes, and chased many on foot with the only weapons he has found to be necessary: his voice and a homemade noisemaker, an old cookie tin filled with nails. Boelens, 35, is a self-taught naturalist and former television reporter who is sometimes referred to by school principals as the Coyote Man, a nickname he dislikes. Six-foot-two, with wire-rimmed glasses and light brown hair, he has the patient, quiet manner of a man who spent his post-college years caring for injured wolves and other animals at a wildlife hospital. Because small children are more likely to attract the attention of a coyote, at least half his time is spent visiting schools to talk about coyote habits. The balance is taken up investigating reports of nuisance coyotes and answering calls from homeowners to the city's coyote hotline.

"First," Boelens told the children, "coyotes have really big ears, and they always point up. They're two big triangles, and they never flop or lay back." Next, the eyes: never blue. Then, the tail: A coyote's is always down, even when the coyote is running. Finally, Boelens said, the coyote has a rim of white fur around its mouth. "So it looks like it's smiling," he said. That helped give the coyote its reputation among Native Americans as a trickster and clown.

Vancouver's coyote management program is based on three principles, all related to the one fact that all the local coyote attacks had in common: The coyotes had been fed by humans. All six coyotes trapped and killed after those incidents had human food in their stomachs: beef stew, perfectly cubed potatoes, dry dog food. The feedings -- some deliberate handouts, others inadvertent (i.e., trash) -- had undermined the coyotes' natural fear of humans and taught them that people were a source of food. So it was clear that an effective coyote management program would have to include management of human behavior, too. Large posters went up in city parks and at golf courses with messages that included: "Do not feed coyotes. A fed coyote puts your community at risk."

Now, in the school auditorium, Boelens went further. "If you feed a coyote," he said, "you are signing its death warrant."

Boelens ran down a list of the coyote's remarkable athletic skills: Coyotes can jump over a six-foot fence, using their paws to vault themselves over the top. They can run 40 mph. They can swim. And leap 15 feet to pounce on prey. They eat mice, snakes, grasshoppers, birds and rats, as well as woodchucks, squirrels and, in spring, small fawns. They move about by day or night, depending on when food is most plentiful and they feel most safe. They don't live in dens, except in spring, when they are raising young. Most of the year, they rest under trees or in any sheltered, out-of-the way place. While they may meet to groom and socialize in family groups as large as eight or nine (including that year's litter of pups), coyotes rarely move around in groups larger than a pair. Their prey is small enough that no pack effort is needed to bring it down.

Then Boelens came to perhaps the most important part of his presentation. He raised his voice and slowed his speech: "One thing you should never, ever do when you see a coyote is run. What you need to do is make yourself 'big, mean and loud.' Be as big, mean and loud as you can." He raised his hands over his head. "This is what we do when we see a coyote," he said, putting on a fierce face and lunging toward a group of teachers. "Go away, coyote!" he roared.

"I'm teaching the coyote not to come around," Boelens told the children. "If all of us behave like that, we'll have no problems."

After the presentation, Boelens got into his battered Honda Civic and drove to a well-to-do neighborhood of large Tudor-trimmed houses, tall trees and manicured lawns. Recently, homeowners there had reported coyotes crisscrossing the neighborhood's winding streets in broad daylight. They had snatched outdoor cats and even a small dog from behind fenced yards. (A coyote can sail over a four-foot fence. To clear a six-foot fence, the coyote uses the top of the fence to boost itself over; thus the spinning roll bar on a "coyote fence.") In this neighborhood, Boelens quickly discovered a typical coyote hangout: an empty lot, where overgrown blackberry bushes and tall grass were providing ideal cover. In Vancouver, the single most effective coyote management tool, said Boelens, has been persuading home and business owners to clean up empty lots and be more careful with trash, a change that ultimately required tightening the city bylaws.

In addition to public education and cleanup, there is a third leg of the Co-Existing With Coyotes program. Its peaceable goal and name notwithstanding, the program recognizes that, inevitably, there will be problem coyotes whose presence cannot be tolerated. These animals -- coyotes that have shown clear signs of aggression toward humans and do not respond to efforts to drive them off -- are reported to city animal control, trapped and euthanized. (Because a coyote that is moved even miles away will often make its way back, in most cases relocation of an aggressive animal is not considered an option.) But Boelens has almost never had to recommend trapping and euthanasia. In the vast majority of cases, coyotes that are making themselves too visible in places where they aren't welcome can be permanently chased away with minimal effort. This is Boelens's job, too. He does it by acting kind of like an aggressive beat cop who notices unsavory types lurking in the 7-Eleven parking lot. He chases the coyotes on foot, yelling and waving his arms and shaking the cookie tin filled with nails. After a few chases, the coyotes invariably get the message and move on, or at least switch to a more nocturnal hunting schedule.

"I've confronted 100 coyotes and never had one that didn't scatter," Boelens said.

The following afternoon, Boelens took me to Langara public golf course in the city. It was 4 p.m. and getting dark. The sixth fairway was a sea of frosted grass, and the final golfer was walking toward the clubhouse. The start of evening rush hour could be heard on the boulevard just beyond a row of dark fir trees. A sliver of white moon hung in the cobalt sky.

The golf course looked deserted, but, as Boelens and I walked on a paved path past the low skirts of a red cedar tree, there was a rustle of boughs and a gray shadow bolted out from underneath, toward a knoll 30 yards to the right. An adult coyote stood there, in the characteristic coyote stance -- its body facing away, in case quick escape was needed, but its head twisted back, watching us. Within moments, a second coyote materialized and stood beside the first. They were the size of adult German shepherds, but skinnier, with stick-like legs, long narrow muzzles and large, pointed ears. Their winter coats were thick and healthy-looking. Each time we stepped toward them, the coyotes took an equal step back, maintaining a constant distance. They looked wary and alert, but not afraid.

"That look they are giving us now means: Who are you? What are you going to do?" Boelens said.

This pair of coyotes had become comfortable with golf course life. Generally they were seen only at dawn and dusk, although last spring a female and her litter of rambunctious pups had kept the course's maintenance crew entertained for weeks.

Just beyond the golf course, however, there were garden apartments from which outdoor pet cats routinely went missing, some assumed to have been snatched by coyotes. "It isn't much fun to come out in the morning and find half of your cat on the front lawn," Boelens said. Coyotes had taken small dogs, too, even dogs walking at the end of a 20-foot flexi-leash. Sometimes the coyote's pounce snapped the leash, and the dogs came right out of their collars, leaving behind nothing but a frayed length of nylon and an empty collar ring.

Failing to show dominance toward a coyote is always a mistake, Boelens said. It undermines the coyotes' fear of humans and, with that, the urban coyote's best chance for peaceful coexistence with us. So now it was time for Boelens to go to work, to remind these coyotes that hanging around and staring at humans, even out of curiosity, was unacceptable behavior.

He turned and looked directly at them. He raised his arms, widened his eyes. Then he ran toward them, arms over his head. Before he'd taken three steps, the coyotes hopped in place, and then took off, so silently and fluidly that they seemed to float over the open ground. Within seconds, they were gone.

SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTIES ABOUT COYOTES, urban and otherwise, are few and far between. Coyotes are famously difficult to trap. Too smart to be tricked into box traps and fast-learning enough to step around all but the most cannily set leg-hold traps and snares, they have eluded wildlife biologists for decades. But as coyotes establish themselves in cities and suburbs, they are drawing renewed attention from a younger generation of scientists armed with new tools, such as DNA analysis, GPS tracking and radio telemetry. New and confounding facts about coyote behavior are emerging, and they highlight the vital ecological function that coyotes serve.

At Quantico Marine Corps Base, an hour south of Washington, one such study is well underway. Like many military bases around the country, Quantico functions as a de facto wildlife preserve. Its 60,205 acres are managed by an ecologist, and the land is home to several rare and endangered species of plants and birds. The base is more than 70 percent forested, but it also has miles of open field. These so-called edge habitats, where field and forest meet, are ideal terrain for coyotes. The past 200 years of land use in the eastern United States -- clear-cutting of forests for farming, followed by gradual reforestation -- has created plenty of it.

Five years ago, a wildlife biology graduate student at George Mason University named Kristi Robinson heard that deer hunters who use the base during hunting season were reporting the presence of coyotes for the first time. The hunters saw the coyotes as potential competition -- a threat to the base's large deer herd. Coyotes are considered nuisance animals in Virginia, as they are in most states, and can be shot at will by a property owner. What did the base intend to do about the coyotes, the hunters wanted to know.

Robinson suspected, based on the limited scientific data available about coyote diet, that the only adult deer coyotes ate were roadkill. She decided to find out for sure. She began traveling the base's 460 miles of paths and streams (on foot, mountain bike and kayak) collecting coyote scat, part of a five-year study that would eventually become her master's thesis.

She discovered that, for much of the year, coyotes at Quantico eat a diet that is more than 50 percent non-game, including berries, fruit and copious amounts of grasshoppers. The balance of the diet consists of mice, voles and other small rodents. Analysis of scat shows that deer meat accounts for less than 7 percent of the diet and tends to show up in the coyote droppings in the fall, coinciding with hunting season.

Coyotes do take spring fawns, however, which, once coyotes are established here, could help stabilize the size of the local deer population, which in the absence of predators, is now wildly out of balance. But mainly, Robinson said, her study shows that coyotes favor much smaller fare. "There's such a huge abundance of small mammals available here year-round," Robinson said. "There'd be no reason for a coyote, which is 35 to 40 pounds, to hunt a 100-pound animal twice its size with real sharp hooves."

Robinson's findings agree with a larger study of urban coyote behavior underway in suburban Chicago. The Cook County Coyote Project, led by wildlife biologist Gehrt, has tracked urban coyotes in a 700-square-mile area that includes 128 cities and towns and O'Hare International Airport. Gehrt, an assistant professor in the school of environment and natural resources at Ohio State University, and a team of graduate students have fitted 220 coyotes with ear tags and radio collars and set them loose. The information shows coyotes' remarkable adaptability to urban life. One of the study's animals regularly traveled more than 22 miles a night, across five cities and the runways at O'Hare. Coyotes particularly like the easements between interstates and malls and subdivisions. "They use the interstates like we do, to cover large areas quickly. I've seen them sitting by the highway, watching traffic."

Analysis of 1,500 scat samples has found that less than 1 percent of the Chicago coyotes' diet is trash or human food. Instead, mice and voles are the preferred meal. When those populations crash, coyotes readily shift their attention to rats. "Rats of a size that a cat or a fox might not tackle present no obstacle to an adult coyote," Gehrt said.

The Chicago coyotes also displayed a keen ability to learn and adapt. Coyotes generally do not hunt deer, and do not hunt in packs. But Gehrt and his research team have found one coyote group that does. The coyotes have figured out how to drive an adult deer out onto frozen pond or lake ice, knowing that the deer will slip on the ice and fall.

Perhaps the most crucial question Gehrt hopes to answer with the Cook County study is whether all coyotes living in close proximity to human settlements are fated to become so-called nuisance animals.

"Coyotes have to be taught that humans are boss," Gehrt said. "We believe it's easy to do that with animals that are just starting to test the waters. But with other coyotes, that have been habituated for decades, we just don't know. With each generation, they become a little bit more familiar with people and the landscape of people -- cars, small patches of land. Where that ends, nobody knows."

ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS, the author of The Hidden Life of Dogs , a bestseller, has been watching coyotes at her home in rural New Hampshire since they first began appearing there in the 1960s. Seeing them interact with her dogs and with one another has made her think about our selective human affections.

"Having coyotes around could be very educational," for the people in Fallsgrove, Thomas said. Coyote behavior offers a valuable lesson about nature and our own place in it. Like most wild animals, coyotes observe strict rules of engagement and complicated protocols that determine who belongs where. Around her house, Thomas said, "the coyotes have the woods, and the dogs have the lawn and field." Sometimes the coyotes will trespass, and then the dogs bark. "All the members of the dog family -- domestic dogs, wolves, coyotes, dingoes -- are very aware of territory. A group must control its own territory -- you can't have others taking it from you, because then you won't have enough food."

The coyotes singing along with the ambulances in Fallsgrove, she said, pose no threat. Instead, she said, they most likely are simply trying to "answer" the sirens and maintain order in their new world. "They may be trying to learn what the siren is saying. Does it say, 'Here is a large coyote?' In that case the coyotes may be answering, 'Don't come over, because we are already here.'"

The prodigious expansion of the coyotes' range in the past 100 years is the result of our own refusal, since the earliest days of European settlement, to tolerate the presence of wolves. With wolves out of the picture, new swaths of rabbit- and rodent-rich territory beckoned, and coyotes were free to move in.

Humans are uneasy with the idea of predators in their midst. But predation is in fact part of nature's design, a finely tuned and highly beneficial system by which sick or unwary animals are culled from the population, leaving more food for the remaining animals and increasing their chances for survival. Rancher and celebrated memoirist Dayton O. Hyde, a coyote defender, has described coyotes as vital partners in on his 6,000-acre east Oregon ranch, keeping the ecosystem in balance by checking mouse, grasshopper and squirrel populations. Biologists consider wolves and coyotes to be "nature's veterinarians," carefully selecting the weakest or least wary among the animals they hunt, leaving more food and terrain for the healthy animals that remain.

The federal government, through the Department of Agriculture, has been killing tens of thousands of coyotes annually on public and private lands for decades. But the control effort has had little effect on coyote populations.

"You can lower the population temporarily, but they will be back," Gehrt said. "Coyotes are made to deal with the adversity we thrust upon them. They can adjust very quickly." This is because of a highly intriguing and anomalous coyote behavior. Unlike deer or Canada geese, coyotes self-regulate their population size. When coyote numbers are falling, coyotes have bigger litters to compensate. When numbers are high, straining the food supply, litters get smaller. Scientists do not precisely understand the control mechanism, which may be hormonal, but they have replicated the effect in captivity by varying the proximity of caged coyotes to one another. This means that coyotes will never become as ubiquitous as white-tailed deer. But they are here to stay. And there are many people who are glad about that.

"Coyotes are a symbol of wilderness here in our midst," Gehrt said. "Even out West, where coyotes are unloved, people associate the call of the coyote with wilderness."

"The sound is different from a wolf howl," said wildlife biologist Robinson, who had coyotes 30 feet from her back door when she lived in Southern California. "One or two start with a very high-pitched yip-yip-yip. Not like a lap dog, but yipping. Then more will join in, and it builds to a kind of crescendo, and then they break out into howling. It's very haunting."

Gehrt and Robinson have come to see coyotes as highly useful members of the ecosystem. "There tends to be this knee-jerk reaction: 'Oh, we can't have another predator competing with us. Let's go kill it,'" Robinson said. "That's not only philosophically wrong, it's just plain ill-informed."

Coyote predation becomes a problem, however, when the weak or unwary prey is a small human. But such attacks on children are rare, despite coyotes' increasing numbers. Dog bites still vastly outnumber coyote bites. In the Chicago area, for example, there are an average of 3,000 dog bites annually, and there have been no coyote bites in recent memory. Coyotes rarely attack humans without warning, rarely carry rabies and almost never attack adults, according to Gehrt. "It's usually an accumulation of events that lead up to a biting incident," he said. "You'll see a coyote that was nocturnal becoming diurnal. You might have seen it in the back yard once or twice at dusk, now you see it every day. That's a bad sign. Also, if they're hanging around where children normally play. There have been a couple of cases where coyotes follow people fairly closely -- especially children to bus stops -- and that's not a good thing."

Another bad sign is a coyote that stands its ground and growls or barks when you step toward it. "In that case, the coyote is actually trying to assert dominance," Gehrt said. But that is still no reason for an adult to retreat. "The thing to do is back off at a very slow pace, keeping your eyes on the animal. I've never felt threatened, even by the ones that growl and bark," Gehrt said. "I would never be subordinate to a coyote, ever. People forget it's just a 35-pound dog. I'm 200 pounds. It's not hard to do what you have to do."

Fortunately, most of the time, successful coexistence is less charged than that. It's more a matter of teaching humans how to respond when coyotes cross a behavioral boundary and constantly reinforcing coyotes' fear of humans. "What we've found is that when coyotes start to change their behavior toward humans, it's a result of people feeding them. Coyotes are not like raccoons," he said. "It takes special circumstances to get a coyote to go to the dark side."

Our ambivalence about coyotes is not news to the people who make a living trapping them. "We have a saying about high-profile trapping jobs," said Fauquier County trapper Sam Poles, sole proprietor of Flat Tail Trapping Services. "They'll make you a hero or zero, right quick."

Michael Adcock, the trapper hired by Fallsgrove to kill its coyotes, likely knows something about that. The Humane Society's lawsuit was dismissed in January, after Adcock's lawyer argued that Adcock was not subject to state hunting regulations, as the suit contended. But before that, Adcock told Fallsgrove resident Cheryl Hays that the controversy had cost him thousands of dollars. And, at one point, when a process server showed up at his house, Adcock confronted the man, according to court records, yelling threats and throwing rocks at his car. Adcock declined to comment for this article. But other trappers, not entangled in court cases, are willing to talk about their trade.

Poles lives in a modest ranch house in the Virginia hunt country. He is middle-aged and mild-mannered, a married father of two who has been trapping beavers, coyotes and other animals for more than 20 years. When he started, no one saw coyotes in Fauquier County, he said. But in the past 10 or 15 years, "they've really taken off." Since then, he's trapped and killed coyotes regularly, mostly on estates and farms, for clients who report coyotes preying on small livestock -- chickens, lambs, calves -- and family pets.

Poles avoids high-profile jobs. "Bottom line -- people hate what you're doing," he said, sitting at his kitchen table. "A lot of people think what I do is wrong. They think it's not necessary. They think it's barbaric.

"I respect every animal that I catch," Poles said. "But I'm like a fireman or a policeman. I fill a need."

"The Canadian government has done a lot of tests -- so traps are more humane than they used to be," Poles said. Then he shifted in his chair and sighed. "But my job is to go out and trap an animal and kill it, so how is that humane? How is death humane?"

The tool of his trade is a small, two-pound leg-hold trap. The one he brings out of an outbuilding behind the house has seen plenty of use. Its metal is worn and stained a dark brown. Closed, it fits in the palm of his hand. The trapper buries the open trap in a few inches of dirt. When the coyote steps on the center disk, or "pan," the trap snaps shut. It holds the animal until the trapper returns. (In Maryland and Virginia, trappers are required by law to check their traps every 24 hours.) The trappers kill the coyotes by a shot to the head or, if a client wants a more "humane" end, with a lethal injection.

The tension created by the trap's piano-wire springs is not strong enough to break a coyote leg, or even a human finger, Poles said. Trappers sometimes demonstrate this using their own fingers at county fairs. Poles says he has caught his fingers by accident hundreds of times. But to demonstrate on this afternoon, he picks up a wooden stick, about an inch in diameter. The trap closes with a sharp "thwack." The impact breaks and splinters the stick, but that is because the stick is dead and dry, Poles says.

Poles and other longtime trappers argue that kindness is not the law of nature. Poles said he has found half-devoured foxes in his traps, the animals attacked by a coyote before Poles could return to kill them himself. "I have to laugh at how people say how cruel trappers are; there's nothing crueler than nature."

In any case, eradication is futile. "They've been trying to get rid of coyotes out West since the earliest days of settlement," Gehrt said. "It hasn't worked. So it really doesn't matter what our view of coyotes is. They're here."

In Fallsgrove, coyote sightings diminished over the past winter. But Aubrey Bursch, the volunteer wildlife rehabilitator and Fallsgrove resident who joined the Humane Society lawsuit, was busy researching coyotes and their behavior. She attended a meeting of Fallsgrove's nascent civic association and, in front of its president and the handful of other people who showed up, made a case for starting a community education program about coyotes.

"Basically, it didn't go over well," she said afterward. "No one wanted to hear about coyotes. Their thinking was, 'The trapper's done, it's over.' Basically, I was seen as a 'coyote lover.'" But the association's president did say that Bursch might come to a larger town meeting, this spring, and make her case again.

Bursch suspects that persuading residents to focus on the conditions that may have drawn coyotes to Fallsgrove will be a challenge. The Safeway and restaurant dumpsters across the street frequently are filled to overflowing, but it's unclear in whose jurisdiction that problem would lie. The shopping center is outside the community's boundaries but was built by the same developer. The residents of the townhouses who put their trash out in black plastic bags say they do so because their city-issued trash cans are too small. The city of Rockville says it can't give them bigger cans because the development's quaint alleys are too narrow for the large trucks that could lift them. Black plastic trash bags are a magnet for rats. And on it goes.

It all comes down to how much thought and effort people are willing to put into managing the coyote problem. Whether they want the quick but temporary relief of trapping, or whether they value the presence of coyotes enough to make larger changes that might, in the short term, require more work. In a way, it is like the question the researchers say coyotes ask every time they encounter us: "Who are you? What are you going to do?"

Cheryl Hays did not make it to Bursch's civic association presentation. But she has been listening at night. She reports that the coyotes are still out there, and they are singing.

Mary Battiata is a Magazine staff writer. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

peregrines in the concrete jungle

2006-04-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Falcons Flock to Urban Perches
Peregrines Trading in Wild Life for D.C. Area Roosts

By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006; A01

Stephanie R. Spears leaned over the side of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge with a video camera as the drawspan opened to let a construction barge pass through. Spears, an environmental specialist with the bridge replacement project, was looking for the pair of peregrine falcons nesting there when suddenly one of them came after her.

The shrieking bird with a sharp beak and hooked talons shot into the air, wheeled around and dived. "Watch your head!" Spears shouted to a handful of onlookers just as the female falcon veered away. Peregrines are said to be the fastest birds on Earth, capable of diving at 200 mph. This one was protecting three eggs.

The eggs are on a jumble of powdery road grit inside one of the bridge's concrete supports, only a few feet down from the rumble and shake of thousands of vehicles a day crossing between Maryland and Virginia. "It's an interesting place to make a nest," Spears said. "It's probably why she gets nervous when we stop traffic -- it's so quiet."

The Wilson Bridge is a dangerous place for a bird, but more of the region's peregrines are nesting on bridges, skyscrapers or other manmade structures than on the mountain cliffs that are their natural homes. Falcons are living on more than a dozen bridges in Maryland and Virginia and have made nests on tall buildings in Baltimore and Richmond.

The falcons' willingness to live near people and noise has let them thrive in an urban region. But it has frustrated state wildlife biologists who have tried in vain to get them to nest in the back country.

It is harder for a falcon to make a living on a mountain than in an urban area, said researcher Shawn Padgett. "They can't just take a plunge off a bridge and get a starling going by," he said. "They have to go out and hunt."

The Wilson Bridge peregrines, like the bald eagles that have a nest near the bridge, have an avid fan club. Paula Sullivan of Fairfax County visits Jones Point Park on the Alexandria shoreline several times a week to watch the peregrines through a spotting scope and to trade stories about them with people fishing there.

"The first time I saw the bird come in with prey, it really screamed -- I assume to announce its arrival," she said. "Feathers were flying in all directions. My assumption was that it was a pigeon. . . . It's really thrilling. I've gotten such an enormous kick out of it."

This is the second year that peregrine falcons have nested on the 55-foot-tall bridge. This year's eggs are due to hatch early next month. The birds laid eggs last year that vanished -- taken, Spears thinks, by raccoons.

Spears has seen raccoons walking the girders under the existing bridge and says they could use the span to traverse the Potomac -- just like humans. In many ways, the bridge is a miniature ecosystem of predators and prey. Pigeons and rats live there. Waterfowl linger under it, and gulls fly over it to scout for trash.

Construction workers on the bridge being built near the existing one have not found where the raccoons live, but they have learned to lock up their food after the creatures broke into their lunchboxes to eat their sandwiches. The raccoons have left their distinctive paw prints -- the front one resembling a human hand and the rear one a footprint -- in fresh concrete on the new bridge.

Life on the bridge meets the falcons' three basic needs: a rough surface with good drainage to lay their eggs, a high perch from which to hunt and a good food supply of other birds. The Wilson Bridge peregrines often sit atop 200-foot-tall construction cranes, even riding them as the cranes move along the Potomac River by barge. The falcons have made a noticeable dent in the bridge's pigeon population, but they also grab gulls and songbirds.

Once so rare that there were no breeding pairs east of the Mississippi, the peregrine falcon population has rebounded in the past three decades after the deadly pesticide DDT was banned. They were taken off the federal endangered species list in 1999.

Padgett said there are at least eight pairs making their home on bridges in Virginia and about the same number in Maryland, including on the Bay Bridge and a bridge off Baltimore Harbor. Padgett, a research associate at the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary, plans to check a report of a pair of peregrine falcons on a highway bridge leading into the District from Virginia.

"Just looking at D.C., I can tell you there have to be more," he said. "We are looking for other pairs in the city."

But Padgett, whose center is deputized by the state to implement peregrine recovery efforts in Virginia, is concerned that more falcons are not nesting in the wild. So is Glenn D. Therres, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources associate director for wildlife.

In recent years, both states have removed baby falcons from nests on bridges and placed them in group nestboxes on mountain cliffs, where they are fed dead birds and have little interaction with people. The birds leave when they are able to fly on their own, and state officials hoped they would return when they were old enough to breed. The technique, called "hacking," has a proven track record.

Maryland has tried it for three years near Harpers Ferry, and although the first year's birds would be expected to return by now, none has. Virginia placed more than 60 birds in Shenandoah National Park in the past six years, and Padgett said only one pair returned to nest there, but others have been seen in urban areas.

"There's some art to this technique," said Therres, who has not given up on getting birds to live in the wild. "The theory is, you get birds acclimated to the cliff faces so they know to come back to them. But we really don't know when and at what age they actually imprint on the kind of habitat they should come back to."

Padgett said bridge life is perilous for baby falcons, which can easily drown or be killed in traffic when they try to fly. Most peregrine chicks die before they reach 6 months, he said. "It's definitely a bad setup," he said of the Wilson Bridge nest.

And although the odds for baby chicks also are bad in the mountains, Padgett said that is where falcons belong. He hopes that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the falcon population, will choose to remove the Wilson Bridge chicks from their current location and put them in a nestbox in Shenandoah National Park.

Sullivan, who has posted photos of the birds on her Web site, http://www.pbase.com/paulasullivan/peregrine_falcons , said she has mixed feelings about any attempt to remove the birds. "I'd love to see them have success where they are," she said. "I know there are experts who I trust to make the right decision. They seem so determined to do the best for the bird."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

flamingo

2006-04-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

flamingo
Originally uploaded by MikiINtokyo.

Chã

2006-04-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

Chã
Originally uploaded by Mateus Reis.

falcons

2006-04-10T19:35:00.001-07:00

falcons
Originally uploaded by sovietzz.

My dad's Falcons on the way to an afteroon hunt

MainCamera_20060410-1451

2006-04-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

MainCamera_20060410-1451
Originally uploaded by blmiers2.

Falcon

2006-04-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

Falcon
Originally uploaded by corvidae.

"Coloured pencil"

falcon

2006-04-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

falcon
Originally uploaded by kelco.

hawks continue streak of good PR

2006-04-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ready to take wing
by Peter Rusland
The Pictorial
Apr 08 2006

Ed Harris, Ethan Hawke and Ronnie Hawkins aren't humans but they are local celebrities.

"Our three boys were bred here and they're the first babies fledged at Pacific Northwest Raptors," biologist Tina Hein says of the boisterous Harris hawks.
"Lots of them hatch but don't necessarily survive through fledgling, which is leaving the nest, flying and hunting on their own."

The trio of brothers was parent-reared by Queenie and Gollum after hatching in July.
They'll show off their young hunting skills during flying demonstrations this season at PNR.

"The time they would leave the nest naturally is when we started working with them," Hein says.

"We get them used to being with a person then we give them flying training introducing food.

"It's all about positive reinforcement. They hop a short distance to a piece of food and we increase that distance to what you'll see at a flying demonstration."
The hawks are trained raptors but remain "essentially wild with skills for the wild," she explains. "Most would survive in the wild if released. A lot of hunting is instinctive but with us they're honing their hunting skills every day.

"Birds are fed daily here but we do take them out hunting and they get some of that catch."

Hawks catch prey as large as themselves, "so Ed might catch a rabbit," Hein said.
PNR's breeding program prevents birds from having to be brought from outside B.C.

"It's about raptor education in general; how they live, hunt, and why they're important to the environment and spiritually. They're wonderful indicators of habitat pollution," she says. "These three brothers show our breeding program must be working and our program is about educating people."

Harris hawks are native to the American Southwest and range to Chile. "They're a wonderful educational tool because they're the only species of social raptors," Hein says. "They hunt in groups, but all other raptors hunt by themselves so we fly a pack of Harrises."

Hawks, eagles, and owls use their talons to kill prey.

During a flying demonstration they fly to a glove or a lure that looks like a rabbit or another bird.

"We show how a bird uses its aerial ability to catch prey."

Other species among 60 birds at PNR include red-tail hawks, eagles, owls and peregrine falcons all born in captivity.

Captive-bred birds are typically used for falconry.

"We do have some non-releasable, injured birds that are kept permanently that might otherwise possibly be euthanized," she says.

One of those recovering residents is Charlie, a one-wing bald eagle.

"Some are wild and non-releasable and a large majority are captive-bred flying birds and some are doing some breeding," Hein says of PNR, B.C.'s first bird-of-prey and falconry centre that opened in 2003.

"Our birds do in captivity what they do in the wild.

"They're the bosses; we work for them and they help us teach people about raptors."
PNR encourages folks to take injured birds found to a rehabilitation centre such as Errington's North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre.

"We're not a rehab centre, but we will take bird in an emergency; we don't want to see anything harmed," says Hein.
Doubleday Canada Limited

more falcons unwittingly enlisted in cheesy marketing program

2006-04-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

Falcons make home atop high-rise bank

CINCINNATI, April 6 (UPI) -- An office building in Cincinnati has two tenants who hope to raise a family in a home on the roof.

Princess and Powerhouse, a pair of peregrine falcons, have four eggs in their nest, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. The Division of Wildlife of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources set up the nest at the PNC Building.

Peregrine falcons, exterminated in eastern states by DDT that caused a thinning of eggshells, have been making a comeback since use of the insecticide was restricted. Princess and Powerhouse are one of 39 pairs nesting this year in boxes provided by the state. Other pairs may have made their own nests.

Princess is no stranger to Cincinnati. She and a mate used the PNC Building nest in 2002. Powerhouse was born that year in a Division of Wildlife nest in a smokestack at a power station, the newspaper said.

Now, Princess spends most of her time on the nest while Powerhouse keeps watch nearby. He also sits on the nest when Princess needs a break.

"He keeps a constant vigil to protect her," Todd Channer, a graphic designer and volunteer falcon monitor, told the Enquirer.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

feathers, beak, claws: the seven foot tall meat-eating, flying dinosaur

2006-04-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

Giant Raptor Dinosaur Discovered in Utah Monument

New “egg-thief” dinosaur roamed the southwest

Media Contacts

April 3, 2006 -- Scientists from the University of Utah and the Utah Museum of Natural History have discovered the remains of a new bird-like, meat-eating dinosaur in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), southern Utah. Although represented only by the fossilized remains of hand and foot bones, comparisons with more complete skeletons found in Asia demonstrate that this animal was about seven feet tall when standing upright. Discovery of this Utah giant, which is much larger than its counterparts in Canada and the northern US, nearly doubles the documented range of these dinosaurs in North America, and demonstrates that they roamed much farther south than previously thought. A scientific paper naming and describing this animal, and published in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, was authored by Lindsay Zanno, a graduate student in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Scott Sampson, chief curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History (UMNH), and associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics.

The new dinosaur, formally dubbed Hagryphus giganteus, which means "giant four-footed, bird-like god of the western desert” in reference to the animal's outward resemblance to a large land bird, its giant stature, and its discovery in the Utah desert. Hagryphus is a member of the oviraptorosaurs, a group of bird-like feathered dinosaurs with toothless beaks, powerful arms and formidable claws. These enigmatic animals are thought by some paleontologists to have been omnivorous, feeding on a mixture of meat and plants. Although only the hands and feet of Hagryphus are known, the scientists were able to use the animal"s close relatives to estimate the size of the skeleton. The researchers say they do not know why this dinosaur was so much larger than its northern cousins but speculate that it may have been related to different environmental conditions in the south.

Ruthless Thief or Protective Parent?

The most spectacular finds of oviraptorosaur dinosaurs are fossilized skeletons from the Gobi desert in Mongolia. These dinosaurs were named oviraptors, meaning “egg-thief,” because their remains were discovered in close association with nests of dinosaur eggs, and it was thought that the raptors were eating the egg contents. In more recent years, however, eggs have been found with remains of baby oviraptors inside. And the adult oviraptors turn out to have been sitting on the nests, brooding the eggs just as birds do today. Thus, it appears that the adult oviraptors were protecting the embryos rather than devouring them! Nevertheless, the name has stuck.

Continental Connections

Oviraptorsaurs are known from a large portion of Asia but were thought to have invaded only the northern portion North America, since previous examples were known only from Montana, South Dakota, and Alberta, Canada. Discovery of Hagryphus in southern Utah demonstrates that this group of dinosaurs was much more widespread, living across much of the western United States. Hagryphus lived in a time of global warming, which melted polar caps and produced exceptionally high sea levels. As a result, the central portion of North America was flooded, isolating the eastern and western portions of the continent. The dinosaurs preserved in GSENM were stranded on the western landmass, which formed a narrow peninsula. The relationships between northern and southern dinosaurs that occupied this western landmass during the Late Cretaceous are part of a long-term research project undertaken by University of Utah scientists.

A Monumental Effort

Hagryphus is the first new dinosaur to be named from GSENM, and just one of many exciting finds made during a five-year collaborative project between the Monument and the University of Utah. The primary goal of this project, funded by GSENM, has been to conduct paleontological surveys and to excavate the fossils of dinosaurs and other lifeforms that existed in this region during a period near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. More specifically, the focus of this work has been the Kaiparowits Formation, which dates to a time near the end of the Cretaceous, between 76 and 74 million years ago. Over the past five years, GSENM and University of Utah and researchers, including dozens of students and volunteers, have spent almost 17 months conducting field work within the Monument boundaries.

GSENM encompasses 1.9 million acres, comprising a substantial portion of southern Utah. Sampson states that, “due to the extremely rugged nature of the terrain, this region was the last major area within the lower 48 states to be formally mapped. For the same reason, it now represents an untapped and perhaps the last major dinosaur graveyard in this country to be explored.” The central region of the Monument, known as the Kaiparowits Plateau, preserves one the most complete records of Cretaceous life anywhere in the world. However, access to the remote back country must be accomplished almost entirely on foot, and fossils must either be carried out under human power or, if the specimen involves a large dinosaur skeleton, via helicopter. Thus far, project teams have prospected approximately 20,000 acres of the central Kaiparowits Plateau in the search for dinosaurs and their prehistoric contemporaries. Yet this area amounts to less than 5% of the Cretaceous, fossil-bearing rocks preserved in the Monument.

To date, the results of this collaborative project have been spectacular. In addition to Hagryphus, discoveries include at least three other previously unknown kinds of dinosaurs—including a meat-eating tyrannosaur, a duckbilled dinosaur, and a horned dinosaur—all of which are under study and will be formally named in the near future. Remarkably, virtually every dinosaur species identified to date has turned out to be new to science. Many of the fossils from the Monument were buried quickly in sandy rivers and are exceptionally preserved. Several duckbill dinosaurs even retain fossilized skin impressions, which are very rare finds anywhere in the world. One bony claw of Hagryphus preserves the impression of the keratinous fingernail-like that would have covered the claw in life (see image CD). In addition to the charismatic dinosaur “megafauna,” fossil finds from GSENM include abundant remains of clams, fishes, amphibians, lizards, turtles, birds, crocodiles, and mammals.

Project investigators, aided by workers at several other US institutions, are currently researching this bounty of prehistoric life forms, as well as their geologic context, in an effort to reconstruct this 75 million year old ecosystem. Project findings, including many original fossils, will be featured in an entirely new UMNH facility, scheduled to open at the end of 2009. Meanwhile, Hagryphus and many other Monument fossils can be viewed on display at the current UMNH building on Presidents Circle at the University of Utah campus, as well as in the GSENM visitor’s center in Big Water, Utah.

For more information: http://www.umnh.utah.edu/

...this just in:

2006-04-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

The Universe trapped in its own web

Embargo Date: /
Posted: 4/4/2006, 9:46
Posted by: Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)

Astronomers from the University of Nottingham, UK, and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (Spain), have found the first observational evidence that galaxies are not randomly oriented. Instead, they are aligned following a characteristic pattern dictated by the large-scale structure of the invisible dark matter that surrounds them.

... of course, it turns out to be the negative space ("invisible dark matter") that matters, not what we can see but what we can't see that provides the structure ("web") which rules the expression, that yadayada Jack built....

street heart

2006-04-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

street heart
Originally uploaded by dev null.

Sharing

2006-04-02T17:52:00.000-07:00

Sharing
Originally uploaded by LexiJoy.

"A pair of American Kestrels lunching on a freshly-caught shrew. The bird on the left is the male (you can tell by his bright coloring), while the dull one with bloody shrew guts hanging from its mouth is the female. As disgusting as it was to watch, it's still an amazing thing to see these birds of prey and their rituals."

human touch kills

2006-03-31T14:42:00.000-08:00

March 31, 2006
Coyote That Romped in Central Park Dies
By MARIA NEWMAN, The New York Times

Hal, the coyote with wanderlust who toured Central Park for days earlier this month until a posse of New York City police officers finally managed to capture him, died as he was about to be released back into the wild, state environmental officials said today.

Hal was to be taken on Thursday from a wildlife rehabilitation center on Long Island, and was about to be set loose in the California State Forest upstate in Putnam County, said Gabrielle DeMarco, a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Environmental Conservation. As workers were trying to tag him for release, he stopped breathing.

They could not resuscitate him.

"It's truly so sad," said Ms. DeMarco, adding that pathologists would be conducting tests on the coyote to determine the cause of death, and whether the trauma of his New York escapade had contributed to his early demise.

The year-old coyote caused a stir when he was spotted in the meadows and woods of the nation's most congested city, scaring some park goers and delighting other people in a city used to intrepid newcomers.

For days, the coyote known as Hal, because he was first spotted at the park's Hallett Nature Sanctuary, was chased by breathless police department sharp shooters armed only with tranquilizer guns, park maintenance officials on golf carts and countless news media. There were news helicopters flying overhead in search of a Hal sighting and top park officials held news conferences on scenic knolls in the park.

But Hal managed to evade them for days more efficiently than a celebrity with a new secret lover dodges the paparazzi.

Finally, on March 22, a Wednesday, Hal's excellent adventure ended when a police officer landed a tranquilizer dart in his rump.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

flora & fauna come & go

2006-03-27T20:57:00.000-08:00

Britain's changing wildlife

What have the short-haired bumblebee and the red-backed shrike got in common? They are now officially extinct in Britain. Unlike the golden twin-spot moth, a native of North Africa, which quite happily breeds here now. Whether due to global warming, changing farm practices or loss of habitat, Britain's flora and fauna is changing. Stephen Moss charts some of the new arrivals - and those that have sadly departed

by Stephen Moss
Tuesday March 28, 2006, Guardian

People who trap moths are, as a rule, an undemonstrative bunch. But following a vintage year, even they could be forgiven the odd whoop of joy. For 2005 saw an extraordinary invasion of rare and exotic moths - from mainland Europe and beyond - into southern Britain.

The influx was spearheaded by a dull, greyish moth with a wonderfully eccentric name - Clancy's rustic - scores of which turned up on our coasts. These were accompanied by visitors with equally bizarre monikers: beautiful marbled, dewick's plusia and golden twin-spot, to name but three. The highlight, though, was the Tunbridge Wells gem, so called because the original specimen was discovered in the Kentish spa town in the 19th century. Despite its quintessentially English name, this species normally lives in North Africa, yet last year no fewer than seven were recorded here.

So are moth enthusiasts simply becoming more observant, or was the invasion an indicator of some wider phenomenon? Definitely the latter, according to Mark Parsons of the Butterfly Conservation Society. He believes that climate change, leading to shifts in wind-patterns, is responsible for bringing these moths and butterflies from the Mediterranean and North Africa to Britain.

These modest little creatures are not the only new arrivals to our shores. This winter there has been an influx of of cattle egrets, with at least 20 of these attractive herons wandering around southern England. In the past few decades this species has surged north from its Mediterranean home, and now nests as close as Brittany and the Netherlands. The cattle egret may soon become the latest addition to our growing list of British breeding birds.

Marine life is getting into the picture, too. How could we forget the unfortunate northern bottle-nosed whale, which took a wrong turn and ended up in the River Thames, where it expired before a huge crowd of onlookers? This was only the latest in a long line of sea creatures that are turning up in British and Irish waters, including the humpback whale, striped dolphin and leatherback turtle. "Many of the humpback-whale sightings involve mother and calf pairs," says Dylan Walker of Organisation Cetacea (ORCA), "which gives us even more optimism for the future."

But despite this good news, not everything in the British wildlife garden is rosy. Even as we celebrate these new arrivals, we are saying farewell to several native species. The red-backed shrike, known to generations of schoolboy egg-collectors as the "butcher bird" because of its grisly habit of impaling its prey on thorn bushes, finally disappeared as a British breeding species during the 1990s. At about the same time, the short-haired bumblebee was officially declared extinct in Britain. Occasionally, creatures do bounce back: despite apparently becoming extinct in 1990, the greater mouse-eared bat was recently rediscovered in Sussex.

Other rare plants and animals are managing to hang on by the skin of their teeth. Lady's slipper orchid is confined to a single site in Wharfedale in North Yorkshire, with a round-the-clock guard to deter plant thieves. And one of our most attractive butterflies, the marsh fritillary, survives partly as a result of protection by the military. The training area on Salisbury Plain provides just the right level of disturbance (from shells and tank cracks) to allow the butterfly's food plant - devil's-bit scabious - to thrive.

The species with the most tenuous foothold of all is the fingered speedwell, a tiny blue flower confined to the lawns and flowerbeds of a new housing estate in the Norfolk town of Thetford. It is not known what residents think about having one of Britain's rarest plants as a weed in their rose beds.

So why does our flora and fauna continually ebb and flow in this manner? Geography has a lot to do with it. The British Isles stretch across more than 10 degrees of latitude, from the Isles of Scilly in the south to Shetland in the north. As a result we are home to arctic species on the very southern edge of their range, such as ptarmigan, arctic skua and mountain hare; and southern species on the northern edge of their range, such as cirl bunting, southern damselfly and Lulworth skipper. When conditions change, most recently as a result of global warming, we lose existing species and gain new ones.

Our position on the edge of a vast landmass, sandwiched between Eurasia and the Atlantic Ocean, also makes us a global crossroads for migrating birds. These sometimes take a wrong turn, and instead of reaching their intended destination, end up in Britain. If conditions are suitable, they may breed. Several species, including a little egret, have recently colonised Britain as a result of such wanderings.

However, water can also present a formidable barrier to colonisation. Terrestrial species such as mammals, reptiles and amphibians can only cross the Channel with help from humans; while even some birds appear reluctant to fly over the sea, and grind to a halt at Calais. Such is the fate of the zitting cisticola, a tiny warblerlike bird spreading northwards through Europe, and long predicted as a potential colonist. A pair of cisticolas is currently residing on Jersey, but only a few individuals have ever reached mainland Britain, none of which has yet to breed.

But despite these natural arrivals and departures, by far the greatest changes taking place in Britain's fauna and flora are the result of human agency. A recent report by English Nature - "Audit of non-native species in England" - listed no fewer than 2,721 non-native species and hybrids currently found here in the wild. Most of these are flowering plants, but there are also 102 species of bugs and aphids, 101 species of beetle and almost 50 different butterflies and moths.

Only four introduced species, including game birds such as pheasant and red-legged partridge, are considered to bring any economic benefit; while many others, such as the Chinese mitten crab, American mink and Japanese knotweed, are known to have harmful economic and biological consequences.

In recent years, in an attempt to offset these disastrous introductions, we have tried to redress the balance by reintroducing native creatures. The most successful of these schemes, the restoration of red kites to England and Scotland, shows that despite our predisposition to meddle and destroy, we also have the ability to make things better. It may not be too long before kites resume their place over the streets of London, for the first time in more than a century.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Passage Guilhem #2

2006-03-27T14:53:00.000-08:00

Passage Guilhem #2
Originally uploaded by Aaltra.