It was in the Nethermead, the area now taken over by the awful Oooga Mooga, which probably driving out the nesting green herons found by photographer Peter Colon.

I saw these turtles on May 1. They had first been seen two weeks earlier under a toupe of grass that you could lift up and see them squirm. Were they from last year, but somehow went more slowly and were sped up by the spot of hot weather we had? According to redearslider.com the eggs usually hatch in 60-80 days and need temperatures in the 80s. That puts the egg-laying back in February or March, but obviously the temperatures were nowhere near warm enough. The hole is only a few inches deep.

I don’t see how any of these babies could make it to water without getting run-over by a human. But then again, I can’t see how the turtle mom made it to this patch of grass, either.

Snapping turtle in the Phragmites of Prospect Park Lake.

The only downside: the sliders aren’t native and I wonder how many birds–like wood ducks–they eat or discourage.

Where to SEE TURTLES & TORTOISES

Red eared sliders sunning themselves on one of the many turtle logs in the Lullwater.

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.

Non-denominational waterfowl feeding.

I went out last week hoping to see the Orthodox Jews throwing their leavened bread at the Prospect Park geese before Passover. The Prospect Park Alliance publicly notified them not to try to foist off their chametz on the waterfowl feeding. That ticked off the community, who denied any such plans., to the New York Times and the Brooklyn Paper.

So I headed over to the prime duck-feeding spot on the lake in Prospect Park on both the eve and morning of Passover. Let’s be honest, I was hoping for a spectacle: maybe 10 guys in 5 kinds of fur hats, surrounded by their collective 87 children and 10 wives in perfect wigs, all hurling bags of bread at grateful Canada geese. The aggressive swan family that lives there might charge them. A Park Slope mom might passive-aggressively read the sign about not feeding the waterfowl outloud to her kids. The pushy Peking ducks that follow bird feeders away from the lake might try to follow these generous Jews all the way home to Borough Park.

Instead I got absolutely no visible Hasidim at the spot where people and ducks have come to agree is the best spot for feeding, the southwest corner of the lake. (I also looked around the shore and by the boathouse.)

That’s not to say I didn’t see plenty of visibly Orthodox Jews feeding ducks earlier this spring. Sometimes there were even two men in formal garb. But mostly, just families like the rest of us. I’ve talked to people who say they have seen what sure looked like organized duck feeding. Years ago I wrote about a similar phenomena at the Central Park Zoo for New York Magazine. That would’ve been a bigger deal since the animals have a much more specialized diets.

Here, if a bunch of people want to feed ducks once a year as part of a religious tradition, just let them. Feeding ducks is part of a long American tradition, too. Who didn’t grow up feeding ducks with their parents?

The disadvantages the sign spells out to feeding the ducks–messed up migration, diet, behavior–may all be true. (Although the real reason for the policy is all about goose poop, but that’s another story.) But let’s compare the impact of a few people throwing food in a Brooklyn lake with the mere creation of Brooklyn, let alone the greater New  York City area. The Prospect Park lake is man-made and in the middle of the country’s biggest city that has chewed up wildlife and wetlands for centuries. But now, some families want to throw bread at ducks once a year and suddenly we’re upsetting the balance of nature?

If you’re a parent in Brooklyn, you know that you can’t go to any kind of outdoor, cultural, educational or kids event without running into Hassidic families. They seemingly are on a very active schedule of field trips. So it’s no surprise that they’d take part in the very American tradition of feeding ducks, too.

Where to SEE FARM SANCTUARIES with cow, chicken, domesticated pig, sheep

Courtesy of Island Marine

Blackfin and spinner sharks are passing by Palm Beach, FL, this time of year–so many and so flamboyantly you may be able to see them from the shore.

The sharks are migrating through and will spend the summer along the east coast. (They have similar patterns off Africa and Europe.) The sharks, which average about 6 feet, mate in early summer then carry the young 12-15 months and give birth to 3-15 pups that are already a couple feet long. Because the US shark population is in decline, the inland shark nurseries are important. Oddly, the sharks don’t entertain residents on the way down south. Tellman says the current may make them travel far from shore.

Tellman has another Florida shark watching tip: off Jupiter scuba divers can see lemon sharks. Normally sharks flee from the bubbles of scuba tanks, but these don’t seem to mind.

	Where to SEE SEALS (and sea lion and walrus)
	Where to SEE SHARKS

Where to see animals down south

Here’s the case: Professional dog handler Robert Chaffin went to the biggest dog event in the country with Cruz, a happy-looking, fluffy, white, 3-year-old Samoyed. Didn’t win. Days later in Colorado, the dog died vomiting blood. Horrific. Tragic.

Here’s what you or I would do if we even vaguely suspected somebody poisoned our family pet: order tests and raise hell till we caught the person who did this horrible thing.

If I had the vaguest suspicion my dog had been poisoned by anyone I’d be demanding a necropsy and the most thorough anaylsis of the poison money could buy. In fact  I did get a necrospy on my 15-year-old dog, Jolly, when he died a few years ago, just to see exactly what went wrong. The death was not suspicious and he wasn’t part of my business. I didn’t have a website touting Jolly’s lineage like they have for Cruz. New Yorkers routinely order up necropsies on dead hawks they find in parks to figure out if poison was involved and which one.  If I thought he had died at the hands of a villain at major dog event–and therefore thousands of other dogs would be vulnerable–I would have had an obligation to get to the bottom of the case.

But Cruz, more formally known as BIS Am. Grand ch. Polar Mist Cruz’nT’party at Zamosky, is co-owned by Lynette Blue and an Indonesian breeder, Zamosky, and is hardly a family pet. So here’s what the handler and owner do: refuse to do a necropsy (animal autopsy). Then go to the New York Times and accuse the PeTA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, of somehow slipping their dog rat poison at the premier dog show in the country. They claim to have called the New York City Police but not gotten a response.

“[Rat poisoning] is in the realm of possibility,” Lynette Blue told The Associated Press on Thursday. ”The timeline adds up. There’s no other scenario we can come up with other than poison,” she said. (The Times came up with hemophilia, which is linked to the breed, but it seems unlikely to have gone undetected so long.)

“Unfortunately, dog shows have been plagued by some of these people for years,” Chaffin said told the New York Times, which amazingly ran this unsubstantiated attack on PeTA. “I’ve heard horror stories about other people’s dogs having their setups tampered with, being poisoned, but I never thought it would come to me.”

Chaffin’s weird paranoia about animal rights groups is pretty much the only thing their claim is based on. Lots of people hate dog shows and the creepy dog breeding industry. But they do it because they love dogs–instead of loving arbitrary breed standards. If there are any documented cases of dogs being poisoned at shows it would be a horrible crime and certainly newsworthy. So the Times should have no trouble digging them up, right?

Chaffin says Cruz was hardly alone for minutes. I’ve been to Westminster and many dogs are left in crates for hours with no person  in site. Other dog people hover nearby. I don’t know which type he is. I only know that you don’t ever leave a dog alone in New York City. I have had dogs here for about 16 years and I don’t do it for a minute. Especially not if I sincerely believed someone was out to get them.

He claims somebody gave him the evil eye for having Cruz’s vocal cords cut. I can easily imagine someone rolling their eyes at this practice, but this is hardly the biggest target of animal rights activists. Even if some arch villain were set to poison a show dog, wouldn’t they go for more offensive breeds like boxers and ridgebacks, that regularly kill off puppies for not meeting breed standards? Or breeders that keep producing dogs despite known genetic defects?

The most obvious problem with the theory: why would an animal lover quietly poison an inconspicuous competitor at a big dog show with a poison that takes days to work? Wouldn’t you use anything with the sugar substitute xylitol, which kills within hours?

They told the Times that they didn’t hear back from the NYPD. If I didn’t get a good enough response from the NYPD, I would have pulled in the Westminster Kennel Club, which surely would have an interest in either catching someone who did something so awful to one of its dogs or putting all the other attendees at ease. So far I don’t see much reaction from the Westminster Kennel Club aside from saying that they haven’t had dogs poisoned. The Kennel Club has to step up, one way or the other, either by investigating the possible crime or saying the story is ludicrous.

Where to SEE DOG EVENTS like basset hound waddles, Halloween parades, dock dogs

I was so delighted to find a pond where the rules were mainly about keeping dogs on leashes (and, fussily, how you have to pay if you want to take professional pictures there). I credited some kind of Southern conservatism that bucked unnecessary rules and interference with family fun. We had a fine time feeding the mallard, Peking and muskovy ducks. As usual there were Canada geese, but not an overwhelming number. The ground wasn’t covered in droppings or anything.

The place is delightful. It’s just a small pond in a residential part of Buckhead. The concierge at our hotel didn’t know of any toddler playgrounds in the area, but this space turned out to be pretty and fun.

But then when I went to look up the place, it turns out the Peach Tree Heights Neighbors just got together and decided they had too much goose poop and so would start spending a lot of money to evict the geese and will start sending out patrols to stop moms from feeding the ducks with their kids. Frown. The patrols will tell people that feeding the geese is costing the neighbors thousands of dollars. Sigh.

They plan on telling parents who happen to amble by with their kids the USDA has confirmed that the pond has “too many” geese. I’m sure that’s a great way to intimidate moms into doing what you want, but I’m not sure it’s really helping them understand the situation. That’s like arguing you should have a nose job because the cosmetic surgeon said it would look great. The USDA’s Wildlife Services unit is an infamous juggernaut of animal-killing that recommends its own killing and relocation services to anybody in the country with an animal problem. They kill about 5 million wild animals a year.

They’ll also throw out there the usual canard: that this is all for the health of the birds. This issue is 100% about people thinking goose poop is yucky. If the concern were about bread being bad for the goose’s diet, you could just suggest better foods (dog food, actual duck feed, grain or some fruits or veggies).

To its credit, the Peachtree Heights East group isn’t starting off with a mass gassing. They’ll do a little egg addling and plan to “relocate” many of their birds, despite the overwhelming evidence that this is a short-term solution at best and that they are unlikely to find anybody willing to take them.

The association cites rising costs of dredging (even though they only seem to have done it once in 2001) and $50,000 of sod in 2011. Seems to me it’s hard to pin 100% of the sod cost on Canada geese, which they claim are pulling up too many grass roots.  (Well, maybe people aren’t feeding the enough.)

Much cheaper options:

The pond already has tons of signs  and rules about off-leash dogs and is set to get more about how duck-feeding is an unnatural scourge. Meanwhile, the association is considering spending $1,500 to $4,000 to hire dogs to chase the geese away. I don’t want to sound too radical here, but wouldn’t the park be more enjoyable for everyone if they just let dogs go off leash?

If the Canada goose is the only species you want to get rid of (and if you’ve got a place called “Duck Pond,” I’d hope that was the case), just ask people not to feed that particular species. You don’t have to be an ornithologist to tell the difference between a mallard and a Canada goose. Just ask people not to feed the Canadian geese. Not that complicated.

Where to Go See Wild Animals in the US

Where to See Weird Birds

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.

Dolphin stranded in the Gowanus Canal

The unanimous judgment of the crowd of Brooklynites crowded on the Union Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal last night: somebody needs to be getting in the water to save that dolphin. Despite the cold and snow. Despite the unknown oils and toxins in the soon-to-be dredged superfund site. Just somebody, please, help the dolphin.

The crowd of kids and adults wanted to see the dolphin make it. Somebody brought along dolphin recordings and played them on mini-speakers over the water, where the 7-foot  dolphin thrashed on concrete bridge pilings.

But it didn’t happen. The dolphin died after spending the day in the canal, first spotted in the morning at the entrance, then ending its life around 6 p.m. on the concrete pilings under a bridge about 1.8 miles up the dead-end canal. The Times says it was a common dolphin. That means it was most likely a short-beaked common dolphin, Delphinus delphis, making it one of about 120,000 on this side of the Atlantic.

Would-be rescuers from the  Riverhead Foundation told the Times they needed special permission to rescue the marine mammal and were waiting for the 7 p.m. high tide to carry it out on its own. But Robert DiGiovanni, senior biologist at the Riverhead Foundation, told the Daily News that it was the toxic waters holding them back. “It’s not safe for us to get people in the water.” But, towards the end, the dolphin was on the footing of the bridge and people could’ve stood next to it in hip waders.

The dolphin was likely in big trouble to wander off on its own up the canal to begin with. But, once it got there, the canal itself surely didn’t help. It has been shown to have too low of oxygen levels to support life. And its pipes, pilings and concrete make it hard for anybody to get out unscathed.

Read more:

, 

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/6336/0 

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