A Close Encounter with Ospreys

A group of ten or so "bird banders" had been banding terns on Wainwright Island in late summer of 2008. This particular trip was a “clean up" with the goal of banding stragglers and birds missed on two excursions to Wainwright earlier in the summer. This trip also featured something a little unusual. A Brandt was mixed in with the terns.

Brandt with Terns

The Brandt was a delight to encounter. He/she was a goofy bird that couldn't fly and was taking refuge with the terns. This might have been the highlights of the day, but after we arrived back at the landing on Cedar Island and stowed all of banding gear away most of our crowd quickly dispersed. It was then that John Weske asked to the two of us who remained if we were up for a little different adventure. He suggested that we go back out into the sound to a channel marker where we had observed an Osprey nest with babies and try to band them. John, Rachel Salmon, and I jumped back on the boat and headed out to the nest.

I have always admired ospreys but I had never really looked at one close up. I was a little apprehensive as I maneuvered the boat into the tide flow and John swung onto the marker ladder with a nimble jump from the bow. He was quickly onto the nesting platform. Mom and Dad Osprey were suddenly on the scene screaming and darting through the air toward John.

Ospreys present a banding problem that is different from the problems of banding pelicans and terns as the Osprey babies are asynchronously born. Of a typical clutch of three eggs, they may have been laid -first egg till the last – several days to perhaps even a week or more apart. And, the hatching is spaced out roughly the same, rather than a clutch hatching at (more or less) the same time - as is more usual among birds. So, when we looked into this particular Osprey nest there were three babies. One - the one in the picture below - was closing in on time to fledge. The other two were much smaller, the smallest just a puffball.

Osprey Baby

John grabbed the big chick first and banded it. He wanted to get that bird out of the nest so he could gently handle the little birds as he banded them. I asked John as he handed the big bird down to me after banding it if it would bite. He, of course, told me no. - Note my right index finger where the bird immediately bit me, and notice the size of this beautiful creature's feet with new band.

Rachel Salmon with the biggest Osprey baby

I first become aware of this concept of asynchronous hatching when I read Marie Winn's book Red-Tails in Love? But having this eye to eye encounter made me think about this concept even more. What was the reason for it? What was Mother Nature up to?

A little research led me to find that this asynchronous hatching is seen in various types of raptors, and it is an adaptation to the kind of often wildly fluctuating food supply found in coastal Carolina's rivers, sounds and oceans. During seasons or times of seasons when food is in short supply, the later hatched young will probably starve as the earlier hatched young, being larger and stronger, deprive them of food (siblicide - they push their weaker brothers or sisters out of the nest) And, the size of the brood is reduced to a level in balance with the available food supply. In years of plenty all the young may be able to survive.

Brown Pelican Banding at Atlantic, NC

The star east of Atlantic, NC is the approximate location of the island where the Brown Pelican banding took place

Timing is everything when banding colonial birds. To efficiently band Brown Pelicans you have to be aware of some key timing facts.

After the female Brown Pelicans lay two or three eggs both parents incubate them for around thirty days. The babies hatch looking like little purple/pink Pterodactyls. Then they are fed and given whatever parenting Brown Pelicans do for seventy-one to eighty-eight days when the chicks fledge. Shortly after their first flight they start earning their own living.

It is important to pick a banding time when these new chicks are old enough to be gently handled. Too young and a band will not fit on their small legs, or worse yet they may simply go into shock and die. Too old and they are strong and rambunctious. So, before a gang capable of banding thousands of birds is assembled someone must go into the colony and assess the timing.

Word that the timing was right had been sent to fifteen plus people. Two boats would be required.

July 1, 2008, at 7:00am

Today I met a group led by long time bird banders, John Weske and Micou Browne, at a boat landing behind Drum Inlet Seafood in Atlantic, NC. The group had gathered to band baby Brown Pelicans on an island in Core Sound roughly halfway between new Drum Inlet and Atlantic, NC. This island is closed to the public from April through August and the group leaders hold federal and state permits to band birds. They also have been granted a special permit from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission band birds on this and others of a special group of islands that the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has designated as a sanctuary for nesting colonial waterbirds.

Micou Browne and Dr. Peter Hertl loading a boat at the Drum Inlet Seafood landing

We loaded the two boats up with people bands, pliers and lots of water. Then we motored across the Core Sound. As we pulled up in the boat to our destination island, here’s how the island looked.

Because there were Black Skimmers and other shore birds nesting on the sandy low parts of this island, we carefully circled around along the wet edge of the shoreline.

In my path was this beautiful freshly dead octopus lying on the wet sand.

We walked around the perimeter of the island to the opposite side where there was an area low enough that we could climb up and have access to the central high ground portion of the island where the pelican rookery was located.

Just before we got to our entrance area Micou Browne spotted a Great Black-back Gull baby. The big chick had apparently fallen off the tidal ledge and it was hiding in a crevice along the bank.

John Weske stopped the group at the foot of the entrance area to the higher ground and talked a bit about the plan for what we were doing and then gave out assignments.

Together we then climbed up on the high portion of the island and there they were - Brown Pelicans galore!

A pair of Brown Pelican eggs on the nest

Freshly hatched Brown Pelican babies

Our task was now to carefully circle a section of the pelican rookery and cut out a group of babies. Some of our group were assigned to put bands on birds and others were assigned to capture birds and hold them for the persons banding.

A couple of small groups “cut out” for banding

I had a turn at both tasks. To capture a bird you had to grab and control a bird gently enough not to hurt them. There are several methods. The most used method was to hold the bird first by the bill. The sharp tip is the part that may scratch you if you do not have it under control. Then you hold both of the bird's wings by the wing joints closest to the bird’s back while supporting the bird from below -sometime with a hip, knee or leg. You then present the right foot to the person banding. The bander uses a special pair of pliers to fasten the bands in place.

When banding you have to first get the right leg into position to place a specially sized (for Brown Pelicans) band between the toes and the first joint. Then the bands are then squeezed tight with pliers until the two band ends butt together tightly, but do not overlap. The baby is then released with its new jewelry.

Squeezing on a band

In all, we banded seven hundred and seventy baby Brown Pelicans and were finished around 1:00pm. With two parents per bird and considering we probably missed some sneaky babies, there must have been well over two thousand birds on this island of just a couple of acres.

I have been thinking about how Brown Pelicans faced extinction from DDT poisoning in the early 1970's when there were probably fewer than fifteen viable breeding pairs toughing it out in North Carolina. Unfortunately for the Brown Pelican, one of their unusual behaviors is to stand on their eggs and wrap them with their webbed feet to incubate them rather than warm their eggs with the skin of their breasts like most other birds. If you take a look at their nests of hard sticks and shells, and then picture the incubating parent standing on top of the fragile eggs, it is not hard to understand why so very few eggs were hatched. This peculiar incubation method made them vulnerable to the effects of the pesticide DDT since the DDT made the eggshells thin. As a result, the incubating parents frequently cracked their eggs. In fact, it astonishes me that they could incubate the eggs even with thick strong eggshells.

In future posts, I intend to write more about banding and observing other coastal North Carolina birds and more about the people banding them.

One question on which I would like to invite comment is whether the anthropomorphism we project to these birds and other creatures is a good or bad thing. I hear other people banding (and I do it myself) talking to the birds - cooing trying to keep them calm.

Marie Winn in her book, Red-Tails in Love, asks some interesting questions about this subject along these lines:

- doesn't evolution show that all human characteristics with survival value have precedents in the phylogenetic past?

- don't such supremely human properties as reasoning ability and emotional complexity evolve over time? Surely they don't spring forth fully evolved?

The notion that only humans think and feel surely is a relic of Creationism - a Victorian notion.

Chime in and tell me what you think!

Nature is both beautiful and cruel. All of the baby Brown Pelicans don’t make it.

First Fishing Trip

Starting with a little fishing trip.

The First Jon Boat Trip with Fishgirl and Fishdog

I finally finished fixing up the Jon Boat to the point where I could put it in the water and use it on Friday, September 7th, 2007.

So, Alice, our dog Baby and I put the boat in the water at the public boat ramp by the Community College here in Morehead City. The ramp was crowded and there were no places to park the car and trailer after I offloaded the boat into the water. I ended up squeezing between two big trucks that were each overflowing into the next space leaving a VERY narrow slot. Thought I was going to have to slip out the window, but was able to squeeze out.

First, we motored down the Intracoastal Waterway to a shallow area in front of the public access park on Holly Lane near our house. I had seen many schools of perfect sized finger mullet there in the morning. I used my cast net to catch a good bunch, put the mullet in a bucket and then we ran east to the causeway bridge to Atlantic beach.

The battery for the fish finder was almost dead so I was turning it off and on frequently as I motored around the bridge pilings looking for bait pods.

At first the falling tide was moving out very fast. There was a big concentration of baitfish showing on the fishfinder on the down current side of the bridge’s main passthrough south side pilings.

I anchored up the Jon Boat under the shadow of the bridge to keep us out of the direct sun and started fishing. Soon I caught a rather nice skate and carefully released him - then another. As beautiful as they were, I really wanted to catch a flounder. So, I repositioned the boat dropping back even closer to the baitfish pod and reset the anchor. I then put two live finger mullet over the side. One bait was hooked through the top of the eye socket on a carolina rig and the other hooked the same way but on a flounder rig with a float to get the bait off the bottom slightly. Same hooks, 2/0 Kahles were used on each. The flounder rig was set closest to the pilings. I hooked yet another skate on the carolina rig but he broke off. I think the leader was frayed from the other skates. Then I hooked a flounder on the float rig which was closer to the pilings. The fish was very scrappy as big flounder can be, and to my horror I realized that I did not bring a landing net. Luckily, I was able to get my Boga Grip into the fish’s mouth and hoist him aboard. He was very thick. 

 

Fishgirl, Fishdog and I ate him in fish tacos and in stuffed Poblano peppers. He was delicious!

We thank the Fish Gods