General Interest

Discussion of any other birds and animals, anywhere.
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Liis
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Re: General Interest

Post by Liis »

Does anyone remember Miina the flying squirrel and the ELF project to study and preserve flying squirrels in Estonia [url]ttp://www.looduskalender.ee/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2638#p2638[/url]
Now a recent report says, according to newspaper Eesti Päevaleht (article in Estonian here viewtopic.php?p=2638#p2638), that a great threat to flying squirrels in Estonia is the pine marten, besides the fact that their habitats with old aspen trees disappear more and more. Among the flying squirrels that scientists have followed, 90% of the deaths were due to martens.
But two female squirrels with radio senders brought up three young each this summer. On the other hand only 14 out of 39 known nests had been used.

Pine martens aren’t hunted any longer because there is no use for the fur that was once highly valued, and the marten is quite difficult to hunt.

Another problem for flying squirrels is that good living places are at ever longer distances from each other, and the landscape in between is not very hospitable to travel in for flying squirrels: so less nice flying squirrel come-togethers
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

I accidently posted an image of a coyote running on frozen lake Erie, because all the ice fit in with the Seal cam I left the image up but thought I should provide information about urban coyotes if anyone was interested.

This NPR article http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =105385196 was the first I heard about the studies. I found it amazing that coyotes are doing well in urban areas despite cars they do better than their rural counter parts. They do eat some cats but they really tackle rats and in Chicago they eat a lot of goose eggs in season.

And here is a public site on the Chicago study http://urbancoyoteresearch.com/

And talking about Big Mama (one of the coyotes they are studying) "I once watched her cross 8 lanes of traffic on I-290 when she was a yearling." The idea of any animal being able to cross 8 lanes of a busy urban road is just mind blowing to me!

This is a link to a pdf http://ohioline.osu.edu/b929/pdf/b929.pdf It is about the same study and has some of the same material as online -- lots of big colour pictures, which are a little hard to scroll through on a pdf but it also has, or seems to have, a bit more detail.

One interesting point, it appears that mange has become (since 2003?) a big problem for coyotes in the study. Just like for the raccoon dogs and the foxes ;(
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

alice44 wrote: ame, a coyote on lake erie, instead of an eagle on the baltic, because the silly photobucket failed to copy the code it said it had copied

Image
The image that started me off on this Coyote tangent

The study suggests this is unlikely to be a dog coyote mix -- they do not survive well because male dogs to not help rear the young the way male coyotes do.
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Kitty KCMO
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Post by Kitty KCMO »

Interesting links, Alice. I have read at some point in the past about coyotes moving eastward & interbreeding with wolves. Also about coyotes becoming urbanized. They are a fascinating species. I am very familiar with them from my childhood & adolescence out in Montana. It was always a treat for me to see one or a couple trotting along a roadway or across a field. I absolutely love to hear them yipping & howling in the night. It is such a wild sound & tugs something up from deep in your chest. But I can see how it would be unnerving for someone who had lived in a city all his or her life to suddenly hear this weird howling sound echo through the suburban neighborhood late one night! :shock: I did know a rancher once whose female dog had bred with a stray coyote & had pups. The pups were cute, but I don't know what ever happened to them.
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

I think female dogs would have a better chance of raising the pups because people would help her -- I do not know how well they would adapt to humans once they grew up.

I thought it was interesting that according to the study cats make up only 1% of their diet, which is the big fear. Coyotes are known to be around where my sister lives in Portland. mostly based on reports of missing cats, but of course cats some times disappear due to dogs and cars. And at least around here suburbs are experiencing huge upswings in rats. So that may be an invitation for coyotes, but my friend in rural Corvallis had foxes in her yard, which seems very exotic to me.
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Bleggi
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Post by Bleggi »

:gathering: I have a question and don't know, where I can ask it. So I will do it here:
Last wintertime my daughter showed me a webcam where birds came to eat. I was very interested in that and took nice pics. Do anybody know, wether (if) this cam is going online this winter, too?
Excuse me for asking here :bow:
In love with all animals
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

Bleggi, I think, hope and expect that the we will again have the eagle feeding cam. It will probably show up on the front page when it opens and the discussion will be in this forum viewforum.php?f=9
It won't open until the ground is frozen and the eagles really need a little extra help. Last year there were so many ravens and not so many eagles, but I still think they will do something.
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Bleggi
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Post by Bleggi »

Hello Alice!
I found that Link from the last wintertime: "mms://tv.eenet.ee/toidumaja". I thought perhaps the cam will open earlier when there is snow in Estland and the birds cannot find food enough.
I will let myself be surprised.
Kindest regards :hi:
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Leica Eagles
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Post by Leica Eagles »

thought i would share a couple shots of the WTSE's Ameican Cousins who i was happy to photograph this fall at Connowingo Dam which is located on the Susquehanna river near the Pennsylvania and Maryland state border line

Eagle after they grabbed a winter shad fish from the river below the hydroelectric plant

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Juvenile soaring looking to steal a meal i think
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This shot isnt as sharp as i would have liked as i literally just stepped out from my car. The eagles are migrating to warmer climates following the river towars the Chesepeake bay about 50 miles south. That day they were chasing each other all over the place

Image
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Leica Eagles
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Post by Leica Eagles »

This is the Female Peregrine Falcon known to those locall as "Mom" who was one of the longest observed breeding falcons in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Alas this past august she was apparantly ill and was seen dead after an intense air battle with a new female who was slightly larger and younger. At the time of her death , she was 12 years old and fledged from one of the bridges over the rivers in nearby Philadelphia

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This shot was captured across the street atop a church steeple in Harrisburg. PA from the Rachel Carson State office building where she fledged many young eyasses over the years.

this was her last falcon fledged this season known as white girl for the tape the biologists from our state game commission places on one leg when theyre banded. She was photographed literally 2 days after she had fledged and was perched over the entrance to the office building where she fledged from the 15th floor scrape

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Anyone who has the fun to be able to witness either a falcon fledge or when theyre banded will see how protective of their young peregrines are compared to hawks ,eagles and other raptors. One year a game commision staffer who was out on the ledge to get the eyasses for banding had a nice sized gash put right above his nose by one of the two adults. Anoter year, one had a huge piece of flesh ripped out of the hand by one of their talons.

In our region of the US, green and white leg bands are used much like the bands used over there in Estonia for the WTSE's to identify them as Estonians
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Leica Eagles
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Post by Leica Eagles »

I am not sure how well tolerated the Red Tail Hawk is in europe but i am going to share some images of the three eyasses hatched atop the third floor window ledge of Philadelphia's science museum The Franklin Institute.

Both this and last year the two hawks fledged three eyasses and are very tolerant of humans. In the urban environment of philadelphia they have abundant prey ranging from pigeons to rodents including rabbits and have no real predators since Great Horned Owls dont like the urban setting it seems

This is the Formel the female
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These are her three eyasses who fledged only a week or so later

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One of them testing their wings before fledging

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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

Live stork cam here;

http://storchennest-hoechstadt.de/live-cam

edit;Put this link in two places,not sure where to put it really.
Leonia,can you tell us if Hoestatt is in Germany,Bavaria or Switzerland ?

edit 2; Much later, Its snowing now on the stork couple.. :slap:

Thank you Leica Eagles for those lovely Falcon and Red Tail Hawks' photographs. :nod:
Carmel a member of SHOW .. I hope you love birds too. Its economical. It saves going to heaven.
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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

Red panda cam via firefox from Knoxville TX here;

http://firefoxlive.mozilla.org/
Carmel a member of SHOW .. I hope you love birds too. Its economical. It saves going to heaven.
Emily Dickinson
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Post by Jo UK »

Back in the summer, I read of some local (to me) news about a peregrine falcon which had been found, unable to fly, in Guernsey.


Guernsey is a Channel Island, closer to France than to Engliand, but still a British island.
Thanks to the generosity of a benefactor, the falcon was put aboard a private plane and brought to the Hawk Conservancy, a few miles north of here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10329141

Now I have just seen the end of the story - the falcon was unble to fly because the gull's defence mechanism of vomiting on its aggressor had immobilised the falcon!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10526278

Hawk Conservancy Trust
http://www.hawk-conservancy.org/index.asp
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Post by Jo UK »

More news from the Hawk Conservancy - our birds of prey are suffering in this harsher winter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-12018846
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Leica Eagles
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Post by Leica Eagles »

Just a wing up for those who have eagle withdrawl syndrome.

There are two eaglets who have hatched this week at a nest on Jordan Lake, in the state of north carolina. Most recent debuted this morning and the link for the eagle camera is as follows:

http://www.basic.ncsu.edu/eaglecam/
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Kitty KCMO
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Post by Kitty KCMO »

An albatross continues to lay eggs & raise chicks into advanced age.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... s-midway/1
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Kitty KCMO
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Post by Kitty KCMO »

The 60-yr old albatross & her chick survived the tsunami.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42220011/ns ... vironment/
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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

This may be of interest to those of you watching Ospreys and other wildlife in Britain;
http://www.rspb.org.uk/datewithnature/
Carmel a member of SHOW .. I hope you love birds too. Its economical. It saves going to heaven.
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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

Kitty KCMO wrote:The 60-yr old albatross & her chick survived the tsunami.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42220011/ns ... vironment/
Very sad news there;
The tsunami killed an estimated 2,000 adult albatrosses and about 110,000 chicks in the refuge, a U.S. possession about a third of the way between Honolulu and Tokyo in the North Pacific.
Oh dear.. :cry:
Carmel a member of SHOW .. I hope you love birds too. Its economical. It saves going to heaven.
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