I’m standing in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, one of the oldest wind farms in the United States and most concentrated in the world. There are now some 5200 turbines crowded into this 4-by-6-mile rectangle of land, operated by about a dozen companies. The first rotors were installed in 1981, prompted by federal tax credits, and at the time no one knew much about how well, or even whether, they would work. What’s more, no one had a clue how the turbines would interact with wildlife—more specifically, birds.

As it turned out, Altamont Pass could add to its list of pioneering superlatives this frightening title: deadliest wind farm in North America. More than 4700 birds are killed here each year, including 1300 raptors. Seventy golden eagles, a federally protected species, are also among them

So the farm has been there for 26 years that works out to 122,200 birds, 33,800 raptors and 1820 Golden Eagles.

source

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I posted yesterday about the bird I rescued and asked readers to take a stab at identifying it. Although there were some valiant tries no one came close.

Two guesses were for “female house finch” there was also a guess for Chickadee and “Sparrow” sparrow doesn’t count because that isn’t a species just like “gull” or “hawk” wouldn’t have counted.

Besides it isn’t a sparrow.

Take a closer look at this bird:

Note first the colour - it is an overall slate gray, with a dark eye and a light coloured bill. Also note the underside seems paler -almost white. Now take a look at the tail - the outer feathers are white. This is a very good clue.

Now take a look at a Chickadee:

Notice the distinctive black cap with white cheeks and buffy sides. Definitely not the bird in question.

Now the female house finch (and Paul that site you linked to has inaccurate pictures of the bird)

Note the overall brown streakiness of the bird. Our bird in question is neither brown nor streaked. Also notice that neither the Chickadee or Female House Finch have white outer tail feathers like the mystery picture.

Now consider this description from Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds:

“This slate gray hooded, sparrow-shaped bird is characterized by white outer tail feathers that flash conspicuously as it flies away. The bill and belly are whitish. Males may have blackish hoods; females and immatures are duller.”

The answer?
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In my bid to even out the karma associated with the amount of dead creatures I consume I readily leap to the rescue of any injured or trapped creature that cannot be eaten appears on my property. I even take spiders and crickets outside should they wander into my house (my wife finds this somewhat amusing).

So it was today that when I went out at lunch to release the hounds I noticed a small bird trapped in my mud room. The bird had come in under a gap at the bottom of the screen door and now was trying to fly out through the windows.

Birds seem to have difficult exiting through the same way they came in. When I was a boy we used to hunt grouse by building a little pen out of cut boughs which we would place around some berry bushes. then we would make a small gate with two sticks on either end and affix a snare to it. The grouse would fly in to the enclosure but instead of flying back out they would walk through the little gate and get caught in the snare.

Anyway this bird was not a grouse so I determined that I would get it outside. My first attempt was to try and get it to fly through the open door but no amount of coaxing and hand waving would convince it that the door was a much better alternative to the window.

So I decided to catch it and release it. If you decide to do this yourself please don’t try to catch and hold a bird in your hands. They see you as a predator and it scares them to death - literally. Here’s something you probably didn’t know. A good portion of small birds that are mist netted and banded for research will die from the experience.

So I got a big towel and calmly walked over to the bird and trapped it under the towel. This usually calms them down because it is dark. then I quickly opened the door and released it to it’s natural habitat.

The little bird flew off without so much as a by your leave.

Now a little test for you - can you id the bird in the picture? It’s pretty easy.

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It was absolutely thrilling last week to get confirmation of the existance of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. A bird thought to be extinct.

People have been looking for the bird for the past few years and there have been tantalizing hints that the large woodpecker (second largest in the world) was indeed alive and well in the Southern US.

Efforts to find the bird over the years have been hampered by the terrain which is typically flooded swamps and bayous. But find it they have and now birders have another box to check off on their list and another Mecca to journey to.

Why did the bird become so rare? Here’s a good backgrounder:

The story of the ivory-bill is apparently closely connected to the history of our forests. The species was a creature of mature, or old growth, southeastern bottomland forests. It was essentially restricted to these kinds of habitats. Within these forests it was most commonly associated with “die off” areas resulting from fire, wind, drought, or insect attack. According to the Audubon Land Bird Guide by Richard Pough (Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1946, 1949) “_ _ _it is most abundant where there has been an abnormal tree mortality. It is likely that most nesting has always been in ‘die off areas’. A normal healthy forest has a low carrying capacity for ivory-bills”. Unlike our many other woodpecker species that thrive in mature bottomlands, but also do quite well in younger second growth forests, the ivory-bill could not make this adjustment. When the old growth bottomland forests were extensively harvested to meet demands for forest products; the ivory-bill was deprived of its life source.

A major part of that life source was a food supply that was rather restricted. While ivory-bills sometimes ate various fruits and nuts, like most woodpeckers they thrived on insects (its scientific name, Campephilus principalis, means “the principal lover of grubs”). However, unlike other woodpeckers that drill into trees to obtain burrowing insects in sections of dead or diseased heartwood, the ivory-bill depended on insects that live just under the bark of recently dead and dying “upright” trees. Rather than drilling into these trees, they stripped the bark away to expose their food source. Standing dead trees of mature size are not a common item in young, second growth forest stands. Indeed, such trees are only relatively abundant in expansive stands of older growth. As our old growth bottomland forests were depleted, so was the ivory-bill’s primary food supply.

Read more here

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