Earth and Space News: January to August bird breeding season

Showing posts with label January to August bird breeding season. Show all posts

Sunday, January 11, 2015

American Turkey Vulture Habitats: Brown Body, Ground Nest, White Egg

Summary: North American turkey vulture habitats in Canada summers and in Mexico and the United States year-round get brown bodies from white eggs in ground nests.

North American turkey vulture habitats affect arboriculture, master gardening and master naturalism through Cathartidae condor family carcass-clearing appetites during distribution ranges seasonally in Canada and year-round in Mexico and the United States.

Turkey vultures bear their common name and the scientific name Cathartes aura (golden [or air] purifier) for heads like wild turkeys and for scavenger ecosystem roles. Collisions, poisoning from lead shot in carcasses, predation, shooting and trapping challenge the turkey vulture, described in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1787). Feeding sites within 4.97 to 6.21 miles (8 to 10 kilometers) of roosts draw turkey vultures into permanent, seasonal or temporary communally foraging, nesting, roosting flocks.

Seventeen-year lifespans in Canada summers, Mexico year-round and the United States seasonally or year-round expect temperate to subtropical or tropical caves, cliffs, fields, shores or woodlands.

January through August furnish opportunities for brooding one one- to three-egg clutch in caves, on cliffs or up to 20 feet (6.09 meters) above the ground.

Parents-to-be gather no materials for nests in dark, secluded, undisturbed sites in abandoned buildings, hollow logs or rotting stumps or on cave ledges or low cliffs. Nests house elliptical to oval, granulated or smooth, non- or semi-glossy, 2.44- to 3.27-inch- (62- to 83-millimeter-) long, 1.69- to 2.09-inch- (43- to 53-millimeter-) wide eggs. Parents-to-be incubate the cream- or dull-white, brown-, purple-, red-brown-blotched, speckled, splashed or splotched eggs with brown-, purple-, red-brown-blotched, speckled, splashed, spotted overlays 28 to 41 days.

Great horned owls and humans jeopardize juvenile and mature turkey vultures whereas people and raccoons jeopardize eggs, hatchlings and nestlings in North American turkey vulture habitats.

Semi-helpless nestlings open-eyed since hatching know bare heads, blackish skin around bills and eyes, long white down on bodies and sparse, thin, white down on crowns. They quickly learn to live by keen senses of smell since they live off regurgitated food from their parents in locations thereby loaded with carrion scents. They mobilize gray-pink bills into feeding and gray-pink feet and legs into moving around with their parents until, at 11 weeks, they manage their first flights. Adults need animal dung, dead amphibians, birds, fish, insects, mammals and reptiles, live injured or weakened birds and livestock and ripe or rotten fruits and vegetables.

North American turkey vulture habitats up to 4,300 feet (1,310.64 meters) above sea level offer winter-coldest temperatures at minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.77 degrees Celsius).

Ability to fast for two weeks, adaptability to climate and geographic extremes, communal feeding and roosting and keen sight and smell promote turkey vulture life cycles.

Killing external bacteria and lowering body temperature with ammonia-rich, leg-drenching excrement and spreading wings toward the sun to raise body temperatures qualify as successfully adaptive behavior. Brown-bodied, long-tailed, long-winged, pink-legged adults retain black underparts, little, naked, red heads and silver-gray flight feathers whereas juveniles reveal blackish, brown-edged back feathers and brown-gray heads. Soaring flight tipping side to side on 5.5- to 6-foot (1.68- to 1.83-meter), rare-flapped, V-held wingspans suggests 4.5-pound (2.04-kilogram), 25- to 32-inch (63.5- to 81.28-centimeter) adults.

Silence other than grunting, hissing and throwing up over intruders tell of foragers, nesters and roosters in North American turkey vulture habitats from Canada through Mexico.

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

A turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) sidles over to a fish-eating osprey (Pandion haliaetus); Everglades National Park southernmost headquarters, Flamingo, Monroe County, southwestern Florida; Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, 11:20: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Osprey_&_Turkey_Vulture_Interaction_(16145036889).jpg; Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith (Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith), CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/slobirdr/16145036889/

turkey buzzards (Cathartes aura) guarding eggs, illustrated by American painter and draughtsman Edwin L. Sheppard (1837-1904); Thomas G. Gentry, Nests and Eggs of Birds of the United States (1882), Plate XLVIII, opposite page 281: Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/50886921193/; Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35136635; via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/nestseggsofbirds00gent/page/n403/mode/1up

For further information:

Baicich, Paul J.; and Harrison, Colin J.O. Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds. Second edition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, Princeton Field Guides, 2005.

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volumes 8-11, Birds I-IV, edited by Michael Hutchins, Jerome A. Jackson, Walter J. Bock and Donna Olendorf. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2002.

Illigeri, Caroli. 1811. "Genus 67. Cathartes . . . . Species: Vultur Papa, Aura Lin." Prodromus Systematis Mammalium et Avium: 236. Berlini (Berlin): C. Salfeld.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48453941

Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. "4. Vultur aura." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 86-87. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/726991

Molina, Giovanni Ignazio. 1787. "Il Jote Vulcur Jota." Saggio Sulla Storia Naturale del Chili, Libro IV: 265-266. Bologna, Italy: Stamperia di S. Tommaso d'Aquino.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41028060

Molina, Giovanni Ignazio. MDCCLXXXII (1782). "Catalogo I: Regnum Animale: Aves: Vultur Jota." Saggio Sulla Storia Naturale del Chili, Libro IV: 343. Bologna, Italy: Stamperia di S. Tommaso d'Aquino.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41028138

Peterson, Alan P., M.D. "Cathartes aura (Linnaeus) 1758." Zoonomen: Zoological Nomenclature Resource > Birds of the World -- Current Valid Scientific Avian Names > Cathartiformes > Cathartidae > Cathartes.
Available @ http://www.zoonomen.net/avtax/cath.html

Sharpe, R. (Richard) Bowdler. 1873. "XVI. On a New Species of Turkey Vulture From the Falkland Islands and a New Genus of Old-World Vultures: Catharista falklandica." Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Including Zoology, Botany, and Geology, vol. XI (Fourth Series), no. LXI: 133. London UK: Taylor and Francis.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/25121059

Spix, J.B. (Johann Baptist Ritter) de. 1824. Avium Species Novae, Quas in Itinere per Brasilium Annis MDCCCXVII-MDCCCXX1, tomus I: 2-3. Monachii (Munich), Germany: Franc. Seraph Hübschmann.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/bub_br_1918_017354-09#page/n9/mode/1up

Swann, H. (Harry) Kirke. 1921. "4a. Cathartes aura meridionalis, subsp. nov." A Synopsis of the Accipitres (Diurnal Birds of Prey), Part I: 3. Second edition. London UK: Privately printed for the author.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41718053

Wied, Prinz Maximilian zu. 1839. "1) . . . . Cathartes septentrionales." Reise in Das Innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834, erster band (vol. I): 162. Coblenz, Germany: J. Hoelscher.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48176190

Sunday, January 30, 2011

North American Wood Duck Habitats: Cavity Nests, Drab Females, Gaudy Males, White Eggs

Summary: North American wood duck habitats link cavity nests, drab females, gaudy males and white eggs seasonally in Canada and Mexico, year-round in the United States.

North American wood duck habitats advance cultivation through appetites for crustaceans, insects and spiders, hunting through appearances from Canada to Mexico and naturalism through year-long distribution ranges in the eastern United States.

Wood ducks bear the common names acorn, Carolina and summer ducks and the scientific name Aix sponsa (diving-bird [in] bridal [dress]) as nut-eating, southern-, warmth-, wood-lovers. Collection, development, drainage, hunting, pollution, predation, recreation and tourism challenge the wood duck, described in 1758 by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1787). Flocks draw together half-siblings and their mothers into cavity nests and nest boxes since mothers-to-be sometimes develop built and natural domiciles into communal, maternity ward-like domains.

Eighteen-year lifespans expect open water and vegetative cover from beaver ponds, bottomland forests, freshwater marshes and swamps and wooded shores of creeks, lakes, rivers and streams.

January through August furnish seasonally monogamous opportunities for brooding two six- to 16-egg clutches in farm buildings, natural holes, nest boxes, tree cavities and woodpecker nest-holes.

Females gather downy nest-lining from white breast-feathers after going cavity-hunting with their mates early in the morning up to 1.2 miles (1.93 kilometers) from water bodies. Two- to 15-foot- (0.61- to 4.58-meter-) deep nests with 4-plus-inch (10.16-plus-centimeter-) wide openings 2 to 60 feet (0.61 to 18.29 meters) high house glossy, smooth clutches. Mothers-to-be incubate cream-white to tan, 1.8- to 2.4-inch (4.57- to 6.09-centimeter) by 1.4- to 1.7-inch (3.56- to 4.32-centimeter), subelliptical to oval eggs 28 to 37 days.

Alligators, black rat snakes, bullfrogs, collectors, gray and red foxes, great horned owls, hunters, mink, raccoons, snapping turtles and woodpeckers jeopardize North American wood duck habitats.

Brown-eyed, downy, long-tailed, precocious hatchlings know black-brown crowns and upper-parts, dark eye-to-nape lines, gray-white to yellow faces and underparts, white rear-edged wings and white-spotted lower backs.

Fast-functioning blue-gray bills with red-brown nails, gray-yellow feet and legs and open eyes launch sharp-clawed nestlings from nest entrances to the ground one day after hatching. Chicks manage five alarm, contact and threatening calls within two to three days, flight 54 to 67 days later and sexual maturity one year after hatching. Adults need arachnid-, crustacean-, insect-, mollusk-rich diets of ants, bees, beetles, caddisflies, caterpillars, crabs, damselflies, dragonflies, flies, moths, pillbugs, shrimp, slugs, snails, sowbugs, spiders and wasps.

North American wood duck habitats also offer omnivorous adults acorns, blackberries, duckweed, hickory nuts, maple seeds, millet, panic-grass, smartweed, soybeans, water primrose, waterlily and wild cherries.

Daytime forages, defensive chasing, hitting, jabbing, jerking and pecking, speed in diving, flying, swimming and walking and 12 adult calls protect flock-based wood duck life cycles.

Alder, arrowhead, buttonbush, smartweed and willow qualify as camouflage, during winter-coldest temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit, through 900-foot (274.32-meter) altitudes above sea level. Burgundy flanks, maroon breasts, pale bellies and under-tails, red eyes and white breast, chin, face, head and neck stripes reveal black bill-tipped, helmet-headed, rectangular-tailed, stout-bodied males. Deep-winged, heads-up, rapid flights on 26- to 29-inch (66.04- to 73.66-centimeter) wingspans suggest 16- to 30-ounce (453.59- to 850.49-gram), 18.5- to 21.5-inch (46.99- to 54.61-centimeter) adults.

The rising oh-eek-oh-eek call and the up-slurred, wheezy, whistled zweeet vocalization respectively tell of brown-and-white females and of gaudy males in North American wood duck habitats.

An unhatched wood duck (Aix sponsa) egg, held in gloved hand of wildlife technician Kelly Tingle, was retrieved during annual nest box maintenance check conducted by Biological Sciences, Environmental Management Division, at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, Onslow County, southeastern North Carolina; Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, 09:45: U.S. Marine Corps, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

A pair of female (front) and male (back) North American wood ducks (Aix sponsa) take a walk; Saturday, March 6, 2010, 09:25: Andrea Westmoreland from DeLand, United States, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mr._and_Mrs._Wood_Duck_Taking_a_Stroll_-_Flickr_-_Andrea_Westmoreland.jpg

Baicich, Paul J.; and Harrison, Colin J.O. Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds. Second edition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, Princeton Field Guides, 2005.

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volumes 8-11, Birds I-IV, edited by Michael Hutchins, Jerome A. Jackson, Walter J. Bock and Donna Olendorf. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2002.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. "35. Aix sponsa." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 128. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/727033

Peterson, Alan P., M.D. "Aix sponsa (Linnaeus) 1758." Zoonomen: Zoological Nomenclature Resource > Birds of the World -- Current Valid Scientific Avian Names > Anseriformes > Anatidae > Aix.
Available @ http://www.zoonomen.net/avtax/anse.html

"The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map." The National Gardening Association > Gardening Tools > Learning Library USDA Hardiness Zone > USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.
Available @ https://garden.org/nga/zipzone/2012/

Sunday, January 23, 2011

North American Black Vulture Habitats for Black Bodies From Pale Eggs

Summary: North American black vulture habitats pull black-bodied, white-tipped, yellow-billed raptors from pale eggs in caves, logs, stumps, thickets or on cliffs.

North American black vulture in southern Florida's Everglades National Park; Monday, Feb. 27, 2006: Everglades NPS (evergladesnps), Public Domain, via Flickr

North American black vulture habitats anger ranchers who accuse the condor family member of accessing eggs and newborns but appease environmentalists and naturalists who appreciate Mother Nature's year-round carcass-seeking, carrion-eating clean-up crew.

Black vultures bear the common name American black vulture and the scientific name Coragyps atratus (crow-raven clothed in black) as black-bodied native raptors of the Americas. Angry ranchers, forest fire-destroyed tree cavities and pesticide-thinned eggshells challenge black vultures, described in 1793 by German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein (July 11, 1757-Feb. 23, 1822). Communal roosts draw together the extended families of the broad-winged, gray-footed, gray-headed, gray-legged relative of Andean and California condors and of king, turkey and yellow-headed vultures.

Twenty-six-year lifespans entertain 3.73-mile (6-kilometer) feeding ranges and 39,442.06-acre (5,962-hectare) summer and 36,771.75-acre (14,881-hectare) winter mean home ranges up to 9,186.35-foot (2,800-meter) altitudes above sea level.

January through August furnish opportunities for brooding a first one- to three-egg clutch, with a second three to four weeks after failure from predation or weather.

Monogamous parents-to-be gather eggs amid palmetto, sawgrass and yucca thickets or tree roots, onto cave shelves or cliff ledges, under boulders or within logs or stumps. Egg-depositing happens at two-day intervals at 8- to 10-foot (2.44- to 3.05-meter) heights for non-glossy, oval to elliptical, smooth, 2.98- by 2.01-inch (75.6- by 50.9-millimeter) eggs. It involves both parents in 28- to 39-day incubations of blue-white, dull white or gray-green eggs blotched or spotted with chocolate or lavender clusters or wreaths.

People and weather jeopardize North American black vulture habitats whose distribution into Mexico joins the Brazilian subspecies, whose mountain ranges join those of the Andean subspecies.

Bare-headed, downy, semi-helpless nestlings with creamy-buff bodies and red-tinted upper-parts keep to their birthing places under both parents' care for the first eight weeks of life. They live on regurgitated food from their parents even though they leak everything from both ends before letting their heads sink between their wings when alarmed. They manage activities within 10 days, full growth within eight weeks, feathering and flights 11 weeks after hatching and independent life cycles as 14- to 18-week-olds. They need bald cypress, hickory, juniper, oak, pine and sycamore stands, clean water sources and thermal air currents for communal roosts, internal hydration and soaring flights.

Black vulture habitats offer summer and winter temperatures respectively below 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29.44 degrees Celsius) and above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23.33 degrees Celsius).

Lowland forests and open woodlands provide communal roosts while landfills and roadsides present bright-colored cloth, glass and plastic for nesting- and roosting-place decorations and food sources.

Sharp sight and soaring flight on choppy, quick, shallow wingbeats and flat-winged glides qualify as survival skills for nesting and roosting scent-challenged, square-tailed, weak-legged black vultures. They reveal the 4.5- to 5-foot (1.37- to 1.52-meter) wingspan and the strong-muscled eyes of the somewhat iridescent, 24- to 27-inch- (60.96- to 68.58-centimeter-) long scavenger. Lack of a syrinx stops the 3.5- to 5-pound (1.59- to 2.27-kilogram) vulture's yellow-tipped gray bills from sounding out anything other than barks, grunts and hisses.

Governmental tardiness in roadkill removal and motorist tendencies toward roadside litter turn urban and wilderness interfaces into "Scavengers Wanted" niches within North American black vulture habitats.

Coragyps atratus egg in Egg Collection at Museum Wiesbaden, Hesse state, central western Germany: Klaus Rassinger and Gerhard Cammerer, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

North American black vulture in southern Florida's Everglades National Park; Monday, Feb. 27, 2006: Everglades NPS (evergladesnps), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/evergladesnps/9103751408/

Coragyps atratus egg in Egg Collection at Museum Wiesbaden, Hesse state, central western Germany: Klaus Rassinger and Gerhard Cammerer/Wiebaden Museum, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coragyps_atratus_MWNH_0717.JPG

For further information:

Baicich, Paul J.; and Harrison, Colin J.O. 2005. Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds. Second Edition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, Princeton Field Guides.

Bechstein, Johann Matthäus. 1793. Johann Lathams allgemeine Uebersicht der Vögel, vol. I, anhang: 655. Nuremberg: Adam Gottlieb Schneider and Johann Christoph Weigel.

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volumes 8-11, Birds I-IV, edited by Michael Hutchins, Jerome A. Jackson, Walter J. Bock and Donna Olendorf. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2002.

Peterson, Alan P., M.D. "Coragyps atratus (Bechstein) 1793." Zoonomen: Zoological Nomenclature Resource > Birds of the World -- Current Valid Scientific Avian Names > Cathartiformes > Cathartidae > Coragyps.
Available @ http://www.zoonomen.net/avtax/cath.html