Crane Reintroductions and Animal Behaviour

I guess that amongst my British readers you will already be aware of and probably already watch Springwatch, but as many of my readers are from overseas, I apologise in advance if I am talking about stuff you already know.

But last year on springwatch they showed one of the Barn Owl chicks eating his younger siblings. One thing that the programme can not be accused of is being over sentimental. This is part of normal natural behaviour. Then this year was something even more extraordinary. When the series started they showed a Swallow (Barn Swallow) that was using an artificial nest. On Monday the chicks hatched and the male killed the chicks. While there was an attempt to save the chicks, there was nothing that could be done and the male killed the chicks. He then went on to build a new nest.

Now while artificial nest boxes are a boon to many birds, even back twenty years ago I was told that artificial nests for swallows just don't work. This is because the building of the nest is an important part of the pair bonding. What possibly happened in respect of the birds on SW was that the male thought the female had been unfaithful. It was not his nest and he possibly thought that he was not the father.

As this has never been filmed before, even the experts are not sure what is going on, but it shows that we don't know everything and we humans have more to learn.

One of the other things that SW has been showing is the work being done to reintroduce the Crane to the UK. This has involved one of the presenters having to dress up in a silly costume to disguise his human form. Something I can empathise with as I have had to do similar things myself. However, while the techniques may seem silly, they are in fact proven ones. In the US the same processes have been used to help increase numbers of the Whopping Crane. This includes all the dressing in silly costumes and using litter pickers to mimic the bill of the chicks mother. As well as teaching the chicks to become cranes, well it has to be seen to be believed. However, the aspect that differs with the American programme is that they have to also teach the birds to migrate.

This is done by teaching the chicks to fly with and behind microlight aircraft so that they can learn the migration route to Florida.
For my American reader you can see this on Wild Chronicles in an edition called Operation Migration.

The success of the red kite reintroduction programme all bodes well for the Crane School.

Barn Swallows

As on Tuesday, I saw for the first time this spring, a Swallow, I was preparing to make a posting about this. However as I had discovered, some of my readers of based in the good old USA, they have confuse matters by giving the same birds or species are completely different names. This applies if to the Swallow or air as the Americans call it the Barn Swallow. While this is the the same species, Hirundo rustica, it does mean that I have to be careful to ensure that I don't confuse any of my loyal readers even though is is only two cats and a human. Further, I have discovered that some in the US just don't understand simple words like Jumper.

However while thinking about what I needed to say and what I wanted to say, I was thinking about the way that there is a degree of speciation between the two populations. This speciation occurs when two populations are isolated. It was this the trait that Charles Darwin discovered on his trip in the Beagle and led to the discovery of evolution, the origin of species.

Any way, I was just looking to see what else was going on in news, when I discovered this article on human population. it appears as though a the human population really became two species before we left Africa.

In this case of the barn swallows they are the differences between the two populations in the US and in Europe, where the US population are a different shade and have longer streamers. However they are still both the same species.

They are that instances of where the Americans have given birds they complete the different name even when we have an existing name for the species. This is where the Latin name for a species become so important. In the dim and distant past even in the UK there were many different names for the same plant for instance. This is in no way a dig at the Americans for renaming our plants birds or animals, you do that well enough yourselves by electing a Bush to be your president and simultaneously disproving evolutionary theory.

There are some occasions when the American name is more appropriate, take the example of the loon, to us in Europe the bird will always been known as the great northern diver but any observation of its behaviour will show just how appropriate the American Names is.

Anyway it was great to see the first swallow of Spring arrive, no matter what its non de plume is.

The Article on human populations

New toys for the wildlife

Recently, a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I had to get a decent pair of binoculars. I used to have three pairs; one was a compact pair, one was a normal size but very bright and made them excellent for low light levels and one pair that was a zoom with both high magnification but bright as well. However, as an ex of mine had been an alcoholic, she disposed of them for the price of a drink or two, hence my need to get something decent again.

So I looked on Ebay, and while I saw many that were cheep, I wanted to be sure that I didn’t end up with cheep and nasty ones either. I also noticed that there were many that also have a digital camera built in. While I was interested, I was also concerned that the quality of both the camera and the binoculars would be compromised. However after a couple of unsuccessful bids on normal binoculars, I was successful on a pair that has a camera built in.

I must say that the binoculars are actually better than I expected, and quite bright, brighter than most compact ones. And while the blurb on the box says that they are ideal for wildlife, I have used better, but unless I suddenly find that I can afford the best quality ones, they will serve me well, as binoculars that is.

The camera part is useful, but doesn’t even match the focal length of the binoculars. T the binoculars being an eight times magnification the camera is at best only five times. Also as with so much electronic equipment it is full of bleeps with every operation, making it nearly useless for anything to do with wildlife.

I have tested it out, and it has some uses as the picture above of a moorhen shows, but I will not be expecting to create anything spectacular with them. But who knows, I may just be surprised myself one day. Though it is in helping to gain a positive identification that it can be most useful. As this picture of a House Martin shows, I was being told that the birds were swallows, yet by getting the picture and checking in a field guide it was clear that it’s a House Martin.