A double-crested cormorant in Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo has learned to respond to sound to find his food. The bird, named Oscar, lost his vision due to a virus. Zookeepers worked with the bird, who lacks a sense of smell, in order to insure his survival. Read the story Blind bird plays it by ear in the Chicago Tribune.
“Key West’s city commissioners approved a resolution Tuesday for the removal of free-roaming chickens from city streets and parks, and private property upon request. There are roughly 2,000 to 3,000 chickens in Key West, which lies at the southern end of the Florida Keys island chain.” Read the whole story Citing bird flu fears, Key Westers vote to remove free-roaming chickens in the Sun-Sentinel.
Last week a six-meter tall crow was placed atop the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The museum hopes the statue will prevent birds from flying into the glass windows of the building.
Birds regularly fly into the windows of the museum, killing themselves in the process. The birds are generally added to the collection of the museum. The museum has tried using models of birds of prey on the building to prevent the window crashes, to no success.
The huge crow is a work by Rotterdam artist Florentijn Hofman. The bird silhouette is made of black metal and was created for the 2005 Crossing Border Festival and stood for a time atop the city hall of The Hague.
The body of the unfortunate Domino Sparrow will join other sparrows in the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam in a “Hall of Fame” exhibit. The Domino Sparrow was shot last November in a bid to save a domino-felling record chance.
Other birds will join the Domino Sparrow in the museum’s Sparrow Hall of Fame. For example, a sparrow killed by a live cricket ball during a 1936 cricket match in the U.K., currently housed in the MCC Museum in London, will probably be included in the exhibit.
The Sparrow Hall of Fame will be open to the public on 14 November 2006, exactly one year after the Domino Sparrow’s death.
Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, is an important bird sanctuary and was declared to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. The park is nearly 29 square kilometers and can be explored on foot, by bicycle or cycle rickshaw. Motorized vehicles are not allowed in the park.
We visited the park on 7 and 8 March, 2006.
We rented bikes from our hotel, the Falcon Guest House. There are several budget and mid-range hotels located within cycling distance of the park entrance. With names like The Spoonbill, Hotel Nightingale, Birder’s Inn and Hotel Pelican, the hotels know their clientele well and many offer bike rental. Binoculars and guidebooks may also be available, though it is also possible to rent binoculars as well as bikes at the entrance to the park itself. Of course, we saw many serious birders who brought their own equipment.
At the main entrance of the park you can buy admission tickets (good for one entry only – bring lunch with you) and hire binoculars of bicycles if required. Cycle rickshaws are also for hire; official rickshaws have a yellow plate on the front and the driver will act as a guide.
The park has a great new visitor center, the Salim Ali Visitor Interpretation Centre. Inside, there are interesting displays on the important role water plays in life on earth, plus dioramas of bird life and other animals that can be found in the park.
After purchasing an admission ticket, visitors proceed down the main road into the park. A hotel and restaurant are located about a mile past the main entrance. The second checkpoint is nearby; motorized vehicles may drive to the restaurant and hotel, but cannot proceed past the second checkpoint. There is also a small bookshop by the checkpoint, offering Indian bird and wildlife guidebooks and some souvenirs such as t-shirts, postcards, stickers, caps, and paintings of birds.
Past the checkpoint, the paved road continues south through the park. Cycle rickshaws may only drive on the main bisecting road. There are benches along the way and some informative signs giving details on the kinds of birds you can find in the park. There is a paved trail across the water at the Ghana Canal, and from that road you can find a brick trail. This and the many other side trails in the park are better navigated on foot rather than bike.
Over the two days we visited the park, we saw many birds. [Edit March 2012: apparently I didn’t keep the best of records during this trip. Here are my two eBird lists for Keoladeo: S6497553 and S6497566]
Related articles:
India Bird Sanctuary: Rickshaw Drivers Trained As Guides
Water Brings Birds Back To Indian Bird Park
A band-tailed pigeon has been spotted in the back yard of a Wisconsin man’s home. The bird is normally only seen on the West Coast of the U.S., certainly not east of the Rockies. For that reason dozens of birders have made their way to the St. Croix County home where the bird has been hanging out. Read the story Surfer bird on our turf at JS Online.
There are over 500 breeding pairs of storks in the Netherlands today, the same amount as in 1900. The bird has been doing especially well in the Green Heart area between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht.
Dutch bird protection group Vogelbescherming is extremely happy with the return of the stork to the Netherlands. In 1970, only fourteen birds were recorded in the country, and only one breeding pair. In that year the group took action and volunteers began a protection program to save the bird in the Netherlands.
Twenty-eight pairs of storks from Switzerland were brought to a breeding area set aside for the birds. Breeding here was successful and gradually the population began to spread from the original breeding area. In all twelve areas were set aside for stork breeding and the protected zones were managed by volunteers. Most of these areas were in the Green Heart and the northern province Friesland.
Approximately half of the 500 breeding pairs build their own nests, while the rest use nests still in existence in the protected areas. One such zone, in the town Alphen aan den Rijn, will close down because it is not necessary to offer the birds extra protection there anymore.
Because of a love for animals, some people feed the storks. According to Vogelbescherming this poses a great risk to the birds – if they are provided food on a regular basis they may fail to migrate south in the fall.
Storks are found in watery areas because they find their food, including frogs, there. Most nests are also found close to water, but there are some known exceptions in Dutch cities today. A pair of birds lives in the area of the Amsterdam zoo, Artis, and they obtain their food from the zoo. There is also a pair of birds living in the Kralingse Woods close to Rotterdam, and one pair living close to the center of the Hague.
Source:
Aantal ooievaars terug op oude niveau
Number of storks back up to old level
The black swan (Cygnus atratus) is a native of Australia. Imported birds, brought to private parks, gardens and ponds outside of Australia, sometimes escape or are set free and live wild. In Britain in 2001, there were at least nine breeding pairs of black swans reported.
Black swans differ from other swans not only in color but also in behavior. They nest on large mounds that they build in the middle of shallow water, reusing the same nest year after year. Unlike many other water birds, black swans do not migrate, instead spending their entire lives in the area where they were hatched.
The black swans living in Leiden, The Netherlands, are found mostly on the moat surrounding the city and close to a petting zoo in the Merenwijk neighborhood. The birds breed in the Dutch winter, because their biological clocks are set to Australian time.
Sources:
Een zwarte zwaan: gewoon en toch bijzonder
Black Swan on Wikipedia
Non-native birds breeding in the United Kingdom in 2001
BirdLife has partnered with service provider MissionFish to allow sellers on eBay.co.uk to donate a portion of their auction proceeds to BirdLife. Sellers using the service may donate 10% – 100% of the final auction sale price to BirdLife. For more information see the article List on eBay to benefit BirdLife on the official website of BirdLife.
Meadow birds have returned to the Aalkeetbuitenpolder in South Holland. Due to measures taken by the agriculture group Vockestaert, the polder will host hundreds, if not thousands, of godwits, snipes, lapwings and plovers in the coming months.
In the last few years the polder has been much too dry to host the birds. The polder now has its own water system, including a dam which keeps the water levels high enough for the birds.
