Raven redux

According to William Roberts, our local wildlife rehabber (along with his wife Joyce), Bernd Heinrich (known for his studies of ravens and a book titled, Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds) was surprised when on one or two occasions, cooperative family groups did participate in the rearing of next generation young. This behavior is apparently rare and unexpected in the wild.

Occasionally groups of breeding pairs nest in close proximity, but breeding success is less than that of the more common solitary pair. Heinrich speculates that the group breeding event may have to do with added protection from perceived dangers in the neighborhood.

According to William, there are nesting ravens in a warehouse in Winston-Salem, which is very strange. Historically and today as well, ravens are more common farther north, and are full-time residents within the Arctic circle. Typically, the farthest south they have been seen until recent years has been around here, in our mountains. But more reports of ravens are coming from places like Chapel Hill and Durham, North Carolina, for instance, with widespread anticipation of imminent breeding documentation. I read last night that ravens, once considered to be intolerant of human activity, are learning to adjust. Opportunism does indicate intelligence, for good or ill.

New River State Park, Alleghany Access, Mouth of Wilson, Va.

There is a North Carolina state park nearby, an old farm given to the park by the old farmer, down on the New River. I go there often, formerly with Aaron Floyd, and now with Mica Paluzzi, a 13-year-old friend who has taken to birding.

Surrounding the park are huge vacation home developments, gated, growing like fungi. So this part of the park is an oasis, lots of trails, primitive canoe camping areas provided. Aaron and I discovered the endangered golden-winged warbler breeding here three years ago, fully documenting the process from building the nest, to bringing caterpillars to the young. But deer have pretty much destroyed their preferred fragile habitat, so no warblers of that kind have been seen breeding here since.

In the summer, the undergrowth makes off-path walking a challenge -- but, ah, in the winter, everything opens up. Today Mica and I spent half of our time just rambling about, and though it was warm, there was ice, making trudging through the marshy areas a solidified breeze. We discovered an old farm road, found an old foundation, saw remnants of fence rows, etc. I pointed out the various signs of how successional field-to-forest events were happening before our eyes.

Across from the park, below a new house, there is an enormous rock face that has played host to generations of nesting ravens. Three years ago was the last time anyone had seen activity there, but today we not only saw a raven on her nest, but two others nearby playing on the rock face and soaring, depending on their mood. This is great news, and I intend to monitor the site throughout our late winter. This is the typical time for ravens to nest, for they must tend to their offspring for nearly a year, and they need a jump start on things.

Aaron's father knew the old farmer, who had one of the most amazing arrowhead collections known in these parts, picked up from the fields after spring plowing. When Aaron was a lad, he visited the farmer and was shown the wonderful array of chiseled beauties. Aaron and his brother have a pretty good collection they drew on for comparison.

The raven show suggested some questions regarding their behavior. We watched off and on through the four hours there, and never saw four. Just the one on the nest, and those other two, often picking at the hardy plants clinging to the sheer face of the rock, and otherwise flying around and joking in raven.

It is possible that there are two couples, and possibly another nest not detected. This afternoon after returning to my library, I could not find any documentation of second-generation ravens aiding in the rearing of the next, helping their parents as some corvids do. So, anybody out there that might have some closer knowledge would be of great help to us.

Mica is working on his bird-watching merit badge, and after only a year of our sharing these jaunts, he has become, shall we say, daunting. My abiding advocacy is: get those kids outside, mentor, share, and have fun.

More on the bat disease

Scientific American has taken note of the mysterious bat illness.

There's a sad photo of four bats whose faces show the signs of the fungus from which the syndrome gets its name.

First bees, now bats?

There was a troubling AP story earlier this week about a mysterious disease that's killing bats as they hibernate. It's been spotted to the north of us, in Vermont and New York state.

Dubbed, for lack of a better name, "white nose syndrome," it has killed as many as 90 percent of the bats in some caves. The species hardest hit is what I think of as the "default bat" in our area, the little brown bat. It causes migrating bats to burn up their fat reserves long before they would ordinarily emerge from hibernation.

The bat infection has been compared to "colony collapse disorder," a viral infection that decimated honeybees in North America. If it's really that bad, it may well migrate south down the spine of the Appalachians in our direction.

This story jumped out at me because it was in the past year that a friend of mine told me about a mass bat die-off from a roost in a horse barn. At the time I suspected rabies, but could it have been white nose syndrome?

The beautiful vanishing bobwhite

Mark Taylor has a piece today in the Roanoke Times about a new state initiative to save habitat for Colinus virginianus, the bobwhite quail.

This little bird has always been dear to my heart, from my childhood in Texas when I'd sit on my granddad's front porch in the evening and watch a bobwhite mama lead her young ones across the yard, til right now, when I have a hard time finding any at all.

When I moved to Floyd County back in the '70s, I saw and heard bobwhite all the time without any effort. A stretch of Woods Gap Road between the town of Floyd and the Blue Ridge Parkway had prime bobwhite habitat on both sides of the road. It was hard to drive down that road in the spring and NOT hear a bobwhite calling. Clyde Kessler tells me that the bird was once, if not dirt-common, at least plentiful in Floyd and Patrick and Franklin Counties.

But for every four birds that existed in Virginia four decades ago, today there's only one.

Why have bobwhite numbers collapsed? It's the old story: vanishing habitat. The quail require early successional growth, brushy areas that are interspersed with fallow fields and small stands of pine and hardwoods. To someone intent on maximizing income from land, such habitat looks like a mess. Nowadays, less and less land is allowed to remain in such an "unproductive" state. Instead, it's likely to be either pasture, farmland or developed for housing.

There are groups devoted to saving the bobwhite quail, such as Quail Forever and Quail Unlimited, which has a central Virginia chapter here. Both are organized mainly by and for hunters.

At any rate, a focus group has recommended to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries that a "Bobwhite Quail Action Plan" be developed, and DGIF agrees. Let's hope it bears fruit.

OK, forget the lion

Kevin Myatt at the Roanoke Times reports that the photos below have actually been circulating for a while "in several northeastern states."

Looks like a real mountain lion in any event, but just not in Giles County. I will leave the photos up in case anybody wants to compare them with others they find on the 'Net. But the bottom line is that this is probably another for Snopes dot com -- it's safe to go back in the woods.

Mountain lions in Giles County?

The buzz today is of possible mountain lions in Giles County. Supposedly they're in the Big Stoney Creek area of the county. The photos here are of a lion who came to somebody's back porch supposedly, "looking for food" and reportedly "very agitated." The real thing? I don't know. But be careful out there...