Monthly Archives: March 2014

21 March 2014 – no casualties, Mourning Dove removed

Posted on by

Yesterday’s Mourning Dove had vanished without a trace today, so it lasted 1 day.  I actually suspect that it was human intervention that removed it because predators so often leave feathers behind when dealing with Mourning Doves.  This is one of those cases in which I would’ve missed the event completely had I not been here within 24 hrs of the collision.

20 March 2014 – Mourning Dove

Posted on by

I guess I spoke too soon yesterday:  There was a beautiful, adult Mourning Dove dead along the south wall of the NRC this morning.  Mourning Doves nest on and near the Noble Research Center, and I had a live bird very near this location yesterday.

I have a photo but the bird sustained a rather gruesome injury so I’ll not post it.  I left the bird in place (after moving it about 1m out of the middle of the sidewalk) to conduct a removal trial.

Image

Spring migration: casualties to come?

Posted on by

Pretty good movement to our east last night on powerful south winds.  With birds on the move, I’ve transitioned from sort of weekly to more like daily monitoring again.  As far as I’ve been able to discern, we’ve had no casualties at the NRC since a junco on November 30, 2013.

Image

6 March 2014 – no casualties, but an odd story

Posted on by

No casualties today, but yesterday a student brought my attention to a plastic container apparently just inside one of the doors at the NRC that contained a dead Indigo Bunting.  She said she had seen it there for “weeks”; I indicated that if it was really an Indigo Bunting it more likely had been in place for months.

The student procured the container for me:  Sure enough, it was a plastic, lidded container in which it appears someone had used a knife to cut “air holes”.  Inside was a near immaculate condition male Indigo Bunting, except for the fact that when I opened the lid the stench was close to the worst I had ever experienced from a little bird.

I don’t know what to make of this.  Had someone found the bird alive, put it in a box to help it recover from being stunned from a window strike, and then forgot that it was there?  Did someone find the bird and leave it there for me to collect?  It certainly is a mystery.  I cannot even say for sure it was a casualty from the NRC or even from a building on campus.  Maybe someone found it at their home and brought it in hoping I would find it?  However you slice it, I consider it to be an example of gross negligence, and I just hope the poor little guy didn’t suffer too badly from its ham-handed treatment.