Sometimes when you're in your 20s you do very stupid things

This is from the Seattle Times:

Student lifts falcon egg, faces charges

By Ashley Bach

Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Booth Haley speaks in exclamations and explains his yolk-related legal problems with a certain flair, including diatribes about living off the land and society's reliance on store-bought food.

The 22-year-old Haley is from Mercer Island, attended Mercer Island High School and is about four weeks from graduation at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. He was arrested April 7 for taking a special kind of egg from a nest sitting on a railroad bridge near campus.

To hear him tell the story, he was just a college student in search of a unique meal. To hear state environmental officials tell it, Haley was endangering a rare species, and maybe worse.

Haley was canoeing with a friend on the Connecticut River when the two men came across a metal ladder rising from the water. They decided to climb about 80 feet to the bridge, where they saw a nest sitting on the edge of an old iron control booth.

Inside were four small eggs, dappled brown, and Haley, a longtime climber and outdoorsman, decided to take one. To eat. "Probably scrambled," he said.

But a state conservation officer happened to be in the area and witnessed the grab. Haley and his friend were arrested and charged by Middletown prosecutors with third-degree trespassing, a misdemeanor, for walking on the bridge.

And the egg, it turns out, was from a peregrine falcon, an endangered species in Connecticut, state officials said. Only six pairs exist in the entire state, including those nesting on the bridge.

The two men could face up to three months in jail on the trespassing charge, and state officials are considering charges related to the egg pilfering. Federal officials are trying to determine if Haley planned to sell the egg on the black market.

Haley, described by friends and family as "mischievous," "careless" and "unusual," but no egg trafficker, says he was just hungry. He has been a longtime proponent of finding food in the wild, from oysters to snails, and the egg was something new.

"I thought, 'Wow, what a great opportunity! I'd like to try one and see what it tastes like,' " he said.

Haley said he thought the egg was from a pigeon or seagull, and his only question was whether the mother bird would mind the missing egg.

Connecticut wildlife officials aren't sympathetic. They understand how young people can sometimes do crazy things, but messing with the peregrine falcon is altogether different, said Dwayne Gardner, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.

"Mischief is mischief, but when it threatens an ... endangered species, we have to take it seriously," Gardner said.

It is illegal in the state to take eggs from any wild bird, Gardner said.

Wildlife officials returned the egg to the nest, and it is developing normally, Gardner said.

Haley's friends have started a Web site in his defense www.freebooth.org. They sell T-shirts with Haley's head coming out of an egg, reading, "Free Booth!" The site's front page says Haley faces criminal charges "for basically just being an idiot."

"It was a foolish mistake with consequences far greater than the actions deserved," said Ben Rogovy of Seattle, Haley's childhood friend.

Haley said he regrets taking an egg from a rare bird, but not the act of taking an egg in general.

The arrest generated a lot of media interest in Connecticut, and Haley still hears comments about it.

"Anyone who knows me has come to expect these playful adventures," he said, "and they think this is not at all out of character."

But, he added, "People who don't know me think I'm crazy."

How to Find an Ivory-billed Woodpecker

It will NOT be easy! I have had questions floating in my mind all day. Are the communities near the ivory-billed sighting prepared for the influx of birders? Is the area going to be restricted? Are there going to be companies offering ivory-bill tours? Of course many are saying right away the best thing is to not go see this bird, but that's not going to stop people from going to see it. Here are answers to some of those questions from Mike McDowell:

For Immediate Release – April 28, 2005
Media Contact: Kyla Hastie, cell: 770/329-1697
Refuge Contact: Dennis Widner, 870/347-2074

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Discovered on Cache River Refuge Background

The ivory-billed woodpecker, considered to be extinct by many birders, has been
rediscovered on Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. The discovery is the
result of a collaborative effort by The Nature Conservancy of Arkansas, Arkansas
Game and Fish Commission, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and the
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, working together with Cornell University as the
primary researcher, to determine if the ivory-billed woodpecker existed in the
bottomland hardwood habitat of the White and Cache River basins.

Questions and Answers: Access to Cache River National Wildlife Refuge

What laws protect the ivory-billed woodpecker?
The ivory-billed woodpecker is an endangered species and is afforded protection
through the Endangered Species Act, the Refuge Administration Act, Migratory
Bird Treaty Act, National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act of 1997, and other
federal and state legislation.

Is the Service restricting access to the location where the bird was found?
Beginning immediately, the Service has established a managed access area of
approximately 5,000 acres within the Bayou DeView drainage from Highway 38
southward to Dagmar WMA. Only researchers will be allowed access into this
area. A map is provided on the refuge’s website and is available through the refuge
office showing the designated managed access area.

Is access limited to the entire refuge?
No. Over 55,000 acres representing the majority of the refuge is still open to the
public for all permitted public use activities, including hunting, fishing and boating.

How can I see the bird?
The Service expects an influx of birders from across the country and beyond to
come to see the bird. The best opportunity for birders to add this bird to their life
list is on the adjacent Dagmar Wildlife Management Area, managed by the
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Good viewing areas are designated on
the associated map. The Service is working with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, and The Nature Conservancy to provide additional viewing sites, which are expected to be available in early May.

Can I use recorded, mechanical or otherwise artificial calls to draw in the
bird?
No. Any means to artificially call the bird is strictly prohibited.

Scott Weidensaul's Involvement

This showed up on BirdChat from Scott Weidensaul:

I was going to wait until after noon today (when a press conference
is going to be held in D.C. on the subject) to post anything about
this, but with the NPR broadcast following several days of email
chatter on the Web, I guess the cat is out of the bag: The
ivory-billed woodpecker has indeed been rediscovered in the vast
bottomland forests of eastern Arkansas, an area known as the Big
Woods that includes Cache River and White River NWRs.

Unlike the 1999 report from the Pearl River in Louisiana, which was
never confirmed despite several attempts, this time the search team,
a cooperative effort of the Nature Conservancy and Cornell's Lab of
Ornithology, has documented the presence of at least one male
ivorybill, thanks to multiple sightings, videos and audio recordings.
The Lord God bird lives.

I was incredibly privileged to have been quietly invited last
winter to join the search team for a week in order to write an
article announcing the find for TNC's magazine. More than 60 people
were in the field for 15 months, operating under such strict secrecy
that in many cases, their own families didn't know what they were
doing. The secrecy was in part to protect the bird while
documentation was gathered and management plans were being crafted,
and in part to give TNC time to buy up land to further safeguard the
ivorybill. In that short time, the conservancy spent more than $10
million on land acquisition in the Big Woods.

The area in question is in the Mississippi delta, forming a
corridor of swamp forest 15 miles wide and 130 miles long -- big,
deep, and difficult to penetrate except by canoe (and even then,
you'd better know how to use a GPS). Over the past 20 years, TNC and
others have protected more than 120,000 acres there, bringing to more
than half a million acres land that's in conservation protection,
largely within the two national wildlife refuges and state wildlife
land. It's been a largely unknown conservation success story, and
this news is an incredible validation of that work. TNC has plans to
buy and restore an additional 200,000 acres of bottomland hardwood
forest there, including land that was cleared for soybeans in the
'70s and '80s and will be reforested. Things should only get better
for the ivorybill. In fact, things have probably been getting
steadily better for decades, as the once-cut forests of the South
have recovered.

Later today, there will be a lot of information about the events in
Arkansas posted at two web sites: www.ivorybill.org, and on the web
site of the journal Science, which is publishing an article
documenting the sighting, including a frame-by-frame analysis of the
video www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.shtml.

In a nutshell, the initial sighting came in February 2004, when a
Hot Springs kayaker named Gene Sparling was exploring a remote part
of the Big Woods, and had a close, unmistakable encounter with a male
ivorybill. Gene, a birder and experienced outdoorsman, understood the
significance of what he'd seen. Two weeks late, Gene escorted Tim
Gallagher, editor of Cornell's Living Bird magazine, and Alabama
photography professor (and longtime ivorybill hunter) Bobby Harrison
to the same area, where Gallagher and Harrison both saw the bird.
Cornell and the Arkansas chapter of TNC were informed, and
immediately launched one of the most intensive wildlife searches I've
ever encountered, all while keeping it almost completely secret. The
plan was to announce the findings next month, coinciding with the
publication of the magazine article, but someone blabbed over the
weekend, and as the ripples started spreading, the decision was made
to announce today at the Department of the Interior.

The sightings were all of a single bird, always a male (though
there was one undocumented sighting of a possible female). It appears
the search team was not operating near the bird's normal home range,
since the sightings averaged only about one per month; this is a huge
area, and there's lots of room for even a duck-sized woodpecker to
disappear. No one thinks it likely that this bird is the very last of
its kind, so it's likely there are more out there in the huge Big
Woods region, or in other bottomland forests along the Mississippi
Delta.

Interestingly, in contrast to the noisy, fairly tame behavior Jim
Tanner recorded for the species in Louisiana in the 1930s, this bird
has proven incredibly shy and wary, always vanishing at the first
hint of a human. Many people -- and I include myself in this -- had
long assumed that if ivorybills survived in the U.S., someone would
have found and documented them decades ago. The fact that so many
people, backed up with technology like automated recording devices
and cameras, had such a hard time getting documentation in the Big
Woods, suggests we've been underestimating the difficulty of finding
this species. The "intensive" Pearl River search, for example,
involved six people for 30 days; most times that a sighting has been
followed up, it's been someone in a canoe poking around for a day or
two at most. One lesson from the Big Woods is that we cannot easily
dismiss any of the reports elsewhere in the species' historic range,
especially those in South Carolina and Florida which have been
persistent for many years. I know scientists are following up on some
of those reports even as the news is trumpeted from Arkansas. Let's
all keep our fingers crossed.

This is one of the most hopeful stories I've ever had the privilege
to report on, and it comes at a time when conservationists need some
good news. It shows how incredibly resilient nature can be if we give
it a chance. And it's a second chance that, frankly, America probably
doesn't deserve, given our treatment of Southern forests.

My part in this was very small and very secondary, as much as I
treasure the opportunity. I want to close this by expressing my
gratitude and admiration for the folks who pulled this off in an
incredibly professional, collegial manner, including Arkansas TNC
director Scott Simon; John Fitzpatrick and Ron Rohrbaugh at Cornell;
and Gene Sparling and Prof. David Luneau.

The ivorybill lives. It makes the sunshine just a little sweeter,
doesn't
it?

Scott Weidensaul
Schuylkill Haven, Pa.

Ivory-billed Woodpecker Found in Arkansas

I always thought that Cornell actaully knew where an ivory-billed woodpecker was but was keeping it under wraps. How many birders would come from not only the United States, but around the world to see this bird. Looks like I wasn't just another conspiracy theorist after all, this is from NPR:

Morning Edition, April 28, 2005 · A group of wildlife scientists
believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct. They say they have
made seven firm sightings of the bird in central Arkansas. The landmark
find caps a search that began more than 60 years ago, after biologists
said North America’s largest woodpecker had become extinct in the
United States.

The large, showy bird is an American legend -- it disappeared when the
big bottomland forests of North America were logged, and relentless
searches have produced only false alarms. Now, in an intensive
year-long search in the Cache River and White River national wildlife
refuges involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working
together as part of the Big Woods Partnership, an ivory-billed male has
been captured on video.

"We have solid evidence, there are solid sightings, this bird is here,"
says Tim Barksdale, a wildlife photographer and biologist.

For an NPR/National Geographic Radio Expeditions story, NPR science
correspondent Christopher Joyce joined the search last January along
Arkansas’ White River, where a kayaker spotted what he believed to be
an ivory-billed woodpecker more than a year ago. Many other similar
sightings over the last 60 years have raised false hopes.

But this time, Joyce reports that experts associated with the Cornell
Laboratory of Ornithology in New York and The Nature Conservancy were
able to confirm the sighting. They kept the find a secret for more than
a year, partly to give conservation groups and government agencies time
to protect the bird’s habitat.

The Nature Conservancy has been buying and protecting land along the
White and Cache Rivers for years, along with the state and the federal
Fish and Wildlife Service. Since the discovery, they've bought more
land to protect the bird.

Feeders at the Arboretum

Today was one of the fun days to have my job. The bird store is sponsoring two feeding stations at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and I had to install them today. The arboretum is beautiful and while I was putting together feeders and screwing in brackets I was serenaded by ruby-crowned kinglets. I really enjoy doing this, it's kind of artistic putting different feeders together. Below I tried to go with a natural/wood theme.

I put raccoon baffles on both setups so I shuldn't have to worry about unwanted critters.

I'm worried that I may have gone overboard with the decorative feeder area (below). But I really wanted to show that feeders don't have to look traditional and that there are some really beautiful and sturdy feeders that with proper placement from raccoons and squirrels work very well.


Now, let's keep our fingers crossed that blackbirds won't take these over. That's going to be a challenge. I figured the arboretum didn't want birdseed growing all over the place so I used shelled sunflower mixes in the feeders. I'd like to avoid using safflower if I can.

We have chicks!


Saturday I checked the house finch nest and found that there are five chicks. I think they hatched Thursday which is pretty amazing considering how chilly it's been in Minnesota the last few days. It's a testament to how hardy house finches are and demonstrates one of the many reasons they were able to spread across the eastern United States so quickly.


A check of the hooded merganser nest showed the female was out for the morning and kept her eggs well covered in the 34 degree temperatures. I felt around the nest and 11 eggs appears to be the final total of eggs.

Biggest Chickadee box in Wayzata


Yes, folks, that hole in the wall of our strip mall is a chickadee nest box. I noticed a chickadee the other day with a bill full of nesting material but as long as I was watching the bird it wouldn't go anywhere.

Today, Denny said, "I know where there's a chickadee nest!" I asked him where I could find said nest and he told me to go out to the dumpster behind the store and look to my left. There's a small hole in the wall and he watched the chickadees go in with nesting material. I investigated with a flashlight and sure enough there is nesting material inside. How on earth will we ever clean that nest box out in the fall???

On another note, the merganser must have been chilly today, she wrapped the cedar shavings and her down around her: