B and B

Wind energy battle on the south Texas coast

The fight over wind farms along the south Texas coast continues.  From the Express-News over the weekend:

A coalition of bird and conservation organizations will make a last-ditch effort Monday to stall or kill two large wind farms on the Texas Coast.

The increasingly acrimonious dispute pits two favorites of the environmental movement against each other — the supporters of wind energy and bird lovers.

A coalition of bird and conservation organizations will make a last-ditch effort Monday to stall or kill two large wind farms on the Texas Coast.

The increasingly acrimonious dispute pits two favorites of the environmental movement against each other — the supporters of wind energy and bird lovers.

...

The debate has become nasty at times, with local Audubon societies and the famous King Ranch facing off against the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation and the John G. Kenedy Jr. Charitable Trust, which own the land where the turbines would be built.

The developers of one of the farms, the Australian-based Babcock & Brown Ltd., claims it has conducted more environmental study on this site than almost any other in the world.

The company's chief development officer, John Calaway, said those studies show the wind farm has little potential to harm birds. Calaway said the company is even pioneering a radar-based system for the project that can shut down the turbines within a minute in the event of a massive bird run-in.

But Calaway said it's unlikely at this point that he would share the studies with any of the groups in opposition.

"I don't think that, because of the way they've been referring to us, that we will be jumping up and down to accommodate then," he said. "And quite frankly we don't have to."

It is this kind of in-your-face arrogance that makes me, who might normally be sympathetic to this particular energy development, extremely suspicious.

What are Calaway and his company hiding?

Whooping cranes' habitat threatened by development pressure

I was distressed to read this morning that housing development is threatening to eat into the small area of remaining habitat for the majestic, endangered Whooping Crane on the Texas gulf coast. 

From the San Antonio Express-News:

An Austin developer who insists he is doing everything possible to protect the species wants to be the first to build a subdivision in an area deemed critical habitat for the sole remaining wild flock.

The dispute centers on 100 acres of the roughly 35-mile-long swath of Texas coastline named critical habitat for the species' survival by the federal government in the 1970s. The development, if allowed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is being touted as a potential precedent setter by both sides and has caught the eye of national environmental organizations.

Those who are adamantly against the project worry that it could open the floodgates for development in the environmentally sensitive habitat. They are pressuring the corps to order a full-scale environmental impact statement on the project.

...

[Developer Bill] Ball is a managing partner of Seadrift Ranch Partners. The corporation bought the roughly 6,000-acre ranch near Seadrift last year. Current plans call for developing a 700-acre residential and marina subdivision on the San Antonio Bay. Roughly 100 acres of the property on the southern end of the development are in critical habitat.

...

[Tom] Stehn [of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] said it's too early to cast judgment on Ball's proposal, but he said he is worried about the overall impact of coastal development on the whooping crane.

"I'm afraid that development will rob the species of the opportunity to grow," he said. "This is just one. There will be others. We all knew (development) was coming, but it's just exploded."

As Stehn points out, this is just the beginning.  If we are not careful, before we know it, we could lose a major chunk of habitat.  If that happens, we could well lose the Whooping Crane once and for all.

For more on this impressive bird, see my December 2005 post, Whoopers put on a show.

The word from Audubon on how to help declining bird species

I looked into the Audubon Society report on the dramatic decline of a number of common bird species in recent decades, but, unfortunately, the report was not designed to determine the cause of these declines.  That is left to intelligent speculation and to future studies.

Meanwhile, though, Audubon has provided a list of things we can do, in general, to help preserve troubled bird species.

The bulleted list:

• Protect local habitat
• Promote sound agricultural policy
• Support sustainable forests
• Protect wetlands
• Fight global warming
• Combat invasive species

See Audubon for the details.

Bobwhites and field sparrows on the way out?

My wife pointed out a disturbing essay in the New York Times for those of us who are concerned about the world we inhabit.  An exerpt of "Millions of Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight" by Verlyn Klinkenborg:

Last week, the Audubon Society released a new report describing the sharp and startling population decline of some of the most familiar and common birds in America: several kinds of sparrows, the Northern bobwhite, the Eastern meadowlark, the common grackle and the common tern. The average decline of the 20 species in the Audubon Society’s report is 68 percent.

Forty years ago, there were an estimated 31 million bobwhites. Now there are 5.5 million. Compared to the hundred-some condors presently in the wild, 5.5 million bobwhites sounds like a lot of birds. But what matters is the 25.5 million missing and the troubles that brought them down — and are all too likely to bring down the rest of them, too. So this is not extinction, but it is how things look before extinction happens.

The word “extinct” somehow brings to mind the birds that seem like special cases to us, the dodo or the great auk or the passenger pigeon. Most people would never have had a chance to see dodos and great auks on their remote islands before they were decimated in the 17th and 19th centuries. What is hard to remember about passenger pigeons isn’t merely their once enormous numbers. It’s the enormous numbers of humans to whom their comings and goings were a common sight and who supposed, erroneously, that such unending clouds of birds were indestructible. We recognize the extraordinary distinctness of the passenger pigeon now because we know its fate, killed off largely by humans. But we have moralized it thoroughly without ever really taking it to heart.

The question is whether we will see the distinctness of the field sparrow — its number is down from 18 million 40 years ago to 5.8 million — only when the last pair is being kept alive in a zoo somewhere. We love to finally care when the death watch is on. It makes us feel so very human.

Like you, I’ve been reading dire reports of declining species for many years now. They have the value of causing us to pay attention to species in trouble, and the sad fact is that the only species likely to endure are the ones we humans manage to pay attention to. There was a time when it was better, if you were a nonhuman species, to be ignored by humans because we trapped, shot or otherwise exploited all of the ones that got our attention. But in the past 40 years, we have killed all those millions of birds or, let us say, unintentionally caused a dramatic population loss, simply by going about business as usual.

I missed this Audubon Report last week, but will try to take a look at it and learn from it.  Hopefully I shall have a chance to post about that here soon.

Birdathon in the news -- ten days late

I missed the Mitchell Lake Birdathon again this year, alas.  But apparently I'm not alone.  The Express-News is currently headlining it on their website with a nice hummingbird photo and has a brief write-up on it, yet it took place on April 14.  Ten days ago.

Experienced and novice birders flocked to Mitchell Lake on April 14 for Birdathon 2007, an annual fundraiser benefiting the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center.

"Everyone had a terrific time," center director Susan Albert said.

Participants in the Birdathon raised funds based on how many species they spotted at the wildlife refuge, Albert said. This year, birders raised about $10,000, which will be allocated to the center's conservation, education and habitat restoration programs, she said.

The money also will support Audubon Adventures, "a classroom resource manual for children in grades 3-5," according to a Birdathon news release.

Albert said 16 birders spotted 76-80 species, slightly fewer than last year.

The lower count could have been caused by the timing of the event, which was three weeks earlier than last year's, she added.

That last sentence may hint at an excuse for this belated article.  Perhaps the Express-News was caught by surprise, expecting to write up a story on the event ten days beforehand, only to find out that they were ten days late?  Ah, well.  Perhaps they, and we, will have better luck making it on time next year.

First hummingbird of the spring is here

My wife just spotted the year's first hummingbird in our backyard--not sure if it was a Ruby-throated or Black-chinned, as we get both (though the latter are more common).  We rushed to put out our feeders.  Judging from the migration map at hummingbird.net, the first hummingbird sighting in this (roughly) this part of Texas was a week ago. 

This hummingbird was also the first sign of the spring migration we've seen here.  Very soon, we'll be seeing a lot more, I'm sure.

Join in the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend

The yearly Great Backyard Bird Count is this weekend, February 16-19.  Anyone can join in.  I know we'll be participating for the fourth time, including the third year in a row.  Here's my post from 2005 and two posts from 2006.

Thanks to Nuthatch at bootstrap analysis for the timely reminder.

Our coating of ice remains, for a little while longer

This morning, we are still in the deep freeze in northwest Bexar County -- the winter wonderland look, normally so rare and fleeting here, almost appears to be settling in for the long haul.  Our bushes and trees sag heavily under the tremendous weight of the thick ice that coats every exposed surface, encasing branches and leaves in crystal cylinders and globes.  As we walked around the neighborhood yesterday, the sound of ice-laden branches breaking and falling was commonplace.

The birds appear to be taking the prolonged cold in stride.  In fact, yesterday was an amazing day for backyard birdwatching, as it seemed that all the birds we normally see at various times throughout the day were here constantly -- perhaps not wanting to stray far from the food that must be critical to keep them warm.  In particular, I've never seen so many hermit thrushes in one day -- they are omnipresent, all of a sudden.  And we also had dozens of Lesser Goldfinches, dozens of Chipping Sparrows, plus Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadees, Bewick's Wrens, Carolina Wrens, Golden-fronted Woodpeckers, White-winged Doves, and, down the road, a very large hawk, possibly a Red-shouldered Hawk.

Apparently, we are finally going to ease above freezing later today, if only by a few degrees, for the first time since early Tuesday as I recall. Our trees and bushes will be relieved of their burdens, and our ice-covered landscape will revert to its normal appearance, minus quite a few large branches.

AGUA sues feds to protect Golden-cheeked warbler habitat and the Edwards aquifer

Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas (AGUA), a San Antonio-based group interested in the protection of the Edwards Aquifer and the land that feeds it, has recently filed a lawsuit charging that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have violated the Endangered Species Act by permitting the construction of an electric transmission line through Golden-cheeked Warbler habitat in northwest Bexar County. Golden-cheeked Warblers are an endangered bird that nests exclusively in central Texas.

From the AGUA website:

In particular, the suit claims that the biological opinion prepared by the Service did not follow federal rules and that the cumulative loss of Golden-cheeked warbler habitat has not been fully and fairly considered. The suit asks that the permit decision be set aside and that a plan be developed and implemented to set aside enough acreage to protect the warbler.

AGUA also reports that "Much of the local habitat has already been eliminated due to suburban developments, especially in the area from Austin to San Antonio." Living in this area, the truth of this is self-evident to me, as I see more and more sections of Hill Country terrain bulldozed and scraped to bedrock every week. It is extremely painful to watch — the slow-motion death of the land we have come to love.

This destruction of land is likely to bring with it the degradation of the principle water source for this entire area, the Edwards Aquifer, as the runoff from this land is what feeds the aquifer. This is the reason that a group like AGUA is concerned with habitat for an endangered bird. AGUA President Enrique Valdivia was quoted in the Express-News last week: "We believe that the warbler is an indicator of the health of the environment and the Edwards Aquifer. Our focus is really to protect the Edwards Aquifer."

Back in Texas

We're back in Texas after a vacation adventure to the Pacific Northwest.  This was not a birding adventure, but we still managed to see some cool birds anyway.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to relate a story or two soon.

Meanwhile, though, I am happy to see that our resident flock of at leat sixteen(!) Lesser Goldfinch has stuck with us during our absence, thanks to the prodigious amount of nyger seed we left out in numerous feeders.  It is hard to believe that only a few months ago I claimed that a Lesser Goldfinch sighting in our yard was unusual.  This spring and summer, they have become the dominant bird in our yard, and their numbers keep increasing.

Also, we were delighted to discover that the cool weather appears to have come back with us.  Dare I hope that we have already seen our last 100 degree day for the year?