Wired world of swallows
Sometimes I think the swallows would hate a wireless world most of all. Tree, Barn, Northern Rough-winged, Bank, Cliff and a Purple Martin or two can still all be seen trying to head south. Aerial insectivores have to go where the food is flying or they’ll be in deep trouble. We need to rely more on them to clean our skies rather than chemicals which harm us all.
Read MoreKeep cats indoors
The State of the Birds Report 2014 tells us that 2.4 billion birds are killed by cats annually in America with 196 million more slaughtered in Canada. That is not even beginning to mention how many small mammals they kill. How do we solve this? Keep cats, an invasive non-native species introduced by humans, indoors. That’s it. I know we have feral cats and that complex problem is very difficult to solve. I have had cats my entire life and have rescued plenty of strays, dealt with colonies, seen many suffer horribly because they live outside and others perish due in grotesque fashion....
Read MoreEastern Screech-Owl (Megascops asio) by Scott Kruitbosch
I found this forgotten photo in my archives from several years ago of what appears to be the outline of an Eastern Screech-Owl that crashed into our glass door, despite the main door being closed right behind it, on a July night. This was all that was left and it presumably flew off, hopefully OK. The wing position makes it look like the owl saw that it was about to fly into an object and slowed down before impact, thankfully. Hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of birds die as glass strikes every year in the U.S. It doesn’t have to be a window and it can still happen despite...
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