Clean Your Feeders

This past week a House Finch with what may be conjunctivitis was spotted at one of our bird feeders. Conjunctivitis is a respiratory infection caused by a unique strain of the bacterium Mycoplasma gallisepticum. It is a common pathogen in domestic turkeys and chickens, and poses no known threats to humans.
This disease was first seen in House Finches 1993-94 in Virginia and Maryland. It then spread to states along the East Coast, and has now been reported throughout most of eastern North America, as far north as Quebec, Canada, and as far south as Florida. It has also rarely appeared in other bird species such as American Goldfinches, Purple Finches, Evening Grosbeaks, and Pine Grosbeaks; all of them are members of the family Fringillidae.

While at first it was an epidemic, knocking back almost half the population of House Finches in the east, it is now in restricted to a smaller percentage of the population, about 5% to 10% of the eastern House Finch population has this disease.

Birds that are infected with conjunctivitis have red, swollen, runny, or crusty eyes and in extreme cases the eyes become swollen shut or crusted over. This causes the bird become essentially blind. If the infected bird dies, it is usually not from the conjunctivitis itself, but rather from starvation, exposure, or predation as a result of not being able to see.

So what do you do when you see an infected bird? According to the House Finch Disease Survey conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology you should:
Take down your feeders and clean them with a 10% bleach solution (1 part bleach and 9 parts water). Let them dry completely and then re-hang them. Also, rake underneath the feeder to remove old seed and bird droppings.

They also suggest these following these guidelines for feeder hanging to reduce the spread of any bird disease:


1) Space your feeders widely to discourage crowding. If crowding is an issue, such that your feeder or feeders cannot accommodate all the finches (or other birds) visiting them at one time, consider adding more feeders to reduce crowding.

2) Clean your feeders on a regular basis with a 10% bleach solution solution (1 part bleach and 9 parts water) and be sure to remove any build-ups of dirt around the food openings. Allow your feeders to dry completely before re-hanging them.

3) Rake the area underneath your feeder to remove droppings and old, moldy seed.

4) If you see one or two diseased birds, take your feeder down immediately and clean it with a 10% bleach solution.


To learn more about conjunctivitis and/or to take part in their survey see:
House Finch Disease Survey conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Hawk Watch

A few days ago we had an unexpected raptor sighting. While on a walk in our neighborhood we heard the distinct call of the Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus). It was surprising, as we had never heard or seen one in our neighborhood in the three years that we have lived here. After a quick scan, we found the hawk perched in a snag (dead tree) calling out.
To hear the call of the broad-winged hawk click here.

The broad-winged hawk is a small, stocky, forest-dwelling hawk. They are a migratory hawk and breed here in eastern deciduous forests. In fall it completely leaves its breeding grounds and migrates to central and south America where it spends its winter. Huge numbers of migrating broad-wings can be seen at Hawk Watch stations across the Americas. It usually migrates in large flocks or "kettles" that can range from a couple of individuals to thousands!
This is a picture of a kettle (or vortex) of thousands migrating raptors taken in Veracruz, Mexico.

To learn more about Hawk Watch see:
http://www.hawkwatch.org/home/

Poke Salet

The pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) berries in our backyard are just starting to ripen. We have observed this in three different ways: actually seeing the dark purple ripened fruit, finding our deck dotted with dark purple bird scat (poop), and by finding dark purple stains on our dog’s white fur.
Pokeweed is a large herbaceous plant with big leaves, a stout reddish trunk, widely branching reddish stems, and elongated clusters of small white flowers that later turn into drooping clusters of dark purple berries. It is a very attractive plant that is native to the southeastern US. It can grow up to 12 ft tall, looking more like a tree than an herbaceous plant.

It is an important food source for birds. While the berries are poisonous to humans, they are very popular with local and migrating songbirds, especially robins, towhees, mockingbirds, catbirds, thrushes, and cedar waxwings.

The berries begin to ripen in summer and plant will retain them throughout winter even as it begins to die back. This provides the backyard birds with one type of natural food source throughout the fall and winter.

References:
Floridata

Silver-Spotted Skipper

A frequent visitor to our lantana bushes, the Silver-Spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus) favors the red, pink, and purple flowers of the plant. Other preferred nectar plants include: everlasting pea, common milkweed, red clover, buttonbush, and thistles. It almost never visits yellow flowers and it is not known why that is.Adults of this butterfly species are known to perch upside down under leaves at night and on hot or cloudy days. To seek females, the males perch on branches and tall weeds, and occasionally will go out on patrol.

After mating, the females will lay single eggs near their host trees, and the caterpillars must find their proper host on their own. Host plants include: woody legumes such as black locust (Robinia pseudacacia), honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), and false indigo (Amorpha species). Also some herbaceous legumes such as Glycyrrhiza species.

The young caterpillars live in a folded leaf shelter, while the older ones live in a nest of silked-together leaves. And, according to Harper’s index of animal facts: The distance a silver-spotted skipper caterpillar can propel its own feces (called frass in the insect world) is 5 feet.

To read more interesting animal facts, though I warn that some are a little disturbing, see:
http://www.harpers.org/subjects/Animal/SubjectOf/Fact

References:
Butterflies and Moths of North America

Hairstreak

Lately we have seen this butterfly in our backyard:

It is the Red-banded Hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops). They are one of the most common hairstreaks found throughout the southeastern United States. You will often see them in dry open wooded areas and in wooded neighborhoods.

They are called hairstreaks due to the having tiny hair-like tails on their hind wings. Another characteristic of hairstreak butterflies is that they will rub their hind wings together when perched.

The adults feed on nectar from a variety of flowers such as milkweed and yarrow. The caterpillar larvae are reported to feed on the dead leaves of wax myrtle and sumac trees, as well as detritus in the leaf litter.

References:
Butterflies and Moths of North America

July June Bug

We found an adult green June Bug (Cotinis nitida) lurking in our garden this morning. It is actually not a "bug" but a beetle in the Scarabaieidae family. They are distinguished from other june beetles by their coloring: Their top side is forest green, with lengthwise tan stripes on the wings and their underside is metallic bright green or gold. They are also active during the day rather than at night.

This species is native to Georgia and is sometimes considered a pest, as it like to eat ripened fruit such as figs and peaches, and it likes to lays it eggs is turf grass.

To learn more about green june bugs, see these websites:

http://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/bimg142.html

http://iaa.umd.edu/umturf/Insects/Green_June_Beetle.html#Distribution

Invasive plants in my backyard

After reading the Forest Service publication, Nonnative Invasive Plants of Southern Forests: A Field Guide for Identification and Control, we discovered that a some of our backyard plants are listed in this guide!

To name a few:

Chinese/European Privet (Ligustrum sinense)

Bush Honeysuckles (Lonicera sp.)

Climbing Yams (Dioscorea sp.)

Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica)

Now that we have identified some of them, the next step will be removing them. I am not ready to arm myself with chemicals, so I think we will start in hand pulling and then go from there.

If you would like a copy of this forest service publication, they will send you one for free! You can request this publication to be mailed to you by sending your name and complete mailing address, publication title (Nonnative Invasive Plants of Southern Forests: A Field Guide for Identification and Control), author (James H. Miller), and publication number (GTR-SRS-062) to: pubrequest@fs.fed.us

You can also access this guide online at: http://www.invasive.org/eastern/srs/