Sandhill Cranes at Jasper-Pulaski

On Saturday, Sara and I stopped at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area en route to Indiana Dunes State Park. This area is popular during the fall migration because it is a stop-over site for thousands of Sandhill Cranes. The cranes begin to appear at the end of September and reach peak numbers (thousands in a single night) in mid-November. The evening we spent there, we saw a couple hundred cranes. Instead of staying and watching them fly in to their evening roosting field, we drove around and snapped some photos of the cranes flying in for the night.

Cranes are awesome birds for a number of reasons, but my favorite things about Sandhill Cranes is their call. This was my first time seeing a large gathering of these birds and hearing the strange sounds resonating throughout the area, over and over, was a wacky sensory experience. (You can listen to some recordings on the Cornell page here: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/sandhill_crane/sounds)

Sara and I swapped the camera back and forth a couple times - here are some of my favorite photos from the evening.

When the cranes would come in for a landing, they would drop their legs straight down and spread their wings, lowering themselves kind of like a parachute. It was kind of awkward to watch, but it does the trick, so who am I to criticize?

The Aye-Aye: Adorably Terrifying

Many animals are cute. Many animals are quite frightening. It's only once in a great while that you encounter an animal that manages to tow the line between the two. Enter the Aye-aye (pronounced "I-I").

Image from: factzoo.com

I was introduced to the Aye-aye during a round of youtubing with the GGRO interns last year. More recently, I was reminded of the Aye-aye by Dr. Patricia Wright, winner of the Indianapolis Prize (a super prestigious conservation award) during a talk she gave at Ball State earlier this month. Dr. Wright won the prize for her work with lemurs, many of which are endangered on the island nation of Madagascar. One of those lemur species is the Aye-aye.

When most people think of lemurs, there is probably a distinct image that comes to mind - something like this:

Ring-tailed Lemurs are adorable and not at all creepy (Cincinnati Zoo, Oct. 2014)

The Aye-aye has a slightly more striking appearance:

Photo from WikiMedia Commons.

Is it adorable? Is it terrifying? The jury is still out.

Native to Madagascar, the Aye-aye possesses a host of unique traits that make it stand out from its other lemur brethren. When first discovered, the Aye-aye was thought to be a rodent because it looks so distinct from other primates. In fact, it does share one trait with rodents: its teeth, specifically its incisors, which grow continually throughout the lifespan and have to be maintained regularly.

Check out those teeth! (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Most notably, the Aye-aye has an extra-long middle finger. Unlike the rest of its fingers (and most mammal fingers for that matter), the middle finger is composed of a ball-and-socket joint, giving it the ability to swivel around in all directions. The Aye-aye uses this finger to tap on the bark of trees, (much like woodpeckers) sometimes up to 8 taps per second. By tapping, the Aye-aye is able to identify hollow parts of the trees. Once identified, the Aye-aye then uses its rodent-like teeth to break open the bark. Lastly, it uses it's narrow finger to dig into the tree and pull out bugs and grubs hidden within. Yum.

Multi-purpose finger (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Aye-ayes are nocturnal, the largest nocturnal primates on the planet. They are also solitary; occasionally territories will overlap, but for the most part they keep to themselves (okay, there might be some recent research to dispute this long-believed fact). Often, many females will live in a single male's territory and there is no regular mating cycle. The female pretty much just lets the male know when she's ready.

Like many lemurs in Madagascar, the Aye-aye is classified as endangered (as of this year). This is partly due to a superstition amongst the native Malagasy people that the creature is an embodiment of evil and must be killed whenever spotted. Many Aye-ayes are killed without second thought because of this legend. In addition to this superstition, Aye-ayes are viewed as pests by local villagers and farmers, which puts another target on their backs.

Luckily, people like Dr. Wright and her research team are working hard to ensure a future for Aye-ayes and the other lemurs of Madagascar. She was instrumental in the implementation of Ranomafana National Park, which protects vital habitat for many of these lemur species.

Whether creepy or cute, the Aye-aye is an important species in its own right and worthy our protection and attention.

A great creature to pay attention to this month - Happy Halloween!

Cerulean Warblers in Decline

Last month, the National Audubon Society released a report in which they indicated that nearly half of North American bird populations are threatened by climate change. To carry out this study, scientists examined the current geographical ranges of North American species and projected if and how those ranges would change over the next century under current projected climatic changes. (This is, of course, a massive oversimplification of a scientific compilation that was more complex than I could probably ever articulate). As I perused this report, I was entirely unsurprised to find the Cerulean Warbler as one of the 314 species projected to experience significant range shifts.

Doing Science. (Photo: Claire Nemes)

Given my long absence from this blog, you may or may not be aware that I spent spring and summer of 2014 studying breeding Cerulean Warblers in southern Indiana. As part of a collaborative research project on the larger effects of various silvicultural practices, we monitored Cerulean Warblers on nine different study plots, studying abundance, nesting location and outcome, territory extent, and vegetative makeup of nest plots and territories.

Our research was part of an ongoing survey of Cerulean Warblers in Indiana, now in its 14th year. Cerulean Warblers have received a lot of research attention recently because they have one of the fastest declining populations of all North American songbirds. Since the 1960's, it has been estimated that Cerulean Warbler populations have decreased between 2 and 4% every year!

Male Cerulean Warbler.

Female Cerulean Warbler.

Cerulean Warblers are described as "neotropical migrants," meaning that every year, they fly from North America to South America, a migration averaging 4,000 miles, twice a year! Some of these birds actually fly over the Gulf of Mexico, which is believed to require 18-20 hours of continuous flight. And this is coming from an 8 to 10-gram songbird, which simply makes it all the more incredible.

Preferred habitat is the canopy-tops of old-growth forests. The nests we monitored were typically located at least 20 meters into the canopy and almost always in the top third of the chosen tree. It's rare to see a Cerulean Warbler at eye level, unless they are tending to newly fledged offspring, who remain close to the ground for the first few weeks of their lives out of the nest.

Fledgling Cerulean Warbler, perched on a log on the ground.

One of the principle questions in conservation biology is: what makes populations susceptible to declines? There are a number of factors that can make a given species more vulnerable to sudden and significant declines, including having a narrow geographic range, requiring a large area to establish a territory, and requiring a long time to reproduce viable offspring. Species may naturally possess one or more of these characteristics; however, it is also possible for a given species to be "forced" into one of these categories based on environmental changes. It is when these changes are forced upon a species that extinction often becomes a likely possibility.

Which brings us to the Cerulean Warblers. Without considering human interference, they already have a pretty specialized niche (canopy tops of old-growth forests) and annually embark on a dangerous and energy-expensive migration. So their populations are already kind of wobbly. Also, because they are migratory, they rely on not one, but two habitats every year (one old-growth forest in North America for breeding and another old-growth forest in South America for overwintering) not to mention all of the stopover habitat needed during migration.

A clear-cut patch with old-growth forest in the background.
(Photo: Claire Nemes)

Now, throw in the humans, and what do humans love? We love paper and we love wooden furniture and we love coffee. And what do all these things have in common? Of course, it's those old-growth trees that the Cerulean Warblers rely on. And whether through the creation of coffee plantations in Peru or mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia, we have done a great job of destroying tons of ideal Cerulean Warbler habitat. (I plan to unpack each of these issues in future blog posts, which I will write sometime in the next 16 years).

The Audubon report is extremely concerning for Cerulean Warblers. With all the current threats to their habitat, they have managed to hang in there, finding pockets of good habitat to breed and overwinter and survive. However, the climate report suggests that in the next 100 years, the Cerulean Warblers will have to relocate 98% of their range to survive. That's a lot of adaptation that needs to happen and not a lot of time (relatively speaking) in order to do it.

Is it all doom and gloom for the Cerulean Warblers? Of course not. But, as is almost always the case with these conservation issues, humans need to get their act together, and soon, or the Cerulean Warblers could end up being another species that exists only in our memories.