The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006 has just been published at Lulu.com, and one of my essays was included.

This project is important in another way. By their nature, good blog posts are relatively brief and tightly written, and often about subjects that are unusual or esoteric, and/or draw on personal experience. These are the types of writings that can really hook people, and print-on-demand technologies such as Lulu make publishing accessible and easy. I think projects like this, especially if even more targeted to specific science topics, have good potential to spark the public interest in science.

Time to get working on next year’s submission!

Two laugh-out-loud portions for only $2.89 each.

Bora Zivkovic, surely one of the most prolific bloggers in science, or elsewhere, is organizing the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference in Chapel Hill later this month. Through that, he ended up with the job of editing The Science Blogging Anthology, a book collecting the top 50 science blog posts of all time.  He put out a call for submissions, got 218 responses, and he and a panel narrowed the choices down to 50, of which my post on Cuban Todies (“the little farter“) was picked for inclusion. I guess it wasn’t so cheesy after all.  More details when it comes out.

I did this last year, so I may as well do it again:

• Number of species seen: I did a lousy job of recording, so I don’t know.
• New life birds: 21
  • First life bird: I said it would be West Indian Whistling-Duck, but that was #5. The first was Scaly-naped Pigeon (Patagioenas squamosa). I’ve now seen every Cuban endemic except for Zapata Rail, Cyanolimnas cerverai.
  • Last life bird: Rusty Sparrow (Aimophila rufescens), Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.

• Total life birds: 908
• Total ABA-area birds: 568 (no progress there)
• Total state birds: 305
• Total birds in my home city: 208
• Total birds at my place of work: 183
• Yard birds: 131

What might be my first life bird of 2007?   That’s a tough one, as I don’t have any trips planned at the moment. There is a Black-backed Woodpecker a few hours from here.  I don’t do much bird chasing any more, but it is near a friend’s family summer home, so we could all visit some old haunts with him.  That seems the most likely bet for the moment.  Of course, the nicest part of birding is the surprises that turn up right near home…  Here’s wishing you good birds, close by!

When I receive a holiday letter, I sometimes don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It seems few people have mastered the art of a lively overview of interesting and relevant information and instead get bogged down in trivial or obtuse details.  I decided to start my own holiday letter tradition.  The following missive uses unaltered excerpts from letters that we received this year; only the names have been changed.

It’s that time of year again, and when we look back on this year, we have many fond memories.

Mikey celebrated his second birthday on March 26.  He has really grown a lot this year — he now has hair (actually a very long mullet). His appetite is amazing.  What a poochy tummy he gets!  We were recently surprised by how solid he is compared to other kids his age.  Just as the cake was put on the table, he put his foot in the frosting. Mom had fun licking the frosting off his foot, though!

In April, we moved into our new house.  Jane Killian was our realtor.  We finally found a spec house built by Joe Fox. Olivia Gregory did a great job with the interior design. Jack put up a wonderful set of cabinets/shelves in our garage (since our basement is finished) so we could use this to put up items we don’t use on a regular basis.  Frank has successfully avoided cleaning the basement for 5 years, and we have yet to hang a single picture on the wall. Mom and Dad’s urns still sit on our mantle.

Our health has remained relatively good. Dan passed his driver’s license without glasses, but will soon be a candidate for hearing aids. Linda fell down the stairs. We are fortunate so many people helped out. A special thank-you to Linda’s mom, Fred’s mom, Jill, Britney, Clark, Jack, Gale, Jeff, Steve, Jerry’s teachers (Wanda, Pete, Cathy, Kate), Robert’s classmate’s families, Rick and Jan, Francine, Don and Jackie, Patsy, Dan, and many others!

Allen is still working for Big Bank and is seeing a lovely young lady named Carolyn (who is studying Mortuary Cosmetology).  My job was everywhere this year. Ever tried to neuter a sugar glider that is the size of a small squirrel? Our department is now called “Global Administration” and everyone is called assistants (no more Executive Assistant, Senior Administrative Assistant, just Assistant). We moved from the third floor to the fifth floor then I went to the sixth floor to sit near my new VP.  I was told my old manager was also moving to the sixth floor, so I got to pack him up and move him while he was on vacation.

We are so richly blessed.  We hope you are, too.

I will confess right now to not being a huge fan of the holidays. However, I am very fond of both natural history and kissing, and that has led me to investigate the botanical life history of mistletoe.

Mistletoe is not one species of plant, but hundreds. They are not all related, rather their common traits evolved independently a number of times across the globe. Most mistletoes are not terrestrial plants, but evergreen hemi-parasites. They perform photosynthesis, but send their roots into the living wood of a tree to get water and nutrients. In most cases, this pilfering doesn’t kill the tree, which would be a bad adaptive move for the mistletoe, but can cause stunted growth and deformities in the host.

Worldwide, 66 families of birds consume mistletoe fruits, which are produced only by female plants. Forty-three bird families have species which nest in mistletoe clumps, and hundreds of insects are associated with the flowers, which have abundant nectar.

The common mistletoe in Europe is Viscum album, one of 30 species of Viscum. This is the species that was probably the source of the custom of kissing under the mistletoe. In the U.S., there are two primary genera: the true mistletoes, Phoradendron, and the dwarf mistletoes, Arceuthobium.

Phoradendron species are widespread and their large clumps (above) are found on many hardwood trees and some conifers. The berries (top) are eagerly eaten by birds, although all parts are toxic to humans. The seeds are extraordinarily sticky, so they cling to branches when a bird wipes them off its bill or defecates. The bird probably most closely associated with mistletoe in the U.S. is the Phainopepla (female at right). In winter, these birds defend trees laden with mistletoe, and have a specialized gut that can rapidly process the fruit – they are able to consume over 1000 berries a day. Phainopeplas frequently nest in mistletoes, as do Cactus Wrens and Abert’s Towhees, among others. Great Purple Hairstreak larvae feed only on mistletoes in this genus.

The dwarf mistletoes are radically different. Rather than relying entirely on birds for dispersal, dwarf mistletoe berries can eject their seeds, which travel up to 40 feet. Most dwarf mistletoes are leafless, and do little of their own photosynthesis. They grow on conifers in the American west, which respond by producing a lot of twigs and branches at the site of the mistletoe implantation, resulting in a structure called a witches broom. The damage they can cause to valuable timber species makes them unpopular with commercial forestry managers, but dwarf mistletoes, in fact, have considerable wildlife value. Witches brooms provide nest sites for Red Squirrels, wood rats, goshawks, and Long-eared Owls and other birds. Dwarf mistletoes are the only host plants of the Thicket Hairstreak and Johnson’s Hairstreak, as well as a number of other insect species.

Mistletoes are an incredibly fascinating group of plants, with ecological value far exceeding their utility as kissing prompts. You can read more here:

• Mistletoes on hardwoods in the U.S. — Forest Service page with range maps and characteristics of common Phoradendrons in the U.S.
• Not Just for Kissing: Mistletoe and Birds, Bees, and Other Beasts — Great article by the USGS.
• More on the mistletoe from the eastern U.S. from Hilton Pond Center (SC), including lots of close-up photos.

Phainopepla photo by Desert Vu. Oak mistletoe photo (Phoradendron leucarpum) by Steve Baskauf of Bioimages.

Seeing a Peregrine Falcon is not very unusual in southeast Michigan.  Although they were not historically found in these parts, they were introduced into the city of Detroit beginning in 1987 as part of the Midwest Peregrine Restoration Program (MPRS). For the last 10 years, there have been five to seven Peregrine territories in southeast Michigan, including some now-traditional nest sites on rather famous
buildings in downtown Detroit, including the Whittier Apartments, the FisherBuilding, and the Book Building.  So, we have resident birds in addition to migrants (the Southeast Michigan Raptor Research hawkwatch tallies about 50 each fall). I’ve even have one on my yard list.

Therefore it wasn’t too surprising that a pair (the male was banded with a MPRS band) took up housekeeping this spring on the central campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, on the Burton Memorial bell tower.  Although a nest couldn’t be seen, the behavior of the birds indicated the female was on eggs for a time, but no young were produced (although the music was halted so as to not disturb them).

The most interesting part of this story, to me, was that my friends over in the bird division at the Museum of Zoology routinely collected body parts at the base of the tower that had been dropped or not eaten by the falcons.  They kept a running tally of prey items from the beginning of April through the end of October, with a two-week gap when the collection manager took a vacation.

Urban falcons are frequently said to favor Rock Pigeons as food.  This pair had much more unorthodox tastes.  I was quite astonished to see that the remains of at least 71 cuckoos were found at the tower, with slightly more Yellow-billed than Black-billed. Granted, Ann Arbor has quite a bit of green space, and there is a large cemetery, the arboretum, and parks along the Huron River in the vicinity, but I would not have imagined there being that many cuckoos around, especially careless ones.

These Peregrines must have specialized in secretive prey, as the leftovers also included nearly 20 rails, mostly Soras but including, incredibly, a Yellow Rail, a state-threatened species considered one of North America’s most elusive and mysterious birds, a species last recorded in Washtenaw County in 1925! Least Bittern was also on the menu, along with regular servings of Pied-billed Grebe, Green Heron, and Northern Flicker.

Not eaten regularly, despite their ubiquity, abundance, and reported favor, were Rock Pigeons, of which it appeared only about a half-dozen were taken.  House Sparrows and European Starlings were represented on only two occasions each.

I found few readily available lists of Peregrine prey items.  One from Regina, Saskatchewan was also heavy on grebes and Soras, but Rock Pigeons also came in at 18% of the prey. Prey analysis of Peregrines nesting at the University of Alberta in Edmonton show few Rock Pigeons but lots of gulls, and the web site notes the importance of marsh birds even in urban Peregrine diets. In the U.K., an observer of Peregrines in Bristol has come to the conclusion that the idea of pigeons as a staple food for city falcons is something of an urban myth.

This may be just as well.  Analysis of a dead Peregrine from Baltimore in the 1980s [1] determined it had died of a gram-negative infection, associated with sublethal lead ingestion in other raptors.  Pigeons made up 93% of this bird’s diet, and samples indicated very elevated levels of lead in the blood and organs of the pigeons — a common occurrence, at least at the time, for pigeons that lived in cities with high traffic density.

This might not be as great a threat now that leaded gasoline has been phased out.  But studies in British Columbia have shown that although DDT has not been used since the 1970s in a local agricultural area, even short-lived birds are still contaminated with the break-down products.  It was estimated [2] that feeding on as little as 10% of species such as starlings, robins, and gulls would have damaging effects on Peregrine eggs.  Detroit Peregrines eat Ring-billed and Herring Gulls, which nest in the Detroit River. Levels of PCBs, DDE, and dioxins have remained steady or increased in local Herring Gull eggs the last decade.  Contaminated prey in urban areas is just one more thing to consider when evaluating the wisdom of introducing wildlife into cities.

Hopefully, those cuckoos were clean-living, and the Ann Arbor Peregrines didn’t get a dose of unwanted chemicals with their exotic meals.

[1] DeMent, S.H., J.J. Chisholm, Jr., J.C. Barber, and J.D. Strandberg. 1986. Lead exposure in an urban Peregrine Falcon and its avian prey.  Jrl. Wildlife Diseases 22:238-244.

[2] Elliott, J.E., Miller, M.J., and Wilson, L.K. 2005. Assessing breeding potential of peregrine falcons based on chlorinated hydrocarbon concentrations in prey. Environ Pollut. 134:353-61.

Photos from Wikipedia, falcon by Joe Kosack / PGC Photo.

Marie Arana’s previous two works, American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood and The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work are both non-fiction. Cellophane is her first work of fiction, following a patriarch and his family as they convert their paper factory in the Peruvian Amazon into a cellophane factory. This book has been compared to Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, and both are family sagas set in Latin America in the first half of the 20th century. But where I found Allende’s plot too mired in detail, I found Cellophane to flow beautifully; where Allende’s magical realism was too fanciful, Arana’s mysticism was imaginative without being incredible.

Don Victor Sobrevilla is a clever engineer who has been obsessed with paper his entire life. He builds a paper factory — and an entire small society of family and workers, finca and village — on the banks of an Amazon tributary. All is well until he becomes gripped with the idea of making cellophane, at that time a new and somewhat wondrous product. Something strange befalls the Sobrevillas — first a plague of truth, then a plague of hearts (and lust), then a plague of revolution.

Every character is carefully wrought, intriguing, and unique, eccentric but believable. In the insulated world of the Sobrevilla hacienda, their lives are necessarily intertwined. An author can weave a coarse fabric, or a fine tapestry. Arana embroiders a pattern both simple and intricate, following the broad leitmotiv of the “plagues.”Her command of characters, plot, and prose is a joy to read.

Searching and finding, love and lust, truth and illusion, wealth and poverty, humor and pathos. It’s all here in Cellophane. A reviewer at Amazon described it as “expansive in scope and theme but magnificently controlled in execution,” to which I heartily agree. I loved this book and, frankly, there are not too many novels I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed.

Patrick at The Hawk Owl’s Nest started a birder survey meme.  I’ll play along…

What state (or country) do you live in? MI, USA
How long have you been birding? Seriously, about 15 years.
Are you a “lister”? I keep lists (of everything!), but no longer consider myself a lister.
ABA Life List: 568
Overall Life List: 908
3 Favorite Birding Spots: Study site at work, Santa Ana NWR in south Texas, Pipeline Road in Panama.
Favorite birding spot outside your home country: Cienaga de Zapata National Park, Cuba.
Farthest you’ve traveled to chase a rare bird: In 1993, several of us went to Delaware to see North America’s first Whiskered Tern (Chlidonias hybridus). In 2000, the road trip was to North Carolina for a Green-breasted Mango (Anthracothorax prevostii). I really doubt I would do anything like this again.
Nemesis bird: Purple Sandpiper.
“Best” bird sighting: As in, rare bird I’ve found?  A Virginia’s Warbler in Michigan.
Most wanted trip:  A trip down the Amazon from Manaus.
Most wanted bird: Wallcreeper.
What model and brand of bins do you use?: I have several pair, but my out-and-about birding bins are Leica 8×32 BA Trivinoids.
What model and brand of scope do you use?: Husband schleps the scope –  Leica APO Televid 77.
What was the last lifer you added to your list?: Rusty Sparrow (Aimophila rufescens).
Where did you see your last lifer?: Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.
What’s the last bird you saw today?: White-throated Sparrow.
Best bird song you’ve heard ever: Winter Wren.
Favorite birding moment: A Blue-headed Quail-Dove (Starnoenas cyanocephala) strolling across the trail in front of me.
Least favorite thing about birding: Ego-centric obnoxious birders.
Favorite thing about birding: Peace and discovery.
Favorite field guide for the US: Nat Geo.
Favorite non-field guide bird book: The Beak of the Finch.
Who is your birder icon?: None.
Do you have a bird feeder(s)? Yes.
Favorite feeder bird? Red-breasted Nuthatch!