Sick songbirds, deep sea life & animal traps

It's worrisome for warblers like goldfinches (NJ's state bird), sparrows and chickadees, and those who love them: Songbirds in our area are sick, and the cause is still unknown.  

The Mercer County Naturalist Newsletter recommends cleaning and putting away bird baths (10% bleach and 90% water) and feeders for the time being, while this “mortality event” that’s “occurring in nestling and fledgling songbirds in the mid-Atlantic, extending into the Southeast and eastern upper Midwest” is investigated.   https://tinyurl.com/y5epfsrx

Numerous young birds – also including orioles, woodpeckers, blue jays, robins and cardinals – have been found to have eye and neurologic issues, the publication continued.

American goldfinch

Although birds are susceptible to several viruses and bacteria, it’s already known that this outbreak was not primarily caused by salmonella, chlamydia, avian influenza virus or West Nile virus. 

Those who see birds with head tremors, partial paralysis or weakness in the legs; or birds falling to the side or unable to stand at all may contact the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife's Wildlife Veterinarian Dr. Nicole Lewis (Nicole.lewis@dep.nj.gov) or call 877-WARN-DEP for any additional instructions.

The article linked here looks at this issue beyond New Jersey.  https://tinyurl.com/yay333ct

Will this season come to be called the "silent summer"?  We pray not. 

Unfinished ocean business

Soon after my last post, about marine creatures, the NYTimes book review section featured a cover

Tufted titmouse

review of two new books about ocean life.  The essay itself included myriad surprises about who lives in that vast watery world, and where – with much of the information only recently discovered, and fascinating.  If you lack time or book-length interest, at least read the review and enjoy the cover illustration. https://tinyurl.com/dux8rp5a

Trapping: a year-round horror

“The question I want to ask is simpler than [whether human beings have the right to take another animal’s life, and if so for what reasons].  I want to know why it is still legal to kill animals in ways that cause inexpressible pain and fear and destruction, to both the targeted animals and an immense range of others.”

Margaret Renkl’s opinion column last fall, “How not to kill an animal,” is powerful.  She writes against inhumane ways to kill animals when that is to be done, including animal traps, a hideously cruel vestige of earlier, less enlightened times.  Animal traps, which can torture any animal caught in them, maiming or killing pets and people, are outlawed elsewhere, but not in most of the US.  https://tinyurl.com/29tr3jx9

House sparrow

One antidote to the horrors involved with animal traps is the Sept. 14 webinar from the Humane Society of the US (described below), “Protecting your pets and wildlife from traps.”  Yes, the fall hunting season is closing in, but trapping animals happens all year round – made legal with phony claims of predator control or “nuisance” wildlife control -- and it must be fought. 

Here are details about both the trapping issue and the webinar, including a registration form.  I hope you’ll take a look and consider attending next month’s session. https://tinyurl.com/4nwjhw4e

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Please note: AnimalBeatII will return from vacation next month. This is the 200^th AnimalBeatII blog post, so if you want to keep reading about animals, your course is clear! 

 

Dive into the watery world of sharks & more

How many times this seashore season have you heard someone mention Jaws . . . again?  Or talk up merely being near blue water, or extol the healing properties of salt water?  Add to that liquidy mix this summer’s excess of  wet weather, and you’ve got good reason to think about watery creatures.

When you think of animal life in water, sharks probably come to mind early and often.  So let’s start there, and go way back to earlier shark life — an existence that almost vanished  forever yet still limited the array of sharks even now.   

These days, the worst that can happen to sharks is overfishing and man-made killings, like finning – the barbaric practice of catching sharks only to cut off their fins for shark fin soup, then to toss them back into the ocean.  There, the helpless sharks die of suffocation, blood loss or predation.  

“Humans kill 100 million sharks annually,” according to Humane Society International, with hundreds of millions killed for shark fin soup alone.  https://tinyurl.com/vehx4pup

                      Great white shark                NYT image          

About 19 million years ago, long after dinosaurs were wiped out, sharks nearly went extinct, and even now, they’re still not fully back.  Exactly what happened then is still not known, but a mysterious mass extinction occurred in the world’s oceans that decimated sharks’ diversity.

Scientists studying “dermal denticles,” the microscopic scales that entirely cover sharks’ bodies like protective armor, found in sediment cores that shark diversity had so declined that only a fraction of shark species survived that event.

And now, sharks’ abundance is severely threatened, making for a double whammy that some believe may ultimately amount to the worst extinction of all.  https://tinyurl.com/3eyr293m

Scalloped hammerhead sharks

“Shark attacks” -- or those two words, anyway – are disappearing.  That’s because shark scientists hope to change how people regard sharks: not as blood-thirsty predators, but as animals “whose population has plummeted by 71 % since 1970,” mostly from overfishing.   

One shark expert put it: “A lot of what’s called a shark attack . . . is actually provoked by humans” – plus: the great majority of person-shark meetings don’t involve a bite.   So the suggested alternative wording is preferable because it’s less sensational and more accurate.  For instance, “shark incident” or shark interaction" or "shark encounter."

This fascinating story includes examples of myriad possible “shark interactions,” including when a person accidentally steps on a tiny one or a passing shark touches a person and keeps going. (Remember, sharks don’t know what humans are!)   https://tinyurl.com/3t5adnfp

Whale shark

Time out on sharks for awhile.  Maybe later, dogfish sharks and ghost sharks, from among the more than 500 shark species: small and colossal, glowing and roaming, according to one source.

On to another watery creature I’ve never seen but recently read about: the cuttlefish.  This cephalopod (seh·fuh·luh·paad) has lately become a lab darling for curious (aren’t they all?) scientists.  But first,

A cuttlefish is one member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda that also includes squid, octopus and nautilus.  These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, and a set of arms or tentacles modified from the primitive molluscan foot. --Wikipedia

Ranging in size from about an inch to more than 2 feet, cuttlefish boast one of the largest brains among invertebrates.  They can regenerate their limbs and camouflage, blending with their environment to hunt or escape, and they possess amazing skin that can mimic surrounding textures and colors.  These attributes make cuttlefish attractive for exploring how and when intelligence evolves.  https://tinyurl.com/3xe3vd8c

Cuttlefish competing for a female

Feeling like a nice dip in the ocean about now?  Or would “high and dry” be your destination choice?

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Companion animal loss displaces other topics today

You’ll probably recognize this situation: Knowing exactly what you want to say (or write, in this case), you unexpectedly come upon something else that hits you hard and can’t wait.  So it went with this blog post.

Yesterday I attended a superlative webinar offered by Jackson Galaxy, the multi-media cat specialist ("Cat Daddy") I’ve followed off and on for years.  First it was “My Cat from Hell” on TV – usually well worth the watch -- then various other programs of his.  Most recently it was his seasonal “Cat Camp,” which I discovered only after it went virtual.

Norman

The high quality of that series surprised me; each session taught me things I wanted to know, and did it well.  Yesterday’s webinar, “You're Not Going Crazy, You're Grieving: Navigating Animal Companion Loss in a Post-Pandemic World,” was timely and excellent.

Joined by Stephanie Rogers, a grief counselor who specializes in animal companion loss support, Galaxy spoke in touching self-disclosing ways about the effects of pet deaths on their people.  At some length, the two discussed desirable ways to handle such grief-filled times.  

BTW, “grief” was defined as the internal expression of loss; it’s a process we go through after losing a beloved pet.  “Mourning” is the external expression of internal experience of grief, such as crying, sharing stories of those who died and rituals.

Bernie

Rogers shared her formula for grief: “We grieve in direct proportion to how much we love.”  That is, “Our grief experience will be every bit as big as our love.”  We can expect deep, lasting pain after the death of a companion animal we deeply loved; it’s the price we pay.

“Disenfranchised loss” is one major impediment while a person grieves for a lost pet.  When society doesn’t view grief for an animal’s death being as important as grief for the loss of a person, that only adds to the mourner’s sorrow.

The person grieving for a lost animal often wonders, “What can I do to stop the grief, the pain?”  And Rogers answers: Nothing can be done to move on faster and get past this.  We need to understand grief as a transformational life experience; we should “embrace our grief” and acknowledge the intensity of our loss, naming and claiming it.  “It takes more strength to mourn than to keep a stiff upper lip,” she says.

(For more about Stephanie Rogers, visit her website: EmbracingYourGrief.com.  And for more on the subject of grief from the same team of experts, register for this CatCamp summer session on Saturday, August 28 at CatCamp.com. It will cost $10 – a bargain!)

Dupree

Animal nits & bits

 ·         Monarch butterflies: going, going gone?  Judging by monarchs’ interest in my milkweed plant this summer, the sad reports I’ve read must be true – these beautiful creatures are just not showing up in anything like their (former) usual numbers.  I saw just 3 monarchs around the milkweed flowers, and later, only 2 caterpillars among the leaves.  

Will future generations never see monarchs?

 ·         Local sightings with one surprise:  Deer, now more visible everywhere, this time included what I suppose was a young buck, with appreciable antlers – not way high but definitely getting there.  He stared calmly at me while I slowed down for a closer look at him.

·         A fox strolled along the sidewalk-outskirts of Princeton’s    main street, cool as a Kirby cuke.  

Tee shirt surprise

It’s an old pale blue tee with top and underside views of horseshoe crabs in dark blue – a happy reminder of Stone Harbor’s Wetlands Institute.  Finally, this summer, I read the italic wording: Limulus polyphemus. 

How about that?  Polyphemus: a literary allusion to the one-eyed giant Odysseus encountered, and defeated, in his travels.  Now I’m wondering why horseshoe crabs were named so colorfully. 

Moral of the story: Read your own tee shirts!

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Skilled squirrels, beloved elephant, cosmetic ‘testers’ & a cat hearing aide

             Acrobatic fox squirrel           Judy Jinn pic

It’s the dog days of summer – had you guessed it? – and periodicals are filled with advice for  “how to beat the heat” and “how to motivate yourself to work” . . . when you feel much more like napping or reading a novel by the pool.  Here’s a “dog days collection” of animal stories: oldies but goodies, happy and sad.  

Let’s start with a favorite (for me, anyway) neighborhood animal: squirrels.  It turns out that besides all their other sterling qualities, squirrels are notably acrobatic. 

Researchers at a California university studied wild fox squirrels to understand decision making, learning and creativity in the context of physical challenges.  Their being just as smart as they are athletic had made squirrels the easy choice.

They handily showed their adaptive ability to jump along varied perches (artificial branches, sometimes secretly changed by researchers for greater challenge), to adjust their leaps at midpoint for more or less speed and to learn from their mistakes, self-correcting on their landings.

It quickly became clear that squirrels consider the stiffness of the launching branch (for a stable takeoff) of greatest importance.   https://tinyurl.com/9vmd8jtc

Maggie: RIP

                                   Maggie                     PAWS pic          

Around 15 years ago, I started hearing about an African elephant confined in an Alaskan zoo.  On top of that climate, ridiculous for any elephant, Maggie had also lived alone there for the last 10 years.  (Let’s see, how many humane principles have already been violated here. . . ).

Born and captured as a calf in Zimbabwe, she then spent 24 years in the zoo.  Her plight came to the attention of caring and persistent people who worked to get her out of there.  It took them years to do so.  I know because I did what little I could to persuade “the powers that be” to free Maggie.

Finally, she was flown to a California sanctuary where she lived for nearly 14 years with other elephants (and bears and big cats) who had also been rescued from inhumane living conditions.  Her move introduced me to the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), an organization easy to admire because of Maggie and all the other animals it had saved.

Since then, PAWS communications have often included news of Maggie settling in, making elephant friends and – finally – living the good life in an appropriate “wide open spaces” habitat, with medical care as needed and love all the time.

Maggie died earlier this week, with special elephant friend Lulu at her side.  She was 41. https://tinyurl.com/2hkfv8x6

It seems fitting that next Thursday, Aug. 12, is World Elephant Day.  

Ralph: 1 of many

                                              Ralph                     HSI pic                     

Animals suffering and in need include their myriad numbers used in testing cosmetics for humans. That’s right: needless, frivolous cosmetics!  Rabbits are among the animals who are involuntarily involved in this cruel “science,” and they suffer mightily, often dying from their “life style.”  

Recent efforts to remind people about this horrific practice took the form of a short film about “Ralph,” a “tester” rabbit who describes his “job.”  I had missed it till now – but I don’t want you to miss it: https://www.hsi.org/saveralphmovie/

Ahoy, matey!  

Cats have long been common on ships, often serving as “mousers” and diverting company for the crew. But one nautical feline in the news is a handsome polydactyl who serves as ears for his deaf captain, Paul Thompson.

                         Scatty's fancy footwork                       Thompson pic              

“Scatty,” a young Maine Coon – the breed Thompson long aspired to sail with on “La Chica,” the 32-foot sailboat he built – has earned his sea legs atop his wide, extra-toed paws.  So far, there’s been only one “Cat overboard!” which Thompson handled with the fishing net he keeps on hand for that purpose.

To get his captain’s attention, Scatty has only to put a paw on Thompson’s knee for Thompson to rise and follow his crew member to the visitor at the door or the boat pulling up alongside.  

Thompson plans a round-the-world sail with Scatty.  What a team.    https://tinyurl.com/3accprws

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‘It ain’t over till’ . . . black bears are permanently protected

                                                                                              HSUS image

“No bear hunt in 2021.”  Those few words brought joy to the countless people who have fought for years to hear them.  New Jersey’s record for black bear hunts is inconsistent at best, from annual-or-more hunts to no hunt. 

This year marks the end of Gov. Murphy’s first term, before which, he made a campaign promise to end the bear hunt . . . and then proceeded to weasel out of that vow with no change at all or easily-circumvented half measures designed to please everyone.  No one was satisfied.  And hundreds of bears died.

Now, with Murphy’s re-election campaign underway, came the recent news of no hunt.  Does that mean our governor has come to like bears?  Does he feel belated regret at the earlier bear slaughter on his watch?  Has he “seen the (humane) light”?

No.

“It’s directly related to our relentless work,” says Angi Metler, executive director of the Animal Protection League of NJ, an organization that has long fought for NJ’s black bears and against bear hunts.   

This time around, among other things, APLNJ

·         formed an active bear coalition with other groups also against the hunt;   

·         assured there were animal advocates everywhere Murphy went, talking about bears and   challenging him on bear hunts;     

·         reached out to higher-up members of Murphy’s staff;

·         argued for bears on billboards and airplane banners.   

“We didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Metler says, adding, “This is the work we’ve done for almost 30 years.  We never gave up and we never will – not till the bears are permanently protected and we’re not bouncing from governor to governor.”

                                                                    Bill Lea image

For her and APLNJ, the next crucial step is implementing a non-lethal bear management plan for New Jersey.  Other states have led in this effort, and NJ can learn from them.

So there’s much more vital work to be done for our bears.  Metler hopes only that a particular after-effect of success -- that some activists celebrate, but then go away – won’t happen this time.  This bear-hunt fight isn’t over yet!  

As for this fall’s gubernatorial election, nothing could be easier: simply compare what Murphy and his rival say about the bear hunt.  That should settle it for all of us who abhor it.    

Babies in the burbs

It’s baby animal season and a recent story about baby-rescuers includes new and surprising details about how deer mamas keep their babies safe before and after they leave temporarily to forage for food. But: what if a doe goes missing instead of returning to her baby?

                                      APLNJ image

In that case, for some lucky fawns in an area north of New York City, members of Animal Nation, a rescue group based in Rye, NY, step in . . . in unbelievable doe-imitating ways.  And they must do so swiftly and silently so the saved baby deer doesn’t imprint and think s/he’s a human. That would make it very hard to release the animal back into the wild.

There are also baby groundhogs, hawks, great horned owls, squirrels, waterfowl, and more, all recipients of help from Animal Nation and its affiliates.  The organization president, Patrick Moore, is an unpaid volunteer who “can’t help helping the animals” – if necessary, treating overflow babies-in-need in his bathroom! 

And there, for instance, he may keep orphaned fawns together, assuring that they bond with their own kind.  

Moore’s also a full-time firefighter who, because of his work for animals and people, may get just 4 hours of sleep a night during baby-animal season.    https://tinyurl.com/3mdfnjah

                                                                                               NYTimes image

 

 

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Creatures great & small -- & a black bear news flash!

                                  

African elephants

Sorry to say, I still don’t know why those elephants in the news earlier this summer were traveling in China, or where they wound up (hopefully, each in one piece, with tusks intact).  China, remember, is the place that’s so fixated on elephant ivory and probably still leads the world in consuming it, thereby driving the poachers who are only too happy to slaughter elephants for their tusks.  That mysterious wandering herd better watch its back!

Elephants.  Both supremely wonderful and supremely threatened creatures.  Sometimes described as more human than humans as far as good qualities go – family oriented, social, complex, smart . . . . Most of the poems about elephants that I know of don’t at all suffice to suggest their majesty, their nobility.  Neither do the quotes about them that I’ve seen.  (I welcome your suggestions on both!)

Asian elephants 

The very best thing I’ve ever heard about elephants is the gorgeous yet heart-rending poem, “The Sacred Elephant,” by Heathcote Williams (read by him and two others).  And the worst thing I’ve heard about elephants is the real possibility of their going extinct in the wild.  That’s painful even to imagine.

Way before today

Today, elephants are found only in Africa and Asia, but at one time, they inhabited the whole planet. Today, elephants are the largest land mammal, while long ago in some places, they had evolved into being horse-size.

Off Italy’s boot, Sicily is just one island where remains of “dwarf elephants” (now extinct) have been found, and scientists are trying to figure out the evolutionary rate of “elephant shrinkage” in such “geographic isolation” sites as islands.   

There’s proof that downsizing evolution happened to elephants and other animals in such places; the question is, how long did it take those full-size elephants to become dwarf elephants.  https://tinyurl.com/27cvh53s

And even before that . . .

Steppe mammoth  (artist: Beth Zaiken)

Before “our” elephants, there were Columbian mammoths (distant relatives of African elephants) -- taller, heavier and with longer tusks – who roamed North America during the last ice age.  They were assumed to have come from the one known Siberian mammoth lineage.

But then, using DNA more than a million years old -- the oldest ever recovered from a fossil (in this case, three mammoth molars, each about the size of a milk carton) – researchers painstakingly discovered a new mammoth lineage after long years of assuming there was only one, which had produced the Columbian mammoth. 

That changed everything.  Continued genomic research ultimately indicated that this newly found mammoth line had bred with the wooly mammoth to produce the Columbian – therefore, a hybrid species, appearing later than had been thought.   https://tinyurl.com/2exmj6rt

 Sound & light

Sing it!  Now that Brood X cicadas have come and gone, high summer has arrived and insect songs have started, here’s a reminder of who we’re hearing, and when.  Daytime: (most) cicadas; night: crickets can start at dusk and make a night of it, while katydids pick up later and can go till dawn.

Katydid

            Enjoy the concerts, which will eventually end as temperatures fall.  

It takes a swarm: In some species, only when enough fireflies gather together in a dense swarm, do they blink together, in near perfect synchronization.  This seems to happen spontaneously, without a firefly leader.  Apparently, one firefly, flashing while moving, can incite other insects to flash too.

Nor are fireflies the only animals who can glow or flash.  Certain sharks, mammals and reptiles also have the gift of glow.  https://tinyurl.com/tf73y3vr

                                           The best possible news for bears

“Good” only begins to describe this news: The black bear season is closed. New Jersey’s Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy (CBBMP) expired on June 21.  There will be no black bear hunt in 2021!  

 

Details to follow in the next post.  Meanwhile, rejoice!  

 

                                                                                                   APLNJ image

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Of monarchs, people feeding animals & a unique farm

Will 30,000 milkweed plants make enough of a difference for the sinking numbers of monarch butterflies who overwinter in California?  Will that targeted number of vital milkweeds all be planted by people who care about butterflies?  (Nearly 500 types of insects also count on the milkweed’s sap, leaves and flowers for nourishment.)

The monarch population has dropped 99% since the 1980s: fewer than 2,000 of them were counted this year, down from 1.2 million in 1997.  Although threatened with extinction, monarchs aren’t federally protected because other species have been seen as higher priorities.  https://tinyurl.com/3hjsujwc

Meanwhile, “East Coast monarchs” are also in big trouble: their winter refuge in high-altitude forests on Mexico’s mountain sides is being destroyed by  “deforestation” – with the trees they rest in being cut down.  That thins out their protection from winter storms, orioles and other predators.    

Together with a reduced supply of milkweed along their travel route and drought caused by climate change, monarchs are in trouble.  Plus, they can’t indefinitely keep moving up Mexico’s mountains!   https://tinyurl.com/yrwr2szy

Human intervention – to plant milkweeds and halt deforestation – could make a difference for them.  If it happens.  

(The tall “swamp milkweed” in my yard has been good for monarchs before, so I’m eager to witness this year’s cycle underway.)

Why do we feed animals?

“We fed and feed cats both tame and feral, sharks, alligators, deer, hedgehogs, bears, pigeons of all sorts, ducks, swans, zoo animals, lab animals, pets, farm animals and more.”

For centuries, humans have fed birds, beasts and other fauna.  Why?

Did they do it to encourage animal domestication?  Or, although domestication usually comes first, to eat them?  (And BTW, the article mentions an ominous connection between domestication and extinction – think: aurochs disappearing, then cattle appearing.)

Is the reason for feeding animals largely practical (you can’t ride a starving horse) or is it “unrelated to any return or investment”? 

Five British researchers have embarked on a four-year study designed to answer some of the questions about humans feeding animals.  For instance, why do cats eat fish?  (Did religion have anything to do with it?)

The study will focus mainly on the “roles played by birds and cats in human life, as pets, pests, wild animals and zoo animals.”  Analysis of isotopes in ancient and modern animal bones will play a big part.      https://tinyurl.com/23fjfrdx

A farm like no other

This NYTimes headline alone should get your attention, as it got mine: “On this farm, cows don’t have to make milk.  Pigs sleep in.”  

Double WOW!  It sounds like hard-earned heaven on earth for animals, which is exactly the case at one former dairy farm in Germany.  There, cattle, pigs, a few horses, chickens, geese and rescue dogs all “co-exist as equals with Hof Butenland’s human residents and workers.” 

The dairy farmer quit that business because he could no longer stand the “brutality” behind dairy cows’ milk production.  Over time, with a like-minded partner, he adopted total egalitarianism for all species living at the farm.

Now, “no animal is there to serve a human need.”  They do what they want, when they want at Hof Butenland, described as an animal retirement home and animal sanctuary.

“If we want to save this planet, then we have to stop using and consuming animals,” co-owner Jan Gerdes says, well aware of how industrial farms contribute greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.  

His partner, Karin Muck, recalls her time in solitary confinement for trying to free lab animals years ago and describes both settings this way: “You don’t see the sun, you are separated from your friends, you have no idea what is going on around you and you have no control over your own life.”   https://tinyurl.com/3bp5eecw

 

Dairy cow & calf -- unusual and idyllic life together 

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