Matthew Reid: Citizen Reporter

• Review: Silence of the Songbirds

  Bird conservation has been a focus of mine for many years. I remember as a teenage boy walking along the C and O Canal Towpath, near Washington D.C. and watching for migrating warblers in the spring. It was not unusual to see 19 species of warbler in a day during the peak of migration. Now on a good day, during the peak of spring migration, there are only 11 species of warbler. Also the peak off the spring migration season is earlier now.
  
  Those earlier days might include at least one Cerulean Warbler and three or four different Kentucky Warblers. Now you are hard-pressed to see either warbler along the towpath and if you do you will call the "Voice of the Naturalist" and report the details of such a rare observation.
  
  As a young man in Eastern Montana, Sage Grouse seemed to be common where there was good Sage Brush habitat.  Now you are hard pressed to see a Sage Grouse, even if you ...read full post

  
  
  Comments (0)  |  December 4, 2008

• Why Raptors and Turbines Don't Mix

  

  Raptors--a class that includes hawks, falcons, and eagles--are daytime predatory birds.  They migrate in windy areas where, for obvious reasons, wind turbines are best sited. 
  
  Siting these wind turbines so that they pose the least possible threat to migrating raptors is a difficult, but worthwhile, challenge.  The potential of wind power is being evaluated in states like Montana where the wind blows almost continuously and hard in the eastern part of the state, where raptor species like the Ferruginous, Swainson’s and Red-tailed Hawks and Prairie Falcons and Golden Eagles migrate and nest.
  
  During their migrations raptors can either fly high in huge kettles or clusters, or fly in at low altitudes, vulnerable to wind turbines.
  
  Raptors have the tendency to fly against the wind following updrafts right into the sites of wind ...read full post

  
  
  Comments (3)  |  December 2, 2008

• Our Ailing National Symbol--Toxins and the Bald Eagle

  

  I was sitting in my son's living room in Bozeman, Montana two days ago and an adult bald eagle flew overhead, two blocks from downtown Bozeman. Ten days ago, there were eight bald eagles flying overhead and perched in the Cottonwoods nearby, offering exceptional looks at a place called Ennis Lake. In Northern Virginia I saw a bald eagle perched on a tulip tree in Potomac Overlook Regional Park near Washington D.C last year.
  
  Forty years ago you would have been hard pressed to see such a site, even in places like Bozeman, Montana. Now eagles are nesting across the United States, even in large urban areas where they had not been seen in years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have de-listed the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.
  
  In an article ...read full post

  
  
  Comments (0)  |  December 1, 2008

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