Tag Archives: Birds

How many little birds are there?

It’s kind of hard to tell with the low light, the fuzzy cell phone video, and especially with them crawling over each other. You can hear them, though!

Here’s the video:


How many little birds are there?
Video by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 April 2012.

Probably house wrens. Nesting under the eaves of the farm workshop.

-jsq

Pileated vs. Ivory Billed Woodpeckers

There is some confusion of the Lord God Bird, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker that was thought extinct until the 1940s until 2004, with our local Pileated Woodpecker. They are similar colors and similar size:
Pileated WoodPecker
(Dryocopus pileatus)
Flying: Dark trailing wing edge
Perched: Small white patch
Length: 16-19 in.
Wing span: 26-30 in.
Ivory-billed Woodpecker
(Campephilus principalis)
Flying: White trailing wing edge
Perched: Large white patch
Length: 18-20 in.
Wing span: 30-33 in.
Above illustrations by N. John Schmitt © Cornell Lab of Ornithology

You can clearly see when this bird flew overhead it had a black trailing wing edge: Continue reading

Organic Farming Promotes Biodiversity

Rob Goldstein writes in Conservation Maven:
A new study finds that organic farming promotes biodiversity compared to conventional agricultural practices. While past research has found similar results, this particular study is groundbreaking in that it detected ecological benefits from organic farming at both a local and a landscape level.

Researchers looked at the uncultivated, semi-natural borders between organic and conventional agricultural fields in Sweden. They found that the borders between organic fields had significantly higher plant species richness and abundance. The researchers hypothesize that this is likely due, at least in part, to the unintentional impact that herbicides can have on non-target species.

This is good news and not just for plants. Increases in plant species diversity likely trickle up the food chain benefiting the insects that eat plants (and the birds that eat insects).

It’s always good to see research validate what we see on the ground (pun intended).