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February 2011

In This Edition

Docent Reorientation & Recruitment

—Anita Springer

I hope everyone is looking forward to the 2011 season at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. We begin with Docent Reorientation on February 26, 2011 at the Research Station from 10 a.m. — 4 p.m. As usual, bring a lunch. Bob Hamilton will bring us up to date on the happenings in 2010 and what the future holds. New Docent Recruiting will take place in Bartlesville on Thursday, February 24, 2011 at the Bartlesville Public Library in Room B from 7-8 p.m. I want to invite all of the docents in the area to stop by and support Betty Turner in this effort. New Docent Recruiting in Tulsa, OK will take place on Sunday, February 20, 2011 at the Hardesty Library (93rd & Memorial) from 2-4 p.m. All Tulsa area docents are invited to stop by and support Barbara Bates.

I am looking for people to fill the following positions: Docent Scheduler, Reorientation Coordinator and Recognition Luncheon Coordinator. If you are interested, please let me know. Any and all help will be appreciated.

See ya’ there!

Rusty Blackbird

—Nicholas Del Grosso

Rusty Blackbird by Mario Olteana

The cold and snow make it a great time to see northern birds wintering in Oklahoma. One of our northern visitors is the Rusty Blackbird. This is an inconspicuous blackbird which migrates from the boreal forests of the north. While it is snow birding in Oklahoma, and other southern states, you can locate it in small flocks in agricultural fields, grasslands, meadows, along pond edges, swamps and riparian areas. The Rusty plumage is very low key. It is a Robin sized bird with a pale yellow eye and a darker eye patch. It’s feathers give a rusty tinge to the head, back and breast. It tends to forage in small flocks of the same species but it will roost with its cousins the Brewers and Common Grackles. In the roost the rusty feathers and pointed tail distinguish it from the purplish reflections of the Brewer or the green iridescence of the Grackle. During the 2010 Christmas Bird Count at the Tallgrass Prairie we saw several Rusty’s in a riparian area.

Field Observations show that the Rusty Blackbird is neophobic. Neophobia (fear of new things) is the manner in which birds respond to unfamiliar stimuli. Claudia Mettke-Hoffman of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center studied this phenomenon in six closely related blackbird species and found the Rusty Blackbird to be the most neophobic when new objects are introduced into their environment. This becomes important as winter habitat is transformed from farmland and conservation zones into residential and industrial areas while the Rusty is in the north. Whereas other blackbirds are capable of adapting to these changes the Rusty does not. This lack of adaptability has resulted in the loss of winter habitat over the past 40 years. The Rusty is in double jeopardy: in its boreal breeding grounds it is faced with diminishing forests, in the eastern portion of its range, from acid rain and environmental pollutants; in addition to these problems, during the breeding season, Rusty’s depend on macro invertebrates, such as dragonfly larva to feed themselves and their young. They need boreal wetlands to forage. With global warming there have been changes in the ecology of these macro invertebrates. As subarctic temperatures increase permafrost is melting and boreal wetlands are drying up. In its wintering grounds 75-percent of the bottomland hardwoods have been converted to agriculture and other land uses, flood plains have been tamed and this has reduced wetlands. As these changes take place the Rusty suffers. In fact over the last 50 years the Rusty’s population has declined between 85- to 90-percent.

The Rusty is an uncharacteristic blackbird. While Brewers and Grackles thrive with the increase of agricultural and residential areas, Rusty’s are adversely affected. You can think of Rusty’s as forest shorebirds. Invertebrates make up the bulk of their diet during the breeding season. They also feed on tiny acorn mast, or tree nuts, that accumulate on the ground beneath water loving oaks. Studies seem to indicate that the mast provides food when conditions aren’t right for foraging for insects and small fish in vernal ponds.

Now is the opportune time to see Rusty’s. When you’re out birding this winter see if you can’t spot some Rusty’s. You can assist researchers by reporting your sightings on E-Bird.Com. When you report your sightings enter them in the Rusty Blackbird Survey on E-Bird. The Rusty Blackbird is now considered a species of concern and little concerted research has been conducted in its breeding and wintering grounds. Data over the last 50 years has documented a 10.8-percent annual decline, what is unclear is what is causing these declines. Your assistance in reporting sightings this winter will add to the data base and over time assist biologists in constructing a strategy to save this bird. By understanding bird movements we can understand how and where to preserve habitat.

The Rusty Blackbird is a specialist and if the environment it has adapted to disappears there can be only three out comes for the species. It must move to other like habitats but man and climate change make this increasingly difficult. It could adapt to a new habitat but this is difficult for a specialist. This leaves the last outcome, to become extinct. If we can identify the problems we can save the Rusty Blackbird. When we lose a species we are all poorer for that loss.

Bald Eagle Sighting

—Greg Beauchamp

I was with Nick Del Grosso during one spotting of the bald eagle. Unfortunately the eagle was too far off to get a good photo. However, I took this photo and enhanced it through my photo program. It appears more as a art modern painting, but I thought I would like to share it since the image does portray the eagle over the tall grass.

Bald Eagle by Greg Beauchamp

The Birder and the Ominous Rise of Amateur Ornithology

—Nathan Heller

January 2011: For a few days this month, America became a nation of bird-watchers. More than 3,000 dead black birds started raining from the sky shortly before the new year broke in Beebe, Ark., prompting widespread concern about ecological disaster, government conspiracy, and the Rapture. This was not the first time feathered creatures landed recently in public life. Birding, these days, is everywhere. In Jonathan Franzen’s best-selling novel, Freedom, paterfamilias Walter Berglund becomes a bird fanatic to conjure meaning in his drifting life. (Freedom’s cover — maybe you have seen it? — sports a large, teed-off-looking cerulean warbler.) Annie Proulx’s new memoir, Bird Cloud, flatlines into long descriptions of bird watching, wrote the critic Dwight Garner. These next months, meanwhile, Princeton will publish three separate bird guides; Steve Martin will star in a screen version of The Big Year (a tale of pan-continental birding); and the nation’s leading bird-art exhibition will turn 35. If American life is, as some people like to say, a tree of many branches, it is starting to seem a good idea not to stand beneath it…

Continue reading the Slate article here.

Voices From The Past

—Iris McPherson

See more Voices from the Past. We added the back issues for 1996. See the links below.

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

Here is a breakdown of the total visitor counts for this year. There were 6661 total visitors from 48 states with 3840 from Oklahoma. The 3 states with the top representation were Texas (266), Kansas (236) and California (204). There were 48 states represented with only North Dakota and West Virginia missing. There were 270 international visitors from 39 countries with the largest numbers from Germany (51) and England (30).

The history of visitor counts for September-December plus the total for the year follows:

As you can see from the table above we have been pretty steadily increasing the number of visitors each year. Probably that is due in part to the effort all of you have been making to get people to sign the guest book. Of course, that should give us a more accurate count, so that’s good!

Thanks for all of your good work. It’s almost time to start the new docent year, so start your first shift of 2011 determined to at least ask each visitor to sign the guest book. Don’t use coercion, but politely request that they sign and accept the fact that some people will not sign.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Visitor’s Center Latitude & Longitude

Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.

Other Docent Programs

Here we provide some links to other docent programs.

Kiosk Maintenance

The manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning the touch-screen recommend use of a soft dry cloth only. This proved inadequate for smeared fingerprints. Soft-paper kitchen towels work well, slightly damp with a small drop of soft handsoap. Application of a dry kichen towel removes any residual moisture.

Over time, a matter of several weeks continuous operation, I have noticed that calibration of the touch-screen drifts away from the initial set-point. If you notice that the cursor isn’t under your finger when you touch the screen then restart the kiosk by unplugging it from the wall, waiting a few moments and then re-inserting the power plug. It will restart and recalibrate.

This link points to the complete Kiosk Maintenance Manual.

Back Issues

Some printed back issues of the Docent Newsletter, to February 2009, can be found in the two green and one blue-black zip-binders, stored in the Perspex rack by the file cabinet in the office of the Visitor’s Center.

All back issues are available electronically via the links shown below. All newsletters prior to December 2007 are available in Portable Document Format (PDF), which means that you will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read these files. All newsletters from December 2007 onwards are in HTML format that is easily read using your web-browser.

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2003—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2003
1996—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1996
1995—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1995

Newsletter Publication

Deadline for submission of articles for inclusion in the newsletter is the 10th of each month. Publication date is on the 15th. All docents, Nature Conservancy staff, university scientists, philosophers, and historians are welcome to submit articles and pictures about the various preserves in Oklahoma, but of course the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in particular.