Biology 105: What do you call a group of vultures?

On our way to our final Texas destination, we stopped for a couple days at Matagorda Bay along the Gulf of Mexico. One of the days was rainy and gloomy so we took a drive to see what we could see. There were a couple vultures flying around and Al (always the Park Ranger) asked me to look up what a group of vultures was called. We found several terms: committee, venue, volt, wake and kettle.

We came around a corner and what do we see but a large group of vultures doing what they do best: eating road kill!

What do you call a group of vultures?

They are a committee, venue or volt when they are a group in the trees:

They are called a kettle when they are a group in flight:

And they are called a wake when they are feeding together on a carcass:

Here are 20 “fun” facts in case you need to more about vultures: http://birding.about.com/od/Bird-Trivia/a/20-Fun-Facts-About-Vultures.htm

The vultures we saw that day were Black Vultures: https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/black-vulture

See….I taught you something you didn’t know!

Ranger Al to the rescue

We got a call tonight as we were getting ready to eat that there was a bird tangled up by the lake in some fishing line.  When Al got there he found a flicker all tangled up in fishing line and grass. For whatever reason the people that fish along the lake seem to think it’s okay to just  throw their line on the ground when they get a tangle. We see the same thing on the beach when we are in Texas as well.

THROW YOUR LINE IN THE GARBAGE!!

This one was easy to get off, but so many times the wildlife end up dying or maimed. I’m not a super soft heart when nature runs it’s course, BUT if it’s caused by a careless fisherman, I have a problem.  It’s just a bird, and there are lots of them, but it irritates me when they suffer because of someone’s laziness and carelessness.

Sorry if I got on my soap box again but it irritates me!

After Al got the line off, the flicker flew off like nothing happened as Tai watched and wondered where he went.

We have been seeing lots of Flickers around lately as they are leaving their breeding grounds to the north (we see them usually throughout the the early winter and again in early spring).  In case you are curious, here is everything you need to know about them:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Flicker/id

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Flicker

Biology 104: How to take antlers off a bull elk (just in case you ever need to know)

We live in a 700 acre county park with cabins, a campground, lake, and a lodge (where Sarah & Craig and Joe & Lauren were married). We also have a wildlife exhibit with elk, buffalo and white tail deer.

When we moved to the park in September 1992, one of the first things I remember is hearing the elk bugling. I mean seriously….how many of you get to hear this wonderful sound from the peace and quiet of your back yard?  If you have never heard it, here is a sample: http://soundbible.com/tags-bull-elk-bugle.html

The animals we have are domesticated and have never lived in the wild. Obviously at one time their ancestors were in the wild, but that was many many generations ago. They are used for education and are considered livestock. They are governmentally regulated to make sure that they do not get released back into the wild. Al has to have a game breeder’s license in order to keep them in the park and he works hard to make sure that they are healthy and well taken care of.

Of course every year the animals breed and you end up with higher numbers than you want. Al usually sells or trades them to other county parks in the state, but this fall we ended up with three bull elk in the pen: a 4 year old and two 2 year olds. This time of year, that doesn’t work so well, because at least one of them is not going to get along with the others.

As they were feeding Monday afternoon they noticed that one of the bulls had an injury, most likely caused by the 4 year old bull’s antlers. It’s intestines were poking out of a hole in his side.

The solution to prevent more of this is to cut off the antlers of the bulls. As Al said “if one gets hurt, everybody loses their antlers because you don’t know who did it”. If everything worked fine each year we would let them shed their antlers naturally late in the winter/early spring, but sometimes even when we only have one bull, we have to remove them anyway to make sure he doesn’t accidentally hurt one of the cows when he’s getting frisky.

So, how exactly do you go about getting their antlers off? Al’s a big guy, but not nearly big enough to go up to an 800 pound bull elk and ask him to sit so I can please cut your antlers off. I don’t think the bull would cooperate anyway.

But he’s a great shot with a tranquilizer gun, and it’s pretty easy once they are in la la land.

You wait for a few minutes to make sure they are out, and then take a saw and cut the antlers off. Pretty simple, huh?

They then darted the hurt one, and the vets came out and did a little pasture surgery on him and pushed everything back in (he got his antlers cut off as well).

I think the buffalo had to make sure that the vets were doing their job correctly.  These are the same vets that have worked with these animals for the entire time we’ve been at the park. They’re pretty used to dealing with them and know just what to do.

They must have done it pretty good, because today the bull looks like he’s going to be fine.

Biology 103: Evapotranspiration (or Why It’s So Miserable in Iowa Right Now)

We are in the middle of a crazy heat/humidity wave this week. Right now at 6:30 pm the heat index is 113°. It’s one of those days when you open the door and can’t breathe because of the humidity in the air. You stand outside for 2 minutes and are completely covered with sweat. (Especially those of us who already “sweat like a …..”).

In Iowa we seldom get much over 90° and 100° would be a record on just about any given day so why does it feel so miserable here? You can have 95° in Wyoming and it’s hot, but it’s bearable. You have 95° here and it’s completely unbearable.

The main reason is the Dew Point, which basically is a measure of how saturated the atmosphere is with moisture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point) . Here is a map of the forecasted dew points for Tuesday (from www.weather.com). A dew point of 75-80° is considered “oppressive” and dew points over 80° are rare in this area, although it looks like it’s going to be that high tomorrow.

The Dew Point gives the best calculation of the Heat Index. The Heat Index is the “feel like” temperature, or how hot it feels outside (much like wind in the winter gives you a Wind Chill that makes it feel colder than the actual temperature). I found a Heat Index Calculator here: http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/heatindex.shtml, then looked up Wyoming & Iowa to compare since today we had comparable temps.

Wyo: temp 97°, humidity: 21%, dew point: 52°, Heat Index 94°

Iowa: temp 95°, humidity: 60%, dew point: 79°, Heat Index: 113°

How can that be? The temperature in Wyoming is higher, but it’s unbearable in Iowa.

I found an article today that explains it. Basically when you have low humidity and high temps you sweat but it evaporates and cools you down. Your body temp doesn’t raise that much. With high heat & high humidity you sweat and sweat but since the air is also wet, your body can’t evaporate the sweat, and subsequently can’t cool down which can lead to heat stroke or heat exhaustion very quickly.

But why is it more humid here? You expect it to be humid on the Gulf Coast, Florida and the southern East Coast, but why in the Midwest? Simply put: it’s all the corn! The corn (along with all the other plants) release water vapor into the air.  We don’t have the ocean, but we do have PLENTY of corn.

From www.weather.com: “Evapotranspiration is the total amount of water that is transferred from the earth's surface to the atmosphere. It is made up of the evaporation of free water surfaces (lakes, rivers, soil moisture, etc.) plus the transpiration from plants. Evaporation of water from soil with high moisture content (due to passing thunderstorm complexes) and the transpiration of water from tens of thousands of acres of a mature corn crop contribute to an atmosphere that is sopping wet “

If you are interested, here is the full article: http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/evapotranspiration-corn-belt-humidity_2011-07-13

Did you learn anything new?

Biology 102

Geometrid Caterpillar or “geometer, earth-measurer”.

I was out on the deck the other night and saw a cool bug, thought you might enjoy him as well. From my research I THINK he is a Geometrid Stick Caterpillar. He was larger than the normal (around 2” long) inch worms we see around here, and looked just like a stick. He was pretty cool to watch.  I couldn’t find out exactly which one he was, but I think I at least have the right family.

They get their name from their locomotion, or the way they move along like this:

They mostly eat leaves and thankfully do not like tomatoes! (ok….I just made that up, but I HOPE they don’t like them, we have enough trouble with the tomato horn worms. We don’t need anything else eating them)

They turn into a very non-descript moth, which we have plenty of around our house.

In case you are interested in more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometridae

and http://bugguide.net/node/view/43986/bgimage

I got a quick video of him doing his “locomotion”.

Biology 101

Last year Matt said “no more biology lessons…..only blog about people, friends, family”. But the problem with that is we live in a wildlife reserve. We are surrounded by “biology”. I can’t help but share what’s going on, even if it is biology. So I’m going to ignore him for a bit and give a lesson to you anyway (sorry Matt, don’t read it!:)

A few years ago the county built a few ponds around the park to stop the silt from the farmland surrounding the park from getting into the main lake and filling it up. We have one of these ponds right by the house.

We can sit on the deck and watch wildlife around the pond every day. We see deer and their new fawns, turtles (we have a new turtle nest right next to the deck…..we watched the mother lay her eggs the other night and now are just waiting for them to hatch), egrets, herons, muskrats, eagles, turkeys, bullfrogs, geese and ducks at or near the pond regularly. The most common one is the Canadian Goose. 

We had several pairs hatch their eggs in early-mid May around the pond, and have watched the goslings grow. I have picture after picture of them, sometimes clear up to the driveway, getting bigger by the day.

The parents teach them what to eat and teach them how to clean themselves in the water. They were doing that this morning. They would go under the water for several feet then come back up. Almost like they were just playing.

I really enjoy watching them.

But geese are pretty fertile creatures. Even with the raccoons and mink that raid the nests every year, you still have too many geese. If they are where people are, you end up with trouble. The people start feeding them, and the geese end up everywhere exactly where you don’t want them.  Our park just can’t have the high numbers of geese that come back every year. 

So the DNR came today to transplant several of the geese to a different area that can handle the higher numbers of geese. The young ones will return to nest every year from the place where they learn to fly from, so they transplant them before the goslings have learned to fly.

They have moved geese from here for several years, but this is the first year that I could actually watch….they were doing it in my front yard! I stood on the deck and just watched (and snapped photos).

It wasn’t too spectacular really…..they just snuck up on the geese and herded them where they wanted them to go. Since the young can’t fly yet, the parents won’t leave them, so it’s fairly easy to herd them (although I just found out that the parents are molting right now and couldn’t fly anyway…..maybe it’s not that they want to stay with their babies!).

 

They just pushed them down a mowed trail toward the road into an already set up catch-pen.

They then loaded them into box in the back of a pickup to transport them.  They left one pair with very young goslings here, but took 25 of the rest of them to Otter Creek Marsh, which is an Iowa State waterfowl refuge an hour south of here that can handle the higher numbers.

That ends the lesson for today……. did you learn anything new?

(I bet you read it all the way through even though you didn’t want to….didn’t you Matt?)