fangsheath
Well-known member
I think I had seen a mention of Oct from someone who attended Jon Andrew's presentation. I am watching for it.
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Ivorybill Searcher's Forum: Insights and current reports (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter fangsheath
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Goatnose
Inspired by IBW
I also wonder about the amount of water this bird needs given scalings and sightings close to the water line. Also, as was pointed out earlier as water rises insects move up the tree to avoid drowning, but in so doing become easier prey.[/QUOTE]
I am thinking that who we need to answer these questions is a Forester. The morning fog that comes off these swamps and rivers feed the forest and insects. If I remember from college was not this called “transpiration”? Well heck where is a forester when you need one. If thinking correctly an increase in transpiration increases forest growth, straight curve.
I am thinking that who we need to answer these questions is a Forester. The morning fog that comes off these swamps and rivers feed the forest and insects. If I remember from college was not this called “transpiration”? Well heck where is a forester when you need one. If thinking correctly an increase in transpiration increases forest growth, straight curve.
Goatnose said:
curve /kɜrv/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kurv] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, curved, curv‧ing, adjective
–noun
1. a continuously bending line, without angles.
I am beginning to suspect that geometry is different in Arkansas...Land of the straight curve...
Later...
Pileated_MO
Native Missourian
curunir said:
He may get a few more holiday cards this year
fangsheath
Well-known member
Mike - I absolutely considered it, but I am saving my pennies for my trips to La.
Mexican coast
especially South of Veracruz. There I found little pockets of woods in the otherwise somewhat dry landscape. In these I found a few of our wintering warblers like Black-Throated Green, and Black and White Warbler.
That said, w.r.t to driving down there... your American plates would be a tipoff. Better to rent a car with no rental car designations on it.
American license plates would cause a lot of hands to go out, and police will
pull you over, take your license and then say in perfect Spanish:
"Of course you have rights here, all citizens have rights. And to show you
that you have rights, I am returning your license. You may choose to refresh me for your generosity!". Then you neatly rollup 20-50 pesos (2-5 dollars) into a small sliver of paper money, and hand it to the officer in a handshake.
He's made a day's wages. But it felt safer in the vast open spaces of the
countryside where people rode by on mule or donkey, and black vultures circled and flapped lazily overhead. Sorry this is a bit off topic but a worthy travel tale that actually happened!
Paul
The Mexican coast is beautiful and surprisingly undeveloped for many miles,cinclodes said:
especially South of Veracruz. There I found little pockets of woods in the otherwise somewhat dry landscape. In these I found a few of our wintering warblers like Black-Throated Green, and Black and White Warbler.
That said, w.r.t to driving down there... your American plates would be a tipoff. Better to rent a car with no rental car designations on it.
American license plates would cause a lot of hands to go out, and police will
pull you over, take your license and then say in perfect Spanish:
"Of course you have rights here, all citizens have rights. And to show you
that you have rights, I am returning your license. You may choose to refresh me for your generosity!". Then you neatly rollup 20-50 pesos (2-5 dollars) into a small sliver of paper money, and hand it to the officer in a handshake.
He's made a day's wages. But it felt safer in the vast open spaces of the
countryside where people rode by on mule or donkey, and black vultures circled and flapped lazily overhead. Sorry this is a bit off topic but a worthy travel tale that actually happened!
Paul
HASnyder
Well-known member
olivacea said:
I've driven thousands of miles in Mexico in my truck w/Arizona plates, some of it alone or with another American woman in the truck, and never have had anything like this happen. Have been pulled over a few times by Federales and thorougly earched for drugs, which was scary, but always was let go after explaining I was after birds and going to meet some Mexican government biologists, praising their natural resources, showing them a field guide, letting the cops look through some good binoculars etc. Most of my travel has been in rural areas of the Sierra Madre Occidental and I find people very helpful especially in case of a breakdown or flat tire. Sometimes I offer a lift to an older pedestrian looking in need of a ride (there are lots) just to talk. Don't act like a total tourist and you won't be spotted for a sucker.
Jesse Gilsdorf
Well-known member
HASnyder said:
I take it you've been looking for thick bills, raptors or condors? What does the more rural areas of the Sierra Madre Look like? Is there a goodly amount of secondary growth there? Find anything that might even remotely point to an imperial?
HASnyder
Well-known member
Jesse Gilsdorf said:
I have doubts that any are left.
The Thick-bills nest in the highest-elevation forests (mixed conifer and aspen) which are also the former home of the Imperial Woodpecker. Unfortunately, even though much of this habitat is protected from logging (on paper; it's illegal to cut Douglas Fir) the Sierra Madre is very well visited by people doing subsistence hunting, as well as drug growers. There are well-used foot trails everywhere, and people know the forest and wildlife very well. I got a great description of a Zone-tailed Hawk from a hunter who told me he saw one take a parrot: he called it the "aguilita cenizada con una raya blanca escondida en la cola" (little ashy-black eagle with a white stripe hidden in its tail). This bird looks identical to a turkey vulture in the air and I found only one US rancher who knew they were out there among the TVs. Most non-birders living in Zone-tail habitat are totally oblivious to them.
You just don't see much wildlife of any kind in the Sierra - I have seen exactly one bear, one squirrel, one bobcat, and maybe three deer in all those months of field work (in comparable time & habitat in the US I would probably have run into maybe 1 bear/4 months, 1 bobcat/3 weeks, deer and squirrels daily). In the Sierras even birds like jays and robins are pretty scarce, especially in the Tarahumara county around Copper Canyon and farther south. There are thousands of square miles of pine forests with no ground vegetation at all and where the fallen needles are kept smouldering; people keep fires going I suppose to improve grazing, and there is a smoky haze over the whole countryside.
I spent a week flying in the Sierra Madre looking for radioed parrots and while the habitat at 9,000-12,500 feet looks wild, solid and green from a distance, there are little rancherias and corn plots everywhere, many of them dozens of miles beyond the nearest road. We had to stay 1500 feet over it all due to the potential of unseen drug growers anxious to protect their interests.
There is some great forest down to and south of Durango but there were radio antennas on many of the highest peaks, as well as the network of trails, so there was easy access to all of it.
My cousin lives in the southern Sierra Madre and has been very busy tracking down the Pitoreal, with no luck. She's found one old-timer who had seen them and could imitate its call, but that was it.
Edited to add: Most of what I saw looked like original forest, not regrowth from having been logged. The lack of fire management has created a forest that looks very different from US forests to the north: small patches of different seral stages, with lots of very old trees in open stands, crowns not quite touching, very little forest trash below, kept clean by lightning-started fires in areas where people aren't starting fires deliberately.
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HASnyder
Well-known member
curunir said:
Never had a problem at the border either, except on time when I was taking a (female) vet down to do some blood work on parrots, and she had boxes of stuff like syringes, sampling tubes, a centrifuge, etc. What caught the eye of the guy at the border (an officer equivalent to the IRS, not an immigration person) was her brand-new video camera still in the WalMart bag which she had just bought in a WalMart half a mile away. He wanted the 20 or 30% tax on it, but became distracted when my small male Chihuahua-type dog came roaring out of the cab swarming over all the boxes to bark at him from inches away.
The guard was impressed at this fearlessness, asked if it was a male or female, I said it used to be a male at which he looked blank...then I explained the dog was neutered, which left the guard so non-plussed he forgot about the tax. I could see him wondering why two women would do such a thing to a muy hombre little dog...
fangsheath
Well-known member
Jackson mentions grilling a piece of a pileated breast from a road-killed bird he was preparing as a museum specimen. He said it wasn't bad.
Interesting observations on the Sierra Madre Occidental. I haven't been in that part of Mexico and was wondering about the fire regimes.
Interesting observations on the Sierra Madre Occidental. I haven't been in that part of Mexico and was wondering about the fire regimes.
Pileated taste
Pileated's that eat Carpenter ants supposedly taste pretty bad according to my A C Bent book on Woodpeckers. Nonetheless they were offered for sale on street markets, but the strong formic acid taste rendered them almost non-palatable to the author's (not me nor Bent) tastebuds.
I didn't see anything about IBWO's being shot for food in the A C Bent book
though I seem to recall somewhere it mentioned they had a good flavor.
(an awful thought, I know!).
Paul
Pileated's that eat Carpenter ants supposedly taste pretty bad according to my A C Bent book on Woodpeckers. Nonetheless they were offered for sale on street markets, but the strong formic acid taste rendered them almost non-palatable to the author's (not me nor Bent) tastebuds.
I didn't see anything about IBWO's being shot for food in the A C Bent book
though I seem to recall somewhere it mentioned they had a good flavor.
(an awful thought, I know!).
Paul
fangsheath said:
