Parrots and Palms

Christian churches throughout the world celebrate Palm Sunday by distributing palm fronds to the faithful. In Columbia, the palm of choice is the national tree, the Quindío wax palm. Harvesters typically cut down the entire wax palm tree, including some that are 200 years old. They then strip the palm of fronds, and sell the fronds for church use.

This is bad news for Colombia’s critically endangered yellow-eared parrots, which nest only in the Quindío wax palm and also eat its fruit. The yellow-eared parrot looks something like a green and yellow macaw. Its name comes from yellow ear patches that are part of a mask-like band of yellow across its head. There are only about 660 of the parrots left.

The conservation campaign to save the parrots and the palms may be the most successful in Columbia’s history. The country banned the harvest of wax palms, and even rebel guerillas enforce the sanction. Thanks to the palms and the parrots, in Columbia today celebrating the environment has become a part of Easter.

A similar campaign began this year in Ecuador to preserve that country’s wax palms and its increasingly-rare golden-plumed parakeet.

This year Palm Sunday is on April 1.

Snow Day

This winter, I have been treated to an amazing sight several times a week. A barred owl and a red-tailed hawk have been hanging out near one of the farms down the road from my house.

They perch in trees near the road or on the powerline that overlooks the pond. (I’m guessing that the fact that it overlooks a pond is just a coincidence. Fields surround the pond.)

I don’t recall seeing a hawk in my neighborhood over the winter, but this has been a very unusual winter: it was warm until the end of January. We had some snow, but it barely covered the ground.

I suspect the hawk hung around because the mice and voles in the field were easy pickings with not enough snow to hide under. Think about it – in winter, even the grass is mashed flat on the ground. There were not many places for even a mouse to hide.

And yes, after the Valentine’s Day Blizzard, that is “were easy pickings.” No more.

We had less than two feet of snow here, but that is still plenty of room for a mouse or vole to tunnel in and stay safer from hawks and owls than the bare ground.

It has definitely been a mixed winter for small rodents. There have been plenty of nuts and seeds for them to munch on, but until last week, few places for them to hide from their predators. I guess it’s been a good winter for eaters, but a poor winter for the eaten.

I have seen the owl since the big snow, but not the hawk. Perhaps I have just missed the hawk, since I’m not spending as much time driving up and down that road as I usually do. Or perhaps the hawk has flown off in search of a snowless field somewhere else, somewhere where the balance still favors the eaters over the eaten.

Pick-up Sticks, Bald Eagle Style

On a recent Sunday morning I found my self perched on the side of a hill overlooking the Connecticut River.

Two Audubon volunteers and two Vermont Fish and Wildlife employees were there to look for sticks. Specifically, they were there to look for sticks between one inch and three inches in diameter, and one foot to eight feet long. Sticks of this size are what bald eagles use to make their nests.

A pair of bald eagles had nested on the hillside last summer. They were the first pair of bald eagles to successfully nest in Vermont in at least 50 years, and possibly more. But in the fall, the towering pine that held their nest fell. Bald eagles can take an entire summer to build a nest. The Fish and Wildlife department was eager to keep the eagles in Vermont (tempting nest sites lie just across the river in New Hampshire) and to keep this pair nesting to help restore bald eagles to the region.

The two Fish and Wildlife employees used their chainsaws to remove some saplings. Raccoons had raided the previous nest, perhaps by climbing similar saplings. One Audubon volunteer scoured the ground around the nest site for sticks of the desired size. The other went to the top of the hill where fallen tree limbs had accumulated – partially due to logging, and possibly due to wind at the edge of a clearing.

It was time for a little participatory journalism.

I climbed the hill and found piles of tree branches of the correct size. But how to move them to down the hill to the nest site?

First, I tried the obvious. I picked up one branch, about six feet long and two inches in diameter and walked down the steep slope. It was tough going. The branch got caught in the trees I passed. Walking with the large stick threw me off balance.

I tried to imagine myself as an eagle, trying to fly with this strange load. Would my grip be stronger as an eagle than as a human? I suspect it might be, to grasp flailing fish. How difficult would lifting this stick in the air be, even if I had a seven foot wingspan? I could only imagine myself in need of a snack and a nap when I was done.

It’s no wonder to me that the eagles can take an entire summer to build their nest.