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Peregrines (my last post on this, I promise!) and yard Siskins



Hi Carolinabirders,

I want to thank Will Cook for posting the address of the Federal Register 
containing the notice of the proposed Pegegrine Falcon capture plan. I 
suggest that anyone and everyone who is even remotely considering posting 
about this read the Register first; it greatly reassured me that the 
USF&WS does, in fact, know what they are doing. Here's that web address 
again:

http://www.fws.gov/r9mbmo/issues/falcons/gpogate.pdf

And here are a couple of quotes in particular that should set many folks' 
minds at ease, and clear up a few things:

"One management plan will address take of peregrine falcon nestlings in 
the United States. The other will address take of immature peregrines 
that originate in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, and migrate through the 
contiguous United States. These management plans will be developed 
cooperatively by the Service and the States with input from the 
governments of Canada, Greenland, and Mexico."

"To avoid compromising the restoration of peregrine populations in North 
America, our preliminary objectives for the combined plans are:
(1) Protect from harvest to the extent possible, nesting and dispersing 
juvenile American peregrines from natal areas in eastern Canada..."

So apparently the falconers *do* want some nestlings, not just adults. 
And the plan is not to catch "mostly Canadian birds" as one post claimed, 
but a mix of Canadian and US birds. And the planners are completely aware 
of the different statuses of the still-rare Peregrines of eastern Canada 
vs. the more common arctic subspecies, and will take steps to take birds 
from only the healthy populations, so the New Brunswick folk can stop 
worrying about their local breeders. That is, if the project is ever 
actually implemented; these plans are still in very preliminary stages, 
and may never even be approved, and if they are it will be after 
considering the input of the other governments involved. So we can 
probably drop the whole subject until a more complete plan is published. 
Frankly, after reading this, the Peregrine issue sounds much less 
alarming than the following Register article, which authorizes BP Oil to 
take polar bears and walrus incidental to oil and gas exploration... but 
that's completely off topic.

So back to Carolina birds: I mentioned last week some suspiciously 
familiar finchy calls in the trees above my yard. Unfortunately, the 
buggers are far too busy with Sweet Gum balls to come anywhere near my 
feeders, so all I've seen until now has been silouettes that could just 
as easily be goldfinches. But today I finally took the scope out and 
nailed one: Pine Siskin! It was with a group of about 4 others, with 
loads of American Goldfinches all around also partaking in the Gum 
fruits. Also had the Brown Creeper back at the suet, and a skulker in the 
hedgerow that may possibly have been a Winter Wren, but my housemate's 
dog scared it off into the shrubbery before I could confirm it. Oh, 
well...

Good birding!

Josh



Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Zoology

jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/