| Wednesday Feb. 1, 2012 |  |
Volume 11 Issue 2 |
The Ferocious Coot's Mate
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The dangerous coot that terrorizes all the other coots has a mate. She is very wild and shy and difficult to photograph. It is unusual to have more than one female coot in the marina, but now there are three. The new female is at the top of the picture showing her smoothly rounded feminine shaped head. The ferocious male is in the foreground. |
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Dabbling
Coots "dabble" their beaks in the water to express friendly intentions.
Beaky dabbles to Monday. |
Monday dabbles to Beaky. |
Beaky dabbles back. |
Dabbling is finished. |
THE DISPLAYS AND CALLS OF THE AMERICAN COOT by Gordon W. Gullion is one of the best studies of American Coot behavior but no mention is made of the use of the dabbling display as it is used here. Dabbling is one of the most common mutual displays between coots to show friendly intentions to prevent a confrontation or affirm a bond between mates.
THE REPRODUCTIVE CYCLE OF AMERICAN COOTS IN CALIFORNIA by Gordon W. Gullion briefly mentions dabbling by mates, but puts most emphasis on billing as the initial contact between coots. Billing has not been confirmed here. This discrepancy may be because the coots don't breed here.
Big Boy Feeds the Blackbirds
Big Boy gets a cracker, but he cannot eat it, or escape with it, without the blackbirds getting a few crumbs.
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Big Boy does not want to share his cracker. |
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Anyone with food is a friend of a blackbird. |
Eventually, Big Boy drops a few crumbs, and blackbirds are fed. |
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The Killing
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The killing at the Port of San Diego Marina View Park on Marina Parkway continues in the first week of January. This rabbit is the first victim claimed by the street on January 4. Rabbits are often seen on the grass early in the mornings after midnight. The field on the opposite side of the street (below) had been mowed and the drainage ditch graded just recently, possibly driving the few rabbits surviving there across the street to the lawn in the park. |
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Another young coot follows the fate of the rabbit. (right) Later in the month, two coots both have broken left legs. (below) 
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The crippled coots are impossible to catch. |
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On January 30, another coot is killed on Marina Parkway. The birds had been drinking from a puddle resulting from that morning's lawn irrigation. The weather had been warm and dry in the past week. |
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Terror in the Marina
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The coots are terrified to see a seal mysteriously appear from under the water early in the mornings in the second week of January. Beaky watches for the horror of seeing a dog that comes from nowhere in the water. Coots are terrified of dogs, but nothing is worse than a dog in the water since the water is a coot's refuge from predators. |
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Beaky cries to be fed, but probably in frustration of not being able to eat for fear of the monster. Later, he hides in the corner at the front of the slip, not thinking of getting out of the water. (below) He is still too nervous to eat. |
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Beaky's Revenge
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Beaky stands watch on his quarterdeck at the top of the Coot Ladder. Wearing his uniform of the day, he will constantly supervise, inspect, control, make timely and sound decisions, and is ready to respond quickly to a variety of situations. He is ever mindful of the weather when the ship is anchored, moored, or secured to a pier. Security of the ship (and food) is one of the most important duties of the OOD (officer of the deck) in port. |
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Beaky stands watch at night as well as day, always alert to intruders, enemies, or friendly visitors. His biggest threat is the harmless but troublesome enemy coot that sneaks in before sunrise to steal food from the deck. He chases this bird around every day to no effect. Beaky is often tricked into abandoning his watch, and becomes infuriated when the enemy turns in a circle to return and steal food from the ship. |
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On one morning, Beaky did happen to catch this troublesome enemy and jumped on him to give him a good beating. Beaky has a grip on the enemy bird's neck with his foot while holding his head under the water.
However, as always, the enemy intruder easily escapes by swimming under the water and back to the boat to steal food. This goes on through January.
The Stingrays
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The stingrays are breeding at the end of January. They come up to the surface and try to bite the coots. The picture at the right shows a rising stingray swimming up toward a startled coot at the top just out of the picture. Coot News from February, 2009 describes how male stingrays bite and grip the body of their female mates during courtship. |
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The Flocks
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Usually a large flock of coots makes a very poor subject for the study of coot behavior. They are usually all wild and appear as a random swarm of generic vermin. This often changes during the winter. Perhaps as a result of starving on the lawn for a few months, many of the birds become "tame". Many of them, especially young birds-of-the-year, run up to people to be fed. Intelligent interaction with humans now becomes more important. |
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Monday's Battle
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Monday had innocently paddled around the corner of the inner end of the dock the last morning in January. I heard a rythmic whacking noise and saw Rachel standing on a rigid inflatable boat slapping it with her foot. Having gone about fifty feet past the corner boat slip, Monday was attacked by Rachel. . The picture at the right shows both coots giving the paired display (that often indicates a warning about a territorial boundary). |
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Apparently, Monday had trespassed too far into Rachel and Big Boy's territory, and Rachel did not accept Monday's display as a boundary mark. Monday was driven back around the corner toward the safety of my boat. |
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Monday retreated. She was very excited and giving the female coot cackling and buzzing call. |
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Beaky (right) heard this, soon joined her, and returned toward the location of the confrontation with Rachel. |
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Beaky quickly took up the fight for the male half of the disagreement, and jumped on the first male coot that appeared. This probably was the nuisance male coot who was innocent of any transgression at that time. |
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The Ducks
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A water drip on the docks can attract ducks, and the ducks can make quite a nasty mess. One way to prevent this is to let the water drip directly into the bay so that the ducks have no reason to hop up. |
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Stupid Sign of the Month
According to a Port of San Diego (Port) spokseperson, a sign posted by the Port has no legal effect unless a specific enforcement code is cited on the sign. The sign is meaningless.
The problem is that the Port is attempting to regulate emissions from boat bottom paint in San Diego Bay, but they don't specify exactly what sort of paint is legal to use. The following links give information provided by the Port's website.
Hull Cleaning Ordinance District Code Section 4.14: - REGULATION OF IN-WATER HULL CLEANING
Copper Reduction Program: In-Water Hull Cleaning Policy
The environmental harm of copper oxide in the bay is controversial since its effects are not readily visible. There is still lots of life in the bay, especially the type that the copper biocide is supposed to kill, on the bottoms of boats. A more visible high profile pollution threat is sewage spills from poor city maintenance. The following two pictures show the bay from the naval station south to Chula Vista looking like an unflushed toilet. In fact, there has been substantial sewage pollution in the marina every morning in January. No government agency has a plan to do anything about this. At least it is obvious that nothing has been done to prevent frequent sewage leaks into the bay.
As miserable as this looks, water pollution in the bay is merely a cosmetic defect. The real disaster is loss of the entire California coastal wetlands habitat due to human changes. All the shallow bays and natural estuaries have been either filled and covered, or dredged out with deep water surrounded by rocks and concrete. So much of the natural nursery for birds and fish is gone that almost every resident species is constantly declining in population.
Fighting pollution in the bay makes for good politics, but at best, it is a distraction from the real causes of the current extinction event.
News Links You May Have Missed
(I don't make this stuff up!)Birds fall dead in Arkansas town — again CBC NEWS “Blackbirds have fallen dead from the sky in a central Arkansas town for the second New Year's Eve in a row."
Fed review continues of NOAA fishing cases Gloucester Times “The special investigative master who documented federal law enforcement abuses of commercial fishermen and businesses last year is continuing to review NOAA law enforcement's handling of dozens of cases, lawyers in Gloucester and New Bedford confirmed Tuesday.."
Video: Divers find large, unexplained object at bottom of Baltic Sea Yahoo NEWS “A team of salvage divers has discovered an unexplained object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden.."
MLPA News:
New No Fishing Zones for California Santa Barbara Independent “Love it or hate it, the waters of Southern California just became a whole lot more conservation-friendly."
NOTICE TO RECREATIONAL AND COMMERCIAL FISHERS dfg.ca.gov ?
Lobster fisherman worry about new marine reserves MercuryNews “LOS ANGELES—Beginning New Year's Day, state wildlife officials will start enforcing a vast underwater reserve intended to help struggling marine life rebound, one that will stretch along the 250-mile arc of coastline from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara. ."
Man cited for allegedly poaching lobsters inside marine sanctuary Los Angeles Times “State wildlife officials cited a Riverside County man Sunday for allegedly poaching dozens of lobsters inside one of Southern California's new marine sanctuaries, in what authorities called the first major violation of fishing restrictions that took effect Jan. 1."
VAN ZANT: Forbidden Zone no longer just on Planet of the Apes Press-Telegram Long Beach, CA "Fishing restrictions named the Marine Life Protection Act began Jan. 1 along our California coastline. "
(*Talk around the bay says that nobody likes this Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) law, and California Department of Fish and Game agents may refuse to enforce it. The commercial and sport fishing interests have been having some bad years recently, and this will probably be the end of many of them. Fishing anywhere around San Diego has not been all that good, anyway. Setting out small areas here won't stop the migratory fish from being exterminated at the other end of their annual tour. Some paleontologists are skeptical about the efficacy of small nature reserves separated from each other. --Editor.)
WWF’s Top 2012 Endangered Species YahooNews But what about the other 30,000 species that paleontologists say actually go extinct every year?
Environmental Group Files Lawsuit Over Bluefin Tuna Fishing Policy VINEYARD GAZETTE "Frustrated by policies that increase overfishing, a San Francisco-based environmental group filed suit in federal court last week against the National Marine Fisheries Service, charging that its most recent rule changes are allowing additional harvesting of bluefin tuna by expanding the fishing season"
( The NMFS has been described as "the perfect example of the fox guarding the henhouse while wearing a poorly fitting sheepskin suit" - Editor).
Wandering Albatross Alters Its Foraging Due to Climate Change Science Daily "Since winds have increased in intensity and moved to the south, the flight speed of albatrosses increased and they spend less time foraging"
For Want Of A Shark… Deep Sea News "The loss of apex predators in a reef ecosystem upsets the natural food web and changes the composition of the reef community, eventually leading to the decline of critical reef species like herbivorous fish. With fewer herbivores, algae can become overgrown, suffocating the reef and reducing the number of available niches for fish species."
BP Launches Propaganda Blitz TriplePundit “They might not blatantly lie in the ad, but the true story is far less shiny, and far more troubling.”
Proposed county ban on feeding pigeons lauded, lamented Las Vegas Sun " A proposal to outlaw the feeding of pigeons in unincorporated Clark County had the passions of pigeon lovers and haters on display at this morning's Clark County Commission meeting."
The Urban Wildlife Society (UWS) Web Site Urban Wildlife Society Background information about bird control and links.
Pigeons driving officials coo-coo Urban Wildlife Society Another story about failed attempts to exterminate pigeons...
Huge pool of Arctic water could cool Europe: study Reuters "LONDON (Reuters) - A huge pool of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean is expanding and could lower the temperature of Europe by causing an ocean current to slow down, British scientists said Sunday."
World's Smallest Vertebrate: Tiny Frogs Discovered in New Guinea Science Daily "We now believe that these creatures aren't just biological oddities, but instead represent a previously undocumented ecological guild -- they occupy a habitat niche that no other vertebrate does."
The Navy Is Depending on Dolphins to Keep the Strait of Hormuz Open The Atlantic Wire "If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy has a backup plan to save one-fifth of the world's daily oil trade: send in the dolphins. ."
Global warming: European species lag in habitat shift Yahoo News "While significant engineering goes into designing an icebreaker, breaking ice is based on two simple principles: (1) a sledgehammer is better than a butter knife and (2) two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time,"
Divers Remove Abandoned Fishing Gear Off SD Coast 10 News "SAN DIEGO -- A team of scuba divers on Monday worked to remove hundreds of pounds of abandoned fishing gear off the coast of San Diego that was threatening sea life."
True threats to cod all caused by people the chronicle herald. "The true threats to cod are all caused by people and include directed fishing, bycatch in other fisheries, fishing-induced changes to the marine ecosystem, and the impacts of offshore oil exploration. Attempts to scapegoat seals for fisheries woes are a disservice to the industry, coastal communities and the public.."
7 Things You Should Know About (Nuclear-Powered, Drone-Guided) Icebreakers the Atlantic "Fast-track warming in Europe is making butterflies and birds fall behind in the move to cooler habitats and prompting a worrying turnover in alpine plant species, studies published Sunday said. "
A Molecule That Could Solve Climate Change; What's Killing the Bees The Atlantic Wire "Discovered: A molecule that could cool our warming Earth, what's killing all the bees, fat tastes good, a cancer-processed food link."
Birds Tortured With Beer Can Chokers NBC Bay Area "Since late summer several birds have been spotted in the Bay Area with jagged beer can around their neck."
Bird 'surfing' down snowy rooftop is internet hit The Telegraph "Remarkable footage has emerged online of what appears to be a crow enjoying itself by repeatedly using a small disc to slide down a roof covered in snow "
Environmental research group lambasts GOP field on climate change Houston Chronicle (blog) "The current Republican presidential contenders received a B.S. this week – but not the type they’d get by graduating from college. "
Chimeric monkeys are a genetic mash-up … for science! Yahoo News "...in genetics, the term "chimera" refers to an organism created from the cells of multiple distinct organisms... "
Four-assed Monkey South Park Studios "Dr. Mephesto informs the kids that, according to a Loverboy song, pig and elephant DNA just won't splice. "
DA: State Official Told Butterball Turkey Farm Raid Was Coming abc NEWS "Days before a Butterball turkey farm was raided by police because of allegations of animal abuse, the company had been tipped off that it was under investigation,. "
Animal rights group sues Live Oak poultry hatchery, alleging animal abuse MercuryNews "SANTA CRUZ - A Washington, D.C.-based animal rights group has filed a lawsuit against a Live Oak hatchery alleging numerous examples of animal abuse."
AIce Age, interrupted University of Cambridge Research News "Research shows that a new ice age could well have been upon us in the next millennium were it not for increases in CO2 due to humans, despite the advantageous trend in solar radiation of our current age. ."
Counting crows: Number of black birds on the rise in Bay Area San Mateo County Times "The intelligent, opportunistic birds are in the midst of a decades-long population surge and territorial expansion. "
Suddenly dire cod assessment sends shock waves South Coast Today "a fall survey, conducted by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, shows cod on the verge of collapse and warned that fish stock rebuilding targets would not be met even if the entire fishery was shut down today."
Wasps Wired to Recognize Each Other's Faces Live Science "A species of paper wasp has a special talent for recognizing faces of its own kind, shows a new study."
Study shows humans were skilled fishermen 42,000 years ago rawstory.com "HONG KONG (Reuters) – Fish hooks and fishbones dating back 42,000 years found in a cave in East Timor suggest that humans were capable of skilled, deep-sea fishing 30,000 years earlier than previously thought "
Hundreds of seabirds caught in Cornish fishing nets in just one day wildlifeextra.com/ "Birds are trapped in nets and then drown"
Food for 9 Billion: Turning the Population Tide in the Philippines PBS Newshour "Tonight's story is part of a new project that looks at the challenge of feeding the world in a time of social and environmental change."
New pesticide ban stokes West Nile fears in California By The Associated Press "BURLINGAME - A new federal regulation that bans the use of mosquito-abatement pesticides near protected waterways is stoking fears of a severe West Nile season in California because of the unseasonably warm weather. "
Pelicans and Flying Rays (BBC One)
OutTakes
(Use your mouse cursor to read the titles)
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"Scattered by every roadside, the black corpses of corvids lie, feath- ers ruffled slowly by the wind. I don't regard their lives as cheap; the opposite, only infinitely fragile. The birds who have lived and live here have done so for much longer than they would have lived in the wild, although I am always aware of the ways in which they haven't lived, what they have been denied, either by my actions or by what might loosely be described as fate. "
Esther Woolfson: Corvus A Life with Birds
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