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2014 Operation Migration - Whooping Cranes

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2014 Operation Migration - Whooping Cranes

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Today Show 3:04

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Special program teaches whooping cranes to fly south

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A different type of snowbird is settling in to Florida this week. It's a flock of whooping cranes, guided south by an aircraft run by a dedicated group of volunteers. TODAY's Erica Hill reports.

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WSJ 1:52

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Whooping Cranes Catch a Plane to Louisiana

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Eleven whooping cranes raised at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland are being reintroduced to Louisiana, where habitat destruction all but wiped out the species decades ago. Photo: Scott Calvert/The Wall Street Journal

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Animal Diversity Web

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Greater honeyguides are the largest bird of the Indicatoridae family and are usually around 20 centimeters in body length. Males are on average 48.9 grams and females average 46.8 grams. Adult males have pink bills, black throats, a pale gray ear patch, and a nearly white breast.

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Internet Bird Collection (IBC)

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Crested Bellbird (Oreoica gutturalis) videos, photos and sound recordings | the Internet Bird Collection

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Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive series is the first work ever to illustrate and deal in detail with all the living species of birds.

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Arkive

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Magnificent frigatebird videos, photos and facts - Fregata magnificens | Arkive

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With its extraordinarily long wings and deeply forked tail, the magnificent frigatebird is unmistakable when seen in flight. The massive wingspan enables the magnificent frigatebird to soar...

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Siyabona Africa Kruger National Park

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Secretary Bird | Bird | Southern Africa...

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The Secretary bird is a bird of prey, but unlike other raptors it has long legs, wings and a tail. The single species of its family, the bird gets its

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Britannica Money

Discover all you need to know about retirement, investing, and household finance, without the jargon or agenda. Get reliable guidance, insight, and easy-to-understand explanations, written, edited, and verified to Britannica's exacting standards.

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Explore the fact-checked online encyclopedia from Encyclopaedia Britannica with hundreds of thousands of objective articles, biographies, videos, and images from experts.

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Greater Honeyguide

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Grootheuningwyser [Afrikaans]; Intakobusi (generic term for honeyguide) [Xhosa]; iNgede, iNhlavebizelayo, uNomtsheketshe [Zulu]; Kasoro (generic term for honeyguide/honeybird) [Kwangali]; Tsehlo, Molisa-linotši [South Sotho]; Tshetlo [North Sotho]; Mukaranga, Shezhu, Tsoro [Shona]; Inhlava (generic for honeyguides) [Swazi]; Nhlalala (generic term for honeyguide) [Tsonga]; Tshetlho [Tswana]; Grote honingspeurder [Dutch]; Grand indicateur [French]; Großer honiganzeiger, Schwarzkehl-honiganzeiger [German]; Indicador-grande [Portuguese]

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Patterned somewhat like a gull but very different in flight behavior, the fulmar flies fast with quick wingbeats and stiff-winged glides, wheeling effortlessly in strong winds, often swinging up in high arcs over the waves. In North America, it breeds mainly in high Arctic Canada and on islands in the Bering Sea.

Conservation status

Population in eastern part of North Atlantic (Iceland to Europe) has been increasing and spreading dramatically since the late 1700s. Expansion possibly linked to habit of following ships and feeding on offal. No such increase noted in western North Atlantic until 1960s and 1970s, when fulmars began to breed in Newfoundland, but apparently now increasing off eastern North America.

Family
Shearwaters and Petrels

Habitat

Open ocean; breeds colonially on open sea cliffs. Generally over cold waters, including around edges of pack ice in Arctic Ocean. Also south into temperate waters (especially around European nesting sites, and in winter off North America's west coast). Widespread at sea, often concentrated over outer continental shelf, upwellings.

Feeding Behavior

Forages by seizing items at or just below surface of water while swimming. Also plunges into water and dives (to 12' or more below surface), propelled by feet and half-opened wings. May feed by day or night.

Eggs

One. White. Incubation is by both sexes, usually 49-53 days. Young: Both parents feed young, by regurgitation. One of the parents is usually present at nest for first 2 weeks after hatching; both adult and young can defend against intruders by spitting foul-smelling oil. Age at first flight 41-57 days, usually 46-51.

Young

Both parents feed young, by regurgitation. One of the parents is usually present at nest for first 2 weeks after hatching; both adult and young can defend against intruders by spitting foul-smelling oil. Age at first flight 41-57 days, usually 46-51.

Diet

Varied, includes crustaceans, fish. Feeds on a wide variety of marine creatures including crustaceans, small squid, marine worms, fish, and carrion. Follows fishing boats and other ships and feeds on offal, scraps, refuse. In North Pacific also noted feeding on jellyfish.

Nesting

First breeds at age of 6-12 years. Breeds in colonies. Unlike many related birds, fulmars are active around nesting colonies in daylight. Birds at nest site display in variety of situations by opening bill wide, waving head back and forth while calling. Mated pairs nibble at each other's head and bill. Nest: Site is on ledge of cliff, or hollow in bank or slope. No nest formed on rock ledge, but on soil makes shallow scrape, sometimes adding pebbles as lining.

All Seasons - Common

All Seasons - Uncommon

Breeding - Common

Breeding - Uncommon

Winter - Common

Winter - Uncommon

Migration - Common

Migration - Uncommon

Chuckling and grunting notes when feeding; various guttural calls during breeding season.

Audio © Lang Elliott, Bob McGuire, Kevin Colver, Martyn Stewart and others. Learn more about this sound collection.

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Patterned somewhat like a gull but very different in flight behavior, the fulmar flies fast with quick wingbeats and stiff-winged glides, wheeling effortlessly in strong winds, often swinging up in high arcs over the waves. In North America, it breeds mainly in high Arctic Canada and on islands in the Bering Sea.

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Measurements

Both Sexes

Relative Size

Smaller and more slender than an American Robin; larger and longer-tailed than a Western Bluebird.

Other Names

Pie-grièche migratrice (French)

Alcaudon yanqui, Verdugo Americano (Spanish)

Cool Facts

A Loggerhead Shrike can kill and carry an animal as massive as itself. It transports large prey in its feet and smaller victims in its beak.

The upper cutting edge (tomium) of the Loggerhead Shrike's hooked bill features a pair of built-in pointy projections, aptly named "tomial teeth." Like a falcon, the shrike tackles vertebrate prey with a precise attack to the nape, probably using these tomial "teeth" to paralyze the animal with a jab to the spinal cord.

Loggerhead Shrikes impale noxious prey such as monarch butterflies and eastern narrow-mouthed toads-then wait for up to three days to eat them, which allows time for the poisons to break down. These shrikes also eat the heads and abdomens of toxic lubber grasshoppers, while discarding the insect's poisonous thorax.

Newly fledged Loggerhead Shrikes perform exaggerated, misdirected versions of adult hunting behavior. They peck at inanimate objects, fly about with leaves or sticks in their beaks, practice aerial chases without a target, or chase after their parents. They also perform rudimentary impaling gestures, grasping objects in the tip of their bill and repeatedly touching them to a branch or perch as if trying to get them to stick.

Loggerhead Shrikes sometimes go hunting on cold mornings, when insect prey are immobilized by low temperatures.

"Loggerhead," a synonym for "blockhead," refers to the unusually large size of this bird's head in relation to its body.

The longest-lived Loggerhead Shrike on record-a male-was at least 11 years, 9 months old when it was caught and released in 2010 by researchers in California.

Habitat

Open Woodland

Loggerhead Shrikes inhabit open country with short vegetation and well-spaced shrubs or low trees, particularly those with spines or thorns. They frequent agricultural fields, pastures, old orchards, riparian areas, desert scrublands, savannas, prairies, golf courses, and cemeteries. Loggerhead Shrikes are often seen along mowed roadsides with access to fence lines and utility poles.

Food

Loggerhead Shrikes eat insects and other arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, and birds; they also sometimes feed on roadkill and carrion. Their staple foods include agricultural pests such as grasshoppers, beetles and rodents. Insects generally dominate the Loggerhead Shrike's diet during breeding season, while winter brings a greater reliance on vertebrate prey. These include lizards, snakes, frogs, turtles, sparrows, goldfinches, ground squirrels, voles, mice, and shrews, to name just a few.

Nesting

Nesting Facts

Clutch Size

5-6 eggs

Number of Broods

1-2 broods

Egg Length

0.9-1.1 in
2.3-2.7 cm

Egg Width

0.7-0.8 in
1.8-2 cm

Incubation Period

15-17 days

Nestling Period

16-20 days

Egg Description

Eggs are grayish buff, marked with gray to yellowish-brown.

Condition at Hatching

Naked, blind, and helpless, with closed eyes.

Nest Description

Both sexes gather material. The female usually constructs the nest on her own, over a period of about 6-11 days. The bulky, well-insulated open cup is neatly woven of rootlets, twigs, forbs, and bark strips and lined inside with soft material such as flowers, lichen, grass, moss, feathers, fur, string, or cloth. The nest is about 6 inches in diameter on the outside, with an interior diameter of about 4 inches; the cup is about 3 inches deep.

Nest Placement

Both sexes help find the nest site, inspecting many locations before choosing. Loggerhead Shrikes often build their nests in thorny vegetation, which may help keep predators away. In the absence of trees or shrubs, they sometimes nest in brush piles or tumbleweeds. Average height of nests above the ground ranges from about 2.5-4 feet.

Behavior

Aerial Dive

Loggerhead Shrikes hunt by scanning the ground from elevated perches, then diving onto prey. They also hover-hunt. Loggerhead Shrikes sometimes hunt from the ground, flashing their wing patches in a manner similar to the Northern Mockingbird, to startle prey out of hiding. To immobilize large prey items, the Loggerhead Shrike impales them on sharp objects such as thorns and barbed wire, or tucks them into forks between branches. Caches of prey thus lain away, also called "larders" or "pantries," provide food stores during winter when prey is scarce, or in breeding season when energy demands are high. A well-provisioned larder may also help a male shrike attract a mate. Loggerhead Shrikes maintain territories largely through songs and displays. Males challenge intruders with a wing-fluttering bow, like an intensified version of their prey-stalking display. Displaying rivals usually face away from one another, but may whirl to face each other or stamp the ground. Before nesting, several neighboring shrikes may gather together and call or display for several minutes. This may help establish territories in the neighborhood, promote pair formation, and help new arrivals find territories near already-established birds. Courting males feed and sing to females, perform a ritual dance, and/or perform a flight display. They are mostly monogamous, although females occasionally raise one brood with one male and then take up with another mate for a second brood the same season.

Conservation

Least Concern

Loggerhead Shrikes are still fairly numerous in some areas (particularly the South and West), but their populations have fallen sharply. Between 1966 and 2015, the species declined by almost 3% per year, resulting in a cumulative decline of 76%, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Partners in Flight estimates the global breeding population is 5.8 million, with 82% spending some part of the year in the U.S., 30% in Mexico, and 3% breeding in Canada. The species rates an 11 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, and the 2014 State of the Birds Report lists them as a Common Bird in Steep Decline. Loggerhead Shrikes have been listed as endangered, threatened, or of special concern in several states and Canada, and have been proposed for federal listing (the subspecies that nests on San Clemente Island, California, is listed as endangered). The species' decline coincides with the introduction and increased use of chemical pesticides between the 1940s and the 1970s, and may result in part from the birds' ingestion of pesticide-laced prey from treated fields. Other likely causes of population decline include collision with vehicles, urban development, conversion of hayfields and pastureland, decimation of hedgerows, habitat destruction by surface-coal strip-mining, and altering of prey populations by livestock grazing. Given this bird's potentially high reproductive rate, and provided that adequate habitat continues to be available, Loggerhead Shrike populations may be able to recover if the causes of the bird's decline can be identified and eliminated.

Credits

Yosef, R. 1996. Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus). In The Birds of North America, No. 231 (A. Poole, Ed.). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.

Dune, Pete. 2006. Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

North American Bird Conservation Initiative, U.S. Committee. 2014. State of the Birds 2014 Report. U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, DC.

North American Bird Conservation Initiative. 2016. The State of North America's Birds 2016. Environment and Climate Change Canada: Ottawa, Ontario.

Partners in Flight. 2012. Species assessment database.

Tyler, J.D. 1991. Vertebrate prey of the Loggerhead Shrike in Oklahoma. Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Science 71:17-20.

USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. 2016. Longevity records of North American Birds.

USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. 2015. North American Breeding Bird Survey 1966-2015 Analysis.

Wiggins, D.A. 2005. Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus): A Technical Conservation Assessment. Prepared for USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region, Species Conservation Project.

Migration

Migratory in the northern portion of its range, generally moving south of 40°N latitude to avoid significant snow cover. Loggerhead Shrikes apparently migrate individually and diurnally, moving short distances at a time and feeding en route.

In the South, Loggerhead Shrikes are quite common and you can quite easily find them by scanning fence posts, power poles and lines, and other obvious perches in open country. The species has become quite rare in the Northeast and upper Midwest and finding it there is much more problematic. However, your best bets involve searching areas of rough grassland with scattered shrubs and trees for the bird or for their caches of prey. In the West, Loggerhead Shrikes can be fairly common in similar open habitats. Loggerhead Shrikes also sometimes hover while hunting, so watch for hovering birds that seem too small to be American Kestrels.

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Learn how to identify Loggerhead Shrike, its life history, cool facts, sounds and calls, and watch videos. The Loggerhead Shrike is a songbird with a raptor's habits. A denizen of grasslands and other open habitats throughout much of North America, this masked black, white, and gray predator hunts from utility poles, fence posts and other conspicuous perches, preying on insects, birds, lizards, and small mammals.

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PLEASE NOTE THE TORONTO ZOO IS CLOSED
An update to the Zoo's operating schedule amid the COVID-19 virus: the Zoo and Terra Lumina will be closed until further notice to ensure the safety and well-being of our guests, members, staff, volunteers, and animals. During this closure, minimal Zoo staffing will still be on-site to ensure the health of our 5,000 animals. As this situation evolves, we will keep you updated on our website, Facebook and Twitter.

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PLEASE NOTE THE TORONTO ZOO IS CLOSED An update to the Zoo's operating schedule amid the COVID-19 virus: the Zoo and Terra Lumina will be closed until further notice to ensure the safety and well-being of our guests, members, staff, volunteers, and animals.

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Australian Museum, Sydney - Explore our events, exhibitions, collections and indigenous cultures

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San Diego Zoo website

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In 2002, a secretary bird pair at the Safari Park's off-exhibit Bird Breeding Complex, housed in a large flight aviary with several other bird species, showed an interest in breeding. The pair was seen carrying nesting material to a tree, and before long, they had a very large nest built of sticks, twigs, and grasses at the top of a tree.

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Animal Listings

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A-Z Animals Listing | A Complete List of Animals | Animal Corner

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A comprehensive A-Z list of all the animals archived on Animal Corner.