Mark U. Delivers on Another Mystery Plant and Beta Blogger is Up

A Yew Shrub, the berries are favored by many migrating birds, including Rusty Blackbirds and the Trushes.

Mark comes through again.

Mark U. the gold star plant researcher, who identified the Boston Ivy, has done it again. He's come up with the name of another plant that I've been wondering about. It's a horticultural shrub version of the Yew. It has the red berries that are often the first to be eaten in The Bird Park by native birds.

The only time I've seen a Rusty Blackbird in the BP, we don't have the moist ecosystem they prefer, a seemingly exhausted individual suddenly appeared in front of me, landed on the bush, lost it's grip, struggled to stay on the twig, and then began to voraciously eat the berries. Somewhat strengthened by his meal, he flew over to the traffic circle until I left. Then he returned as I was locking the gate, and began to eat more.

As we're speaking of the Yew tree and it is near the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt...the French, the English...Henry V, remember? The decisive victory of the incredibly outnumbered English over the French historically has been lain at the feet of the English Archer.

And what about the Yew? There was a law in Briton that every church yard had to have a relative of the shrub, the Yew tree in it.

Because Yew is the wood of choice, hands down, for bows. The excellence comes from the difference in the inner and outer layers of the wood giving the bow more power and spring. The government always wanted to make sure that the famed English archers, more likely Welsh, Scots, and Irish actually, always had the stuff available to make their weapons.

These days bows are often made of laminated materials which mimic the special layering of Yew wood.

NEW VERSION OF BLOOGER IS UP!

The new version of Beta-Blogger is now up. And it seems to working very well in the usage department but there were some glitches in the transfer from the old program. The comments section has disappeared from the previous entries, as well as some of the entries themselves. The engineer page tells me that these problems are being worked on and the full blog without glitches will be up very soon.

Also concerning comments, there is a new feature of Beta-Blogger. Comments are directly emailed to me, before being posted, so it's a super way for you to contact me personally. Though one might have to register in order to place a comment at all in the new system, I'm not sure. We'll see as things progress.

Donegal Browne

Shipshape Falcon and Chromatic Aberration

First sighting.



How the Shipshape bird looked to observers, and then digiscoped.

Chromatic Aberation is coming soon.

The Long Island Red-tail and The Starlings

Today, Saturday, was spent in Huntington, Long Island. At about 11:30 AM, standing in an open grassy area surrounded by small patches of woods, a Red-tail appeared in the sky soaring in everchanging circles above the trees. She continued on, in what I've come to think, from watching Red-tails in other RT behavioral situations, is an observation mission about prey. She then disappeared out of sight to the north, behind trees.

At 3:11PM, a mature Red-tail, conceivably the one seen in the morning, appeared in the east followed closely by a flock of approximately 50 Starlings. My initial thought was that the hawk was being mobbed by Starlings. But in a moment I saw that wasn't true. There were none of the frenetic dives and individual actions seen in mobbing. The Starlings were following a little above and behind the Red-tail in a very structured, precise pattern. They continued to adjust , to bank and weave in swift formation which kept them, no matter the hawk's flying pattern, just a little behind and a little above the raptor.

Why? Did it give them the best protection in that moment in regards to predation by the Red-tail?

When Pale Male Jr. demonstrated his "on the wing" pigeon nabbing technique to Little, after flushing the pigeons off the rooftops, chasing them into a united circling flock at full speed, he then slowed down, waited for the pigeons to catch up, then turned on a dime in midair to come back at them and possibly procure lunch. But these birds though close behind the hawk, were also above her, always, making the quick reverse move much less satisfactory in capturing prey due to the difference in altitude.

A Red-tail does not gain much altitude without time for the effort of flapping, or in this case by the Red-tail's precise timing of catching just the right updraft at just the right moment of the about face. Starlings being faster in abrupt changes of altitude , the close but above position just might be a safer position for them then some others they could take . That is, if she even knew the Pale Male Dynasty technique of the mid-air instantaneous turn back.

Something to watch. Please let me know if you can add anything from your observations of Red-tails or Starlings to the matter.

Thanks.

D.B.