The Essentials

Friends, family, ornithologists and bird lovers across the country – including those of us who didn’t know of him until this week – are mourning the passing of a golden eagle named Ithaca.

The eagle, who hatched at Cornell on May 13, 1972, was the second of three eagle chicks bred through artificial insemination by then Cornell graduate student Jim Grier. Grier and his wife, Joyce, raised Ithaca at home with their own children; and the bird of prey became a celebrity of sorts, appearing on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” in 1977 and a host of news features afterward. Grier, who joined the North Dakota State University faculty in 1973, frequently brought Ithaca to classes and presentations there.

Ithaca contracted West Nile virus in 2002, and he was euthanized Sept. 29, 2009, because of complications of that illness.

“It is sad that he encountered and suffered from the virus, that we lost him, and that he died so young (only 37 years old – he otherwise probably would have lived many more years and I expected that he would outlive me),” Grier writes on his Web site. “As a biologist, however, I’m familiar with life (and death) and understand that it’s all in the nature of biology.”

- Lauren Gold

An update: Following the news of the death of Ithaca, a Native American name was bestowed on Grier by an Oklahoma group of Numu (Comanche) Native Americans. “The name they conferred on me is ‘Queeni Phuakat,’ pronounced with accents on the capital letters, ‘Kwee-Nigh poo-Ha-Cot,’” Grier says. “The name essentially means ‘he who carries eagle medicine/power/knowledge’ or ‘he who understands and cares for eagles.’”

When Cornell Lab of Ornithology founder Arthur Allen and colleagues recorded the call of the ivory-billed woodpecker in 1935, they made history. To this day it is the only confirmed recording of the bird.

That historic recording is now part of the National Recording Registry maintained by the Library of Congress. The registry was created by Congress in 2000, “to maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

In 1935 Allen launched an expedition to document vanishing North American bird species. His team, including Cornell ornithologists Peter Kellogg, George Sutton and James Tanner, found and recorded a pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers in an area of old-growth forest in Louisiana called the Singer Tract.

The Allen ivory-bill recordings are still being used by scientists conducting the first range-wide search for any remaining ivory-bills throughout the southeastern part of the United States. The recordings have been used to train searchers in what to listen for, to compare with new recordings made in the field, and to develop pattern-recognition software so that computers can scan thousands of hours of field recordings to find similar sounds.

“The superb recordings of the ivory-billed woodpecker made by Arthur Allen and co-workers in 1935 might be the most famous natural sound recordings ever made,” says Cornell Lab director Dr. John Fitzpatrick. “The haunting sounds of this majestic woodpecker have become tragic symbols of biodiversity loss.”

- Pat Leonard

When Oscar the bobcat was brought to the Janet L. Swanson Wildlife Health Center in mid-June with a broken femur and pelvis – he’d been hit by a vehicle in the Albany area – his survival was severely threatened.

The bobcat quickly transferred to the Cornell University Hospital for Animals, and with financial support from the Feline Health Center, the CUHA and the Janet L. Wildlife Health Center, the cat underwent orthopedic surgery June 19.

During the three-hour operation, surgeons Stuart Bliss and Heather Knapp-Hoch removed part of Oscar’s femur and stabilized the fractured portion of the pelvis with a steel plate and seven screws.

“Not only was the cat in pain, but his ability to survive as a functioning, highly athletic, predatory animal depends on a successful surgical outcome,” said Knapp-Hoch, a resident with the small animal surgery unit at the CUHA. “Removing the fractured head of the femur will prevent the development of painful and debilitating arthritis of the hip, and stabilization of the pelvis with the steel plate is intended to accelerate the cat’s recovery and enhance his long-term mobility.

“This was an excellent opportunity to focus on finding the best surgical method to preserve the animal’s ability to run and jump, while at the same time minimizing the chance of long-term complications,” she said. “His ability to live in the wild will depend upon both.”

Oscar is now recovering at the New York Wildlife Rescue Center in Middleburgh, N.Y. Surgeons expect his recovery time to be between six and eight weeks.

To monitor Oscar’s recovery, visit http://www.nywildliferescue.blogspot.com

When Hemlock woolly adelgids – aphid-like invasive insects that devastate hemlocks – were found in Cornell Plantations’ Cascadilla Gorge and Beebe Lake natural areas, Cornell Natural Areas staff members quickly trained more than 120 volunteers to scour Cornell and adjacent privately owned lands in the Ithaca area.

After volunteers spent over 250 hours surveying nine sites covering 568 acres, adelgids were found in only one additional Cornell Plantations site – on hemlocks in the Edwards Lake Cliffs Natural Area north of Lansing, near the shore of Cayuga Lake. That was encouraging, said Natural Areas director Todd Bittner.

“Now it is clear that we’re going to have a lot of hemlock woolly adelgids right around the lakes, but we have not yet found them far from the lakes due to the adelgids’ winter cold intolerance,” Bittner said. The lakes create warmer winter microclimates near their shores, which reduce the bitter cold that normally kills adelgids, he added.

Cornell Natural Areas staff and entomologists are also experimenting with different treatment methods, including the first release of a heavily researched biocontrol predatory beetle from Idaho.

A gray catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) found itself in the catbird seat May 19 when it was captured and released at the Appledore Island Migration Banding Station – making it the 100,000th bird banded at Appledore.

The station is part of the Cornell- and University of New Hampshire-operated Shoals Marine Lab in the Gulf of Maine, six miles off the coast of Portsmouth, N.H., where thousands of migrating songbirds stop over each year. The resting spot is an ideal location for researchers to study the migration and stopover ecology of neoarctic-neotropical migrants.

More than 131 species have been banded at Appledore since 1981. On one notable day in May 1985, nearly 600 birds were captured and released.

Many birds banded on Appeldore have been sighted far afield. One northern waterthrush, for example, was banded on Appledore in August 1992 and caught again by a bird-bander in Venezuela in October 1994.

Rich wetlands, ponds, streams, rivers and lakes make Ithaca a major attraction for great blue herons. These glorious 4-foot-tall birds (weighing only about 5 pounds) fly as far as 25 miles to get from nest to fishing site.

Two birds fishing in the big pond in Sapsucker Woods have apparently decided to dispense with the commute. They built a nest in a huge snag above the pond, under the watchful eyes of staff and students at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The birds were first reported bringing sticks to the snag April 30; within days, they were observed weaving in new sticks, and by May 8, one or the other bird was spending time hunkering down in the nest.

These two birds are on full display to anyone who visits. It takes about 27 days for the eggs to hatch, so by the middle of June the chicks should be visible. Check out the excellent views from the visitor’s center or upstairs in the Adelson Library.

- Laura Erickson

On May 9 the nation’s top teams will compete in the World Series of Birding, a manic midnight-to-midnight birding blowout to find the most bird species in New Jersey. Team Sapsucker (the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s team) and the Redheads (a student team named for the Cornell Big Red) are aiming to win and break the record they set last year for the most funds raised for conservation.

Last year, the Cornell teams raised $200,000, more than any other group in the event’s history. The donations funded an expedition to Peru, where Cornell undergraduates contributed new information on birds and brought attention to conservation needs; and also helped advance technology for detecting the calls of birds migrating at night – a valuable source of information in conservation decisions, such as where to site wind turbines to minimize impact to wildlife.

Watch a video about Team Sapsucker and make a gift in support of bird conservation at www.BigDay09.org.

Spring’s here, the birds are coming back . . . and volunteer docents at the Lab of Ornithology will be leading two weekly bird walks at Sapsucker Woods in April and May.

Beginner bird walks, 9 a.m., Saturdays and Sundays during April: leisurely guided walks, from 60-90 minutes long.

Bird before work at Sapsucker Woods, 8 a.m. Wednesday mornings through April and May: hour-long guided walks for beginner birders.

All walks meet in front of the Visitors’ Center. Dress for the weather; bring binoculars and field guide (if you have them).

Cornell has been providing individuals with garden space since the Victory Gardens of World War II. The university donates land on Freese Road (off Hanshaw Road) to individuals who want garden plots. A rental fee covers plowing the land, water, compost, advertising and supplies. Gardeners can use the land from late April until late October. Each garden plot is 20 x 25 feet and costs $18 for the season. Rent as many plots as you like by sending a self- addressed, stamped envelope to Cornell Garden Plot Committee, P.O. Box 871, Ithaca, NY. 14851.

A short video highlighting artist Todd McGrain’s “Lost Bird Project” is being shown at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology through the end of March. The video follows McGrain’s project for casting five extinct bird species (passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, heath hen, great auk and Labrador duck) in 6-foot-tall bronze sculptures. McGrain, an associate professor of art at Cornell, wants these larger-than-life figures to jog our collective memory about creatures missing from the world because of human carelessness. The exhibit will be on display through March 10 in the Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. Visit here.