THE SHOREBIRDS ARE BACK

In fact, southbound migratory shorebirds have been back in the Pacific Northwest since the last week of June, but it is timely to write about them, as they are probably at their peak at the beginning of September.

The adults come back as soon as their young fledge, but of course some nests fail, and those adults are the first to return. Why stay in the Arctic, with all those mosquitoes and arctic foxes, when where you really should be is on a mud flat in Grays Harbor or a sandy beach in Sinaloa? Some of them are going farther, well into South America, so they had better get an early start for that long flight.

In quite a few shorebird species, one sex deserts the other adult and the offspring soon after the eggs hatch. The majority of these are females, presumably because females have expended much energy producing the eggs, so to balance parental investment, the males are left to raise the young. Most shorebirds don’t feed their young, so raising young shorebirds consists of shepherding them around to feeding sites and warning them about potential predators. It’s still a lot of work (imagine keeping track of four kids when you can’t see them much of the time).

Perhaps because they are big enough to potentially ward off predators, large shorebirds such as curlews and godwits divide parental responsibility, and the sexes migrate together. This is also true of most plovers. But the first Western Sandpipers you see in fall are probably those that failed at nesting, then a large wave of females that have left their families, then the males.

Many of these species undergo body molt while they are migrating, so in the fall we see birds in breeding plumage, in nonbreeding plumage, and at all stages in between. In addition, another plumage complicates the issue. These are the juveniles, young of the year that migrate after the adults. The peaks of their migration are often about a month apart, so in some species that continue south after passing through our region, we see a lot of adults and then a lot of juveniles, but not much mixing.

When trying to identify unknown shorebirds, it is extremely important to place them in a plumage, or at least an age stage. In fall, the adults have very worn body feathers until they are all replaced, and many of them don’t replace all their feathers until some time in the winter. Of the flight feathers, both the primaries and the tertials (the feathers of the inner wing that cover the primaries when the wing is folded) become very worn, and that wear is easily seen. Juveniles, on the other hand, have neat unworn feathers, including the primaries and tertials.

Get out to the coast and savor the shorebirds. You can easily see one to two dozen species on a good day, and identification is much facilitated because they are often in mixed-species flocks.

Dennis Paulson

KINGS OF THE INSECT JUNGLE

Many insects are predators on other insects. Dragonflies and damselflies (order Odonata) come to mind immediately, as all of them eat smaller insects and spiders. But put them up against robber flies (order Diptera, family Asilidae), and they have not only met their match but been bested with ease.

Robber flies eat dragonflies and damselflies regularly, but there are almost no records of odonates turning the tables. One type of predator is clearly superior to the other. I have seen robber flies take insects from most orders, including their own. Size is no limit, as an inch-long robber fly can latch onto a flying dragonfly three times its size and bring it down to the ground instantly with a paralyzing bite. Presumably if the fly was captured, it could do the same thing to its captor.

The two wings of a robber fly are narrow but strong, and they propel their owner through the air with an audible—sometimes impressively loud—buzz. Their flights are usually short, and when you hear that buzz you can often find its source resting on a branch, rock or the ground. They usually perch right out in the open, again like a dragonfly, where they can see potential prey. They have relatively large, forward-pointing eyes as befits a predator.

The thick, tubular proboscis injects venom that is both proteolytic and neurotoxic. The neurotoxin paralyzes the prey almost immediately, and the proteolytic enzymes digest the innards into a liquid soup that the fly sucks out. The proboscis is strong and sharp enough to penetrate the hard cuticle of a beetle.

Many insects are poisonous and distasteful and brightly colored to advertise their unpalatibility. This adaptation must be against birds, because robber flies freely feed on such insects, as do dragonflies.

Robber flies are very bristly. The legs have long, sharp spines to hold onto the prey, much as in dragonflies. The face has a dense coat of bristles, called the mystax, presumably to protect it from the legs and mandibles of struggling prey (but it’s a sure thing that they don’t struggle for long).

Many robber flies are sleek and pointed at the rear, the jet fighters of the insect world. Others are fat and fuzzy, very effective mimics of bumble bees but just as effective as predators. They have been called aggressive mimics, mimicking their favored prey species to get close enough to make a kill.

Fly larvae are legless and look like maggots, and robber flies are no exception. Slim and pointed at both ends, at least some of them feed on the larvae of other insects, usually in rotting organic material such as logs and dead trees or in the soil. Surprisingly little is known about the larval life of this group, however.

With over 7000 species in the world, robber flies are diverse on all the continents. They are relatively uncommon in the wet western lowlands of the Pacific Northwest, just as many groups of insects are less common in our cool, cloudy summer climate. Head across the Cascades to see a lot more of them in the dry, open areas that they prefer.

Robber flies are easily observable, as they are fairly tame, but capturing one in an insect net and looking at it closely allows you to appreciate its adaptations even more. Be cautious, however, as their bite can be painful. I know enough about their adaptations that I have never allowed one to bite me!

Dennis Paulson

ODONATA EMERGENCE – A CHANGE IN VENUE

Dragonflies (including damselflies, both in the order Odonata) are aquatic as larvae and terrestrial (and aerial) as adults. These are very different environments, and organisms need different adaptations to be successful in each one.

Dragonflies, like amphibians, have successfully colonized these two different environments. Some amphibians remain in water, and their immature and mature stages are very similar. Others undergo a dramatic metamorphosis when they move from water to land, for example tadpoles to frogs.

In dragonflies the changes are even more dramatic. A dragonfly larva (nymph) is so different from an adult that you would never think they were the same organism. Each is perfectly adapted to its environment, but they must change radically to move from one to the other.

Most dragonfly larvae spend months, in some cases years, in the water. Very tiny when they hatch from the egg, they begin feeding on other small organisms immediately. With an inflexible exoskeleton, they have to molt to grow, so they enlarge each time they shed their cuticle and grow a new one. Each of these stages is called an instar. Larvae usually go through 10-12 instars before they are full size.

While in the last instar, they begin the amazing transformation of metamorphosis. Within the larval body, tissues are transformed from larval to adult tissues. All this happens while the larva continues to move around, feed, and try to avoid being eaten by some other predator. Finally, the change becomes such that the larva switches from aquatic to aerial respiration. It cannot feed any more by that time, and it heads for a place to emerge from the water.

The larva crawls up onto shore or onto a stem emerging from the water and begins its transformation. It anchors itself in place by its sharp claws. Soon a split appears in the cuticle of the thorax, and the adult within enlarges and begins to emerge. The thorax and then the head emerge, and the dragonfly rests in that position for some time, presumably waiting for muscles to firm up.

It then reaches forward and grabs its own skin or the stem in front of it and pulls itself completely out of the larva (the cast skin is called an exuvia). It is still more or less the shape of the larva, but then it begins to enlarge still more while still soft. First it pumps body fluids into the wings, which had been accordioned into very small wing pads. The wings get bigger and bigger, finally reaching full size.

The fluids then are pumped from the wings into the abdomen, which lengthens greatly. Eventually the fully developed wings open up, and the dragonfly remains that way for a while. Finally it lifts into the air and flies away. The entire process may take only a half hour in a small damselfly, up to several hours in a large dragonfly, but the result is the same. Free of the water at last, the dragonfly undertakes a completely different life from then on.

That life will be much shorter than the larval life, in the range of a week to a few months, but it will involve dispersal away from the water to feed and mature, then back to the water to mate and, for the females, to lay eggs. The cycle is complete.

Dennis Paulson

“TIS THE SEASON TO EAT DUCKLINGS,

Fa la la la la, they’re good for you.”

This just might be the spring song at the top of the Coyote Hit Parade. Ducks have been breeding for the past several months in the Pacific Northwest, and there is a steady supply of cute, fuzzy, edible ducklings. Mallards were first, and many of them have full-sized young now. They were followed by other species, including Gadwalls, the second most common breeding duck in western Washington.

Ducks lay clutches of around 8-10 eggs and incubate them for almost a month to hatching. Incubation begins when the last egg is laid, so the young all develop synchronously and hatch at about the same time. The female leads the ducklings from the nest off to a good wetland feeding area, watching carefully for predators.

She can warn her offspring to hide, but she can’t do much to protect them against the predatory mammals, birds, snakes, frogs and fish that might relish a duckling meal. A duckling might be a snack for a Coyote, a good lunch for a Mink, or an overstuffed belly for a Bullfrog.

The downy (cute) stage in a Mallard lasts about 25 days, and then they begin feathering out and enter their gawky “teenager” stage.  After another few weeks, they are fully feathered, and they can fly at around two months of age; most broods are abandoned by the female then or a bit before.

Males of most species of ducks desert their mates when incubation begins, but in city ducks, it seems that more and more males can be seen with their families, at least early in the season, and one wonders if there are genetic changes happening in these populations.

The males begin to molt out of their definitive plumage soon after leaving the females, changing to a female-like eclipse plumage and eventually molting all their flight feathers simultaneously. The Gadwall shown here is entering that plumage. After their brood has fledged, females also undergo a complete molt, although they don’t change plumage.

Meanwhile, predators are taking their toll. Rarely will you see a complete brood of ducklings. Instead, the numbers decrease week by week until there are often only a few left with any given female. Sometimes females combine broods, raising the level of predator awareness with two pairs of eyes, but the young still remain relatively unprotected.

In any case, all a pair has to do is raise two young successfully in their lifetimes to keep populations stable. Waterfowl populations as a whole are doing well, so those females must be doing something right! Perhaps it’s good that not all those ducklings survive, as wouldn’t we be knee-deep in ducks at some point?

Dennis Paulson

ACCIPITERS IN A MUSEUM

Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus), Cooper’s Hawk (A. cooperii) and Northern Goshawk (A. gentilis) are three hawks of different sizes that are basically quite similar to one another. They are at home in wooded country, where they nest and usually forage. However, during migration, all three can be seen in open country, and all three can be seen at any time flying overhead, above the forest canopy.

All three eat primarily birds, and all three have relatively short, rounded wings and relatively long tails, useful aerodynamically as they chase their prey through the vegetation. All fly with a rapid flapping flight, interspersed with short glides.

The two smaller species, Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s, have become relatively common in urban/suburban settings, where they find abundant bird life, especially where people concentrate the birds by feeding them. So the hawks that appear in people’s yards are often one of these two species. The larger Northern Goshawk tends to stay in large tracts of conifer forests in wilderness areas.

People have trouble distinguishing the species, especially the two smaller ones, and there have been volumes written about the identification of accipiter hawks in North America. These Slater Museum specimens are put forward to furnish would-be identifiers a better idea of the relative sizes of the sexes and species. The study skins were chosen to be representative.

The first photo shows immatures of both species, the smaller males on the left and females on the right for each species. The size differences are quite apparent, and a female Cooper’s is very much larger than a male Sharp-shinned, but there is a steady gradient from one sex and then one species to the next. You can see that a female Sharp-shinned is as close in size to a male Cooper’s as it is to a male Sharp-shinned.

Immatures of the two species differ on average in the markings on their underparts, with Cooper’s tending to have finer, more distinct streaks and Sharp-shinned broader, blurrier streaks, often with some barring on the sides. Nevertheless, you can see that there is much variation. The best mark, if there is any doubt about the size, is the tail, more graduated in Cooper’s (outermost feathers substantially shorter than the central ones).

The second photo shows the same species as adults, in this case with only one female Cooper’s. Note first the difference in the tail shape. There is really no difference in the ventral color pattern. The final photo shows the upper sides of the same birds. Note the difference in color in the sexes, the males with distinctly bluer upperparts, as well as the better-defined dark cap of the Cooper’s. The male Cooper’s on the left is growing in a new central rectrix.

Dennis Paulson