Along the way, as I often do, I got distracted.

Last month I was writing a few words about my attempt to identify a bird on power pole. Raven or crow? Corvus corax or Corvus brachyrhynchos? Their scientific names—binomials, genus and species—piqued my interest.

What did they mean? Did they give any clues as to the differences between the birds?

The two-part names are usually Latin, but sometimes Greek or sometimes something else altogether.  They are standardized so that everyone knows exactly what we are talking about when we refer to that noisy black bird scavenging in the parking lot as a Corvus brachyrhynchos.

I started with Google, but didn’t find the answer easily using a Latin translation website, so I asked one of my local reference librarians who sent me back to the internet.  I kept scrolling and cobbled together what I thought was the answer.  Corvus means crow.  And, from what I could tell brachyrhyncos seemed to mean short-nosed.  But I wasn’t completely certain I was right and, worse, I wasn’t satisfied.

Still trolling, I discovered a book published in 2014 called Latin for Bird Lovers: Over 3000 bird names explored and explained written by Roger Lederer and Carol Burr.  Bingo.  But my library didn’t have a copy.

I published my raven or crow blog post without defining their scientific names and  waited for the book to arrive in the mail.

It didn’t disappoint.  A compact hard cover, it’s the perfect companion to my birding field guides. The definitions are arranged dictionary style with lots of color illustrations and supplemental information—a whole page devoted to the Corvus genus.

I’ve been going through it slowly.  Looking up birds as they appear in my backyard, first in the field guide to learn their scientific name and then in the book of definitions.

Of course, I started with the ravens and crows.  Corvus means crow in Latin and corax means raven, also in Latin.  Brachyrynchos, a two part word: brachy means short in Greek and rynchus, bill in Latin.  That makes the common raven in my back yard the “crow raven” and his smaller counterpart, the American crow, the “short-billed crow.”

The red-breasted American robin that has recently returned to my bird bath is the Turdus migratorius or “wandering thrush.” The midnight blue Steller’s jay with its saucy crest is the Cyanocitta stelleri or “dark blue jay named for the German naturalist, George Steller.”

With its three thousand definitions you would think it would be years before I ran up against the book’s limits, but it happened quickly when a red-crowned, zebra-striped bird showed up at the feeder.  It is known as the ladder-backed woodpecker or Picoides scalaris.  Picoides means woodpecker-shaped, but scalaris is not defined.

Looks like I’ll be on the hunt for the Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names if I really want to know the answer.  Referenced by the authors in their introduction, it boasts 20,000 definitions.  I checked, but my library doesn’t have it.

The Kitten Whisperer

David Schultz as Santa 2015
Photo by Paula Nixon

Sixty-five?  Seventy?  It’s hard to say.  David looks a little like an outlaw biker: pale yellow bandana, folded neatly and tied into a narrow headband; metallic wraparound sunglasses.  He also looks a bit like Santa Claus:  long white hair with a matching shaggy beard.   Underneath the shades is a friendly pair of blue eyes.

He worked as a grocery store manager and landscaper in California before he moved to New Mexico twenty-odd years ago.  These days he spends most of his time rescuing kittens in Santa Fe.

Over a cup of coffee he told me about a family of cats that he had recently taken in.  The three kittens, all with eye infections were easy enough to capture, but the mother had to be lured into a trap.  He doctored their eyes, fed them, and, most importantly, introduced them to the voice and hands of a kind human being.  Soon they were purring when he held them and gobbling up their mom’s canned food.  Once they were weaned and comfortable with people, the rescue group David works with put them in a foster home and posted their pictures and story on a pet adoption board.

Two of the kittens, Macky and Marco, had Siamese markings and found homes quickly, but it took longer for the third one.  Maez, named by David for the street where he and his brothers were discovered, had a fluffy black coat.  Shortly before we talked, the half-grown cat was finally adopted by a family that included two little girls.  They renamed the gangly feline with big green eyes Shadow Maez.

David looked at his digital watch, time to go.  He had set traps earlier in the day behind the Salvation Army and needed to check them.

I followed him over to the deserted, weedy parking lot.  No luck.  The towel-wrapped traps were empty, the food untouched. We saw the tail end of a cat; it paused briefly to glance over its shoulder at us before it slipped away.   A woman from the dilapidated apartment complex next door came to the chain link fence, concerned about the kittens.  David assured her they were fine.  He would keep setting and monitoring the traps until he caught them all.

We walked back to our cars and David opened the side door of his white van.  Wire racks were filled with the tools of his trade:  cans of cat food, bags of kibble, a stack of clean, folded towels.  He pulled one of the long, rectangular-shaped wire traps out to show me his invention—a piece of Masonite with a small hole, about the size of my fist, cut in it.  He uses the baffle, slipped in front of the trap door, to ensure that he catches the kittens first, leaving the mother free to care for her offspring until all of them can be captured.

Before we said goodbye David pointed out his new personalized license plate.  It reads:  CATRESQ.

I wrote this story about David a couple of years ago when I was working with Felines and Friends.  I caught up with him earlier this month at Petco where he was doing Santa pet photos. During a lull he filled me in on the details of his  most recent rescue kittens—Sheldon, Selver, and Saleena.  The three, tired out from playing, were snuggled down together in a fleece bed in the nearby adoption room.  By now I hope each one has found the perfect forever home, just in time for Christmas! 

Photo Credit: Mr.TinDC via Compfight cc

I’ve been spending more time with numbers than words lately trying to finish the taxes so I can get outside and enjoy the first days of spring.

From my desk I’ve noticed a robin hanging out at the birdbath, mostly standing on the edge, sipping, but late yesterday he waded in and had a good splash.

Anne Schmauss’s  recent column in the New Mexican had several tips to help identify backyard birds.  She advises taking the time to really observe the details—size, shape, markings— before opening the field guide.  Following her advice I spent a long moment looking at the robin, noticing for the first time his white eye ring.

Another sure sign of spring is all of the talk of basketball.  Since I don’t have a clue about any of the teams this year (I never really do) I have opted for a different bracket challenge—Mammal March Madness.  Stealing time away from my calculator I have been googling quokkas and numbats, making totally unscientific choices based mostly on cuteness.

Soon our local bears will be waking up and Albuquerque is one city where they are welcome according to this top-ten list of wildlife-friendly cities.  Austin, Texas was rated number one and New York City ten.  In between were some I might have guessed, Portland and Seattle, and a couple I wouldn’t have, Atlanta and Indianapolis.

And finally, do you know one thing that Steve Jobs and Charles Dickens had in common?  A love of walking according to this article touting the benefits not only to our physical health but also to our creativity and problem-solving abilities.

Have a great week and take a walk!

March Madness Mammals

Phainopepla Photo Credit: wplynn via Compfight cc

Sitting in the backyard, drinking hot chocolate, and watching the bird feeder doesn’t seem like it advances the cause of science, but it turns out that it can.  I wrote last month about participating in the annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC)—a citizen science project based on thousands of bird watchers recording and submitting their sightings over a four-day period.

The final results have been tallied and more than 140,000 individuals in countries ranging from the United States to Chile to Saudi Arabia to India counted upwards of18.5 million birds, almost 5100 different species.  The data will be used by researchers to determine the status and health of bird populations around the globe.

In this Yale Climate Connections segment ornithologist Caren Cooper talks about the importance of citizen science, reporting that  “roughly half of the scientific papers she looked at relied on this crowd-sourced data”.

Tiger beetles are the subject of Sharman Apt Russell’s citizen science project that she writes about in her charming story Meet the Beetles (Orion Magazine November/December 2014).  Reflecting on  being middle-aged she writes, ” . . . I do not expect now to ever become a rock star or to go to medical school or to create cool television shows.  But wait, I tell myself.  Turn that idea around.  At every point in life there is still a long list of what we can be.  This is the clarion call of citizen science . . .”

If counting birds or tracking beetles doesn’t excite you, there are lots of other citizen science projects to get involved in.  Two I have recently come across are the great sunflower project which focuses on pollinators and the monarch way station project which helps create habitat for migrating monarch butterflies.

Have a good week and spend some time outside!

I was learning that coexisting with nature in all its wild forms is one of the gifts and lessons of this life, one that takes flexibility and creativity on our part. Coyotes are as clever and as driven as any human, and are simply adapting as people pave their world.
—Shreve Stockton in “The Daily Coyote”

Photo Credit: yathin via Compfight cc

Coyotes are my neighbors.  They run and hunt and raise their young in the piñon and juniper woods just outside of Santa Fe. We all mind our own business, for the most part, but we keep a wary eye on one another.

Picking up my mail late in the afternoon a few weeks ago, I spotted one of the wild canines standing in the middle of the road—less than a hundred yards away.  He was focused on something in the trees and didn’t notice me.  I stood watching him until we were both startled by a passing car.

In New Mexico it’s legal for residents to kill coyotes without a hunting license—there is no closed season and no bag limit.  Two short sentences cover “unprotected furbearers”, a small category which includes only coyotes and skunks in the state’s 137-page hunting rules and information booklet.  This lack of regulation allows the coyote-killing contests for which New Mexico has become known.   Often sponsored by gun shops, the competitions reward the hunter who kills the most coyotes within a designated time period.

There is no doubt that coyotes can be troublesome, raiding chicken coops and preying on livestock.  In my neighborhood their primary diet consists of rabbits and rodents, but more than one house cat has gone outside to nap in the sun or to take a stroll never to be seen again.  Even so, I don’t like to think of coyotes being hunted for sport and many of my fellow New Mexicans seem to agree based on this editorial published in the Albuquerque Journal.

For a moment it looked like our state legislature might pass a bill this session to outlaw the contests.  The proposed law easily cleared  the Senate with bipartisan support, but died in the House Agriculture, Water and Wildlife Committee when, by an overwhelming margin, they voted to table the bill, effectively killing it for the year.

In a few weeks it will be spring.  The adult coyotes that saunter through my backyard in broad daylight will be less visible, busy raising new litters of pups, keeping such close tabs on the youngsters that I’ve never seen one.   But sometimes late at night when their chorus of yips and howls drifts on the breeze that flutters the lace curtains, I’ll listen closely certain I hear the high-pitched voices of the pups chiming in.

Love them or hate them, coyotes continue to adapt to our rapidly changing world, thriving in spite of all efforts to thwart them.

February 13, 2015 7:08 am
Clear and Calm, 35 Degrees

Photo Credit: P. Nixon

Sunrise and I are not well acquainted, but nevertheless, I set my alarm for that early hour on Friday morning.  In the Audubon presentation about bird watching last week, Cheryl advised that the best way to see birds was to follow their habits.  I had my doubts, but dragged myself out of bed to find two cats thrilled that, for once, they would get an early breakfast.

I do most of my birdwatching from my desk, but in the spirit of the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) set up a lawn chair outside, a distance from the feeder and bird bath.  Notebook, field guide, binoculars, steaming cup of hot chocolate—I settled in. My first sighting was my favorite.  The canyon towhee, perky and cheery with his rusty crown, discovered the sprinkle of millet I had put out for him the night before.  He did his little hop, scratch, and bob dance in the dirt up until a spotted towhee shooed him away.

The morning quiet was broken when a western scrub jay registered my presence, swooping in low and squawking loudly as he landed on a nearby piñon tree.  Overhead ravens, or were they crows, glided by.  Unable to tell for sure I left them off my official list.

Thirty-five minutes later I had noted only four species, six birds (the jay had friends).  I doubt that my entry does much for the cause of science, but it was a lovely way to start the day.

Note:  There’s still time to participate in the GBBC.  It runs through Monday, February 16th.  They have apps for cell phones, but I had trouble with the Android version.  I found it much easier to register and submit my count from the website using my computer.  Don’t worry if you can’t identify every bird—I had two at the feeder  that I could not positively identify and left them off my list.