Robins-to-be

This is the nest that the robin built on a roll of electrical wire. Last weekend the nest was empty, and by Monday there was one egg. Tuesday there were two eggs, and by Thursday there were three. I took the photo of the eggs then. By the end of the week, the robin had laid another egg, for a grand total of four.

She’s been afraid to enter her nest when we’re out on the porch, but she’s going to have to get used to us being there. Yesterday we moved the box away from the corner of the porch so that it’s almost underneath the bathroom window. I thought I could be clever and take photos of the robin and her brood from inside the house. I went into the bathroom and looked through the venetian blinds. I don’t know if she heard me, or else she has really, really good eyesight, but the robin immediately looked up at me when I got near the window. And I thought I was being quiet!

I looked up some robin information, and found out that the Latin name for them is Turdus migratorius. No, that isn’t a joke! The Latin word turdus means “thrush,” and the American Robin is actually a species of thrush rather than a separate species.

Robins will eat fruit as well as insects and worms, but they’re frequently seen hopping through the grass looking for earthworms. It’s a common misconception that robins can hear worms moving about underneath the ground. When they stand with their head inclined to the side, they are actually just looking at the ground.

Because their eyes are on the side of their heads, robins have a very wide range of vision, but they don’t see very well directly in front of them. Their binocular vision is limited — unlike humans, cats, or owls — which have eyes on the front of their faces rather than off to the side. The robins can’t move their eyes the way we can, either, so they have to move their whole head. It’s just easier for them to look at the ground with one eye, and this is why they tilt their heads.

Location, location, location

I think robins take the prize in being some of the dumbest birds on the planet. Now, I like robins — at least to look at them and hear them sing, anyways. But they are incredibly messy and dumb. No other bird species in our neighborhood is as responsible for as many trips to the local car wash. I’m beginning to think the car wash franchises have found a way to bribe the darn critters into doing their “dirty” work for them! And as for dumb — what other bird builds its nest a couple of feet off the ground, in a loop of wire, on someone’s porch? And then has the audacity to squawk every time a human walks by?

We just finished some major house renovations last fall, which included converting the existing front and back porches to a new three-quarter wrap-around porch. With the arrival of spring, the robins have taken it upon themselves to use our banister railings as a “poop” deck, literally. Since we’ve been waiting for the warmer weather to get out and paint or stain the new porch, I’m worried about having to keep cleaning off this acid rain before the wood bursts into flame.

But that’s not the worst of it, yet. Ben cleaned out his work truck and we have some boxes temporarily stored on the porch while we look for other homes for them. One of these boxes is a plastic milk crate containing several small cardboard boxes and a roll of electrical wire, which is resting on its side in a large loop.

And guess what? We discovered a bird’s nest on the wire. Yep, a robin has found a way to weave its nest so that it rests on the wire, just above the top of the plastic crate. I’ve got to say, though, the robin did some mighty fine nest-building. I just have to wonder at the bird’s sanity.

Now, I can understand the incredibly desirable location — after all, it’s got a nice roof to keep the rain off the bird’s nest, and being right up next to our house at least shields the nest from the worst of the wind. I suppose that helps keep it warmer, too. But I can’t really understand why a bird builds its house so low to the ground (or in this case, the porch floor). We have cats, opossums, raccoons, rabbits, and the occasional unleashed dog running rampant through our yard. I’ve also seen a bald eagle fly over the yard. But maybe that explains it; the eagle is probably the most fearsome predator of any of these animals.

We were going to oust the nest before the robin got too cozy, and we didn’t see any signs that the nest was being lived in. Ben thought that he had frightened the robin away when he went out on the porch the other day. But then Tuesday I went out to the side porch and there was a robin sitting on the nest. It promptly flew away when I got within ten feet of the nest, but then sat on the banister and yelled at me. And pooped.

On Tuesday there was one little blue egg in the nest. Yesterday, there were two eggs. And also yesterday, we got some nice porch furniture, which we aren’t going to ignore just because of a bird.

The next few weeks are going to be interesting, as we see how the robin family is going to adjust to having humans in its front foyer. Neither of us wants to just toss the nest away, and there’s no place that we can easily relocate it to without either breaking the nest apart or scaring the parent bird away for good. No matter how messy they are, the robins will help keep the mosquito population under control, so I’m going to be needing their help pretty soon. They’re welcome in our yard; I just wish they’d stayed in the yard!

Right now the crate is at the back corner of the house, but I’m thinking of pushing it along the porch until it’s just below the bathroom window. Then, I can look out the window and photograph the birds from inside the house. Is that lazy nature photography, or what? Bookmark this page; I’ll have some photos to post of the nest and the eggs to post later this week.

Year of the Frog

A behind-the-scenes visit to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. allowed us to come face to face with these White’s Tree Frogs, which are housed in the zoo’s Reptile Discovery Center. They look a little bit like buddha statues, and when I saw three of them sitting all together like this, I laughed.

Photo copyright Bennett S. Garvin.

But there’s not a lot of reason to laugh about frogs these days, because many of the world’s amphibians are threatened species. For the last thirty years or so, scientists have noticed a drastic decline in frog populations worldwide. During that time period, as many as 122 species of frogs may have become extinct.

The causes of the extinctions and population declines were considered to be loss of habitat due to human development, pollution, invasive plant and animal species that crowded out the native frogs, and climate change. But in the 1990s, scientists discovered a fungus that may be repsonsible. This Chytrid Fungus, and it causes a disease called chytridiomycosis in amphibians. In short, many of the animals are dying because they’re sick.

Some scientists think that the chytrid fungus originated in Southern Africa and was transmitted unknowingly by the frog trade. Since the 1930s, frogs such as the African clawed frog have been used in biomedical research and testing. Frogs were collected in the wild and shipped to laboratories around the world. And they took the chytrid fungus with them. Some of these frogs escaped from captivity and infected the local amphibian populations, which had little or no resistance to the fungus.

This is not to say that habitat loss and pollution issues aren’t issues. Animals such as frogs are often viewed as environmental indicators; that is, anything that is wrong with the environment will show up first in frogs and other small animals. Water pollution is thought to be one factor responsible for a number of frog mutations found in recent years. Scientists don’t know the whole story yet; they think that high levels of UV radiation and parasites may also be causal factors.

Zoos and aquariums around the world are attempting to address the problem of amphibian decline by breeding many of the frog species in captivity. Frogs aren’t the only animals affected — so are salamanders, newts, and caecilians, animals that resemble large worms. One of the species currently being bred in captivity is thePanamanian Golden Frog. If you are so inclined, you may help the conservation effort of the National Zoo by adopting a Panamanian Golden Frog.

Woodland Flowers

Photographing white flowers can be difficult because it is easy to overexpose the image and end up with a washed-out, featureless shape. One way to get around the problem is to bracket your shots.

Bracketing means that you take several pictures of the same flowers, with different exposure times for each frame. Some you will overexpose, and some you will underexpose. But you should be able to end up with one that’s “just right!” But where do you start?

Begin by familiarizing yourself with your camera’s built-in meter system. Most SLRs and even the most basic digital point-and-shoot cameras have program modes for aperture priority, speed priority, and manual modes. Aperture priority means that you set the aperture and the camera will set itself for the best speed for that lens opening. Speed priority means you set the speed and the camera will change the lens aperture to get the best image possible for that speed setting. In manual mode, you fly solo, setting both aperture and speed yourself with no help from the camera. While this can be confusing for a beginning photographer, it also allows you the most creative freedom. But save that thought: for now, let’s get back to the white woodland flowers.

I wanted to capture the detail in the center of the flowers, while keeping the fern leaf from getting too dark. Some definition in the background would be nice, but it’s not necessary. The background could go completely out of focus and this might improve the image, because it would help declutter the image. Too many competing elements can make an image less interesting, because the eye wanders over the frame and there’s no clear-cut subject of the photograph.

In this case, I wanted to bracket to make sure that I got the shot. I started by going with aperture priority so I could control how much of the image was in focus. By choosing a small f-stop, the stamens of the flowers would remain nice and sharp, and I could keep the petals and fern leaf in focus, too. Aperture priority means that the camera selects the speed, so this would give me a starting point to bracket from.

I took one frame at the aperture priority setting, noting the speed that the camera had used. Then I switched the camera to manual settings. Using the same aperture, I changed my speed settings and took one frame at a shorter exposure time, and one at a longer exposure time than what the aperture priority program used. This is how to bracket: now I had three frames of the same flowers, with three different exposures. Sure enough, one turned out very dark, while one was light. This is the middle frame, which is the one the camera picked.

It doesn’t always work that way, though — the camera doesn’t know what results you are trying to achieve, and the program modes often just end up being a compromise between too light and too dark. Sometimes images work best when they’re slightly dark, so don’t be too quick to throw away your images before you have a chance to really look at them.