Our Earthly Cousins #2

More photos from my friend who takes excellent shots of our earthly cousins:

Bald eagle, Skagit Valley, WA

The bald eagle is the national bird and symbol of the United States of America. It nearly disappeared in the U.S. in the mid-20th century due in part to the thinning of egg shells attributed to human use of the pesticide DDT. It was also being illegally hunted. Plus, there was a widespread loss of suitable habitat. The use of DDT was banned in the wake of Rachel Carson's 1962 groundbreaking book Silent Spring, which energized the environmental movement, and the bald eagle was placed on the endangered species list and actively protected by new regulations. Its population has since rebounded. The bald eagle's recovery is testimony to the value of legally protecting threatened species at the federal level.

Common grackle, Anacortes, WA

Common grackles are opportunistic birds that do well amid human populations. Often thought of as pests, they are actually marvelously beautiful birds in their form and plumage, and they are distinctive in that, like mockingbirds, they can mimic the sounds of other birds or even humans. They congregate in large groups, popularly referred to as a "plague."

In the U.S., they live everywhere east of the Rocky Mountains. In fact, they moved west with the pioneers as the primordial American forests were cleared to make land for farming. Grackles' natural predators are hawks or similar large birds of prey ... such as the bald eagle. To the extent that our activities have reduced concentrations of raptors, we are responsible for the large number of common grackles who turn right around and eat our crops.

Baby American robins, Ann Arbor, MI

American robins are beloved of Americans to roughly the same extent that common grackles are disliked. Robins are songbirds of the thrush family and, as migratory birds, are popularly called the "first sign of spring." Emily Dickinson wrote a poem, "I Dreaded That First Robin So," but most of us look forward to seeing robins return in the springtime — though, truth to be told, their annual southern migration for the winter removes them only from New England and the extreme north of the country. These baby robins hatched from distinctive eggs that give the name "robin's egg blue" to a particular color in the spectrum.

Baby woodchucks, Ann Arbor, MI

Woodchucks are also called groundhogs, whistle pigs, and land beavers. Their closest rodent relatives are the group of ground squirrels known as marmots. Groundhogs can be found everywhere in the eastern half of the U.S. except for the deep south, and all through Canada.

The groundhog prefers open country and the edges of woodland. Since the clearing of forests by the pioneers provided it with much suitable habitat, the groundhog population is probably higher now than it was before the arrival of European settlers in North America. Common predators for groundhogs include wolves, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, bears, large hawks, owls, and dogs. Most of those groups have had their populations diminished by human activity, so the groundhogs have flourished. We humans like to hunt them, but we don't take them in sufficient quantities to constrain their numbers.

White-tailed deer, Ann Arbor, MI

White-tailed deer, Ann Arbor, MI

White-tailed deer, a.k.a. Virginia deer, inhabit virtually all of the continental U.S., along with much of Canada. They are found in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. In the U.S., the species is the state animal of Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and South Carolina as well as the provincial animal of Saskatchewan. They are magnificent creatures, but there are far too many of them today.

A century ago, commercial exploitation, unregulated hunting, and poor land-use practices, including deforestation, severely depressed deer populations in much of their range. By about 1930, the U.S. population was thought to number only about 300,000. After an outcry by hunters and other conservation ecologists, commercial exploitation of deer became illegal and conservation programs along with regulated hunting were introduced. Recent estimates put the deer population in the United States at around 30 million — 100 times their 1930 numbers! Conservation practices have proved so successful that, in parts of their range, white-tailed deer populations currently far exceed their carrying capacity and the animal may be considered a nuisance. They are indeed a nuisance where I live, as they eat everyone's gardens.

Gray wolves, cougars, American alligators, and (in the tropics) jaguars are effective natural predators of adult deer. Bobcats, lynxes, bears, and packs of coyotes prey on deer fawns. Human activities have removed many of the deer's natural predators, and deer populations have grown too large.