Fowl shots

An Eleutheran jungle fowl is among the photographs at the driftless area flickr site.

Coot story

The next two posts or so will be part of a recap of the Eleuthera trip. What strikes me most from this visit is the amazing rusticity of the island. The inland areas, with their ancient mahogany trees (correct me, phylo police) and inpenetrable scrub, are as spectacular as the endless azure vistas of the shoreline areas. This was an incredibly successful birding trip. With even a minimal time investment, we could have seen a lot more. Note in the video above that the caribbean coot mention is incorrect--they can only still be found in small populations elsewhere in the West Indies.

Eleuthera list

Birds seen on a visit to the island of Eleuthera in The Bahamas. This total (38 species) represents a one-week high:

laughing gull
royal tern
great blue heron
great egret
yellow-crowned night heron
willet
american oystercatcher
american coot
common moorhen
least grebe
pied-billed grebe
american wigeon
blue-winged teal
ring-necked duck
osprey
white-crowned pigeon
eurasian collared dove
common ground dove
mourning dove
great lizard cuckoo
smooth-billed ani
bahama woodstar
belted kingfisher
northern mockingbird
white-eyed vireo
palm warbler
bananaquit
black-faced grassquit
greater antillean bullfinch
rock dove
lesser yellowlegs
black-necked stilt
magnificent frigatebird
song sparrow
green heron
indigo bunting
yellow-rumped warbler
ruddy turnstone

Ice update

We have been enjoying quite a thaw the past few days. There had been a typical spring gradient of temperatures ranging from the 50s to the 30s in our area. Then west winds came through and made everything mild. The temp right now is 46.2. The ice sheets in front of our house have receded a bit, but they are persisting in the shadows of our north-facing six-flat. I even saw a frigate (OK, it was really an evening cruise boat) plying the waters of Lake Michigan tonight. Ice packs linger in the harbors despite the warmth.

Glass window

The Bahamas are a series of low islands that skirt the shallow seas east and southeast of Florida. The archipelago is made up of huge carbonate deposits. One deposit is the island of Eleuthera, essentially a 110-mile spine of limestone that flanks the Great Bahama Bank. This is one of the few Web sites that covers the natural history of The Bahamas.

The driftless area connection, in addition to the sea level variations of the interglacials, is that we arrive in Eleuthera on Saturday.

O Carnivora

As penance for my Rodentia gaffe, I've written the following haiku:

O Carnivora!
Pinnipeds, canids, felids,
Diverse toothy order.

Raccoon attack

In the latest rodent-human interaction, Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt dislocated her shoulder fighting a raccoon. Jim Rome, humbly described on his Web site as "perhaps the most respected voice in the world of sports broadcasting," shared his admiration for the coach this way:

I don’t think Jim Calhoun is going to throw with a possum in his backyard. Or, ‘Coach K’ is going to get after a beaver!

The full take is here.

CORRECTION: Raccoons are in fact more closely related to weasels, cats, bear-dogs, pandas and seals than squirrels or rats. Raccoons are not rodents. All the more reason to be impressed with beating up a raccoon.