Wow, going from Turkey Vultures nesting in your outbuilding to starlings. Kind a come-down. But, you still seem to be popular! Keep doing what you are doing.
Best, Kevin From: Donna Lee Scott <d...@cornell.edu> Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 8:28 PM To: Kevin J. McGowan <k...@cornell.edu> Cc: CAYUGABIRDS-L <cayugabird...@list.cornell.edu> Subject: Re: [cayugabirds-l] starling fledglings! and solar power! a Starling nested inside the tall storage cupboard in my carport here at Kendal because one door would not latch shut properly. Lotsa noise from nestlings & the parents, lotsa flung poop as parents flew out! Now the nestlings have fledged & I need to tie door shut to avoid a repeat nesting. Donna Scott Kendal at Ithaca-377 Sent from my iPhone On Jun 4, 2023, at 7:58 PM, Kevin J. McGowan <k...@cornell.edu<mailto:k...@cornell.edu>> wrote: Wow, it seems starlings fledged this last week! I’ve been hearing them begging everywhere. I’ve been doing a weekly hour-long bird census at the Cornell compost facility on Stevenson Rd since they opened in, I think, 1999. (I’ve only been ebirding it since 2011 or so.) And this week was the first time this year it was filled with begging baby starlings! That noise was constant during the hour I was there looking for tagged crows. More starling fledglings calling all around this weekend. Cleary their breeding was highly synchronized to have so many of them out all at once. So, apropos of the current discussion about costs and benefits of trying to clean up our energy use… I alone have submitted 668 checklists from the compost hotspot, mostly one-hour-long mostly-stationary censuses of crows, during which time I recorded all of the birds that I could detect. This easily covers the time when the fields above the compost were horse pasture into the current situation with a solar farm. Some creative person could surely do an analysis of breeding birds detected in the horse pasture days versus the current solar farm. It hasn’t affected to crows so much, but definitely the wintering gulls do not like the change. Not sure about breeders. Not many birds breed in the middle of a horse pasture, although lots do around the sides. In memory of our late departed birding friend, Bard Prentiss, Bird Hard!! Kevin -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME> Rules and Information<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> Archives: The Mail Archive<http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html> Surfbirds<http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds> BirdingOnThe.Net<http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html> Please submit your observations to eBird<http://ebird.org/content/ebird/>! -- -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
