Catching and banding in a garden

We were catching birds in Gittan’s garden, as well as that of a neighbour, today. Four birds were caught, two Fieldfares Turdus pilaris, one Tree Sparrow Passer montanus, and one Nuthatch Sitta europaea. As Gittan was at work, I got to band all of them, meaning that I’ve now banded birds in Sweden for the first time since… I think I banded some in Umeå when I was there a few years ago, but I’m not sure. Otherwise, it would be the first time since Padjelanta in 2008. I’ve banded more birds in Japan than in Sweden, probably, and did do some banding in Canada, but before Padjelanta, I think I have to go back to the 90s before I get to any banding I remember having done (at Landsjön, when I was going to be a banding assistant, before gymnasium…).

Interestingly, both the thrushes had lice. We caught a male and a female, possibly a breeding couple. They had different species of lice, though, which makes me wonder.

We got five or so Brueelia sp. from the body feathers of the male. There are two species of Brueelia s. lat. on this bird, and I can’t tell for sure which one it is before I’ve looked at them in the lab. Judging from where we caught them, and the short glimpses I got of them (Heidi did the collecting), they are likely Brueelia marginata (Burmeister, 1838), which will eventually be placed in the genus Guimaraesiella Eichler, 1949, after our revision.

The female, on the other hand, gave us about 20 Philopterus bischoffi Eichler, 1951 from the head.

If the birds were a mated pair, it seems reasonable to assume that the lice would spread laterally between them, during mating. This has previously been shown to be the case for lice on Pheasants Phasianus colchicus, by Hillgarth (1996). At the very least, the body lice should have had the opportunity to transfer, but these were only found on the male. The question (which I cannot answer) is: are these not a breeding pair, or did the lice fail to transfer? Or something else?

In any case, two new louse species collected for this trip, and this is the first time we get 50% of the birds we catch during a day having lice! That doesn’t sound as impressive when you consider that there were only four birds.. when I was in Canada catching shorebirds, we generally got to 90-100% infested birds!

Mystery

We’re watching through the Disney animated movies this trip, and have seen 13 or so by now, out of the c. 50 we have got. A mystery occurred with one of the last movies, however. We were going to watch Cinderella, but as I transferred the movie to VLC, I noticed that it was very short, only about 30 minutes. However, I thought, DVD menus and so on are sometimes much shorter and include only the loop at the menu, and the extra material, so we started the movie. It was a movie about “Cinderella Stories” in sport, not the Disney Cinderella at all.

This was a mystery to Heidi, as she spent some time ripping DVDs and so on before we left, and she couldn’t understand how this could happen, as she’d never seen that sports DVD before, and neither she nor David are interested in sports. We downloaded the real movie and watched that, but the mystery thickened today, when Heidi remembered that she had Cinderella on DVD herself. This was not a case of borrowing a DVD from the library and someone having put in the wrong disc, this was her own DVD that was somehow replaced with a sports DVD.

Any suggestions?

36 dagar kvar!

36 dagar kvar!

Igår var jag och lyssnade på en gratisförelösning med Niel DeGrasse Tyson, som började lite stapplande, men till slut fick tåg i sin röda tråd och sedan genomförde en fantastisk föreläsning om hur framtidens USA kommer se ut, och relationen mellan populärkultur och vetenskap. En skrämmande serie med bilder visade först en världskarta, sedan samma karta fast med ländernas storlek i proportion till hur mycket vetenskap de producerar. Inte överraskande var USA, Japan, och Europa gigantiska, medan Afrika och arabvärlden knappt syntes. Han ersatte sedan den med en karta som visade hur samma karta skule se ut om tio år om nuvarande trenderna fortsatte, och medan Europa och Japan hade ökat, och Kina, Brasilien, och Sydkorea också började svälla upp, så hade USA minskat med hälften.

Han visade samma sak med periodiska systemet, genom att först markera nuar de olika grundämnena upptäcktes, och sedan var. Det framgick tydligt av hans bilder att när brittiska imperiet var starkt upptäcktes de flesta nya grundämnena i Storbrittanien, sedan Tyskland när det enades och blev starkt inom vetenskapen. Efter kriget blev det USA som tog över, men sedan försvann USA igen, efter kalla kriget, och det blev (om jag inte minns fel) framför allt Tyskland som kom tillbaka.

Hans argument är att till skillnad från för femtio år sedan så drömmer folk inte om framtiden längre. Man tänker sig att allt kommer vara som det är, fast med nya modeller av iPhones och liknande, istället för helt nya upptäckter. Hela hans tal kommer väl tids nog upp på youtube, men jag kan inte hitta det nu. Han är väl mitt i sin föreläsningsserie, så det dröjer väl ett tag. Hur som helst så är hans föreläsningar i allmänhet sevärda.

New publication!

I was recently sent the online previes version of a publication on the invertebrate fauna of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, and Novaya Zemlya that I contributed to in the, for bird lice, unusual journal Soil Biology and Biochemistry:

Coulson et al 2014 Terrestrial and freshwater invertebrate fauna Barents Sea

The part about lice is on page 451, and isn’t very long, but it does increase my louse publication list with 50%. Read and enjoy!

Today

Today we searched 50 live birds and about 20 dead ones from the freezer. We got lice only from two Sparrowhawks Accipiter nisus and one Robin Erithacus rubecula, but some of the dead birds also gave some lice, including some from a Grey Heron Ardea cinerea, which is a new search-species for me. A full 33 of the birds searched today were Robins, and we also got the first Yellow-browed Warbler Phylloscopus inornatus in the catch, but it didn’t have any lice, of course. This is only the third Yellow-browed Warbler I ever searched, however, ad I don’t expect any lice until I’ve looked at about a hundred.

In the afternoon, we went biking, Heidi, Johanna, and I. We went all the way to Ventlinge to buy some pumpkins for tomorrow. Three will be carved and two will be eaten, with another four smaller pumpkins to serve as ears, nose, and a pipe. We went down to Grönhögen to swim in the too-cold water as well, as Heidi wanted to swim once every place she goes to here. It turned out to be too much slippery algae in the water, and too cold, so we waded around a bit, stood skipping rocks for a while, had tea, and then went home.

Tonight we’ll carve the pumpkins, so hopefully I’ll be able to show some pictures tomorrow.

The Reed Warbler

We also caught this Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus recently:

Not only is the lower mandible much elongated, but the upper one is uncommonly broad, a bit too short, and deformed. As is usually the case with birds with deformed bills, this one was very poor at preening, and we must have got over a hundred Menacanthus from it! The bander’s hands were full, the fumigation chamber held more than 50 nymphs, and when we ruffled it, the nymphs seemed to never stop falling off!

Now, if we could only get some more Reed Warblers to estimate how much lice they normally have…

Stupendous day

A total of 75 birds searched today, with lice from two Ruffs Philomachus pugnax and a Song Thrush Turdus philomelos! The former seemed to have only Lunaceps holophaeus, while the lice from the latter were menoponids, probably Menacanthus sp. I think 75 is the highest number of birds I’ve ever searched in one day, but there may have been some day in Japan when I searched more birds.

I’ve booked lodgings and tickets to London and Berlin, and my host in Wroclaw has booked their guest room for me during my stay, so all I need to take care of is the train ticket from Berlin to Wroclaw. Tomas will set up things in Czech Republic once he gets back home at the end of the month, and I’ll still need to buy a ticket from Brno to Gothenburg/Jönköping…

Today, Heidi left Sundre, having searched 962 birds (I’m at 931), and by now I think she should be on the ferry, or at least waiting for it. She’ll spend the night in Oskarshamn, and then take a train down to Kalmar tomorrow morning, and arrive here at Ottenby sometime between 3-4 pm tomorrow, depending on which bus she gets on. Once she gets here, we can finally start doing more hippoboscid phoresy trials. I’ve done two when Tomas was here, but usually, I either have live lice or live flies, not both at the same time… And the few times when I have both, I don’t remember that I’m supposed to do these trials until I’ve already killed one of them… Hopefully, we’ll get something done once Heidi comes here, at least…

Preliminary plan for next spring:
Tomas to Umeå again (Umedeltat or Stora Fjäderägg)
Me (and some assistant with a driver’s license) to Sotenäs, Hammarö, Landsjön, Tåkern, and maybe some other place.
Lo somewhere?
Someone on Ottenby?

The main goal would be to compare birds during breeding season with birds during migration. I’ve searched 67 species since I came to Ottenby, and for 16 of those I’ve searched more than 20 birds, which means some sort of comparison could be made. Most of the old material from Sweden has also been migrating birds, which brings the number of searched bird species at Ottenby to approximately 135, with maybe 50 species with sample sizes over 20 (the only summary I have is mixed between Japan, Canada, Australia, the USA, Tanzania, and Sweden so I can’t be bothered to work out the exact numbers now…)

However, both when I was catching Willow Warblers Phylloscopus trochilus in Padjelanta and when I was catching Reed and Marsh Warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus et A. palustris in Torslandaviken, infestation rates were much higher, despite sample sizes being lower. It is sort of known that at least some lice have breeding cycles in synch with those of their hosts (I can’t remember the reference now…), and it would make sense, perhaps, for them to be in synch with migration cycles as well. Comparisons with breeding grounds would be very interesting. I think we could get some data on at least some breeding birds from Landsjön, Tåkern, and Sotenäs, and possibly elsewhere; Ottenby is not as good, as very few passerines breed on the cape, but then again it could be interesting to compare spring and autumn migration.

(I also don’t want to let go of the comparison-with-Mediterranean idea, but we’ll see…)

State coins revisited

So here is a map over the distribution of state coins I’ve received so far, showing presence/absence only. Legend:

Purple – Acquired during August and September
Green – Acquired during October
Red – Acquired during November and first half of December

So far, 38/50 have been acquired, as well as that for American Samoa (not shown on map).

Snö / Snow

Kom precis hem från brädspelandet, och det har nu snöat i stort sett konstant i 48 timmar. Det längsta uppehållet vad jag vet var ungefär en halvtimme mitt på eftermiddagen idag. Snödjupet är ungefär 40-50 centimeter.

I just got back from boardgame night, and it’s now been snowing more or less constantly for the last 48 hours. The longest break, as far as I know, was about half an hour today during the afternoon. The depth is about 40-50 centimeters.

Hur saker fungerar i USA 3 – Övergångsställen / How thing work in the US – 3: Crosswalks

De har ett gulligt system för övergångsställen här.

They have a cute system for cross walks here.