Good News for the Antarctic

A year ago at this time we were on our way to Antarctica on a Russian oceanographic vessel. Among the things we learned en route to and on the planet's coldest, wildest continent (besides the fact that we could ride out 50-foot waves—see slide show) was that the surrounding Southern Ocean waters are massively important both in sustaining the world's ocean food chain (through the abundance of tiny, bottom-of-the-food-chain krill, among other things) and in driving the deep-water currents that are crucial in shaping Earth's climate and transporting nutrients (as extra-cold, extra-salty water sinks to the bottom and moves across the ocean floor). All of which makes this a week to celebrate.

That's because 24 countries and the European Union have agreed to protect an ecologically vital part of the Southern Ocean known as the Ross Sea by creating the world's largest protected marine area—600,000 square miles, and the first such area to be established in international waters rather than the waters of one country. The deal is far from perfect (it expires in 35 years, primarily because of objections from Russia, which is trying to protect its fishing industry), but the hope among conservationists is that this will be the first in a series of Antarctic ocean sanctuaries—protected areas that might help stop us humans from screwing up yet another unique, life-sustaining portion of our fragile planet.

Supermoon As Seen Across America

During this month's Hunters Moon Supermoon (which looked 16% larger than a typical full Moon and 30% brighter because the Moon was 16,500 miles closer to Earth than it is on average), hundreds of people shared with us on our Facebook page their photos of the event. These were taken with everything from cellphones to long lenses to telescopes. It was thrilling to see so many people excited by looking up at the evening sky.

We're hoping even more people will become Moon-watchers on November 13 and 14, when they'll be able to see the largest, brightest, closest full Moon since 1948. The November Supermoon will be known as a  Beaver Moon, borrowing a Native American term for a November full Moon. We won't see another full Moon this close and large until the year 2014...so don't miss it. And enjoy this video we put together with some of the October Supermoon photos. —Craig Neff and Pamelia Markwood

Rare Sight: Two California Condors

Bob Maloy shared with us this photo after he was lucky enough to see two extremely rare and critically endangered California condors from a bridge over the Colorado River in Arizona.

How rare is the California condor? This type of vulture—North America's largest bird, with a wingspan of up to 10 feet—dwindled to just 22 known individuals by the 1980s because of hunting, habitat loss, lead poisoning (from the bullets in the carcasses on which these scavengers feed), DDT poisoning and collisions with power lines.

Those 22 survivors were captured and put in a breeding program, one limited by the fact that the birds can't reproduce before age six and generally lay just one egg every one or two years in the wild. (In the breeding program, that egg is removed, prompting the female to lay a second and even third one; the chicks from the removed eggs are raised using condor hand-puppets so that the chicks don't imprint on humans, as shown in this video clip: http://www.arkive.org/…/gymnogyps-california…/video-15b.html).

Offspring from this painstaking and heroic breeding program have been released over the last 25 years to try to rebuild the wild population, which now stands at almost 250—a fragile number, especially given that all of them descend from just 14 of the 22 condor survivors of the 1980s. Despite a California ban on lead bullets, condors continue to die from lead poisoning, possibly from bullets in carcasses elsewhere in their range, which includes Arizona, Utah and Mexico.

It's interesting to note that in the Pleistocene era (which began about 2.5 million years ago) the California condors' range was vastly larger, extending from what's now Canada to Mexico, across the American South and up the East Coast to New York. That range shrank dramatically 10,000 years ago after the extinction of mastodons, giant ground sloths, saber-tooth cats, camels and other big ground mammals. Our thanks go out to scientists and other conservationists for keeping the California condor from joining that list of extinct animals.

Many thanks as well to Bob for sharing his rare photo with us. He says that the two condors he saw in Arizona bore the wing-tag numbers 54 and H9—biologists have named and tagged all the released condors to keep track of them—and that he also saw an immature one in the area. What an experience.

The Yellow-Billed Cuckoo

If you've ever wondered if cuckoos are real birds or just cuckoo-clock accessories, here's proof that they're real. Melissa Patton took this photo in Alabama of a yellow-billed cuckoo, one of many beautiful and fascinating species in the cuckoo family.

Yellow-billed cuckoo photo by Melissa Patton

Cuckoos of one sort or other are found on every continent except Antarctica. Their name comes from the sound of the call of the common cuckoo (formerly known as the European cuckoo). That bird's constant, seemingly mindless repetition of its call led people to use "cuckoo" to mean "crazy." Click here to listen to that common-cuckoo call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5N7KHSlBRU

Meanwhile, female common cuckoos' habit of laying eggs in other birds' nests led to the coining of the word "cuckold," describing a husband whose wife has cheated on him. Yellow-billed cuckoos do not share this habit, which is known as brood parasitism. (Below are more yellow-billed cuckoo photos—and a beautiful painting—shared with The Naturalist's Notebook by our followers on Facebook.)

Like most cuckoos, the yellow-billed is long-tailed and prefers feeding on on insects. Indeed, it's one of the few birds willing to eat hairy caterpillars. A hungry yellow-billed can down 100 in one session. That appetite can help control infestations of tree-defoliating tent caterpillars—one more reason to be cuckoo about cuckoos.

Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers

Randy L. Schoff shared this terrific shot of a blue-gray gnatcatcher family in its typical lichen-camouflaged nest at the Spicer Lake Nature Reserve in New Carlisle, Indiana.

Blue-gray gnatcatchers (photo by Randy L. Schoff)

Blue-grays are the northernmost gnatcatchers (most other gnatcathers live in Central and South America) and their range has shifted 200 miles farther north over the last quarter century because of rising temperatures. A couple of fun facts: Gnats don't actually make up much of the diet of blue-gray gnatcatchers, and the birds are sometimes forced to build as many as seven nests in breeding season because of predators, parasitism and mites. Blue-gray gnatcatchers are tiny and often flutter around high in trees catching insects, so seeing one is a treat. Many thanks, Randy!

Swimming With the Eels

Tess Johnson was paddling in Maine last weekend when she saw and photographed a natural phenomenon that few of us witness: the mass migration of young eels, known as glass eels or elvers.

Photo of elvers by Tess Johnson in Maine.

The baby eels hatch in the Sargasso Sea, a part of the Atlantic Ocean where floating mats of a seaweed called sargassum provide habitat for a variety of ocean life. They then drift and swim 1,000 miles or more to reach the rivers, streams, lakes and ponds where they mature and live virtually their entire life (10 to 25 years) before returning to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and die.

Photo by Tess Johnson

Maine is one of only two U.S. states (along with South Carolina) to permit commercial elver fishing, a questionable practice given the steep decline in eel populations in recent decades because of dams and other factors. A small number of fishermen with elver licenses string fine nets across waterways in Maine each spring to catch the young eels, which fetch $1,000 to $2,000 a pound depending on the year. The elvers are transported alive to Asia and raised there as a delicacy, primarily eaten as sushi.

Many thanks to Tess for given us a wonderful photographic look at this fascinating species—and the terns that were happily dining on them as she paddled. If you're interested in learning more (eels are an under-appreciated part of the ecosystem), we highly recommend the book "Eels," by our friend James Prosek, the great artist, writer and naturalist, or the PBS series based on it. —Craig Neff and Pamelia Markwood

Tern feeding on elvers in Maine (photo by Tess Johnson)

Photo by Tess Johnson