Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

I received a great email from one of our members in Leesburg about a bluebird nest they’d been watching at their house.  Wanted to share it with you here:

From Betty:

How often does one see a bluebird hatching in a natural setting?  

Luck!!  For some reason, Bill decided to check on our deck rafter bluebird eggs.  We witnessed a hatching!  It’s hard describe the joy of watching this baby bird struggling out of his shell.  Next day 3 had hatched…one to go.

Thank you Bill for the great photos!

Friends, it’s sad news for our local bats.  I received an email update from Bat Conservation International (BCI) last week and I wanted to share it along with some links with you here.

When I first moved to Loudoun, we had bats flying through our yard every summer night. I bought a bat detector so I could hear their echolocation and it was marvelous!  Now when I go outside to listen for the bats it’s radio silence – reminiscent of the folks trying to search for life on other planets, listening to nothing more than the hiss of the atmosphere. 

I hope we’ll see the return of the bats in our lifetime.  Here’s the information from BCI:

“As Bat Conservation International continues our fight against White-nose Syndrome, research being published in the journal Science predicts the outcome we feared: regional extinctions.

The study forecasts that the little brown myotis, until now one of our most common species and one that is often seen roosting in barns, old buildings and attics, could be reduced to barely 1 percent of its current population in northeastern states within two decades.”

Learn more about bats, white nose syndrome and what you can do to help our bats:
Latest news: http://batcon.org/index.php/what-we-do/white-nose-syndrome.html
BCI email newsletter: http://www.batcon.org/index.php/media-and-info/e-newsletter.html 
BCI Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bat-Conservation-International/144437204518?ref=ts 

Spread the news about the bats so more people are aware of what is happening and what we are losing. If you encounter people looking to exclude bats from buildings, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy has developed some resources that can help both educate people on the situation and enable them to act humanely. BCI and Bat World are also fantastic resources. In times like these, we need to do everything we can to help bats, and part of that is learning to live with and appreciate them.

So, last Saturday we were at a picnic in Round Hill celebrating the nuptials of two dear friends.  As we stood in the field sipping lemonade at about 5pm, a number of us noticed all these flying insects.  They weren’t biting and were high enough over our heads that no one was bothered by them. So, we continued with our chats, hoped for some bats to come through and put on a show, and soon forgot about the insects.

The next day, I received an email through our Loudoun Widlife Conservancy yahoo group from Jim W asking if anyone knew about some insects that emerged around 4pm also in Round Hill. He wrote:

“we noticed hundreds of flying insects all throughout our yard, flying near the ground or as high as 10-20 feet above the ground. As we walked into our grass, we noticed lots (hundreds if not thousands) of mounds of ants (we think they were ants), as well as larger insects with wings among the ants. These clusters of ants and insects were everywhere it seemed. The winged insects among the ants were the ones that were flying around. We needed to leave, and when we got back home about 6:30, everything was gone.”

Then, we heard that another member, Beth A., had the same experience in Lovettsville, also on Saturday afternoon.

Curious, we called in the experts (Cliff Fairweather, Phil Daley, Joe Coleman) and inquired.

Cliff responded back with the answer to our mystery of what insects they were:

“I’m sure Phil has already answered the question, but the phenomenon Jim reported was the emergence of reproductive forms of ants. During most of the year, a queen ant produces sterile, flightless workers, but from time-to-time she produces a generation of flighted males and females that disperse in swarms and, if they survive, mate. The males die soon after mating and the females lose their wings. Like other social hymenoptera, fertilized females go on to found new colonies, assuming they survive and find a suitable colony site.”

Jim posted a photo on our yahoo group page for anyone interested: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/loudounwildlife/

Did anyone else notice this occurrance?

At the regular monthly bird walk at Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve  south of Leesburg, about 18 people enjoyed a cooler morning and a  flurry of activity right next to the parking lot that produced the  best 20 minutes of birding of the morning, including the first of two  male Blue Grosbeaks, a perched Red-tailed Hawk, Eastern Kingbirds,  Pewees and Phoebes, a drop-by Red-eyed Vireo, Brown Thrasher, many  Bluebirds, 2 Cedar Waxwings, Eastern Towhee pairs, Field Sparrows, and  Orchard Orioles. 

Later we found a pair of Wood Thrushes carrying food  to a nest about 25 feet off the ground. 

Early likely migrants  included 2 female Redstarts. 

Following is the list of 36 species:

Canada Goose,Great Blue Heron, Black Vulture, Turkey Vulture, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, No. Flicker, E. Wood-Pewee, E. Phoebe, E. Kingbird, Red-eyed Vireo, Blue Jay, Am. Crow, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow, White-breasted Nuthatch, E. Bluebird, Wood Thrush, Am. Robin, Gray Catbird, No. Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Eur. Starling, Cedar Waxwing, Am. Redstart, E. Towhee, Field Sparrow, No. Cardinal, Blue Grosbeak – 2 male, Indigo Bunting, Orchard Oriole, Am. Goldfinch

Mary Ann Good, with co-leader Del Sargent