Is it possible that the Band-tailed Pigeon may have suffered a decline,
but not as large a decline as some of us have the impression, and is in
fact changing its habitat as a response to pressures on its usual habitat
over at least some of its range? Things like this do happen. In Britain,
the European Badger seemed to suffer a serious decline in the sixties and
seventies, more or less obviously associated with the growth of
large-scale "agribusiness" farming which wiped out the traditional small
fields bounded by hedgerows and the stands of woodlands on small areas
that were too steep for conventional plowing (which is where I used to
find the most badger dens). But it turned out that a very large and
healthy Badger population was living in the wooded suburbs of the older
cities, sustaining themselves by nocturnal dining at garbage cans like so
many raccoons. Foxes have been doing this too, to some extent, and both
badgers and foxes are now commmon residents even of Hampstead, which is
an inner London residential area. The cumulative picture from recent
postings looks to me as if it points in this direction - even if their
habitat hasn't been catastrophically degraded, the Band-tails have
obviously discovered the seed-and-suet pots of the Greater Seattle
Conurbation.

On Fri, 3 Mar 1995, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> I offer a hypothesis, that Band-tailed Pigeons may have moved their winter
> base of operations to cities where there are an abundance of seed feeders,
> thus altering our perception of their numbers in different ways. I really
> feel there are more in North Seattle than there used to be. Alan Richards'
> bailiwick out in the boonies by Naselle could lose birds for the same
> reason. I'm not stating there haven't been large-scale declines, but I
> wish it were easier to be sure.
>
> As winter numbers are probably very patchy in space and time, the way we
> really need to monitor their numbers is by breeding-bird censuses, and I
> don't know what those have shown. I believe they may have shown local but
> not widespread declines in the species.
>
> One of the most fascinating things I learned when I was scanning Northwest
> Christmas bird counts for recent years was that BTPI is a locally common
> winterer in western WA but not in western OR. I never came up with an
> explanation for that.
>
> As for their being associated with bigleaf maples, Andy, that would be a
> good idea to check further. They certainly hang out in the maples behind
> my house, but they are the only large broadleaf trees. They also sit in
> the conifers, which don't furnish as many nice perches. I haven't seen
> them eating maple seeds, which would be the only reason I would think they
> would associate with them especially.
>
> American Wildlife and Plants: A Guide to Wildlife Food Habits, by Martin,
> Zim & Nelson, 1951, lists the following wild plants as eaten by BTPI in the
> Pacific states: *** oak & cherry, ** dogwood & elderberry, * madrona,
> cascara, salal, thimbleberry, & bearberry. Number of asterisks
> proportional to importance. Pine, hawthorn, and blueberry occasional.
> Note these are either acorns or fleshy fruits (they may eat the seeds of
> some). No maple listed, and it is a very different seed from the others.
> They also eat cultivated grains and garden peas among non-native plants.
> For these data, 510 stomachs were examined by US Biological Survey
> personnel, presumably mostly gathered from hunters and quite a few years
> ago. This is an impressive sample size. Any Tweeter seen them eating
> anything else, except bird seed? They vacuum up sunflower seeds and millet
> impartially at my feeders.
>
> Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
> Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
> University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
> Tacoma, WA 98416
>
>
>

___________________________________________________________________
JAMES WEST Slavic Dept. Univ. of Washington DP-32 Seattle, WA 98195
Tel: 206-543-4829 Fax: 206-543-9285 E-mail: jdwest at u.washington.edu