Subject: poor Band-tailed year?
Date: Sep 16 09:59:37 2002
From: Robert Cleland - cleland at u.washington.edu


Mark,
We live not far from you (just above NOAA) have had the usual
number of band-tailed pigeons. If anything, we've had more this year.
Almost every evening one sits in the top of a nearby dead tree for hours.
They are still around, in our area.

************************
Robert Cleland

Professor, Botany Dept. Box 355325
Univ. of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-5325
Phone (206) 543-6105; FAX (206) 685-1728


On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Mark Egger wrote:

> Hello Tweets,
>
> I've been wondering if anyone else has noticed the lack of
> Band-tailed Pigeons this spring and summer. I've had them in my back
> yard and elsewhere around the Matthews Beach area every year, nearly
> year round, for well over a decade, but they seem to be locally
> extirpated or else gone elsewhere,,. all within the last year! Has
> anyone in this area seen them? Pigeons are such cool birds (possibly
> excepting urban rock doves, I hate to loose a species like that,
> especially when it's held on for so long against all urban
> odds...I've always associated these forest pigeons with the pine-oak
> of the SW and the Sierras of W Mexico, and to have them in the
> Seattle backyard was a real treat! I was never sure where this group
> found its salt -- can anyone on the list shed some light on that? I
> know the Band-tails of Matthews Beach long pre-date MY arrival on the
> scene (moved to neighborhood in 1986), so their disappearance, if
> that is what it is, should be an "environmental consequence" worthy
> of some further note and analysis...
>
> Mark
>