When I got my job working in the Thurston County prairies doing plant
surveys this spring I was looking forward to observing butterflies in what I
thought was the prime remaining butterfly habitat in western Washington. We
then had the coldest and wettest spring I can remember and the worst
butterfly spring I can remember.

The weather was not only bad for butterflies, but it was bad for most of our
insects species and I wondered how the swallows and other insectivore birds
would survive and how they would feed their young. It is clear that there
weren't enough insects to feed all of those young and adults.

At one point there was one small moth species that was emerging from their
pupae in large numbers and it was a species that was both day flying and
adapted to flying in colder weather, even in the rain. The swallows were
having a field day snapping up this moth species as we flushed them up from
the prairie and you could hear their bills clicking as they snapped them up.

When I was finding Savannah Sparrow nests in the prairie late in the season
I imagined that it was more that they having a second nesting due to earlier
nest failures than that they all fledged their young and that they were just
going for another brood. This last week we were seeing a fair number of
fledging sparrows, and though I wasn't keeping careful tabs, I don't clearly
remember noting fledgelings earlier in the season.

-Stewart

Stewart Wechsler
Ecological Consulting
West Seattle
206 932-7225
ecostewart at quidnunc.net

-Advice on the most site-appropriate native plants
and how to enhance habitat for the maximum diversity
of plants and animals
-Educational programs, nature walks and field trips
-Botanical Surveys


-----Original Message-----
From: stan Kostka lynn Schmidt Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 11:00 AM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] Re: Cause of local 2008 Purple Martin deaths?


Hi Ed,

The other day I checked a colony in Snohomish County and found nine
dead adult martins at one site that only has six boxes, only one
box had an active nest, a second year female incubating three eggs
at this late date, I never saw or heard a male bird the entire time
I was there, even though the female exited her nest and alarm
called, a vocalization that in my experience always attracts other
martins. At two other nearby sites I did not see or hear any
martins, can only check those boxes by boat at high tide and I will
be doing that soon , but admit I am not really looking forward to it.

Back in June immediately after the weather broke I found some
reasonably fresh dead martins which are now double bagged in the deep
freeze, preserved them for an ongoing biometrics study, whether or
not and to what extent they can now be used to test for other causes
of death I do not know, but will investigate that option. Based on
a quick examination of the dead birds I think they all starved to
death, underweight, shrunken breast muscles, with a sharply
protruding breast bone.

My data does not go back quite as far as Rich's, but it does include
2002 and also shows no decline that year, in fact it shows a nearly
30% increase in the known population in my north Sound study area
that year. I personally do not recall the weather being nearly as
cold and wet that year as it was this year, at least not here in the
north Sound, but have not looked at any data regarding that.

I recall living in Pennsylvania back in 1972 when the remnants of
Hurricane Agnes moved up the East coast, turned west and stalled
over the middle of the state during the height of the martin breeding
season in June, it turned cold and rained non stop for a week,
killed all adults and young at many colonies.

Has anyone noticed unusually high mortality in any other species here
in this region this year ?

Stan Kostka
lynnandstan at earthlink.net
Arlington



Subject: Cause of local 2008 Purple Martin deaths?
From: "Ed Swan" <edswan AT centurytel.net>
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 07:25:13 -0700
Talking to Rich Siegrist here on Vashon, he found 9 dead adults in
the boxes he
has set up over the last 15 years. Last year there were 71 pairs
here, this
year 14. Checking the Office of the Washington State Climatologist
website,
this spring's temperatures were relatively cold. However, the spring
of 2002
was also equally cool, yet Rich doesn't have the same sort of dip in his
records.
Is more than the weather going on with the martin population or was
there
something particular about this year that made a difference?
Ed Swan


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