Adding a Loggerhead Shrike to my Bird Photo Checklist

I’ve made several unsuccessful excursions to look for loggerhead shrikes because they are an uncommon species.  They prefer cow pastures with plenty of short trees–a landscape that is being replaced by expanding suburban development.  My sister and her husband recently moved to a gated community in south Florida that was formerly a cattle ranch but has been converted to an housing development built around a golf course.  Abundant wildlife still occurs in the neighborhood, and on my first visit I was able to get a nice photograph of a large bobcat.  I visited my sister on Thanksgiving and was able to get several photographs of a loggerhead shrike–a species I had only seen 3 times prior to this occasion.  I never thought I would get a good look at this bird, let alone get a photo of it.

Loggerhead shrike in Bradenton, Florida.  Click to enlarge.

I’ve written a blog entry about shrikes previously.  See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/pleistocene-pastures-and-loggerhead-shrikes-lanius-ludovicianus/

I took a walk around the golf course on Thanksgiving.  It is a maritime forest consisting of live oak, loblolly pine, saw palmetto, Carolina palmetto, red maple, grape vine,  a non-native flower related to evening primrose, and sedge.  The water traps host anhingas, herons, cormorants, coots, and many other birds.  I saw red dragonflies and azure butterflies.

This is a non-native plant related to evening primrose.  It is very common in this woodlot.

At the hotel I saw the same species of birds as I did last Thanksgiving.  A flock of white ibis must live there year round.

The same flock of white ibis I saw last year along with a great egret.

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Thanksgiving Special: Eating Rabbits and Pigeons

The expansion of temperate climate environments following the end of the Ice Age led to the extinction of many species of megafauna because it resulted in an increase in the population of humans.  Oak woodlands and forests provided acorns, nuts, and fruits that could sustain humans when they overhunted and extirpated big game within their range.  Most predators are not common enough to consume all of their prey…otherwise they would starve and become extinct.  But humans are so adaptable, they can survive on other sources of food.  Wiping out megafauna had no impact on human populations because they could switch to hunting smaller animals and also rely on plant foods for survival.  Resource rich environments meant more humans which in turn meant more hunting pressure on large, slow reproducing species such as mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths.  Fish and small rapidly reproducing species such as rabbits, squirrels, and pigeons easily replaced the sources of protein lost when larger animals became scarce or extinct.

I visited a Vietnamese grocery store recently and found some items that were commonly eaten in the U.S. until the 1940s when American diets became more homogenized with the rise of mechanized farming and chain supermarkets.  Today’s grocery store meat departments sell beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and occasionally lamb; but rarely any other kind of meat.  Modern kids grow up on a diet of hamburgers and chicken nuggets.  I get bored with this monotonous fare.  So when I saw pigeon and rabbit at the Vietnamese store I snatched them up.

A baby pigeon, also known as squab.  They are expensive.

Broiled pigeon is delicious comparable to duck.

The pigeon came uneviscerated. I was afraid this would be a problem, but I learned eviscerating poultry is even easier than cleaning a fish.  Simply chop off the head and cut a slit near the bird’s anus.  Pull the front and the back apart until the keel bone breaks.  Then just pull the intestines and organs out.  I fed the intestines and gizzard to the cats, and they enjoyed eating them.  I ate the heart and the liver myself.  I decided to cook the pigeon just like I prepare quail.  I seasoned it with lemon juice, salt, and black pepper; and stuck it under a 375 degree broiler for 20 minutes.  Pigeon meat is very good.  It is a rich, dark meat, similar to duck, and it also has crispy skin and delicious fat.  Pigeons are built for endurance flying, and they have an high amount of hemoglobin, explaining why the meat is so dark.  The juice that came out when I was pulling the bird apart and eating it was black.  The main drawback to eating pigeon is the small birds just don’t have a lot of meat on them.

Pot-roasted rabbit.

Rabbit meat is just the opposite of pigeon meat.  Pigeon muscles are almost entirely slow-twitch, and therefore dark.  Rabbit muscles are fast-twitch and built for speed, not endurance.  Rabbit meat is all white and has very little fat.  I’ve made rabbit 6 or 7 times, so I’m more familiar with it.  It is good stewing meat.  Most people fry rabbit meat, and it is ok that way, but it is rather dry because it is so lean.  I chose to pot roast the rabbit, using a recipe I often use for a beef roast.  I put the whole rabbit in a casserole dish, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and smothered it with ketchup, celery and onion.  I poured a bottle of good beer in the casserole dish, and baked it, covered, in a 300 degree oven for 3 hours, until the meat was falling off the bone.

 

Why the Western Hebrides are Mostly Treeless

During fall of 1773 Samuel Johnson and James Boswell traveled together on the western islands of Scotland, also known as the Hebrides.  They wrote separate accounts about this journey, and both are included in  a volume I’ve been reading for the past couple of weeks.  Samuel Johnson frequently noted and joked about the scarcity of trees in the region.  I wondered why a temperate locality with plenty of precipitation was mostly treeless, so I researched the natural history of western Scotland and learned there is a fascinating and complex ecological explanation.

Map of the Western Hebrides.  Johnson and Boswell traveled on the inner islands.

Scottish peat bog and heather.  These are also known as moors.

The first explanation I found on google seemed implausible and I was right.  Some claimed the Vikings stripped the island of trees to prevent rivals from using the wood to build boats.  This is an unlikely explanation because a people who lived by pillaging would not be keen on all the labor required in felling and removing all that lumber.  Moreover, trees would grow back within a generation.  I dug deeper and found a better, more scientifically sound explanation.

During the Ice Age glaciers completely covered Scotland, and there were no trees.  11,400 years ago, the glaciers retreated and a scrub forest of birch, willow, hazel, and rowan advanced over the tundra.  These scrub forests co-existed with peat bogs.  By 8500 years ago, oak, elm, and Scotch pine began to grow as well but were uncommon and local in distribution on the Hebrides.  From 9300 years BP-7900 years BP open woodlands of birch, willow, aspen, and hazel with plenty of grassy meadows between the trees prevailed.  But then, peat bogs began to expand while areas consisting of woodlands contracted so that by 2500 years ago peat bogs were the dominant environment on the Western Hebrides.  This predates the Viking invasion by 1500 years.  Instead, natural disturbance and soil chemistry shaped the landscape of the region.

Severe storm events about 8000 years ago felled the trees.  Without trees drinking up the water, the water table rose.  Tree deaths caused a positive feedback loop for peat bog expansion at the expense of woodlands.  The cool moist climate slows down evaporation, and the water just sits on impervious bed rock.  Water dissolves acids in the rock, further helping the growth of acid-loving sphagnum peat and heath but reducing the fertility in the soil required by trees. Peat bogs are dominated by sphagnum peat, sedges, and carnivorous plants, while heath grows on the better drained sites.  Trees just can’t grow in these conditions.

About 400 years ago humans cleared the remaining woodlands on the islands and converted them to agricultural use.  Now, an organization known as the Hebridean Ark hopes to re-establish at least some forests on the islands.  They’ve planted 100,000 trees including rowan, birch, willow, hazel, juniper, and aspen.  According to Johnson and Boswell, attempts to plant trees on the islands during the 18th century mostly failed.  Modern scientists may have a better idea of what they are doing, however.

References:

Fossitt

“Late Quaternary Vegetation History of the Western Isles of Scotland”

New Phytologist 132 1996

Johnson, S. and James Boswell

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Penguin Classics 1984

Leopardus amnicola and More Additional Specimens of Cenozoic Fauna from South Carolina

The Florida Museum of Natural History just published an exciting new bulletin.  The paper describes every Cenozoic fossil specimen found in South Carolina and examined by scientists for the last 17 years–since the late Al Sanders published  Additions to the Pleistocene Mammal Faunas of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. A link to this new bulletin is at the bottom of this blog entry.

Several new specimens of Pleistocene age are notable.  Fossil hunters found the partial tooth of an extinct species of margay cat ( Leopardus amnicola) from the Ashley River phosphate beds–a first for the state of South Carolina.  A close relative of this species ( L. weidii  ) still occurs in tropical Central and South America.   L. amnicola remains have been found at 12 sites in Florida, 3 in Mississippi, 2 in Georgia, and 1 in Alabama.  Apparently, it was a widespread species occupying forests of southeastern North America.  It likely became extinct during the Last Glacial Maximum when environmental conditions changed to more open landscapes.

A margay cat.  An extinct relative of this species formerly occurred across southeastern North America. 

The most remarkable find was the limb bone (a tibia) of a pseudo-cheetah found on Edisto Beach. Scientists tentatively assiged it to  Miracinonyx ? trumani–a species previously unknown east of the Mississippi.  However, assignment was based on the age (late Pleistocene).   M. inexpectus, a species of pseudo-cheetah common from the Pliocene-mid Pleistocene, is rarely, if uncertainly known from the late Pleistocene.  I’m not convinced the limb belonged to a pseud-cheetah.  Pleistocene cougars ( Puma concolor) grew larger than modern day cougars, and I don’t believe scientists can discern with certainty the difference between pseudo-cheetahs and cougars without examining a skull or teeth.  Pseudo-cheetahs grew larger than cougars, but large Pleistocene cougars overlapped in size with small pseudo-cheetahs.  I covered this topic on a previous blog entry.  (See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2018/05/28/an-anatomical-comparison-between-the-extinct-north-american-cheetahs-miracynonyx-sp-and-the-late-pleistocene-holocene-cougar-puma-concolor/ ) Edisto Beach abounds with subfossil remains of big cats including saber-tooths, giant lions, jaguars, cougars, bobcats, and now possibly pseudo-cheetahs.

More bones of helmeted musk-ox, caribou, and walrus have been found in South Carolina over the past 17 years.  Most people think of these species as beasts of the far north, so it’s curious to realized how far south they occurred before man disrupted the ecosystem.

Caribou ranged into the middle-south during cooler climate phases.

This is the first paper I’ve read that identified giant beavers from the mid-south as  Casteroides dilophidus.   Recently, paleontologists recognized that extinct giant beavers of the mid-west ( C. ohioensis) were not the same species as giant beavers from the southeast.

There were 2 species of giant beavers. C. ohioensis and C. dilophidus.

Several other first specimens found in South Carolina are interesting enough to note here.  The remains of the giant armadillo (Holmesina floridanus) were discovered in Clapp Creek, Williamsburg County.  It dates to the early Pleistocene.  Imagine a 300 pound armadillo.  There is also the first record of a Pleistocene coyote (Canis latrans) from in state.  Pre-Pleistocene first South Carolina finds include fossils of the bone-eating dog ( Borophagus hilli), dating to the Miocene, and hell pig (an entelodont), dating to the Oligocene.

The below linked paper really has some nice tables of South Carolina Pleistocene-aged fossil sites and all the species found at each. Although specimens of 13-lined ground squirrels were already known, I was surprised to learn just how common and widespread they were.  This species prefers open habitats and is absent from the region today.  Its presence suggests more prairie habitats during Ice Ages.

Reference:

Albright III, L. et. al.

“Cenozoic Vertebrate Biostratigraphy of South Carolina, USA and Additions to the Fauna”

Bulletin of the Florida Museum of Natural History  57 (2) October 2019

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Vol57No2archival.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peanut Soup

The modern peanut (Arachis hypogaea) originated in the region encompassing northwestern Argentina and southeastern Bolivia.  Peanuts are a sun-loving legume that thrives on the open grassy pampas and in fire adapted woodlands. Remains of peanuts were excavated from an archaeological site dated to 7600 years BP, and it seems likely humans were eating wild peanuts thousands of years earlier than this date.  The modern peanut is an hybrid species resulting from a cross between 2 species of peanut still found in the wild–A. duranensis and A. iapensis.  Cultivation of the peanut spread rapidly across South America, and during European colonization it was introduced to Africa where it mostly replaced the native goober nut (a distant relative) in popularity.   There are 5 groups of peanut cultivars including thousands of varieties.  Cultivars include Spanish, Virginia, runner, Valencia, and Tennessee red and white.  Oily Spanish peanuts are my favorite snack.  In addition to human consumption peanuts are used as animal feed and in hundreds of various industrial products.  Surprisingly, the U.S. ranks 4th in worldwide production behind China, India and Nigeria.  Sudan, a desert nation, almost grows as many peanuts as the U.S.

The peanut is not actually a nut, but instead is a legume related to beans and peas.  I grew peanuts in my garden 1 summer.  The plant flowers on a stem.  Following pollination, the stem grows into the ground, and the peanut shell forms at the end of the stem underground.  They are easy to grow in climates with long summers, and they don’t require much fertilization.

During Colonial times peanuts were mostly used as animal feed, but Inns did serve peanut soup.  I went through 3 pages of peanut soup recipes on a google search and discovered that none of them were the original peanut soup recipe served in Colonial era Inns.  The following is the correct recipe for peanut soup.  All other recipes on the internet are wrong, unless they follow this recipe.

Peanut soup made the way it is supposed to be made.

Fry 6 strips of bacon.  Cut up 4 stalks of celery and 1 onion.  Remove the bacon from the pan and add the celery and onion to the bacon grease.  (Celery really pairs well with peanut butter.  The crisp texture of the celery contrasts with the creamy fat of the peanut butter.)  Sautee the vegetables until just tender and add 1/3rd cup of flour.  Add the vegetables and flour to a quart of low sodium chicken broth along with a cup of peanut butter and a pinch of cayenne pepper.  Stir and heat until the peanut butter is mixed well with the chicken broth and there are no lumps.  Serve with crumbled bacon and/or chopped peanuts on top.

This recipe must include celery and bacon.

Jiff is by far the best brand of peanut butter on the market.

The original recipe includes 2 cups of milk with 3 cups of chicken broth instead of just a quart of chicken broth.  I never add milk to mine.

The original recipe also uses white pepper.  I prefer cayenne.  I never use white pepper because it literally smells like crap.

Reference:

Tullie’s Receipts

The Kitchen Guild of the Atlanta Historical Society

Atlanta Historical Society 1976