A bird that is on the protected species list, a killdeer, makes a home in a very unusual place, a work site.

It’s located on Suburban Road off South Higuera Street in San Luis Obispo.

Work at that site has come to a halt while the expectant bird waits for her eggs to hatch.

For all the reasons a construction project could be delayed, this is the perhaps one of the strangest.

It’s all because of a Kildeer, a type of bird that’s related to the endangered, Snowy Plover.

When an expectant mom nested at a San Luis Obispo construction site, work there came to a halt.

The mom to be sits on her four eggs in what may sound like the perfect nesting spot. But the construction site is anything but a heavenly hatching place.

“I have no idea what she was thinking,” said Plant Manager Hal Bradley.

It seems the expectant mother bird and her feathered mate found lakefront property in the center of a construction site.

“It’s not unusual for them to find a body of water and nest near it,” said Bradley.

“It’s not really a body of water,” said Action News Reporter Stacy Daniel.

“No it’s not, but it is to her apparently,” Bradley laughed.

Not wanting to interrupt nature’s birthing process, the construction crew called in an expert for some advice.

“The workers saw a bird, they immediately put cones around it and called their managers, called in a biologist and we modified the buffer slightly but, basically they did what they should do to protect the bird while it nests,” Biologist Greg McGowan.

So for now, the construction of a concrete wash out area is on hold, at least until a bird of a different kind, a stork makes a delivery.

“We’re going to let her do her thing and give her room and hopefully they’ll find a new place once she hatches out and gets them to a point where they can fly,” said Bradley.

The eggs are expected to hatch within the next 25 days or so.

The hatchlings will need to stay in the area for a little while longer.

So, it looks like the construction project will be put on hold for about a month.

Environmental experts said the construction crew did the right thing by calling a biologist.

Even though the bird is not endangered, special measures need to be taken to ensure the eggs are not harmed before they hatch.

A baby elephant has been rescued – by the nose – moments after his mother apparently tried to crush and drown him.

The drama took place just seconds after the baby was born in a zoo.

Pori, a 26-year-old African elephant, shocked onlookers by appearing to stamp on her new son.

She then began rolling him in her enclosure before putting him in water, in an apparent attempt to drown him. Visitors at Friedrichsfelde Animal Park in Berlin screamed to alert keepers, who lured Pori away from her child with bread and apples.

Members of the public then pulled the baby out of the water to safety.

He was given a tranquilliser and painkillers.

Amazingly, the baby was later reunited with his mother by zoo staff who said she had not been trying to kill him after all.

Although the mother killed her first baby in 2005 by accidentally crushing him, keepers think her behaviour yesterday was down to a failed bid to make the calf stand up.

Elephants usually nudge their young to help them take their first steps. Claus Pohle, deputy director of the zoo, said: ‘It only looked like she wanted to stomp him. All is well with Pori and her son. She is a proud and loving mother.’

“Sparky — who was lost, has been found — hallelujah!”

That was the sentiment expressed Tuesday by students and faculty at Akron’s Archbishop Hoban High School, where the nearly 3-year-old bird — a cockatiel — had been the school family’s nonjudgmental friend.

“To many of us, it is truly amazing that Sparky returned,” said Mary Anne DeCenzo, Hoban’s director of marketing.

“Some of us left school last night (Monday) with no hope of hearing his chirping this morning… Being of the Catholic faith, we quietly told each other to pray to St. Anthony — we believe he is the intercessor for `lost causes’.”

Whether or not St. Anthony interceded, the good news is Sparky is back. He returned to the cage placed on a picnic table outside the biology lab.

Here’s the rest of the story as told in an e-mail by Judy Mohan — biology teacher and unofficial mother to Sparky. “Monday afternoon, just at the end of school, Sparky came out of my classroom on a student’s shoulder, as he often does, to socialize after a hard day of classes.”

At that moment, someone opened the door to the parking lot, and “Sparky, seeing that ray of light, took off!

“Students had been warning me for days that he was managing longer and longer flights around the classroom in the mornings, and I had been slow to respond with the trimming that his wing feathers require every so often,” she wrote.

As news spread that he had flown the coop, Hoban’s school family and parents sprang into action, literally beating the bushes for Sparky.

Brother Ken Haders, the school’s president, ventured out onto the roof to put Sparky’s cage there to tempt him back. Another cage was put by the picnic tables “in case the weary Sparky didn’t have the strength to make it onto the roof.”

“Lost Bird” signs peppered the neighborhood. Some neighbors took it upon themselves to search for the fugitive fowl.

“Although much snugglier than usual, he appears unharmed and none the worse for the wear,” Mohan said.

A long-running custody dispute over two dogs lost in Hurricane Katrina ended Tuesday when the Florida women who adopted the animals after the storm agreed to give them back.

“This is what we wanted from the beginning, our dogs being back home,” Doreen Couture said at an emotional news conference.

Steve and Doreen Couture and their two children lived near New Orleans, when they dropped their dogs off at a temporary shelter before fleeing Katrina in 2005 and didn’t immediately reclaim them. In the chaos that followed, the animals - a St. Bernard and a shepherd mix - ended up at a shelter in Pinellas County, and were adopted.

The Coutures eventually learned of the dogs’ whereabouts and sued in court in Florida last year to have them returned. The new owners said they adopted the dogs in good faith and vowed to fight.

On Tuesday, Tampa prosecutor Pam Bondi, who adopted the St. Bernard and spent thousands of dollars nursing him back to health, said she decided to give him back after getting to know the Coutures and visiting them in Louisiana. The family lost most everything they had in the storm.

The dog, named Master Tank, was renamed Noah by Bondi.

“Master Tank/Noah will be going back to Louisiana, and thanks to these good people, I will be a big part of his life,” a tearful Bondi said. “I will get to visit him, he will come here to see me. We’ve developed a great relationship.”

Lord of the Rings actor Viggo Mortensen has a veterinarian’s bill after emergency surgery saved Brego, his mount in the film trilogy, the horse’s minder said.

A small bowel tear almost did what the films’ villains Saruman, Sauron and the black riders could not - kill the trusty steed of Mortensen’s heroic character, Aragorn.

The actor bought the Dutch stallion after filming and lives in semi retirement in New Zealand on the North Island property of Ray Lenaghan, the horse’s minder.

Lenaghan, himself a veterinarian, noticed Brego was in trouble two weeks ago. The horse was rushed to Massey University’s equine hospital.

“It was very clear from the moment he arrived he was in a critical state,” said equine surgery expert Frederik Pauwels.

“We anaesthetised him, made a mid-line incision into his belly,” and found that “part of his bowel was stuck,” Pauwels said.

He said Brego would have suffered a “pretty nasty death” without surgery, but has come through well.

Running through the fields with her newly-born foals, mare Royal Beatrice has good reason to celebrate - after managing the astonishingly rare feat of producing twins.

The 22-year-old New Forest Pony has shocked equine experts with the surprise birth of healthy twin foals because the chances of both surviving are so slim.

In nearly all cases, one or both foals die in a twin pregnancy because the mother’s uterus cannot support two babies.

The chances of a mare giving birth to healthy twin foals are about 1 in 10,000, experts said today.

But little filly Bess, and colt Royal, have defied the odds by becoming the first twins to be born in the New Forest, Hampshire for many years.

And at just a few weeks old, the playful pair are lapping up all the attention they are attracting from horse lovers across the country.

Royal Beatrice gave birth to the pair at St Leonards Farm near Beaulieu after mating with a spotted Appaloosa Cockaroost Pazaz stallion.

Bess and Royal can thank their father for their distinctive white markings and have been registered as First Cross New Forest/Appaloosa ponies.

Secretary of the New Forest Pony Breeding and Cattle Society, Jane Murray, said: “It is extremely unusual for horses to give birth to twins like this.

“To get both foals surviving to full pregnancy is a very rare feet indeed and we only have a couple of examples in our stud book of it ever happening before.

“But it is even more rare when the mare is so old. At 22, I think it’s fair to say that Royal Beatrice has done extremely well to have healthy twins.

“Her owners can be well and truly chuffed.”

Owner Stacey Gulliver from Beaulieu added: “Although my dad did mention she looked a bit fatter than is usual, it was a total surprise that it was twins, especially as they are so rare.”

The British Horse Society’s senior executive of welfare, Lee Hackett, said the overall chances of a mare giving birth to healthy twins are 1 in 10,000.

He said: “This is incredibly rare and it is wonderful news that both these foals have been born healthy.

“In most cases both of the foals will die during pregnancy, or if you are lucky one might manage to survive.

“Most owners will choose to abort as soon as they realise that the mother is expecting twins because they don’t want to risk losing the mare as well.

“Horses are just not designed to carry twins. The mother’s uterus is not large enough or well enough equipped to cope with them.”

He added that a mare’s placenta cannot support the needs of two growing foals once they reach a larger size in the later phases of pregnancy and therefore one or both die.

Twins account for around 15 per cent of all pregnancies in thoroughbred horses but in only 10 per cent of those cases will both foals survive to the point of birth.

And even if they make that far, only 15 per cent of those will result in a successful birth of two live foals.

The odds are even slimmer in cross-bred horses, Mr Hackett said.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland have taken a novel approach to studying biological diversity by making use of laser remote sensing (lidar). Lidar data provide unique measurements of the 3-dimensional structure of vegetation, an important aspect of habitat diversity. Habitat heterogeneity and complexity have been shown in many places to be directly related to animal species richness – a more complex environment provides a greater number of ecological niches to be filled by different species. Using this basic principle, WHRC scientists examined the relationships between bird species richness and habitat metrics derived from lidar data acquired by aircraft. They then explored the efficacy of predicting bird richness and abundance based on these metrics. The first phase of this research, profiled in the current issue of Remote Sensing of Environment, focuses on results from study sites in the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge in Maryland.

According to Scott Goetz, a senior scientist at the Center who is leading the project, “Lidar is the most unique and exciting technology to come along in the past decade in the remote sensing research community. We now have the ability to characterize vegetation in three dimensions, and that has implications not only for biodiversity research but also for improved estimates of biomass and carbon stocks.”

While some recent studies that have assessed the utility of satellite remote sensing for mapping aspects of biological diversity, they have relied solely optical imagery, particularly LandSat, to characterize horizontal variability in habitat, such as the mixture of different land cover types. Utilizing lidar provides information in the vertical dimension, that is, in the terms of canopy profiles describing the vertical distribution of canopy elements, like leaves and branches. This information is then translated into canopy metrics for every lidar “shot” that penetrates through the canopy. Using this information, researchers can estimate bird diversity through its link with habitat diversity. In the Patuxent study, the lidar metrics were consistently better predictors of biodiversity than those based on the use of LandSat imagery.

Daniel Steinberg, a research assistant who is working on the project, adds, “The instrument we use to acquire the lidar data, known as the Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS), collects literally millions of data points within a small area, and using this data we can actually construct 3-dimensional images of canopy height, elevation, complexity, as well as other metrics of habitat structure.”

The study sites in Patuxent Wildlife Refuge were chosen because collaborators in the project had estimated bird species richness across a regular grid, giving the scientists a basis for comparison. This work is currently being extended to the Hubbard Brook LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) site in New Hampshire to explore how well lidar data can aid predictions of the abundance of birds that are habitat specialists - like those that use (for either foraging or nesting) more vertically complex canopies versus shrubs or open areas – particularly neotropical migrants that rely on U.S. forests for summer habitat.

Dr. Goetz adds, “We have known for years that habitat diversity is important for many aspects of biological diversity, but it was never before possible to acquire data on habitats over very large areas. With the advent of lidar, particularly on a satellite platform planned for the near future, we will have a valuable new tool for identifying and protecting key biodiversity hotspots – while also gathering critical information needed to map and monitor changes in carbon stocks.”

The bald eagle rescued by two brothers near the Michigan-Ohio border on Good Friday will be taken to a veterinarian’s office on Thursday night to have the pins removed from its broken wing.

“If everything goes right, the pins will come out Thursday,” said Dave Hogan, a bird rehabilitation expert who is taking care of the eagle at his home in Monroe County. “I think the wing will be just fine.”

But the eagle continues to have problems with his wrist. It could be arthritis. “That wrist is tightening up on him,” Hogan said Monday morning. “With physical therapy, we can get it stretched out. Every time we go to do it, it’s pretty frozen up again.”

After the pins are removed, the eagle will go through extensive rehabilitation. “After he gets out and is moving around every day, that will help,” Hogan said.

The injured wrist could keep the bird from being released into the wild. If the eagle is not released into the wild, it will be given to a zoo or used for education.

The Free Press wrote about the eagle after it was rescued April 6 by Jon and Joe Barbara, who spotted the injured bird by a railroad track, in a thicket of woods, near Monroe. It wasn’t able to fly.

Wyoming’s bald eagle population has reached a new high of more than 185 breeding pairs.

The rebound has staggered ornithologists who predicted much lower recovery rates when the birds were first granted federal protection in 1967.

The bald eagle population is soaring nationally, as well, with the number of breeding pairs in the lower 48 states climbing from a low in 1963 of 417 to more than 9,700 today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday.

The strong recovery offers evidence to some scientists that federal protection of the birds under the Endangered Species Act should be lifted.

“They’re not facing extinction, and they are not threatened with moving into the endangered classification,” said Bob Oakleaf, who oversees nongame species for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “So we might as well reserve that act and the money and heartache and conflict that goes with it to the species that need it.”

The decline and resurgence of Wyoming’s bald eagles span more than a century.

It’s difficult to estimate eagle numbers before the arrival of Anglo-American settlers, because the settlers both helped and hurt the birds.

Eagles benefited from the creation of reservoirs for irrigation and the stocking of fish species not indigenous to the state.

Even more influential, however, were poisons including strychnine, introduced in the 1800s, to kill wolves and other predators known to feed on livestock. Eagles consumed baited meat or carcasses of dead predators and were unintentionally killed.

Trophy hunting and poisonous lead shotgun ammunition used until the 1980s to hunt waterfowl also contributed to eagle mortality.

By the time DDT, the infamous eggshell-weakening pesticide, arrived in Wyoming, the eagle decline was well under way.

“They used DDT in Wyoming fairly heavily in croplands in the ’40s,” Oakleaf said. “By then it was just icing on the cake.”

Despite the unwitting boost from early farmers and ranchers, Wyoming’s eagle population by 1978 had dropped to 35 breeding pairs.

Most of the remaining birds lived in the greater Yellowstone region, including 15 breeding pairs inside Yellowstone National Park. But severe weather in Yellowstone during the 1970s and 1980s limited the breeding productivity of those eagles. A handful that lived on private land around Jackson formed the nucleus from which most of the state’s recovered population eventually blossomed.

Small groups of eagles in the Sheridan area, possibly migrants from Montana, and in the Saratoga area probably also helped repopulate the state, Oakleaf said.

The population in the Jackson areas, far greater than anyone predicted when recovery efforts began, is so dense that scuffles and deaths between the highly territorial birds are frequent.

But those same birds face some of the most rapid habitat destruction and human encroachment because of development, Oakleaf said.

Fortunately, he said, conservation groups are working to protect open space from development, and bald eagles seem to be increasingly at ease in the presence of humans, possibly because more young birds are forced to live in developed areas.

“There are signs that they are showing increasing tolerance to human activity,” Oakleaf said.

The future of Wyoming’s bald eagle population is unclear, Oakleaf said, except that it’s probably here to stay.

The population growth seems to be slowing, but Oakleaf said he won’t say that the birds have reached their capacity.

In the meantime, the efforts to lift federal protection for bald eagles continues. The current debate centers on fine nuances in the rules that will guide management of the birds in the future.

Conservationists are concerned that the rules will be too flimsy to offer meaningful protection for the long term.

Oakleaf noted that numerous other laws will remain in place to protect bald eagles when federal protection is lifted. After all, he pointed out, they are the national symbol.

A mosquito count scheduled for later this month will decide the schedule for any spraying required to control the pest.

Although a tentative schedule has been scheduled for possible mosquito spraying throughout the community, it will not go into effect unless the count done by the county’s mosquito control department warrants it, said Kristi Connell, the association’s public relations director.

Cy Lesser, chief of the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s Mosquito Control, said mosquito counts are a request-only service, with approximately 140 communities in the county having mosquito surveillance performed.

Lesser said the first stage of mosquito counts in the Pines began in early April.

“What happens is, a team goes in and looks for mosquito larvae in various locations like stormwater, undeveloped lots and undrained ditches. Then they will treat those areas with the larvae,” he said.

Lesser said that because Worcester County has had a cool and dry spring, counts for adult mosquitoes will be conducted at the end of May.

There are two methods for conducting adult mosquito counts and the primary way is through light traps, Lesser said. He said there are approximately five traps placed in various sections of the Pines that operate overnight. The next morning inspectors come in, get the light traps, identify and count the mosquitoes.

“In order for a treatment to be done, the mosquito count has to reach a certain level. If it’s below the level, no treatment will be done,” Lesser said. “On average, if 10 mosquitoes get caught each night in the trap and are counted, then treatment could be performed.”

He added that not all mosquitoes are attracted to light, therefore, a second method is used where the inspectors respond to private complaints at particular properties in the community.

“An inspector will go out into a person’s yard and use themselves as bait for one to two minutes,” Lesser said. “The inspectors will do a count of how many land on them in that period, and a treatment would most likely be performed in the area if at least five land within that two-minute interval.”

According to Lesser, the need for treatment and mosquito spraying varies in the Pines each year and depends on factors such as weather and in what section of the community a person lives.

“It used to be that three-quarters or more of the mosquitoes in Ocean Pines would be in sections 15 and 10, because they are the more southern sections in the community, and as we went more north there would be fewer and fewer, but that has changed,” he said.

According to Lesser, there are many factors that have caused the change, but primarily it is the introduction within the last 10 years of the tiger mosquito. He said the tiger mosquito is attracted to containers, puddles, flowerpots and anything in a person’s yard that will hold the smallest amount of water.

Unlike the Ocean Pines’ native mosquito, which is more attracted to wetlands and tends to stay away from humans, the tiger mosquito has become a large nuisance to many communities because it can closely associate with humans.

“Once it was introduced to any area, it just proliferated and is now the number-one problem species we answer complaints about,” Lesser said.

“Since Ocean Pines is a vacation getaway and retirement community, the tiger mosquito has begun to make more of an appearance during the last 10 years, because people are bringing them in with items that may have been stored somewhere the mosquito would be,” he said.

Mosquito spraying must be done carefully. Consideration must include the wind and its direction to avoid contaminating delicate environments.

The schedule, if the mosquito count reaches the required level for spraying, is as follows; on the Monday following the decision to conduct the spraying, the process would begin in sections 10, 15A, 15B, 16 and 17, that Tuesday would be sections 11, 14A, 14B, 14C, 14D, 18 and 19, on Wednesday would be sections 4, 9, 12 and 13, that Thursday would be sections 1, 2, 3 and 7 and the Friday would be sections 5, 6 and 8.

For more information, call the OPA at 410-641-7717.