For two weeks Lightning has been sending Patricia Fisher, the woman who nursed her back to health, a wordless message.

It’s time to let her go.

Lightning, a bald eagle, was severely injured in June of 2005 when the tree holding her nest in Waushara County was struck by lightning and started on fire. Lightning and another young eagle dubbed Thunder were badly burned.

Thunder was released a year ago. Lightning will be released late Saturday morning at the Petenwell Dam east of Neceda on the Wisconsin River.

It’s a day of mixed emotion for Fisher, who at 71, has been a volunteer wildlife rehabilitator for 21 years. Her Feather Rehabilitation and Education center in New London tends to about 100 birds each year. Both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources license the center.

“It’s a sad day and a good day. When you care for them you become part of who they are,” Fisher said.

DNR Warden Dave Algrem in Wautoma found one of the eagles on the ground. The second one came down with the nest after firefighters chopped the tree down to put out the blaze. Algrem placed them in a box and took them to Fisher.

“They were a mess when they came to me. Their feathers were absolutely annihilated. You could see the exit wounds on their feet where the lightning left their bodies,” Fisher said.

The first two weeks of rehab were intense as Fisher applied medication and bandaged their feet. After that she purposefully had minimal contact with the birds. That improves their chances of surviving in the wild once the rehab is complete, Fisher said.

After the wounds healed it was simply a waiting game to see if the feathers would grow in. It turned out to be a long wait for Thunder who was released a year ago. She lived only three months. She died of a spinal injury, but she was found 75 miles from where she’d been released and had gained two pounds.
Fisher was not sad.

“She died outside doing what eagles do,” she said.

Lightning’s wait for freedom has been longer. She’s finally ready.

Throughout the rehab Fisher has kept an eagle eye on Lightning.

“She’s on camera. I’ve been watching her. The last two weeks she’s been flying continually. She’s been telling me ‘You’ve got to get me out of here,’” Fisher said.

Several volunteers will accompany Fisher to the Petenwell Dam this morning. They expect to arrive between 11 a.m. and noon. Lightning will be released where there is a food source and other eagles.

One of the volunteers will toss her skyward.

“The rest is up to her,” Fisher said.

After making its way slightly off nature’s beaten path and into Wisconsin, one little green-breasted mango has found its way to safety, with the help of the human hand.

Neighbors in the area of Sandale Drive in Beloit - who had been receiving regular visits from the hummingbird since July - lured it into a cage Monday and carefully towed it to the Wisconsin Humane Society Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Milwaukee.

With winds growing increasingly frigid, there’s no way the exotic creature, a native of Mexico and Central America, could have survived a Wisconsin winter, resident and amateur birder Virgil Amundson said.

“Everybody said he wouldn’t leave, but we kept hoping he would,” he said.

About a month ago, Amundson, who resides at 4297 W. Sandale Drive, took down all his hummingbird feeders except one, installed a few heat lamps to keep his porch warm for the bird and waited.

“We just watched him to see when he’d start changing his actions, and he got to the point that last day on Monday, when the wind was blowing really hard and there were no leaves left on the trees, that he was just having a hard time,” he said. “They were talking about it getting so cold, so I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

Now under the care of Scott Diehl, manager of the Wisconsin Humane Society Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, he eventually will make his way to the Brookfield Zoo, outside of Chicago.

In the meantime, some expert ornithologists are criticizing Amundson’s decision to rescue the rare bird.

“Nature’s been doing its thing for longer than we’ve been on the planet and, in general, if an animal is in a naturally bad situation and it’s likely to die, that weeds it out of the gene pool - it’s natural selection, is what it is,” said Sheri Williamson, who has been studying and writing about hummingbirds for more than 20 years and currently serves as director of the Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory.

Although she typically favors letting nature take its course, this situation was a bit different, Williamson added.

“In this case we’ve got a bird that has been dependent on human hand-outs that might have died completely anonymously in the wild of Wisconsin or Illinois, had it not stumbled upon these people’s feeders. So it’s already been a benefit of human kindness and I don’t think that kindness should stop just because the hummingbird water freezes over,” she said.

“This is a humane decision and not a conservation decision,” she added. “Whether this bird lives or dies is not going to make a bit of difference to its species, but it does make a difference to that bird and the people who care about it.”

After Mike Ramsden of Beloit’s Ned Hollister bird club identified the bird and placed an alert on the Internet in September, more than 700 people flocked to Beloit to catch a glimpse of it.

Now Amundson and his grandchildren, who he says have grown attached to the bird, look forward to the opportunity to visit it. Williamson doesn’t necessarily agree with that part of the picture, though.

“This is a bird we can help, not by sending it to a zoo, but by putting it in South Texas where it has a good chance of fulfilling its destiny as a green-breasted mango,” she said. “Being placed in captivity doesn’t seem to be much of a life for a bird that could be healthy living in the wild.”

Brookfield Zoo Vice President of Animal Care Kim Smith assures birders that the little guy will do just fine, though. Once he arrives, he will be quarantined for 30 days - the zoo’s standard procedure for any incoming animal - before joining about 25 other species of birds, including two species of hummingbirds, in the zoo’s aviary.

“We have a history of housing hummingbirds in captivity, and zoological institutions have a long history of maintaining hummingbird species in captivity for a long time, and breeding them in captivity,” Smith said.

With staff on hand to monitor its diet and environmental surroundings, Smith added that, “I understand other people’s concerns, but the animal won’t die - it will have a good home and a good life, so to us that’s obviously a viable alternative.”

The bird is expected to be transported to the Brookfield Zoo yet this week, where it likely will remain.

Ask your feathered friends over to dine this winter.

Birds are easy guests. Set the table with a feeder full of seed at a place in your yard where you can watch from a window. Finish off the table setting with a birdbath full of water nearby.

Before too long, the birds will recognize your hospitality and know they have dinner reservations at your home whenever they show up. In turn, they will be your season tickets to a winter-long show.

Reading at the table is not rude when you ask the birds to dinner. Keep a bird identification book nearby and you will begin to know who your guests are as time goes by. “Birds of Virginia Field Guide” is a good for beginners and children because the birds are grouped by color. If you see a bird that is red, you look under red birds in the book. It’s as simple as that.

Since they always add some color to the day when the weather is dreary, we have prepared some tips for you, the host, to make sure your dinner is for the birds. We also have come up with a list of 10 common yard birds you are apt to see this winter, along with a few unusual visitors

As many as 130 species of birds were spotted by teams of bird lovers in a day-long ‘race’ held in Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam.

The exercise was held as part of the HSBC India Bird Race organised by KeralaBirder, a bird lovers group on the Internet. In Thiruvananthapuram, the race was organised by the green groups ‘Warblers and Waders’ and ‘Thanal.’ The race was also held in Kottayam, Thrissur, Malappuram and Kozhikode on Sunday.

The highest number of bird species — 92 — were spotted from the wetlands of Punchakkari and Vellayani near Thiruvananthapuram. The ‘bird of the day’ — the greater spotted eagle, a migratory bird — was sighted in this area as was the Black-crested Baza (Karimthoppi Parunthu). While 68 species of birds were spotted in Kakkamoola, 62 species were spotted in Arippa in the Kollam-Thiruvananthapuram border area.

Fifty-four species of birds were spotted in and around the Museum complex in the city. C. Susanth of Warblers and Waders told The Hindu here that the sighting of so many birds in wetlands underlined the need to conserve these areas. “It is not common to sight the greater spotted eagle in Thiruvananthapuram. Many migratory birds were spotted during the race today. This shows that wetlands are crucial to the survival of a large number of birds,” he said. The lower-than-expected number of sightings in the Kallar-Ponmudi belt needs to be investigated further. This could be due to some climatic change or damage to the environment, he added.

After the race, the bird lovers — about 80 of them, grouped into a dozen teams — got together at a city hotel to share their experiences. The prize for the best team was given to the group that went to the Vellayani-Punchakari areas. The chief guest on the occasion was poet Sugathakumari.

Though the days of sun drenched hours are gone for a while, the birds of the air are still abundant in the skies of their middle Tennessee homes, including those in Bedford County. Their sonnets of song glide on the autumn breezes as the leaves sail the currents they share with the winged friends.

For the Pyrdum family of Shelbyville, the shorter days and cooler temperatures are a bittersweet time. Not only have the hours of light limited their ability to stay outside, but the frosty mornings have curtailed many of the early morning visits they have come to enjoy with a friend named Lucky.

Lucky is a mockingbird, Tennessee’s state bird, who is indeed very lucky.

This past spring, Darlene and Phillip Pyrdum’s daughter, Karen Pyrdum Williams, was enjoying an afternoon of lawn cutting in the bright sunshine when she noticed something tiny in the grass.

“She and her husband were out mowing when they spotted something in front of the mower,” Darlene began. “She called me excited with a rather unusual request.”

It would seem the tiny newborn had fallen from the nest. Because the nest was obviously too high in the tree to be seen or found, Darlene’s daughter brought her the bird to extend the mother’s touch to the fragile creature, who didn’t even have feathers.

“We couldn’t determine what kind of bird it was at first, because it just had a bit of down but no markings,” Darlene said. “Karen knows I am an animal lover. I can’t stand for anything to hurt.”

She hurriedly prepared a home for the new baby. Using the internet, Darlene learned as much as she could about raising a bird.

“I guess the Lord knew about this long before I even had a thought about it because for some reason I had started raising meal worms about a year ago. That, of course, was the number one food source of this little baby, that had to be fed every hour.”

And thus the process began.

Carefully stowed in a basket of towels for warmth, Lucky the bird began to grow. Soon her tiny basket was too small and a large box became her home, all the while Darlene fed her around the clock.

“As the temperatures warmed and she grew a little, I gradually started taking her outside a little at a time. I was wondering how I was going to teach her how to eat on her own. I was her only mommy. She was big enough to begin eating out of my hand.”

Darlene said the little bird began to be adventurous. At first she would only sit with Darlene on a bench under a tree but gradually found a route to her shoulder and sat there, viewing the world with the protection of her “mommy.”

“I asked my husband to take an old mailbox and make her a home,” Darlene said. “We put it up in a tree, hoping that she might stay in it at night once she was ready to be on her own. It took a lot of persuasion to get him to do it, but he did. Lucky finally grew on him too. I painted the name “Lucky’s House” on the sides of the mailbox. She would sit on the lid, but she never slept in it.”

The Pyrdums let Lucky come and go as she pleased around the house. According to Darlene, the bird had a set time to eat each day, three times a day, having outgrown the continual feedings. She was gradually left outside and allowed to find her way in life without her mommy.

Just as Darlene had found that tapping taught the bird to eat, she also found ways to help her learn to fly.

“I had to be her teacher,” said Darlene. “I took that responsibility and was very proud when she finally flew around the yard. At first she stayed very close to the house and always returned to eat. I would look out and she was be sitting on the back of the bench we enjoyed with her, waiting on her meal worms.”

It didn’t take long for Lucky the Mockingbird to truly spread her wings and fly.

“We noticed by mid-summer that she was getting later in coming back each day,”

Darlene said. “By the tenth week, on a Saturday morning, she didn’t come for breakfast. We looked for her all day to come. Finally late that afternoon, I heard a faint chirp like Lucky’s.”

Hoping that the bird had returned to the “nest,” Darlene looked into a neighbor’s tree and saw the little bird sitting there, among her new friends and family.

“She had made friends,” said the proud ‘mom,’ “with friends of her same breed. I knew that this time would come for her, but only God knew when that time would be.”

Mother Nature soon replaced Darlene, and the little bird joined its peers. Healthy and happy, the little bird that fell from the sky, returned to fly there.

“She gave us joy,” said Darlene of the bird who hasn’t returned to their home. The Pyrdums see several mockingbirds each day and have a feeling that a particular one is their grown up winged friend.

Like the biblical story of Joseph, what was perhaps done by unkind siblings had a purpose that only God could discern.

“If she was pushed out of her nest, I’m sure, in her way, she thanked them,” Darlene said. “She got to live the life of a queen as a bird named Lucky.”

The trials and tribulations of one of Britain’s largest colonies of terns have been captured for a BBC wildlife programme tonight.

The 1,300 pairs of terns - or sea swallows - at Cemlyn nature reserve were filmed over a breeding season for The Nature of Britain programme.

The birds travel thousands of miles from Africa to Anglesey because of the good fish stocks in the sea there.

The programme can be seen on BBC1 at 2100 GMT on Wednesday.

Cemlyn is run by North Wales Wildlife Trust (NWWT) and is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The area is ideal for breeding terns because of the availability of sand eels and small fish, according to John Rowe from NWWT.

“This is the only colony in Wales and it is to do with fish stocks in the surrounding sea,” he said.

The reserve is situated on the north coast of Anglesey, three miles from Cemaes on land owned by the National Trust but leased to the NWWT since 1971.

It includes a large lagoon, separated from the sea by a naturally created shingle ridge known as Esgair Gemlyn.

The birds attract tourists to the area with 3,000 visitors recorded last year.

Over the birds breeding season - after their flight back to Anglesey from Senegal in Africa - the cameras followed the ups and downs in the colony.

“We have mostly sandwich terns, but also common terns and arctic terns breeding here,” added Mr Rowe.

“What I like most about them is all the troubles they have to deal with.

“They fly so far, breed in such big numbers close together, they deal with a lot.”

Viewing the birds close up on the ground is usually quite difficult as they like to keep their distance, so the TV cameras will provide and opportunity to see them close up, he added.

Strangler figs, live oaks and gumbo limbos shade the graves of Confederate soldiers and Florida pioneers. At Fort Lauderdale’s Evergreen Cemetery, a few fragments of history linger in a city overrun by strip malls.

The old graveyard also provides a haven for a vast variety of warblers, tanagers and other birds trying to navigate ancient migration routes through urbanized South Florida. On weekend mornings, bird watchers wander among the headstones, trying to spot a western spindalis or Bahama mockingbird. Sightings of rare species lead to Internet postings that draw birders from as far as California.

“It is really, really, really a hot spot,” said Ann Wiley, of Fort Lauderdale, as she walked toward the north end with her binoculars. “It’s known to have a lot of warblers. You always have Baltimore orioles come through here. You can see a great variety in a short period of time during migrations.”

The cemetery is as gothic a place as can be found in Fort Lauderdale. Even on sunny days, it’s full of dark shadows, as the tall old trees shade the paths and graves. A row of tombs lines the high ground along the thickets at the eastern edge, where the land descends sharply to a narrow pond of black water.

Near one of the northern gates stands a headstone with the single word Stranahan, marking the graves of the pioneer couple who ran a trading post on Fort Lauderdale’s New River. In 1929, depressed by financial failures, Frank Stranahan tied an iron grate to his foot and jumped into the river. His widow Ivy lived until 1971, long enough to see a downtown grow up around their house.

The cemetery, located east of Federal Highway and south of Davie Boulevard, attracts people with a taste for things eerie. Ghost hunters, such as the Palm Beach Paranormal Society, have visited with digital cameras and radiation detectors. And on a recent Saturday evening, a group of young women in dark eye makeup and shroud-like outfits met near the tombs to sample Jello molds shaped like brains before heading out on a pub crawl called a Zombie Walk.

But the most devoted visitors are those who spend hours here to add to “life lists” of birds they’ve seen. Among the species confirmed at Evergreen are the prairie warbler, eastern wood-peewee, black-throated blue warbler, red-eyed vireo, northern waterthrush, ovenbird, Swainson’s warbler, Tennessee warbler, Cape May warbler, bay-breasted warbler, Blackburnian warbler, hooded warbler, summer tanager and scarlet tanager.

“There are several thousand fanatical bird watchers who are competing to get their life lists as high as they can,” said Scott Robinson, professor of ecosystem conservation at the University of Florida’s Florida Museum of Natural History. “There are only about 700 species of birds that occur regularly in North America. The only way they can compete with other people is by hopping on an airplane to see every bird that shows up from the West Indies or Siberia.”

Bryant Roberts, an experienced birder from Davie, sparked one of the Evergreen birding frenzies earlier this year when he looked into a small live oak and spotted a western spindalis, a Bahamas species rarely seen in the United States.

“I was excited,” he said. “It was the first male I’d ever seen and the first one I’d found on my own.”

He posted the news on the Web, and word spread fast.

Jody Levin, a jazz singer who splits her time between Long Island and South Palm Beach, heard the news and came to the cemetery in hopes of adding the western spindalis to her life list of some 500 birds. On her second visit, with more than a dozen fellow birders also seeking the spindalis, a professional birding guide spotted it deep in a shrub.

“He was beautiful, as he showed his striped black and white head, his yellow-orange breast and his multi-patterned back . . . and then he was gone,” Levin wrote in an account for the North Fork Audubon Society of Long Island. “Like players on a sports team, we high- and low-fived one another. Strangers bound together by victory, and then we parted, going our separate ways.”

The concentration of birds results largely from the destruction of habitat along migration routes, forcing birds to cluster in the remaining stands of trees.

“It makes for fantastic bird watching, with them all concentrated in one place, but it’s tough on the birds,” Robinson said. “They can’t find enough food. They need to keep moving. Overall, their numbers have declined quite a bit.”

The birding bonanza occurs in a place fragrant with the past. Near one path stands the grave of Thomas J. Russ, 1st. Lt., Co. H, Florida Infantry, C.S.A. In the northwest corner stands a walled Jewish cemetery founded in 1935. Near it is a mass grave for victims of the great hurricane of 1926. At the northeast corner stands the headstone of Crazy Gregg Newell, a bar owner whose wet-T-shirt contests and low-priced beer helped make the city a legendary Spring Break destination.

To visit the cemetery with Roberts, finder of the western spindalis, is to see how much the average person misses.

On a recent visit, he spotted a prairie warbler, an eastern wood-peewee, and a black-throated blue warbler with a strangler fig fruit in her beak.

Roberts himself is a bit of a historical rarity, being a native of Broward County, and this adds to his appreciation of the cemetery.

“That’s one of the interesting things about birding here,” he said, with a glance at the rows of headstones. “I know some of the residents.”

Flying north for its annual fall return to the colder regions of the northern hemisphere, an eyebrowed thrush took a wrong turn and found itself in Jerusalem at 6 am on Sunday.

The thrush was identified at the Jerusalem Bird Observatory of the Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel’s Urban Wildlife Site by head ringer Shay Agmon.

“This is a mega-rarity,” said Amir Balaban, co-director of the observatory, which is located near the Knesset in Givat Ram.

It was the second time an eyebrowed thrush (turdus obscurus) had been seen in Israel. The first sighting was in Eilat in 1996, and Balaban doubted the bird would be seen in Israel again in his lifetime.

The eyebrowed thrush is not an endangered species in its preferred cold habitats. It is commonly found in the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, Siberia and the taiga (coniferous forests) of the far north, but is rare in the Middle East, Western Europe and the United States.

“It probably joined local song thrushes when it got lost,” said Balaban.

Song thrushes are common winter birds in Israel. Though similar, song thrushes are a “duller version” of the eyebrowed thrush, which is “known for its bluish-gray back and chest, lemon-colored lower mandible, smooth ochre-chestnut upper chest and belly and its trademark beautiful white eyebrow,” Balaban said.

Netted at the observatory’s Bird Monitoring Station, the thrush was trapped, banded, measured, weighed and promptly released. The eyebrowed thrush will face many dangers on its journey, including “feral cats of the Middle East, hunters and lots of uncontrolled pesticides.”

“We crossed our fingers and hope for its safe return,” said Balaban. “It will have to be a very lucky bird.”

Aside from being a thrill for Israel’s birders, 25 of whom “jumped out of bed at the Rare Bird Alert” sent out Sunday morning, the eyebrowed thrush’s presence signals success on the part of the Society for the Preservation of Nature.

“The appearance of rare birds is an important indicator of [the] quality of an urban wildlife site,” said Balaban. “It proves that if we preserve important bird areas in the city, they will be used by both common birds and rare ones.”

Incidents of a seabird preying on colonies of another species at night may be unique to a remote islands archipelago.

Ecologist Will Miles said initial research of great skua preying on Leach’s petrel on St Kilda found the behaviour was unlikely to be common.

The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) has been recording “alarming” falls in the smaller petrels on the islands.

Mr Miles and fellow researchers used night vision gear to observe the skua.

NTS said the Leach’s petrel colony on St Kilda, which it owns, is the largest in Europe and numbers about 40,000 pairs.

Researchers from Glasgow University have been investigating suggestions that great skua, or bonxie, may be eating up to 14,000 petrels every year.

The research on Hirta, St Kilda, will run until 2009.

Results of this year’s work are still being analysed, however, Mr Miles revealed some intriguing insights into the bonxies’ behaviour.

He said: “The skuas are highly active on the petrel colonies at night and catch petrels in a variety of ways - both on the ground and in the air.

“Nocturnal foraging by great skuas is thought to be quite a rare situation.

“At least, it has not been widely reported from the most intensively studied skua colonies on Shetland or from elsewhere across the species’ breeding range.

“The situation on Kilda seems rather unique in this respect.”

Why the bonxie prey on petrels may be down to a combination of factors.

They include limited other food sources, competition between the skuas and when the birds nest close to petrel colonies.

Mr Miles said: “Skuas are highly opportunistic predators and some individuals seem to develop a taste for certain prey types.

“One possibility may be that on Kilda the petrels are a relatively abundant prey type, a few individual skuas have exploited this situation opportunistically and their behaviour has been copied by others looking for an easy meal.”

After assessing the safety of vantage points, the researchers spent nights close to high cliffs, steep slopes and scree boulder fields.

Mr Miles said: “Once on-site, we then stayed put in one watching position for the hours of darkness and just observed the bird activity.”

The vigils were often to the backdrop of the sound of puffins, manx shearwaters and European storm petrels.

‘Elegant seabirds’

Mr Miles said: “The call of the shearwaters is particularly evocative and bizarre - sometimes likened to a chicken with asthma. It is rather a wheezy, wailing sort of call.”

Mr Miles admitted it could be hard to be an impartial observer.

He said: “Yes, Leach’s petrels seem tiny and elegant seabirds when compared with bonxies, so of course it can be difficult to watch a petrel get eaten without feeling some kind of regret.

“Predation is a normal occurrence in nature though, even if rarely observed.”

Data gathered by researchers will be used to help guide conservation efforts for both species.

Preliminary information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reveals more than 71 million people watched, fed, or photographed wild birds in 2006, the latest figures available. They spent $45 billion pursuing their hobby.

That makes feeding wild birds one of the most popular outdoor activities in the United States, with widespread and evenly-distributed fans among all age groups.

And the popularity is growing. From 2001 to 2006, the number of wildlife watchers increased by 8 percent in the U.S. The most popular activity was feeding wildlife close to home. You don’t need a license or any special skills n just an interest and a commitment to doing it right.

Wildlife professionals with the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks offers the following advicde for people who would like to participate in winter bird feeding.

Place feeders where you can watch, enjoy and photograph feeding visitors. If bothered by squirrels at feeders, place your feeder on a pole away from trees. Place feeders near cover to protect feeding birds from weather and predators, such as free-roaming cats.

Move feeders if you notice birds striking windows. Some birds, such as sparrows, juncos, doves and pheasants feed on the ground or on a flat platform. Offer several feeding sites to avoid overcrowding and disease transmission.

If you’re only offering one menu item, black oil sunflower seed appeals to many birds. Ground-feeding birds may prefer corn, milo or millet to sunflower seed. Pine siskins, goldfinches and redpolls prefer niger seed (also called finch or thistle seed), which you can offer in feeders designed for this seed. Suet or peanut butter may attract woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches and brown creepers. Offer year-round water by adding a bird bath heater. Avoid offering human “table scraps,” which may attract rodents or raccoons.

Remember to keep feeders and feeding areas clean by regularly raking up seed hulls and cleaning feeders by scrubbing them with soapy water and rinsing in water diluted with a small amount of bleach. Store seed in tight, waterproof containers to prevent mold and to discourage rodents that may be attracted to accessible seed.

Once you begin feeding, try to continue through the winter, but don’t worry about missing a few days, since feeding birds typically visit other feeding stations besides yours. If you notice sick or diseased birds, disinfect your feeders and stop feeding for 10 to 14 days to avoid further spreading diseases.