Posted on 09/02/2010 7:15:39 PM PDT by Ptarmigan
A couple of weeks ago, I came home to a distressed message on my answering machine. The voice on the other end exclaimed, “Kim! Where are the white-tailed ptarmigan?!” The distraught messenger is a friend of mine, someone who I consider one of the most knowledgeable and active birders in the Eagle Valley area. She went on to say that during her alpine hikes this summer she's seen plenty of pika but she hasn't seen a single ptarmigan and she wanted me to join her on a mission to find some.
“Kim! Where are the white-tailed ptarmigan?!” Perhaps they are with the Snipe.
I suspect fowl play.
Four legs good...two legs better.
Global warming alert?
I am foncused.
The wolves eat the elk, deer, cows and sheep. Soon they will eat a child or two.
The expected environmentalist response: Bad parents need to control their children.
Oh! to think we were once wolf free... Ptarmigan, sharmigan.
On top of the eggplant and the veal.
Oh man, how did the ptarmigans ever survive this long without eco-heroes like this looking out for them?
" CORVALLIS, Ore. - An alarming number of white-tailed ptarmigan in a large region of the southern Rocky Mountains are suffering from acute cadmium poisoning - an exposure to high concentrations of the extremely toxic trace metal."
"A new study published in Nature found that an alarming number of white-tailed ptarmigan are suffering from acute cadmium poisoning.
"Scientists report Thursday in the journal Nature that 46 percent of the adult birds surveyed in a 10,000-square kilometer area in south-central Colorado were found with cadmium accumulations in their kidneys well above the toxic threshold of 100 parts per million.
"Cadmium toxicity causes kidney and liver dysfunction, brittle bones, and adversely affects reproduction and survival.
"Lead author James R. Larison, an Oregon State University professor and alpine ecologist, said the findings are not unlike those that linked the pesticide DDT to a problem of thin-eggshells in the peregrine falcon three decades ago. The implications of th e toxicity go beyond a single species.
"What we found in our study was that a particular genus of plants - willows - were 'biomagnifying' or concentrating cadmium," Larison said. "They act as biological pumps, increasing the concentrations of cadmium by two orders of magnitude. Birds eat a lot of willow, especially in the winter when other foods are scarce.
"They aren't the only creatures to eat willow, though," he added. "The possibility exists that deer, elk, moose, snowshoe rabbits, beaver and other animals may face similar problems, just as it is possible that other plants - including some vegetables - may have the same abilities to biomagnify cadmium that willow does."
More at yahoo search:
Ban the damned willow or better yet, feed it to the clown that wrote this article.
Ban the damned willow or better yet, feed it to the clown that wrote this article.
Ptarmigans are very hardy and resilient animals. Don’t ever underestimate them. Ptarmigans had a great civilization that spanned the vast tundra from Asia, Europe, and North America. It was a peaceful time until the rabbits, hares, pikas, gyrfalcons, squirrels, and coyotes invaded, destroyed, and plundered this great civilization. Also, some humans collaborated in the destruction of this ptarmigan civilization. It was all directed by rabbits, which is known as the Great Ptarmigan/Rabbit War. Rabbits control every aspect of the world and do not want humans to know what ptarmigans are. If more people knew what ptarmigans are, rabbits are exposed for their evil.
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