Colorado Raptors of Winter: An Interview With Anne Price

You guys have heard of Anne Price from the Raptor Education Foundation (REF) before: she's the one who brings all of the awesome birds of prey to the raptor shows at the Best Western Denver Southwest dinosaur hotel!  Eager to learn more about some of the raptors that live here in Colorado during the winter, and how the change in weather affects the birds behavior!  She was nice enough to oblige, and the answers were definitely very interesting!  So after you check out the REF website HERE and like their Facebook page HERE, please join me in welcoming Anne Price, Curator of Raptors at the Raptor Education Foundation!

Anne Price with a prairie falcon at the Best Western Denver Southwest!

1. What raptors are you likely to see if you live along the Front Range here in Colorado?

The big four hawks are: red-tailed hawk (year round), Swainson’s hawk (April through early October), rough-legged hawk (October through March), and Ferruginous hawk (year round, but rare on front range in summer months).  Turkey vultures in spring, bald eagles in winter, golden eagles, Cooper’s hawks and American kestrels year-round, turkey vultures and osprey from March through October.  There are more species around but these are the most likely to be seen by the average birder.

A red-tailed hawk at another one of the raptor shows at the Best Western!

2. What raptors have migrated away that you would be able to see along the Front Range during the summer?

Turkey vultures and Swainson’s hawks.

Anne Price holding a turkey vulture!

3. What special behavior, such as courtship rituals or other behaviors like that, can you observe in raptors during December and January along the Front Range?

You may see red-tailed hawks and bald eagles start to sit next to each other in trees or along telephone poles. The big excitement comes from great-horned owls, which will begin courtship calling (hooting back and forth) in the middle of the night, starting around Christmas Day.

Anne holding a great-horned owl!

4. Do the raptors at the REF change their behavior at all during the winter? If so, how do they change?

Our birds eat more, so we feed them more to put on just a bit more fat for the cold weather. Our two Swainson’s hawks get feisty and start stealing food because their metabolism is telling them that they need to bulk up for a long migration ahead. I always let them gain 1-3 oz during this transition so they are ready for the cold, which came early this year and was REALLY cold. Our female golden eagle will also start gaining weight and developing a brood patch as she gets ready to lay her eggs in early March. She has gained 9 oz just in the last 2 weeks!

A golden eagle takes flight in Dinosaur National Monument!

5.  Finally, I remember you mentioning the black streaks under the eyes of the prairie falcon as a glare reducing adaptation. What can you tell me about that?

It’s called the “malar stripe” or “malar mark.” It’s meant to reduce glare by having the sun strike or be concentrated in the area beneath the eye, leaving the area above in proper contrast. These are black or dark lines under the eyes of cheetahs, most falcons (gyrfalcons and merlins being notable exceptions).  Even flickers have malar stripes, though in these birds they serve as signals for courtship, not for better visibility of prey species!

Which is why the Rockies and the Broncos do the same thing…….

A REF prairie falcon at the Best Western!

Thank you so much Anne for taking the time out of your schedule to answer some of our questions!  I know I will definitely be on the lookout for these birds in the upcoming weeks, and hopefully everyone else will be, too!  Make sure to check out the REF Facebook page HERE, as well as their website HERE.  You can also come visit all the REF birds on Saturday, April 12 from 11am to 2pm! Admission is free and there will be giveaways and refreshments.  RSVPs are kindly requested; please visit http://www.usaref.org/OpenHouse.htm.  Thanks again, and keep an eye out for a follow-up post regarding those fascinating malar marks!

The Shark-Like Edestus: An Interview With Wayne Itano

We've heard from Wayne Itano before, when he told us about the Kremmling Cretaceous Ammonite Locality in Colorado. (To read the post, click HERE.) A physicist at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Boulder, Colorado, Wayne also has a hobby interest in paleontology, and is a curator adjoint at the Natural History Museum of the University of Colorado. He has also been doing some very interesting work with a shark-like animal called Edestus, and he graciously agreed to answer a few questions for me regarding this creature! So please join me in welcoming Wayne Itano, as he tell us about this fascinating prehistoric creature!

Scissor-tooth model for Edestus.  Credit Ray Troll, www.trollart.com

The Natural World:  You've been doing some work with an ancient shark-like creature called Edestus. What can you tell us about it?

Wayne Itano:  Edestus is my candidate for the strangest shark of all time. In my opinion, it is even stranger than the better-known spiral-toothed Helicoprion, since it is harder to imagine how the teeth might have been used.  (Read more about Helicoprion HERE.)  Almost the only fossil remains of Edestus are its symphyseal (midline) tooth whorls, which consist of triangular, serrated teeth, joined together at the bases (roots).

Edestus had one tooth whorl in the upper jaw and one in the lower jaw. Since the whorls are bilaterally symmetric (same on the left side as on the right side), they must have been located in the middle of the jaws.

This is a photograph of a specimen of a species called Edestus mirus. It was found in Pennsylvanian-aged deposits (about 300 million years old) of Iowa.

Smithsonian Institution Specimen USNM V 7255. Scale in cm.  To see a better resolution of the picture, click HERE.  Photo Credit: http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?view=&dsort=&date.slider=&q=Edestus+mirus+holotype&tag.cstype=all

This is a rare specimen, since it shows both the upper and lower tooth whorls.

The curvature of the tooth whorls makes it difficult to understand how they could have been used.

According to the conventional reconstruction, the two tooth whorls were used as scissors, to cut prey between the two whorls, as in this drawing by Ray Troll.

Scissor-tooth model for Edestus.  Credit Ray Troll, www.trollart.com

To me, this model seems unlikely, given the curvature of the tooth whorls. It seems that the outer teeth are nonfunctional, since they can’t come together, so there would be no reason to retain them.

It seems to me that the teeth would be more efficiently used if the entire head was moved up and down, with jaws fixed, to slash large prey. This is a radically new idea. I have submitted an article for publication elaborating on this idea, but I expect that it may be some time before it gets into print.

New vertical-slashing model for Edestus. Drawing by Gary Raham, www.biostration.com, reproduced with permission of Wayne Itano

My new reconstruction of Edestus, showing the pair of symphyseal tooth whorls, in front, used for slashing prey, and flat teeth in the rear for crushing prey. Drawing by Gary Raham, www.biostration.com, reproduced with permission of Wayne Itano.

TNW: I noticed that you referred to Edestus as being a candidate for the "strangest shark of all time." Is Edestus truly a shark? If not, how do you classify it?

WI: I was using "shark" in an informal sense, as the term is not well-defined for many extinct fish. Edestus certainly falls within the class Chondrichthyes, which today comprises 2 subclasses - Elasmobranchii (sharks, including rays) and Holocephali (ratfish). There is some evidence that Edestus (and also Helicoprion) belong to an extinct line that is closer to the Holocephali than to the Elasmobranchii, but this is a matter of debate. It is safe to call Edestus a chondrichthyan, and I try to avoid the word "shark" when I write a technical paper, or maybe keep it in quotes.

TNW:  Tell us a little bit about your research.

WI:  I am interested in many aspects of paleontology, but for the last 22 years I have focused on fossil sharks, particularly ones from the Paleozoic (older than about 250 million years ago). My interest in Paleozoic sharks dates from 1991, when I found a finspine of a Pennsylvanian-aged shark called Ctenacanthus in a roadcut near the town of McCoy, in Eagle County, Colorado. I wrote an article about this find for the newsletter of the Western Interior Paleontological Society (WIPS) in 1992, which you can read by clicking HERE.

Ctenacanthus finspine found near McCoy, Colorado. Scale in cm.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

In trying to identify this finspine, I read everything I could find about Paleozoic sharks. Knowing of my interest in the topic, Professor Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado at Denver loaned me a large collection of shark teeth and finspines from McCoy that he and Karen Houck, also of CU Denver, had found in the 1980s. His paleontological interests had by then switched entirely to ichnology (footprints and other fossil traces), and he gave me the opportunity to write up the fossil shark specimens. I published an article on the finspines in 2003 with Houck and Lockley, which you can read HERE, but I haven’t finished with the teeth yet.

My interest in Edestus started when an amateur fossil collector showed me an unusual shark tooth that he had found at McCoy. After a bit of study, I realized that it was a tooth of Edestus, the first known from the entire Rocky Mountain region. This eventually led to my publishing a rather long paper on Edestus in 2012, again with Houck and Lockley, which you can read HERE.

Recently, I have also published three short papers related to Edestus: one on an Edestus tooth from England, one on an Edestus tooth with abnormal serrations, and one on a tooth from China that had mistakenly been identified as Edestus, but which actually belonged to a more “normal” shark called Carcharopsis.

TNW:  Do you have any future expeditions or research papers in the works?

WI:  Lately most of my “field work” has been in museum collections. In the last few years I have been able to view specimens in the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum, the Natural History Museum (London), the British Geological Society, the American Museum of Natural History (New York), and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. I have several publications in the works, largely based on fossil shark specimens I have seen in those collections.

One area is the taxonomy (classification) of Edestus species. About 15 species of Edestus have been named, but I think that many of these are synonymous. For example, people have named new species based on unusually small or large teeth, but I think they are just teeth of the same species of Edestus but of different ages. There may be as few as 3 valid species of Edestus.

I have another project where I am examining microscopic scratches on Edestus teeth. I am hoping that I can find feeding-related scratches and that their orientation will provide some clues as to whether the scissors-model or the up-down-slashing model is correct.

-Thank you so much, Wayne, for answering some of my questions!  I look forward to hearing more about Edestus in the future!  Thanks again!-

Fishing With Bears: An Interview With Larry Quilling

Here is the last post in the four part series that started with my investigation into the difference between anadromous and catadromous fish (a difference which you can learn about HERE).  My investigation resulted with me contacting Dr. Joe Richardson, Wallace Westfeldt, and Larry Quilling, three people with an enormous quantity of knowledge when it comes to the different fish that fit under both categories.  We've already heard from Dr. Joe and Wallace with a post featuring each of them (Dr Joe's post HERE and Wallace's post HERE), and now it's time to hear from Larry Quilling!  The youth director for Boulder Flycasters and a member of the Board of Directors of Trout Unlimited, whose mission is to conserve, protect, and restore cold water fisheries.  Larry is another one of the expert fisherman that came into my Outdoor Ed class last year to teach us how to fish.  He took us down to Viele Lake, the lake right next to my high school, and we did our best to reel in some dinner!  (Except you would probably not want to eat the fish in Viele Lake, the lake is pretty stagnant and foul.)  I remembered that Larry had mentioned that he had fished for salmon alongside grizzly bears, and so I knew he would be a good person to contact in regards to salmon fishing!  I've reproduced the interview here for everyone to read: there are some pretty awesome pictures within!

Larry Quilling holding a spring Chinook salmon in the Trask River in Oregon!

The Natural World:  In the last few blog posts, we've been talking about anadromous fish, and focusing specifically on the mass migrations of salmon.  What experience do you have when it comes to these mass migrations?

Larry Quilling: I have a good friend whom I visit in Oregon every summer and winter when possible to fish for steelhead trout and salmon.  Here are a few pictures of Tom and I fishing the Oregon coast. Tom has a cabin on the Trask River near Tillamook where I love to fish for spring Chinook. We regularly head to the Columbia River in the late summer where we fish for them as well. The fish I catch in the Trask in late summer are spring spawn fish still held over from the spring run. You will notice their colors morph from the bright silver to dark green and beyond once in the rivers.

Fall Chinook(Kings) from the 2013 Columbia River Trip.

Trask Spring Chinook, 2013

Tom's daughter Margie with a steelhead.

TNW:  I remember you mentioned fishing in Alaska last year.  Do you have any pictures from that?

LQ:  Tom and I went to King Salmon, Alaska two summers ago. The pictures below are from the NakNak River and Katmai National Park.

Fishing with the bears in Katmai. We were fishing just 60-70 yards upstream of these guys. They are all fishing for the sockeye run.

Tom's King from the NakNak.

Me with a a NakNak sockeye.

Patricia and I with a sockeye.

TNW: Tell me more about fishing with the bears! Were they good about maintaining their distance, or did you have any encounters which were a little too close for comfort?

LQ:  Fishing just downstream of the floating bridge at Brooks lodge, I hooked a sockeye.  The commotion and splash alerted another interested party on the other side of the bridge who swam underneath to come see what was going on.

This young griz came to investigate. He is standing right where I was in the previous picture! We took this picture after I landed my fish and got the hell out of there. Rangers were yelling at me the whole time but no one told me the break off my fish.

A picture of my catch....

....and a pose with my fishing partner.

What an incredible opportunity to go fishing so close to wild grizzly bears!  Thanks again for taking the time to talk with me Larry, and we hope to hear from you again soon!  To learn a little bit more about Larry, you can check out his profile on the Boulder Flycasters website HERE!


Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of the photos in the post goes to Larry Quilling.

Fishing for Salmon on Land and Sea: An Interview With Wallace Westfeldt

As I have mentioned several times now, my investigation into the difference between anadromous and catadromous fish (a difference which you can learn about HERE) resulted in me contacting Dr. Joe Richardson, Wallace Westfeldt, and Larry Quilling with different questions about different fish that fit under both categories. Wallace Westfeldt is the Head Guide at Front Range Anglers (book a trip with him HERE), and last year he came into my Outdoor Ed class to teach us about stream ecology. We also went on a field trip with him to scrounge up some aquatic insects and insect larvae, and I've shared these pictures below the interview.  Wallace had some interesting things to share about fishing for salmon as well, and I decided to make this another post in the anadromous/catadromous series!

Wallace Westfeldt holding a Steelhead in Idaho.  By this point, these incredible fish have already swum 850 miles!

The Natural World: We've been talking about salmon migrations here on the blog for the last few days.  Have you ever had the opportunity to fish and/or see one of these mass migrations?

Wallace Westfeldt: Yes, I have been to Alaska for the Coho (Silver) Salmon migration; in 2012 and 2013. My trips were a little different than the norm. Most people go to the rivers, I was fishing in ocean at Yakutat. Here the Salmon feast on bait fish (mainly herring) to fatten up before going up river. We also spent some time inland at various river inlets where the fish would crowd and compete for going upriver. My fly was called a Seeker. When wet, it looks more like a herring than a herring does. However, I don't think fly choice is an issue. You need to get your hooks in front of a fish and they will eat. They are kind of crazy. In the ocean you are searching for baitballs and/or schools of Silvers. Baitballs are exactly what you would expect: massive spheres (10-30 in diameter) of bait fish swirling and the Salmon attack it.

A female Silver at sea.

Getting solid hook-ups can be challenging. The mouth of a male Silver has an enormous overbite and is cavernous. It is important to get the fly deep in the mouth. When you seem them strike, you can see how aggressive they are for food. Their tiny little eyes can't see the end of their strike, so the mouth opens wide and goes from side to side to get its prey. I don't think they feel the pain of the hook, because when they would pop off at the skiff they would sometimes hit the next hook. However, when they feel the tug of the line they panic and put up an extraordinary battle to get away.

Another female. 

A male: check out the overbite!

TNW:  Where else have you been to catch anadromous fish?

WW: I have also been to Idaho to catch Steelhead trout.  They swam 850 miles. We drove 900. They were in better shape than we were. Bitterly cold fishing, but excellent. When we hook up the fish would weave back and forth in the current, as if irritated, then they would take off. You weren't always sure who caught who.  In truth the pictures I have don't represent how big they can get. Those were the ones I caught.

A steelhead.

TNW:  When you were in Idaho, 850 miles into the salmon journey, how much further did the Steelhead have to swim?

WW: We were near the end of their run by about 50 miles. Because Idaho is so far away from the ocean, they only get one run. Closer locations in Washington and Oregon get several.


TNW: I've noticed the overbite before, what purpose does it serve? It seemed to me that it came about only in the males, and after they were undergoing their pre-spawn transformation, is that correct? Does it play a role in attracting a mate?

WW:  For Cohos, it's an overbite, for Browns, Bows, and Steelhead, it is an underbite, called a kype or kype jaw. As the male gets older there is always some evidence of the kype. However, you are correct that when in spawning mode, it gets more pronounced, as do the colors of Bows, Browns, and Chromers (steelhead nickname). You may also see other changes ... for example I caught a very large Brown once and it was particularly slimy.  Trout have more slime than most fish because their scales are small and soft and don't offer any protection. So the slime is protective.

That's a Brown Trout caught in Mother Lake just west of Loveland. His name is Big Mike, slimy guy in pure spawn mode.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Wallace for taking the time to answer my questions!  It was very informative, and really interesting!  Thanks again, and make sure you check out his website by clicking HERE!  Before we go though, here are some of the pictures that I took while we were on the field trip with Wallace.

Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of the photos in the post goes to Wallace Westfeldt.

The Sargasso Sea and the North American Eel: An Interview With Dr. Joe Richardson

In our last post, we looked at the difference between anadromous and catadromous fish, as well as several examples of each type of fish.  Eager to learn more, I contacted several people who have been very helpful to me in the past so that I could learn more.  One of these people was Dr. Joe Richardson, a marine biologist who gives Ecology Tours (which I highly recommend) on Tybee Island in Georgia, and whose Facebook page can be reached by clicking HERE.  Dr. Joe has helped me out a lot in the past, including providing a guest post about moon snails way back in February (which can be reached by clicking HERE!  When my family and I were on the Ecology Tour several years ago, I remember Dr. Joe mentioning something about the Sargassum seaweed that could be found on the beach.  Therefore, when I was researching the North American eel for the anadromous/catadromous post and I came across mentions of this same seaweed, I decided to ask Dr. Joe a few questions about the eel and the seaweed.  I wanted to make sure that you all could benefit from his knowledge as well, so I am reproducing the interview here!  

A picture of Dr. Joe holding a Portuguese Man of War!  WARNING: TRAINED PROFESSIONAL.  DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PICK UP A PORTUGUESE MAN OF WAR IF YOU HAVE NOT RECEIVED PROPER TRAINING.  Photo Credit: mermaidcottages.com

The Natural World:  First off, what is it you're holding in the picture above?

Dr. Joe:  It's a Portuguese Man of War.  They sting real bad.  They are more of an open water, tropical species, but they float (I'm holding it by the float) so they go wherever the wind blows them. We don't get many on Tybee Island, but on some Florida beaches they can be a real problem.

TNW: Didn't you guys find another one pretty recently on one of your Ecology Tours?

Dr. Joe: Yes, within this past week. We found two of them washed ashore during one of my Tybee Beach Ecology Trips. I sure didn't expect to see them; but most anything is likely to wash ashore.

A picture of this weeks Portuguese Man of War.

TNW:  In a recent post, I discussed the North American eel. I was wondering whether you have any pictures or stories regarding the eel that you'd like to share!

Dr. Joe:  I don't have any pictures of the American eel; but my experience with them is that I always hated to catch one when fishing because they were so slimey.  And they would invariably wrap themselves around the rig and line so they were a mess to get unhooked.  The slime was also thick and would stay on the line even after you got them off.  Many years ago, while in college, I worked one summer in North Carolina on a shrimp boat and was involved in a few research projects on the side.  One involved developing eel traps to be used for catching eels in the inshore waters.  They were trying to create a business opportunity for catching eels, then somehow shocking them so they would die straight before flash freezing them.  By being straight, they could pack more of them in boxes than if they were all curvy.

The North American eel.  Photo Credit: cbf.typepad.com

TNW: I also found that the eel spawns in the Sargasso Sea, and I recall you talking about all of the Sargassum seaweed washing up on shore when we went with you on the tour several years ago.  What can you tell me about this type of seaweed?

Dr. Joe:  This species of Sargassum (a brown seaweed) is unlike most seaweeds, that have to grow attached to a hard bottom or structure in shallow water where they get enough light to do photosynthesis. This Sargassum actually grows unattached, floating in open water, generally well out in the Atlantic Ocean. In fact some charts refer to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as the “Sargasso Sea” because there is lots of it floating around out there. The small berry-looking structures on the Sargassum are actually air floats that keep it floating near the surface. Clumps of Sargassum in the open ocean serve as places to hide for some animals and as structure for some small animals to attach on to. During late June, we found lots of those small animals (Sargassum shrimp, Sargassum Swimming crabs, small file fish, baby flying fish) on the beach and in tide pools because they have washed in with the seaweed clumps. All these animals are yellow-orange in order to camouflage or blend in with the seaweed. So the Sargassum has brought with it lots of interesting animals from far offshore, that we normally don’t see on our beach.

Pile of Sargassum seaweed along the high tide line at North Beach.

The berry-like structures on the Sargassum are actually air floats that keep the seaweed at the sun-lit surface.   

Sargassum shrimp (this one carrying eggs under her abdomen) were abundant in some of the clumps of seaweed.

This was one of many Sargassum swimming crabs that were common for a few days on Tybee's ocean beach. 

Small filefish with camouflage colors matching the seaweed were found among many of the Sargassum clumps. 

Although only about an inch long, what appears to be a baby flying fish was another type of fish found among the drifting seaweed.

TNW: Besides the eels and the other small animals you mentioned above, what other animals live in the Sargassum?

Dr. Joe: The floating clumps of Sargassum in the open ocean also serve as places to hide for small young animals that will eventually become larger as they age and grow. When the baby Loggerhead Sea Turtles hatch on Tybee’s beach later this summer, they will head out to sea, and many will hide among clumps of floating Sargassum far offshore. Many years ago, while on a research cruise offshore, we anchored overnight and found ourselves among a large area of floating Sargassum. Being curious scientists, we used some long dip nets to catch some clumps of the floating seaweed to see what sort of animals were among it. This was how I caught the only Sailfish I’ve ever caught!

Baby sailfish hide among the floating clumps of Sargassum far offshore.

TNW:  Do you know why Tybee was inundated with Sargassum when we visited in the summer of 2012?

Dr. Joe: I don’t recall our having a prolonged period of strong winds from the east, so I don’t think it was necessarily a wind-blown event. Instead, I’ve got a different hypothesis. The Gulf Stream current flows from the south toward the north well offshore of Georgia’s coast. It doesn’t flow in a straight line, but meanders a lot. Sometimes those meanders can be almost like huge hair-pin curves, and sometimes those big meanders, like loops, can break off and form large circular or oval water masses of warm off-shore water. If such a large ring of Gulf Stream and warm Atlantic Ocean water (and possibly water that recently had been in the tropics) happened to break off on our side of the Gulf Stream, it could gradually move toward our coast, and bring with it things like Sargassum. This is my guess: one of these offshore water masses, with its floating Sargassum, broke off and had moved into our coastal waters.

Laying among a pile of Sargassum seaweed along the high tide line was this lumber that had been drifting offshore long enough for these Goose-neck Barnacles to settle and grow. This species of barnacle only grows on drifting, open-water objects.

TNW:  What other ecological or biological effects did this inundation of Sargassum have on the coastline?

Dr. Joe:  Since the Sargassum seaweed event on Tybee, I’d been noticing (almost daily while conducting my Tybee Beach Ecology Trips) additional tropical and offshore species of animals. There was a group of Sargent Majors, a small black and white striped damsel fish that is common around coral reefs and rocky shorelines in the Caribbean and Florida Keys. They don’t belong this far north. We also got a Ballyhoo, a strange looking fish with a long extended lower jaw; and they usually live offshore where they are food for large gamefish like sailfish, marlins and dolphins.  So I’ve got a feeling that the Sargassum and all these other interesting tropical and offshore animals are signs that Tybee had been the landfall of a large warm water, open-ocean water mass. It sure made beach ecology on Tybee interesting this spring and summer!!

Small Sargent Major damselfish, common on coral reefs and tropical rocky shorelines, have shown up on Tybee in the last week. 

We've been seeing Ballyhoo in the beachwater, but they normally live in warm offshore open waters.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Joe for taking the time out of his schedule to chat with me for a bit about these fascinating animals, and the importance of the Sargassum!  I look forward to hearing more from you in the future, but in the meantime, make sure you like the Facebook page for his Tybee Beach Ecology Tours by clicking HERE, and make sure you check out his website HERE.

Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of the pictures in this post goes to Dr. Joe Richardson.

Harbour Town on Dwellable