Great news for turtles and rare birds

The National Park Service says the 2010 breeding season has broken records for rare sea turtles and birds along North Carolina's Cape Hatteras National Seashore, according to the Associated Press.

The park service says 147 sea turtle nests have been recorded, the most ever at Hatteras. There's also a record number of piping plover and oystercatcher chicks surviving long enough to fly.

A coalition of environmental groups says the numbers are thanks largely to a rule adopted in 2008 that restricts off-road vehicles in nesting areas. ...

The sad fate of the Carolina parakeet

Bill Bryson, in his book, A Short Guide to Nearly Everything, writes that the now extinct Carolina parakeet was "arguably the most striking and beautiful bird ever to live in North America."

I had heard about these wonderful birds (actually, parrots) before, but had never paid much attention to them until I came across that passage that describes their emerald green bodies with golden heads.

"[A]t its peak it existed in vast numbers, exceeded only by the passenger pigeon. But the Carolina parakeet was also considered a pest by farmers and easily hunted because it flocked tightly and had a peculiar habit of flying up at the sound of gunfire (as you would expect) , but then returning almost at once to check on fallen comrades."

Obviously, behavior like that can only hold for so long. The last wild Carolina parakeet died in Florida in 1904, while the last captive one died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.

Unfortunately, that lowly last majestic bird, named Inca, was stuffed.

"And where would you go to see poor Inca now? Nobody knows," writes Bryson. "The zoo lost it."

The N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Downtown Raleigh has a copy of an Audobon depiction of the bird (pictured). And Wikipedia alludes to stuffed specimens at the Raleigh museum and of one in Germany.

N.C. Birding Trail could lead to revenue boost

From the Associated Press:
"Dozens of sites known to birdwatchers as being packed with rare or popular bird species are now linked in a single trail that state officials are promoting as nature-theme tourism.

"Officials hope the North Carolina Birding Trail will give the state an economic boost. And they may be on the right track: a 2006 federal study found that 2 million people in North Carolina spent about $700 million on birdwatching activities, said Perry Sumner of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. ...

"When completed, the trail will include dozens of places throughout the state where visitors can look for more than 440 species. ..."