Cool Facts from BNA Online

Black-billed Magpies glean ticks from deer and other ungulates.

Drawing by John Schmitt

A ticky situation: In what seems to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, Black-billed Magpies often glean ticks from the backs of large ungulates such as deer. The relationship between magpies and moose, however, may not be altogether mutualistic. In Alberta, Canada, in early spring, a moose carries about 32,000 ticks on average. Black-billed Magpies frequently land on moose and carry ticks away to cache them alive and unharmed on nearby ground. If not recovered later, the ticks may survive to lay eggs, potentially increasing the supply of ticks?fortunately for magpies, but not so fortunately for moose.

American Redstart

Photo by Ann Cook

No place like a winter?s home: American Redstarts wintering in Jamaica generally return to within 75 meters of the same site the following year. Seventy-five percent of yearling males banded in Jamaica returned to the same area the following winter, as did 49 percent of older males and 46 percent of females.

bna.birds.cornell.edu

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu