Why should you take Ecology?

         Learning about the great diversity of our world is simply fascinating. It's amazing how taking an ecology class can change your outlook about so many topics. To learn about the beautiful planet earth makes you just want to explore more. Sadly, we learned that our environment is going away and that animals are suffering for some of the mistakes we have made.

       You can help the environment. Something I learned is that the everyday person can help in a number of ways. You can start a recycle bin at your local school, house, church, etc. Making small contriubutions like that can help a whole lot more then you think. Another thing is making financial contributions help different organizations to do what we simply can't.

Chatham Island black robin

The Chatham Island Black Robins are small, black, sparrow sized birds. Their native to the islands of the coast of New Zealand. The humans brought forth cats, rats, and other non-direct forms of hurting their population. Before long almost the entire species became wiped out. By 1976 only 7 birds remained alive. Instead of trying to breed them in captivity they brought them to a preserve and procted their species. Success was not immediant, four years later no babies were hatched and two of the birds died leaving only five. Their were only one breeding pair left. The small black robins only lay one cluth of eggs per year, but like the condor they will lay more if one or both are lost. So scientist gave robin eggs to surrogates for hatching- though this time, surrogates were of a different species. The unusual program worked. Vurrently theier are over 250 species of black robin in the world.

California Condor

The Condor is the largest North American bird. Sadly Collisions with electrical wires and eating dead animals with ammunition in them, has left them with very few survivors in the world. By 1982, only 22 condors remained. Biologist decided to take all of the birds in captivity in hopes of boosting their numbers. This experiment has become extremely successful and over 250 survived in 1997. Which is pretty incredible since they only lay one egg a year. Unless that egg is lost. So the California Condor experiment has been an overal succes. Which can be helpful for the future endangered species.

Yellow Headed blackbird

The Yellow headed blackbirds are fairly large, with a stout body, a large head, and a long conical bill. Males are striking black birds with yellow heads and chests, and black bodies with prominet white patches at the bend of the wing. Females and young blackbirds are brown instead of black with a duller yellow head. Immature mates show some white at the bend of the wing while females do not.

Yellow headed black birds breed in loose colonies and males mate with several females during the breeding season. The blackbird naturally eats insects and other aquatic invetebrates. They form huge flocks in winter often mixing with many other species of blackbirds.  Yellow headed blackbirds breed and roost in freshwater wetlands with dense, emergent vegetation such as cattails. They often forage in fields, typically wintering in large, open argricultural areas.