A change is in the air. Small songbirds better be on the lookout for two of their greatest enemies.

Late September and the month of October bring an influx of migrating hawks, including a couple of voracious bird-eaters – the Cooper’s hawk and the sharp-shinned hawk.

Fall migration is the best time to see these similar-looking, hard-to-identify, short-winged, long-tailed hawks. Both have bands across the tail and fly in the flap, flap, flap, glide pattern typical of hawks in the genus Accipiter.

While the larger Cooper’s hawks are now a familiar sight as they increasingly nest near people in wooded areas, it’s still rare to find the smaller sharp-shinned hawks in summer. However, during fall migration, a sharpie may find its way to your bird feeder. If the pickings are really good, it might just stick around for the winter. The presence of bird feeders may be the reason sharpies seem to be stopping short in some regions and wintering more to the north than in the past.

If you want to see these and other hawks, head for the hills. Cooper’s and sharpies follow the same traditional migration corridors along ridge tops every autumn. Migrating hawks usually fly lower in the morning than during the middle of the day, when many take advantage of warm air thermals to gain altitude and glide. There’s good viewing from parking lots along the Foothills Parkway on top of Chilhowee Mountain in Blount County.

Take a lawn chair. Near Thorn Hill in Grainger County, visit the panoramic overlook atop Clinch Mountain on U.S. 25E. Don’t miss the famous vinegar pie at the restaurant.

Unlike broad-winged hawks, Cooper’s and sharpies don’t migrate in large flocks. Broad-wings stream along the ridges by the hundreds in mid- to late September. Sharpies and Cooper’s fly by in small groups or as single birds mixed in with broad-wings, red-tails and American kestrels.

Large movements are often associated with the passage of cold fronts.

Flights of accipiters may peak on the day of and the day after the passage of a front. Sharpies hunt while they migrate and may fly lower as they pass over forests and forest edges – their favorite bird hunting habitats.

Whether seen hunting at a feeder or soaring along a ridge, it’s often hard to tell if a hawk is a sharpie or a Cooper’s. One reason they’re hard to ID is because they come and go so fast you never get a satisfactory look at them. Old-timers don’t call them darters for nothing.

After you’ve determined a bird is an accipiter, try to judge if it is noticeably smaller than a crow. Male accipiters are smaller than females. A male sharpie is not much larger than a blue jay, but a larger female sharpie approaches the size of a nearly crow-sized small male Cooper’s. Plumage patterns and color are so similar that these features aren’t much help. And judging relative size is easier said than done.

When folded, a sharpie’s tail looks squarish and a Cooper’s looks more rounded. Sharpies have small-scale heads. The position of the eye on the side of the face can help determine if you are looking at a relatively small or large hawk. If the eye is centered on the side of the face, the hawk is probably a small-headed sharpie. If the eye is forward on side of the face (about a third of the distance back from the bill) the hawk is probably a large-headed Cooper’s – a much stockier bird than the delicate sharpie.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t ID every – or any – accipiter you see. Not even the experts can pin a name on every single one. By Marcia Davis, Knox News.

Yao Pei, a high school headmaster, was not in the mood to enjoy the eight-day National Day vacation.

Before the vacation, he attended several meetings held by the local education department.

“They warned us of potential A/H1N1 influenza outbreaks among students when they come back from the holiday,” said the schoolmaster based in Taiyuan, capital of northern Shanxi province.

This year’s National Day holiday concurs with Chinese traditional Mid-Autumn Festival which falls on October 3. This brings Chinese an eight-day break, from October 1 to 8, the longest public vacation.

Also, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of People’s Republic of China. Various celebrations are staged during the holidays.

Feng Zijian, director of the disease control and emergency response office with the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said unprecedented domestic and outbound travels and mass gatherings during the holidays increased the risk of group infections of A/H1N1 flu.

In mid September, the Ministry of Education issued a circular warning schools of high risk of group infections and asking them to spare no efforts in prevention ahead and after the vacation.

“We have well educated students about how to prevent flu infection and suggested them not to travel to flu-hit regions. We also plan to record every student’s health conditions after they return,” Yao said. “But I am still worrying.”

He has a good reason to worry. In the past two months, the Chinese mainland reported 188 group infections, accounting for 90.8 percent of all group infections since the beginning of pandemic. And among them, 179 cases occurred in schools or on school-related activities, according to the Health Ministry.

Several universities in Shandong, Heilongjiang, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces have decided to cancel the eight-day break for students.

“The holiday is long and students would go back to their hometown or out for tourism,” said a teacher with the Qingdao Agricultural University in Shandong, in explanation to the decision. He noted that the flow of students would make it hard for the school to fend against A/H1N1.

To make up for the loss of students, the schools decided to lengthen the upcoming winter holiday.

While Yao’s holiday is overshadowed by the flu, most Chinese show no signs of compromising their vacation plans.

Jiang He, a 25-year-old magazine editor, is taking a trip in western provinces of Ningxia and Qinghai.

“It is a pity not to make good use of this long holiday,” she said.

During the holiday, 64 million people, almost the same population as France, are expected to travel by trains within China, a year-on-year rise of 9.3 percent, said Wang
Yongping, spokesperson of Ministry of Railways.

Many are rushing back for family reunion as the Mid-Autumn Festival is traditionally for family to get together, and some are sightseeing across China.

Since A/H1N1 is highly transmissible through respiratory droplets, crowded trains could be risky.

Vivian Tan, spokesperson of World Health Organization China Office, said, “The risk of infections is all around us, and what we can do is to take simple measures to protect ourselves.”

Beijing government has started vaccinating local residents. Around 10,000 paraders on the National Day celebrations are vaccinated for free.

But many seemed not to be precautious.

On a train bound to Taiyuan in northern Shanxi province from Beijing on Thursday, two out of 75 passengers in a carriage were wearing masks.

“I don’t think the flu is horrible so I take no preventions against it in my trip,” Jiang said.

“So far, most cases have been mild, but we are concerned that there could eventually be more severe cases emerging,” Tan said.

China had seen a relatively small number of A/H1N1 cases compared to its large population but the number had increased sharply in recent weeks, she said.

As of September 30, China has confirmed 19,589 A/H1N1 cases and the figure was 10,221 on September 16, a rise of 92 percent. No fatal cases were reported, according to the Health Ministry.

“Still we cannot cancel gathering or postpone travel indefinitely, especially since pandemic usually last 1-2 years. Life cannot come to a standstill, or social-economic losses would be enormous,” Tan said. China Daily.

America’s national parks are at risk of disappearing or being fundamentally changed as seas rise, glaciers melt, trees die and animal habitat changes as a result of climate change, according to a report Thursday from two environmental groups.

The assessment focuses on the 25 most threatened parks – from the Everglades in Florida to Denali in Alaska.

The report from the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council says that the most important action needed to protect parks is to reduce the emission of heat-trapping gases, mostly from burning fossil fuels such as coal and gasoline. It also calls on the federal government to take other steps – such as expanding parks and creating wildlife migration corridors.

Theo Spencer of the NRDC said that although the report wasn’t timed for the recent PBS documentary series about the national parks by filmmaker Ken Burns, there’s a link: Treasured American lands again need protection. This time, however, he said, the parks have no champion like naturalist John Muir, who led the early drive for the parks, or President Theodore Roosevelt, who established so many of them.

“There was resistance by people who wanted to develop them, who saw economic gain in the parks. But the leadership at the time had the vision to think of the greater good, to think of the trust of the American public for the future,” Spencer said, speaking to reporters on a conference call.

“This is really a nonpartisan issue, and it desperately needs the leadership that was shown at the time these great parks were created.”

Stephen Saunders, the president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and a principal author of the report, said that climate change was “the greatest threat our national parks have ever faced.”

The Everglades, Biscayne and Dry Tortugas national parks could be swamped by rising seas if climate trends continue, he said. All the glaciers in Glacier National Park could be gone in 12 to 13 years. Yosemite is changing as trees die at a faster rate and forests change with the warming winters.

The report recommended federal mandatory limits on global warming pollution and support for energy efficiency and clean energy, the main parts of a bill the Senate is expected to take up this fall. Other recommendations included expanding the parks, creating wildlife corridors, and using the National Park Service’s educational programs to explain how climate change is affecting the parks.

The 64-page report provided details collected from previously released studies.

The 25 parks were Acadia National Park; Assateague Island National Seashore; Bandelier National Monument; Biscayne National Park; Cape Hatteras National Seashore; Colonial National Historical Park; Denali National Park and Preserve; Dry Tortugas National Park; Ellis Island National Monument; Everglades National Park; Glacier National Park; Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore; Joshua Tree National Park; Lake Mead National Recreation Area; Mesa Verde National Park; Mount Rainier National Park; Padre Island National Seashore; Rocky Mountain National Park; Saguaro National Park; Theodore Roosevelt National Park; Virgin Islands National Park and Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument; Yellowstone National Park; Yosemite National Park; and Zion National Park. By Renee Schoof, The Miami Herald.