Most birds survive storm but seem to be lying low

If you noticed a lack of bird calls or even bird sightings after Hurricane Charley, that probably meant that the birds were just as shell-shocked as everyone else, but they seem to have survived.

Jack Stout, professor of biology at the University of Central Florida, said the birds probably weathered the storm well, and did so right here, as Charley tossed around everything from oranges to oak trees.

Peter Frederick, an associate research professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida, agreed. Most significantly, a colony of whooping cranes that had been started near Kissimmee appeared to weather the storm fine, and they didn’t move, he said.

Among the many questions Central Florida residents are raising, one reader wanted to know why many birds weren’t heard or seen for a while after the storm. Other questions covered topics ranging from homeowners association liabilities to contractors’ licenses.

Question: Where do the birds go during a hurricane? We noticed birds back the next day (or perhaps two days later).

Answer: “I don’t think we have data on it,” Stout said. “I think they probably were in the local area. Singing and going out in open areas may have been reduced because the birds are aware, as we are, that the environment has been totally modified.” Stout said he doubted that many birds died in the hurricane. Another UCF biology professor, Walter Taylor, said he looked for dead birds and couldn’t find many, though he was alarmed about the loss of an osprey nest that was blown off a utility pole.

Frederick said very little is known about how most birds get through a hurricane. Large ones may try to get out of its path, as a number of radio-monitored snail kites did before Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, though no one is quite certain how they knew to leave or where to go, he said. On the other hand, a colony of great white herons in Florida Bay was hit hard by a hurricane in the 1950s. Small, backyard birds fly too slowly to get far enough away and probably got down low into the brush with the squirrels and raccoons. “I know of no studies that would tell us,” Frederick said. “It’s not a known fact what they do.”

Q: My dad lives in a retirement community in Orange City in a manufactured home. He owns the home but rents the property. Who is responsible for removal of trees and storm debris?

A: Chances are, Florida’s mobile-home park laws apply, and those laws leave the matter of trees to the detailed prospectus that every park owner is supposed to give every tenant. Most of those prospectuses make the trees and landscaping the responsibility of the mobile-home owner, not the park owner, though that’s not always the case, said Michael Resnick, housing director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County. Resnick, who specializes in mobile-home law, said people need to check their prospectus carefully. If tree maintenance is not in there, then it is the responsibility of the mobile-home park owner, he said.

Scott Powers

of the sentinel staff