Sunday, June 25, 2006

Loose Feathers #52

News and links about birds, birding, and the environment.

  • Starving baby pelicans are turning up on California beaches in large numbers. The cause is uncertain. Some speculate that the local pelican population has outgrown its food supply, while others wonder whether the problem is a reduction in the supply of sardines and anchovies.
  • NY Times covered the trend of buying carbon credits to offset one's production of greenhouse gases in day-to-day living. I tend to be somewhat dubious about the usefulness of the programs because either way the pollutants are still going into the atmosphere. Some programs act more directly than others.
  • An environmentalist is trying to teach European starlings to repeat the name of Eugene Schieffelin, the man who introduced starlings to this continent in the nineteenth century. (Thanks, Phillip.)
  • It looks as if a pair of whooping cranes in Wisconsin have hatched a chick, the first wild whooping crane chick to hatch in the Wisconsin population.
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