Posts
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| Rough-legged Hawk / US Forest Service |
- Banders are tracking the widely-distributed but elusive Northern Saw-whet Owl. This fall, 39 saw-whets are being equipped with radio transmitters to track their movements in greater detail.
- Early snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains is causing flowers to bloom before the birds and insects that depend on them arrive or emerge.
- Black Guillemots that breed on the northern coast of Alaska feed their young with cod they catch under sea ice. With the rapid retreat of sea ice, how they adapt to the new conditions may be an early indicator of how other species will fare.
- Great Bowerbirds use forced perspective to make their bowers seem more spacious.
- Fourteen young Whooping Cranes were released in Louisiana.
- One way to help birds is to do less raking and allow insects to flourish in the leaf litter.
- Sandy Hook, a popular birding spot in New Jersey, may remain closed through next summer due to damage from Hurricane Sandy. Among other things, the storm disrupted the sewage system and may have churned up unexploded ordnance.
- The UK's wild bird population fell by 1.9% in 2011, with the largest losses among the most specialized birds.
- House Sparrows sometimes line their nests with cigarette butts to discourage parasitic mites.
- Not Exactly Rocket Science: The catfish that strands itself to kill pigeons
- Extinction Countdown: Survey of Critically Endangered Pygmy Sloths Finds Just 79 Animals Remain
- Round Robin: With Digitization Complete, Hear 7 of the Coolest Natural Sounds in Our Archive
- Despite strict pollution controls, London has had trouble ridding itself of ground-level ozone because the particulate filters they use disrupt the ozone cycle.
- Wildfires in the western United States are fueled in part by an invasive species called cheatgrass, which dries out faster than native grasses.
- A fungus that causes ash dieback is spreading rapidly though Britain after the British government failed to prevent its importation of infected timber. There are now 300 known infection sites.
- A new skipper species, Troyus turneri, was discovered in Jamaica.
- Atlanta may become the first major US city to run out of water. Its main reservoir is at a three-year low due to successive droughts.
- A modelling study shows that the use of chemical dispersants had little effect on how much oil reached the surface during BP's spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Small patches of native plants can improve the pollination rate on large farms.
- Despite an early-November snowstorm, the Northeast had its second-driest November since 1895. The driest was in 1917.
- Hawk moths have two olfactory channels — one that looks for the preferred nectar sources and another that looks for acceptable secondary nectar sources.
- As the Earth warms, the Arctic is becoming greener with less ice cover.
