Loose Feathers #371

Fledgling Horned Lark / Credit: WCS

Birds and birding

• Gateway National Recreation Area, which contains several prominent birding spots, is going to be slow to recover from Sandy. Many locations within Gateway are still closed and may remain so for some time. The West and East Ponds at Jamaica Bay were both breached, with the result that they have become saltwater rather than freshwater ponds.
• Since corvids often raid each other's food caches, Eurasian Jays keep quiet when they hide their food to avoid detection.
• The "funerals" held by Western Scrub Jays may serve as warnings to other scrub jays that a predator may be in the area.
• Here is a list of the ten most recent extinctions or extirpations from Canada. Two birds are on the list but survive (for now) within the United States.
• The Farm Bill working its way through Congress changes conservation provisions in ways that may hurt bird populations.
• Frigatebirds have returned to breed on Ascension Island now that feral cats have been removed.
• A rehabilitated Northern Saw-whet Owl was released this week in Central Park.
• The Guardian has a gallery of British urban winter birdlife.
• Raptor killings continue in England, this time a hen harrier that was part of a conservation project.

Nature and science blogging

• Not Exactly Rocket Science: Massive bug hunt reveals 25,000 arthropod species in a Manhattan-sized forest
• Bug Eric: Wasp Wednesday: Pseudomalus auratus
• The Smaller Majority: Mantidflies
• Ecobirder: Karner Blue Butterfly
• Outside My Window: Birds On Ice: Dovekie
• March of the Fossil Penguins: A Fine Fossil Flipper
• Anything Larus: More Intermediate Thayer's/Kumlien's and a 2nd Cycle Thayer's

Environment and biodiversity

• Seven states are suing the EPA for not regulating the greenhouse gas pollution produced by fracking.
• Montana has closed wolf hunts in the areas immediately north of Yellowstone National Park in response to the killing of multiple radio-collared wolves just outside the park's boundaries. One of the dead wolves, 832F, was well known to tourists as well as scientists.
• Florida is holding a python-hunting contest to help control the state's population of these invasive snakes.
• A geologist found the first fossil evidence for dire wolves in Nevada.
• Up to 4% of trees in the Western Amazon died off as a result of a mega-drought in 2010.
• A fossil lizard has been named Obamadon in honor of the president.