Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Loose Feathers #31

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

  • New Jersey hosted a record 194 wintering bald eagles this year, according to a statewide Midwinter Bald Eagle Survey.
  • Parker River NWR is looking for volunteer plover wardens to look after the refuge's population of endangered piping plovers. To learn more about that kind of work, read the past posts from The Plover Warden Diaries.
  • Three dozen dead snow geese were recently dumped in a playground in Columbia, MD. Investigators from the Department of Natural Resources decided that there was nothing for them to prosecute.
  • The Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) is exhibiting birds killed from flying into skyscrapers during migration. The display is in the Royal Ontario Museum.
  • New Jersey is taking monk parakeets off the state's list of dangerous species.
  • A study of the end of the last Ice Age indicates that, with future global warming, Greenland's ice sheet is likely to disappear while Antarctica's may increase temporarily. A 1-2 foot increase in sea levels is likely within the next century, and 25 feet in the centuries beyond that.
  • You can get the latest news on the Fifth Avenue red-tailed hawks at PaleMale.com.
  • Hurricane Katrina altered or destroyed vital habitat for migrating songbirds along the Gulf Coast. Birders there worry about the effects this will have on birds.
Upcoming Field Trip
  • This Sunday, the DC Audubon Society is running its annual field trip to Hughes Hollow, part of a WMA that mixes impoundments, marsh, and woodlands. See the DCAS webpage for more information and directions.