Friday, July 07, 2006

Loose Feathers #54

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

  • In the last Loose Feathers, I noted that a portion of a colony of terns in Long Beach, California, had been cleared from the barges they were using for nesting. Since then, the rest of the colony has disappeared. It is hard to see a natural explanation for this.
  • The Maryland Department of Natural Resources will be testing migratory geese along the Chesapeake Bay for H5N1. The article does not specify which species are being tested.
  • The bald eagle population around the lower Chesapeake is up to 485 pairs with 705 chicks.
  • This op-ed piece warns of two challenges to habitat conservation that have been passed by the House and are headed to the Senate. One guts the Endangered Species Act, and the other expedites logging of recently-burned tracts of forest.
  • Green roofs may help solve some urban heat island and storm runoff problems.
  • I am not sure what to make of this. It looks like a parody, but the rest of the site seems legit.
Carnivals
  • Friday Ark #94 is up, with plenty of pictures of cats, dogs, birds, and other creatures.
As an aside, I have some filters set up to deliver news about birds to my email to make writing these posts easier. From the start, I have had to be careful to set them to catch news about these kinds of Eagles, and not these ones. Lately I have been getting a lot of articles about this type of Sparrow instead of this type.