Posts
News and links about birds, birding, and the environment.
- Refuge managers in Minnesota say that occasional drought periods like the current one are good for the long-term health of wetland areas. It encourages growth of certain aquatic plants and kills some invasive fish, thus improving water quality.
- A SEED article warns against analogies between fossil discoveries and modern creatures, as the analogies are often strained and misleading. (It gives the Demon Duck of Doom as an example.)
- Someone in Pleasantville, NJ, lured gulls in a parking lot with french fries and then ran them over with his car. Gulls in the attached video clip are laughing gulls, but the gull species in the incident were not identified.
- The Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Act, which has been passed by the House and is going to the Senate, would protect several hundred thousand acres as wilderness areas in California.
- One global-warming skeptic has raised $150,000 for himself from the energy industry but sees nothing improper about it.
- Judith Toups looks at two old field guides and finds many terminology changes.
- Four California condor chicks died of the West Nile Virus. In other condor news, about 20 are now flying in the Grand Canyon area.
- Idaho's state quarter will feature a peregrine falcon.
- Part of the beach at Gordon's Pond near Cape Henlopen in Delaware is reopening after being closed for piping plover nesting. Thirteen chicks fledged in 2006, one of Delaware's most productive summers for piping plovers in recent years.
- Sandy Hook, NJ, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area and a migration stopover for many birds, may be leased for private redevelopment of its historic buildings.
- The Post has a story on the Washington Biologists' Field Club and its surveys of fauna and flora on Plummers Island in the Potomac River south of the American Legion Bridge.
- Best of Me Symphony #139 is a weekly roundup of old but good posts.
- The Tech-blog Carnival had its first edition this weekend.
- Circus of the Spineless #11 features invertebrates.
