Posts
Black-bellied Plover / Photo by Tim Bowman (USFWS)News and links about birds, birding, and the environment
- A study of European birds confirmed that the bird protections set by the EU in 1979 have worked to increase bird populations.
- Government scientists in British Columbia have captured two northern spotted owls to start a captive breeding program.
The Army is paying landowners near Fort Hood to preserve habitat for golden-cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos. The conservation program is motivated by fear that development nearby could make habitat on the base more critical, and therefore put it off-limits for training exercises. The Army recently reduced restricted habitat on the base from 66,000 acres to 10,000 acres.- Limestone sinkholes on Oahu preserve the remains of Hawaii's extinct birds.
- Scientists plan to attach satellite transmitters to the backs of six Magellanic Penguins to track their movements to their breeding grounds. Part of the goal is to discover where the penguins encounter oil slicks. You can follow the penguins' progress at penguinstudies.org.
- New Jersey Audubon is concerned that beachgoers on Champagne Island (just north of the Wildwoods) may be disturbing a large colony of black skimmers. The island is unique on the Jersey shore for its lack of development.
- Land use policies in Peru have slowed the rate of rain forest deforestation.
- In Florida, foresters are using controlled burns to provide habitat for scrub-jays.
- Spain is burning fields to kill voles, whose population surged recently. No one seems sure of the cause of the high population this summer. (Perhaps a predator was reduced or a warmer winter killed fewer?)
- Research indicates that black carbon soot from the early Industrial Revolution hastened climate warming in the Arctic. Soot absorbs more energy from the Sun than white snow.
- Born Again Bird Watcher: Birding Up!
- Greensboro Birds: Water: It’s for the birds
- Tails of Birding: The Hammering Life-style of Woodpeckers
- Mike's Birding & Digiscoping Blog: Shorebirds
- Fat Finch: The Ecology of Fear
- Stokes Birding Blog: Bee Grateful
- bootstrap analysis: lady of the flies
