Posts
King Rail / Photo by Jim Rathert (MO Conservation/USFWS)News and links about birds, birding, and the environment
- Scientists at the Smithsonian have developed a method for assessing wetland health across an entire watershed. The method uses statistical models to predict conditions in the field.
- This article follows the fall migration of an imagined Swainson's thrush. It includes a lot of good information about the nocturnal songbird migration. (Make sure to click through to the link on songbird flight calls.)
- Birds Korea is seeking email petitions for restoration of the reclamed Saemangeum mud flats. For more on the issue, visit Restore Saemangeum.
Chinese crested terns are down to fifty individuals; the main threat to the species appears to be consumption of seabird eggs.- Sixty-six species of Australian coastal birds may face extinction due to rising sea levels.
- A dozen Chatham albatrosses - a critically-endangered species - were drowned by a single longline fishing vessel.
- Changes in the brain cells of white-crowned sparrows are helping scientists to learn more about human degenerative brain disease. Each year, the regions of the brain that affect singing grow in the spring and shrink in late summer.
France is trying to enforce a ban on poaching ortolan buntings. The small songbird is considered a gourmet delicacy when drowned in Armagnac and roasted. The EU has designated the bird as a species of conservation concern.- A local Texas journalist gives reasons to be skeptical of a border fence along the Rio Grande.
- A green-breasted mango - native to Central America - is appearing at a home in Beloit, Wisconsin.
- In the current issue of Birder's World, a birder reports seeing an Eskimo Curlew in Nova Scotia. This is a written description only without a photograph or video. (There is some discussion at the Birder's World forum.)
- Audubon scientists are working with power companies in Illinois to manage land along power lines for shrubland birds.
- Climate change threatens the winter feeding grounds of the world population of spectacled eiders.
- A political scientist argues for a more flexible conservation framework that takes account of variable local conditions and the impact of conservation actions on humans.
Another predatory dinosaur species, this time the velociraptor, has been shown to have feathers. The function of feathers in flightless dinosaurs is unclear.- A 15-year-old birder from California plans to do a North American big year in 2008 by bicycle.
- Last weekend was the annual Meadowlands Festival of Birding.
- A man in Philadelphia was fined $14,175 for killing 189 gulls with a pickup truck.
- In climate change news, the Northwest Passage opened to this week when sea ice melted sufficiently to allow navigation. Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level ever.
- The Canadian government is cutting its budget for wildlife protection. (Oddly enough, the environment ministry will still spend money to study why employee morale is low. I guess the budget cuts would not have anything to do with that....)
- Birdchaser: Free Bird Feeders and Seed (through Project Wildbird)
- James Wolcott: Flights and Landings
- 10,000 Birds: The Unseen, Nocturnal River of Birds
- bootstrap analysis: measuring mute swan impact
- BirdCouple: One of the Good Guys
