Posts
Winter Wren / Photo by Shanthanu Bhardwaj
Birds and birding news
- A biologist is studying breeding Pygmy Owls in Portland's Forest Park. The video from Oregon Public Broadcasting includes great footage of adult and fledgling owls.
- Roseate Terns have decreased 30% in the past ten years. A banding program is trying to determine the cause the decline and how to reverse it.
- EBird has a new state needs alert: it will send you an email if a species that you need in a selected state is reported to eBird. You can provide feedback here.
- The Winter Wren packs a loud (and complex) song into a tiny body.
- More than 1000 African Grey Parrots were confiscated at Douala Airport in Cameroon. Of these, 47 were already dead in the crates and another 30 died in their first day at a wildlife rescue center. Illegal trade in exotic birds continues to threaten wild parrot species.
- The coming decision on listing the Greater Sage Grouse under the Endangered Species Act will have habitat management implications in Oregon.
- Three California Condors died of lead poisoning in Arizona. State officials have largely convinced Arizona hunters to switch away from lead ammunition, but lead is still used in nearby Utah.
- Cape Cod National Seashore is planning to poison crows to prevent them from preying on Piping Plover eggs and young.
- An Oregon man that killed 50 nesting Heerman's Gulls and Caspian Terns by driving over them at high speed will spend 45 days in prison.
- The Vancouver Sun is running a series on birds of the Olympics.
- Birder's World has a list of 100 citizen science projects that need volunteers.
- Sibley Guides: Why is Spoon-billed Sandpiper disappearing? and Bill shape and foraging habits of Spoon-billed Sandpiper
- Conservation Maven: Study links mercury contamination with changes in birdsongs
- 10,000 Birds: An Interview with Alan Contreras, Author of Afield: Forty Years of Birding the American West
- Treehugger: Hungry, Carnivorous Birds with Their Prey (slideshow)
- Gallicissa: The stilty style
- Craig's Bird Watching and Nature Blog: Red-Shouldered Hawks Mating
- BSI Blog: A Little Bird with a Big Voice
- West Virginia's largest bat roost has confirmed cases of white-nose syndrome. The cave, known as Hellhole, shelters 200,000 bats. Most of these are little brown bats, but the roost includes 13,000 Indiana bats and 5,000 Virginia big-eared bats, both of which are federally endangered.
- The Biodiversity Heritage Library provides bibliographic information and full text for over 38,000 natural history titles from the 15th century to the present, the bulk of which are from the 19th and early 20th centuries. (via Jennifer)
- The Forest Caterpillar Hunter, a type of beetle, preys on Gypsy Moths.
- A large patch of plastic garbage floats in the Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda. The Atlantic garbage patch is similar in density to that in the Pacific, but its size is still undetermined.
- The EPA's climate regulations are due in April and will go into effect starting in 2011.
- Barnegat Bay is more polluted that nearby Great Bay because its watershed is more densely populated. Cleaning up the bay will require solutions on land.
