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Attack chicken (Greater Prairie Chicken) / Photo © Ryan Askren
Birds and birding news
- The Santa Marta Sabrewing (Campylopterus phainopeplus) was photographed for the first time. This lovely hummingbird lives at higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia.
- Argentina has created a new coastal protected area called Parque Marino Isla Pingüino that will benefit Rockhopper Penguins.
- Scientists are identifying individual African Penguins by the pattern of spots on their chests to track the population.
- Scientists have decoded the Zebra Finch's genome, a development that may eventually help to understand vocal learning in humans.
- The Syncrude trial continued in Edmonton this week with testimony on the importance of the boreal forest as a breeding ground for many bird species.
- More amateur naturalists are engaging in citizen science, such as monitoring nestboxes and reporting observations to eBird.
- Data submitted to eBird is already yielding interesting results, such as the irruption patterns of Ivory Gulls.
- One of the Piping Plovers from the Bahamas showed up in Cape Cod, MA, 1,225 miles from where it was banded on January 17. See also: Bahamas Plover in Cape Cod at CVWO at First Landing. Another marked Piping Plover was spotted in Waterford, CT.
- Brewster's Linnet: What's in the bag?
- 10,000 Birds: Mystery Bird Revealed: Chaffinch in Massachusetts
- The Drinking Bird: Secret Birding
- Iowa Voice: Red-Tailed Hawk - Mid-Air Scuffle
- Tetrapod Zoology: The roller that isn't: the Madagascan cuckoo-roller or Courol
- EcoTone: Peruvian boobies have the advantage as solitary hunters
- Coffee and Conservation: Research: Birds reduce coffee pests in Jamaica, take 2
- Bird Canada: Salt Shaker Birds
- A federal judge ordered the state of Florida to resume construction of a reservoir that had been left incomplete in order to finance the state's purchase of land from U.S. Sugar.
- The US EPA finalized its greenhouse gas restrictions for cars this week. The cuts are the first carbon emissions regulations issued by the agency; restrictions on other sources of greenhouse gases will come later.
- The EPA also issued new guidelines to curb the worst water quality abuses that result from mountaintop removal mining. Operations that would bring water pollution levels five times above normal would be considered too harmful for a permit.
- The five-cent plastic bag tax in Washington, DC, reduced disposable plastic bag usage from 22.5 million bags per month in 2009 to 3 million bags per month in January 2010. So far, the tax has raised about $150,000 for cleanup of the Anacostia River.
- Finally, an essay on the differences between real and virtual interaction with the natural world.
