Posts
Least Tern / Photo by Steve Maslowski (USFWS)
Birds and birding news
- At least 326 seabirds have died as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, along with 209 sea turtles and 19 dolphins. The numbers are expected to climb if a storm pushes more oil into the marshes. Pelicans are breeding on islands surrounded by oil-stained booms.
- A combination of fishing and invasive fish led to the extinction of Madagascar's Alaotra Grebe. BirdLife wants to know if you care.
- Great Tits and Blue Tits that received food from bird feeders during the spring and summer months produced smaller broods.
- The USFWS has photos from a migratory bird parade (with children in Cerulean Warbler costumes) in Colombia.
- The Limited Geographic Area award for the World Series of Birding was won by a team competing in Union County.
- Pigeons were trapped illegally in New York City and transported to Pennsylvania for trap shooting.
- Chip Notes: Global eBird -- assistance welcomed
- View from the Cape: Delaware Bay Shorebird Counts & Chicks at the Meadows
- Audubon Magazine Blog: What oiled birds look like
- Round Robin: Birds Win in World Series of Birding
- Rob's Idaho Perspective: The Life of a Field Biologist
- Conservation Maven: The impact of wetland isolation and adjacent land use on bird communities
- Tetrapod Zoology: Quetzalcoatlus : the evil, pin-headed, toothy nightmare monster that wants to eat your soul
- In the Gulf of Mexico, BP is carrying out its "top kill" procedure to plug the leaking oil well. Work resumed despite some early setbacks. It had better work because the leak is far bigger than original estimates indicated; a government panel determined that 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil were flowing per day. This would make the current spill larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. New photos of the sinking rig are available. Meanwhile, Obama plans to extend the moratorium on new deepwater drilling for at least another six months.
- The gulf oil spill threatens the critically endangered largetooth sawfish.
- In 2008, scientists discovered 18,225 new species. Among those, 48% were insects, and one third of the insects were beetles.
- Here are 6 reasons that Flickr is great for nature photographers and some suggestions for cheap macro photography.
- The Environmental Working Group evaluates available sunscreens according to health and environmental standards.
