Loose Feathers #249

Tree Swallow in Box / Photo by Donna Dewhurst (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

• Federal and state officials hope to reduce New York's resident Canada Goose population from 250,000 to 85,000 geese. State officials insist that the reduction will be carried out with hunting and egg addling in addition to culls like the one in Prospect Park.
• Wildlife photographer Jim Gilbert documents beach nesting birds in New Jersey and provides photos to conservation organizations to help them explain why the birds need protection. In addition to the Least Tern photos in the article, you can find more of his work on Flickr.
• Here is a short radio interview (with audio and transcript) about birding on Alcatraz.
• An appeals court confirmed that killings of birds do not need to be intentional to qualify as violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. 
• The National Audubon Society named David Yarnold, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, as its new president. Before he joined the Environmental Defense Fund he was an editor of the San Jose Mercury News.
• The Kings of Leon halted a concert because pigeons were defecating on them.

Birds in the blogosphere

• Sibley Guides: New bird names in the 51st AOU Checklist supplement
• Earbirding: The Changes Are In
• Birding Dude: Piping Plovers Banded in the Bahamas @ Breezy Point Queens NY
• Tetrapod Zoology: When bivalves attack (or: bivalves vs birds, the battle continues)
• The Drinking Bird: Three thoughts on the vagrancy of Tropical Turdids
• Birdchick: Are These Oil Damaged Gulls?
• Jeffrey A. Gordon: Brown Booby update: some cute photos + updated coordinates

Oil Spill

• Despite media reports suggesting that the oil had disappeared or that the environmental impact was exaggerated, the reality is that there is still oil on beaches and marshes, much of the oil remains below the surface, and the long term impacts of the spill will not be know for some time.
• A pipeline in Michigan leaked over a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River this week. Federal officials had previously warned the owner of the pipeline about corrosion. While this spill is small in comparison to BP's spill, it is one of the largest to occur in the Midwest and affects a tributary of Lake Michigan.
• A report from the National Wildlife Federation documents the thousands of oil-related leaks and explosions from 2001 to 2007, including 1,440 accidents offshore and 2,554 accidents onshore. Together with the two additional spills this week, the report undercuts the claim that BP's gusher was an isolated incident in an otherwise safe industry.
• McClatchy offers 10 lessons from the BP disaster that should influence future drilling and cleanup operations.

Environment and biodiversity

• Environmentalists and the Yakama Nation are concerned that shipping trash from Honolulu to Oregon could introduce invasive species into the Columbia River Gorge.
• Shade coffee plantations support native insects that help maintain the biodiversity of tropical rainforests.
• Migrating Monarchs recolonize the Midwest first and then Monarchs born there spread eastward over the Appalachians. This explains why the earliest Monarchs in the Midwest a month before the earliest appear in the East.
• Climate change could threaten marine biodiversity. A major concern is the potential reduction in phytoplankton.
• DotEarth has a follow-up to the RealClimate post on Wallace Broecker.
• Eleven new species of insects were discovered in France.