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Injured Osprey / Photo by James Philip O'Brien
Birds and birding news
- Con Edison is supporting NYC Audubon's "Lights Out" campaign to reduce fatalities of migrating birds around the city's skyscrapers. Artificial light disorients migrating birds and causes them either to crash into a building or circle it repeatedly to the point of exhaustion.
- Scientists are monitoring ptarmigans to track how the birds react to changing climate conditions.
- Penguin specialists have gathered in Boston to discuss how to protect vulnerable penguin species.
- Annual hawk watches have resumed at Cape May and Hawk Mountain.
- The most fragile eggshells (measured in terms of thickness) belonged to extinct moas. The birds would have needed special nesting techniques to prevent breakage during incubation.
- A new study suggests that the bright red coloration of male cardinals is less indicative of health in urban areas than in rural areas since carotenoid-rich foods are more easily available in urban areas, even for unhealthy birds.
- A census in Cambodia found that the country's vulture numbers rose in the last year. So far it is the only Asian country to see an increase in its endangered vulture population.
- Soras, more often heard than seen, are migrating to the winter grounds in the southern U.S. and Mexico.
- A company paid a fine for the deaths of 55 protected birds in its natural gas pits.
- Making a property more inviting to birds is a great way to control insects and unwanted weeds. One way to make a yard more attractive to birds is to plant native trees and shrubs that provide food and shelter.
- Here is a list of recommendations for keeping bird watching and photography respectful of wildlife and other people.
- Sibley Guides: Birding and a warming Arctic
- Coffee and Conservation: Birds on coffee
- NYC Birding: The limitations of Structure
- A Scientific Nature: A Finch’s Ways to Find a Mate: 1) Peacock It Out, 1a) Meet as Many Friends as You Can
- Gothamist: Parrot Poachers Picking Off Brooklyn Birds
- Another oil rig exploded and burned in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday. All crew members were rescued, and there has not been a confirmed report of a spill, so far. (It took a few days for a spill to be confirmed in the case of Deepwater Horizon.) The company that owned the rig, Mariner Energy, and its parent company, Apache Energy, paid $745,000 in fines for safety violations in 2010 alone.
- BP plans to remove the failed blowout preventer from its Deepwater Horizon well by Sunday. After that, it will begin a bottom kill to seal the well permanently. The federal government wants to use the blowout preventer as evidence in the criminal and civil cases against the company.
- A wildlife rescuer with experience at both spill sites compares the BP oil spill with the Exxon Valdez spill.
- A fuel tanker ran aground in the Canadian Arctic in the Northwest Passage. So far no spill has been reported.
- The fight over mountaintop removal mining is shifting as large banks seek to reduce their involvement with companies that practice it and activists take their fight to the court system. A key question is whether the US EPA will limit valley fills to protect water supplies.
- A coal-fired power plant is being fined for exposing its workers to harmful levels of toxic radiation.
- California legislators decided not to impose a statewide ban on disposable plastic shopping bags.
- Runoff from deicing chemicals can leave urban streams toxic for aquatic life. The study authors call for the development of deicing methods that reduce cloride contamination.
- The US EPA declined o protect wildlife from the toxic effects of lead ammunition.
- A new study found that the oil sands project in Alberta is polluting local watersheds with toxic chemicals in levels that exceed Canadian safety standards. Chemicals are leeching from deforested sites around mines or falling as particulate air pollution. Heavy metals are known carcinogens in humans and also harm fish and aquatic wildlife.
- A warming climate likely reduced the number of horseshoe crabs at the end of the last Ice Age. Future climate change could have a similar effect, leading to problems for other wildlife that depend on horseshoe crabs and their eggs for food.
