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Common Tern Preening / USFWS
Birds and birding news
- According to a new study, a Common Cuckoo can internally incubate its eggs for up to 24 hours before laying them. This allows its offspring to hatch earlier and eject the other eggs from the nest before they can hatch.
- Here is an interview with Marcy Haecker, a Smithsonian scientist who identifies which birds have caused airplanes to crash. The lab uses a variety of methods to identify bird parts, from visual inspection and comparison with specimens to DNA analysis.
- A bird recently became the UK's oldest known Arctic Tern. The bird was originally banded as a nestling in June 1980. The world's oldest known tern of that species a 34-year-old bird in the U.S. The U.K.'s oldest birds (of any species) are a Manx Shearwater and Northern Fulmar, both 50 years old.
- Wild gulls can carry medication-resident diseases that they acquired indirectly from humans.
- The American Bird Conservancy is expanding the El Dorado Bird Reserve in Colombia through land acquisition. The reserve has the world's highest concentration of endemic and threatened birds.
- Gambler's House: Casas Grandes Macaw Breeding
- Idaho Birding Blog: Idaho Bird Observatory: Part One - Song Bird Banding
- Culturing Science: Can seabirds overfish a resource? The case of cormorants in Estonia
- An independent study concluded that BP's well spewed between 56,000 and 68,000 barrels per day, for a total of 4.4 million barrels of oil released into the water. This makes it the largest marine oil spill.
- A search for lost frogs found three amphibian species that had not been seen in decades. They are the Cave Splayfoot Salamander (Chiropterotriton Mosaueri) in Mexico, Mount Nimba Reed Frog (Hyperolius Nimbae) in Ivory Coast, and Omaniundu Reed Frog (Hyperolius sankuruensis) from the Congo.
- A newly discovered spider species, Darwin's bark spider (Caerostris darwini), spins the world's largest and strongest known web. The webs span rivers and can catch up to 30 insects at once.
