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Snow Geese / Photo credit: Jim Bahn
Birds and birding news
- California Condors that forage and breed along the California coast may have trouble breeding due to lingering DDT contamination. Sea lions, a food source for those condors, still store DDE in their blubber because large amounts of DDT were dumped off the coast of Southern California by the Montrose Chemical Corporation up until 1971.
- During migration, birds can show up in places they normally would not normally use as habitat, such as American Woodcocks in downtown Washington.
- Wildlife officials are looking for help in finding and convicting the person who shot a Bald Eagle in Wareham, Massachusetts. Bald Eagles have also recently been shot in Vermont and poisoned in Delaware.
- British researchers placed cameras within European Starling roosts to learn more about how they live. Adults dominate the roost and push juveniles to colder parts of the roost, where the juveniles huddle together to keep warm.
- Only seven pairs of Hen Harriers nested successfully in England this year – a possible sign that the species will be extirpated in the near future.
- In the southeastern U.S., some hummingbirds stay through the winter, including western species that have migrated east. The wintering hummingbirds are being studied by banders to learn more about their movements.
- A flock of African Pink Pelicans recently landed in Siberia during an unusually warm November. The birds were captured by a local zoo and will be released in the spring.
- People on the remote island of St. Kilda survived by eating nesting seabirds well into the 20th century.
- ABC North Queensland is encouraging Australian birders to tweet their bird sightings under the hashtag #bluewrentweet. The project is coordinated on Twitter by Ron Smith (@bluewrentweet) and ABC North Queensland (@ABCnorthqld).
- NYC Birding: Statistical Models of Bird Identification
- Net Results: Ember: Kentucky Peregrine moves to Dearborn
- IBRRC: Reward raised to $6,000 for info on collared gulls
- Quick intervention by conservationists saved a colony of African Penguins from an oil spill a decade ago, but penguins that had been oiled and cleaned had less reproductive success in subsequent years.
- The National Academy of Engineering has been studying the gulf oil spill; they have already concluded that the companies involved inadequately managed the risks involved.
- In addition to the gulf spill, BP is in trouble for oil spills along its pipeline in Alaska, including one in 2009 that spilled 46,000 gallons of oil and oily water onto the tundra after BP ignored warning alarms.
- Estimates of the land footprints needed for generating electricity by coal and solar resources ought to include the land required for mining coal.
- Scientists have identified a new bat species (Myotis diminutus) from a specimen collected 30 thirty years ago in Ecuador. The species may be extinct since it was identified from such an old specimen and not a living animal.
- Some of the soil at the Hanford nuclear site is so radioactive that it has ten times the lethal level of radioactivity.
- A bill to limit carbon emissions was killed by Canada's Senate.
- A fisherman found a nine-inch oyster in the Rappahannock River. Such large oysters are rare now due to the Chesapeake's pollution.
- So far the Obama administration has added 51 species to the Endangered Species List (well behind Clinton's pace) while leaving 251 species on its candidate list.
