Posts
Going Places – Bay-breasted Warbler / Photo credit: Janet M. Hug (JKissnHug)
Birds and birding news
- When scientists attached video cameras to the backs of juvenile Brown Boobies, the recorded footage showed that they learned how and where to forage from other seabirds. There is a short sample video at the link.
- Re-examination of a Triassic-era fossil from China pushed back the date for the split between the crocodile and bird evolutionary lineages.
- Two environmental organizations are suing the owners of Toronto buildings that are most hazardous to birds. The buildings have caused the deaths of 7,000 birds in the last decade.
- Kauai is a good place to see endemic Hawaiian birds, but many of them are disappearing.
- The population of Rose-ringed Parakeets has recently exploded in Great Britain, rising from 1,500 in 1995 to over 30,000 now.
- Experiments show that African Grey Parrots can cooperate to complete a task.
- To some observers, the rise of baby bird webcams is a sign of biophilia.
- Officials in Newcastle are considering building a kittiwake tower to move breeding kittiwakes off the Tyne Bridge.
- 10,000 Birds: A Question of Migration
- Bird Canada: 84 Burrowing Owls Released to the Wild
- March of the Fossil Penguins: Featherless Penguin Gets a Helping Hand from Humans
- BES Group: Black Scoter takes a mollusc
- Ecobirder: Splish Splash!
- The Freiday Bird Blog: Tom Parsons Passes
- The Nightjar: 50 Years of Warbler Springs – Have they really changed?
- The Nemesis Bird: Golden Eagle vs Raven
- A new paper argues that extinction rates based on habitat loss have been overestimated, perhaps by as much as 160%, because many estimates use too crude of a model. However, habitat loss is still a serious issue and contributes to many extinctions.
- Of course, extinctions are about more than habitat loss; other issues include loss of critical food supplies or the spread of deadly diseases (such as the chytrid fungus that is killing many amphibians).
- A red-crested tree rat (Santamartamys rufodorsalis) was recently spotted outside a lodge in El Dorado Nature Reserve in northern Colombia; it was the first time a member of that species had been seen since 1898. (Follow the link for photos of the cute tree rat.)
- Recent calculations conclude that we have yet to discover 33% of amphibians and 3% of land mammals, which put together is about 3,000 species. The trick, of course, is to find them before they go extinct, which is a serious concern since undiscovered species are likely to be rare or in remote and threatened areas.
- Federal officials are trying to determine whether a proposed Christo installation in Colorado would harm bighorn sheep.
- National Geographic has photos of America's top ten endangered rivers. Really, there are probably rivers that are currently worse off, but these will all be subject to major decisions that will effect them for better or worse.
- Demand for green roofs is rising in New York City. If enough building owners install and maintain them, green roofs could ease the strain on the city's storm drains and sewer system.
- Periodical cicadas emerge in 13- and 17-year intervals because prime-number cycles make it harder for potential predators to take advantage of them. Bora explains why we are unlikely to learn the cicadas' mechanism for emerging in prime number cycles.
- Southern U.S. forests are falling to the paper industry and suburban development; unlike the rest of the country, very little southern forest is protected.
- Bug Girl's Blog: Debugging Grace Hopper
- Myrmecos: Photographing insects with a point & shoot digicam
