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| Great Egret chicks / Photo by Mike Baird |
Birds and birding news
- Now that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has settled a lawsuit against it, the Red Knot will be among the highest priority species for listing. The settlement covers 757 species, including 60 in the Pacific Northwest.
- A colony of Great Gray Owls were found on timber company land in California – in oak-pine habitat near active logging operations. The discovery opens the possibility that other colonies exist outside of the owls' expected habitat and range.
- Towns in Indonesia are building bird houses specially designed to lure Edible-nest Swiftlets to build nests that are suitable for bird's nest soup.
- An essay describes the experience of a boat tour of egret nesting sites along the East River.
- A driver in Staten Island deliberately drove his car into a flock of Wild Turkeys.
- Here is a photo of a Knobbed Hornbill.
- Despite their smaller brains, owls have a similar ability to see and appreciate three-dimensional objects as humans.
- A woman in the U.K. found a ghostly image of an owl on her window. The image was created by powder down released when an owl hit the window. The owl's fate is unknown.
- Birds have repopulated their nesting territories on Gaillard Island in Alabama a year after the Gulf oil spill.
- Conservationists worry that Canada does not have adequate protections in place for the Whooping Cranes that migrate through the oil sands region.
- Biodiversity Heritage Library: Book of the Week: The Fate of the Vulture in South Asia
- The Drinking Bird: Birder Jargon Project: Tails and Shoulders, Knees and Toes
- Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog: Of Listservs and Facebook
- Outside My Window: Does Half a Degree Matter?
- WorldWaders News Blog: Where are the Red Knots of the EAAF during spring and autumn migration?
- March of the Fossil Penguins: Salmon are better than Sand
- Round Robin: Seventeen Spoon-billed Sandpipers hatch in captivity
- ABA Blog: Two Weird Warblers
- The Nemesis Bird: County Listing
- The Skeptical Moth: Monday Moth
- An Asian stinkbug, Megacopta cribraria, was recently discovered for the first time in Georgia. This stinkbug species attacks and weakens kudzu, so it may slow down the growth of kudzu vines. However, entomologists are concerned that the stinkbug could turn its attention to soybean and peanut crops.
- A viable population of snow leopards was discovered in Afghanistan.
- Here is a gallery of treehopper helmet designs.
- New Jersey is second in the U.S. in the amount of solar power it generates. Despite its small size, it jumped ahead of sun-drenched western states by setting aggressive goals for its renewable energy standard.
- Residents along the Gulf Coast are still feeling the effects of last year's oil spill.
- Human destruction of top predators has had pervasive effects on ecosystems worldwide.
- Puerto Rican anoles (Anolis evermanni) are able to solve intelligence tests that are usually given to birds.
- A comparison of farming methods found that fields sprayed with insecticides had more aphids in the long run than fields managed according to organic methods. The researchers suggested that the insecticides either killed off beneficial insects or made them seek other locations to prey on aphids, so that aphids could return to the treated fields without fear of predation.
- The Bornean rainbow toad (Ansonia latidisca) was photographed for the first time after its rediscovery in 2010. It was the first time the toad species was seen for 87 years.
- The decade 2000-2009 was less hot than predicted due to sulfate aerosol pollution from increased industrialization in Asia. This is a short-term effect, however, as the sulfates have a short life in the atmosphere, and any reduction in Asian sulfate pollution (such as less reliance on coal) will end the temporary cooling effect.
