Posts
 |
| Burrowing Owls/ Photo by Lee Karney (USFWS) |
- The US Fish and Wildlife Service tries to answer how the warm winter might affect some animals.
- Analysis of feather fossils from the dinosaur Microraptor suggests that its feathers were very dark and iridescent, so that it would have resembled a crow or grackle.
- Eurasian Roller nestlings vomit at the sight of predators to warn their parents to stay away.
- A scrub-jay's recaching behavior may be due to stress it feels when other birds watch where it caches items the first time.
- A natural underwater oil seep off the coast of Santa Barbara is coating dozens of Common Murres and other seabirds in oil.
- Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos is trying to avoid the extinction of Peru's endemic species with a tree-planting program.
- The U.K. is planning culls of two North American species: Ruddy Ducks and Canada Geese.
- A record number of goldfinches visited gardens in the U.K. in 2011.
- 10,000 Birds: Birding the Battlefields
- Sibley Guides: What is the submoustachial?
- The Freiday Bird Blog: Possibility, Probability, and the Cape May Peninsula System
- Laelaps: Snails Hitch a Ride in Duck Guts
- Not Exactly Rocket Science: Scientists and tourists bring thousands of alien seeds into Antarctica
- Outside My Window: Winter Trees: Red Maple
- Seabrooke Leckie: First Moth of 2012
- Bug Eric: Spider Sunday: Common House Spider
- Wild New Jersey: New Jersey Moths: Building a Moth Library Part II - Historical and Other Resources
- Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: Do choosy cuckoos choose well-matched hosts?
- The Obama administration proposed to reinterpret language in the Endangered Species Act in a way that would reduce the number of species that would qualify as endangered or threatened.
- Winter 2012 was the fourth-warmest winter on record in the United States.
- An orange goo that turned up in a remote village in Alaska last year turned out to be a rust fungus, Spruce-Labrador Tea Needle Rust, Chrysomyxa ledicola, after investigation.
- Los Angeles is building a new urban wetland park that will be planted with native plants and replace a former brownfield.
- A genetic study of Antarctic blue whales found a higher level of genetic diversity than expected.
- The U.S. Senate passed the RESTORE Act to ensure that 80% of the fines levied against BP are used to restore marshes around the Gulf of Mexico. The bill needs to be passed by the House and signed by Obama to become law. The marshes are already recovering, but extra funding would help with the hardest-hit areas.
- Scientists at Ohio State University created two experimental manmade wetlands, one planted with marsh plants and the other left on its own. After 15 years, the two marshes showed similar levels of biodiversity, but the unplanted one sequestered more carbon.
- Citizen science programs can document changes in how early plants and migratory animals appear in spring. As an example, Thoreau's meticulous notes now provide a baseline to compare with contemporary observations in New England.
