Posts
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| Yellow Warbler / Photo by Tom Tetzner (USFWS) |
- Researchers at the University of Oxford are using data loggers to study social networks among Great Tits.
- A new land reserve in Ecuador will protect the endemic Esmeraldas Woodstar, one of the world's tiniest hummingbirds.
- The BBC has an image gallery showing research on Chinstrap Penguins in the South Shetland Islands. The scientists are trying to determine why the Chinstrap Penguin population there is in decline. It has fallen by more than a third in the last two decades.
- Speaking of penguins, George Murray Levick, a medical officer traveling with Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole in 1910, was shocked by the behavior of Adélie Penguins, particularly the abuse of chicks by nonbreeding males and necrophilia. He was so embarrassed by their behavior that he did not include his notes on it in the published research from Scott's expedition and his notes only came to light recently. Some of Levick's photos are displayed in a gallery at LiveScience.
- Residents of Kennebunkport, Maine, voted this week on a measure to ban commercial fireworks in order to protect the Piping Plovers that nest on the beaches there. The ballot question passed, 550-254.
- Meanwhile, the ORV rule that protects Piping Plovers at Cape Hatteras is under threat from a lawsuit and proposed legislation in Congress.
- A town in Minnesota is trying to sweep its picnic pavilions clear of Barn Swallow nests this spring. One local birder reports that at least one of the nests they removed contained freshly-laid eggs.
- Not Exactly Rocket Science: To control cannibal toads, you just need the right bait
- March of the Fossil Penguins: Tour of the Penguin Skeleton: The Phalanges
- The Digiscoper: Digiscoping Adapters: Mix & Match!
- Wanstead Birder: Puffinathon
- The Daily Wing: Insect Inspiration
- Compound Eye: The Color of Honey
- BugBlog: Never hold a Black Clock in your mouth
- Nitrogen pollution reduces the amount of insects that sundews eat since they can get sufficient nutrients through their roots.
- Andrew Cuomo is working out a plan that would limit but not ban fracking in southwestern New York. This plan would keep fracking out of the Catskills, but permit it in areas where the Marcellus Shale is at least 2,000 feet deep, particularly these five counties: Broome, Chemung, Chenango, Steuben, and Tioga. To express opposition to fracking in those areas, there are petitions here and here.
- Australia is planning to extend protections to 40% of its waters, including the Coral Sea. The protections will include stricter regulation of fisheries and bans on oil and gas development.
- Mountains lions are repopulating their former range. While the eastern mountain lions are long gone, cougars from the Black Hills population are pushing into the Midwest, and have been found as far south as Texas and as far east as Connecticut.
- The U.S. just experienced its hottest spring on record.
- Scientists have discovered a massive phytoplankton bloom under the Arctic sea ice in the Chukchi Sea — a phenomenon never recorded there before.
