Posts
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| Black Tern / Photo by Ken Sturm (USFWS) |
- Climate change is likely to be bad news for Emperor Penguins and other animals that depend on sea ice. One model predicts that one colony of Emperor Penguins in East Antarctica would fall from 3,000 to 575 breeding pairs by the end of the century.
- An experimental study of Swamp Sparrows found that young sparrows learn to sing the songs they hear most clearly. This provides a mechanism for cultural transmission of new songs, especially in human-altered environments.
- The Vapour Col colony of Chinstrap Penguins on Deception Island has lost 36% of its breeding population since 1991. Chinstrap Penguins, like Adélie Penguins, eat mainly krill, which depend on the algae found under sea ice.
- A British birder praises the Common Cuckoo.
- Here is a gallery showing images of the gannet colony at Bass Rock in Scotland.
- The Birdist: How Do Birders Handle High Lists?
- Extinction Countdown: Rarest Kiwi Species Takes Flight
- Audubon Guides: The Moth that Came from the River
- Bird Ecology Study Group: Common Tailorbird nesting – feeding and fledging behaviour
- Outside My Window: Cowbirds Are Calling Their Kids
- The Brownstone Birding Blog: Customized Notebooks For Sloppy Birders?
- Nine copulating pairs of fossilized turtles have been found in Germany. Examples of behaviors such as copulation are relatively rare in the fossil record. The most likely explanation in this case is that the pairs started copulating in one part of the lake and then drifted into a more toxic part of the lake and died.
- A photographer in Greece recorded a dolphin that had an octopus clinging to its genital slit as the dolphin jumped from the water.
- Lyme disease cases in the Northeast may have increased in response to the incursion of coyotes in the region. More coyotes means fewer foxes preying on white-footed mice, the principal hosts of deer ticks, which transmit the disease.
- Expansion of Arctic forests could hasten the release of carbon that is currently sequestered in the tundra.
- The Kandyan dwarf toad, which was considered extinct, was rediscovered in Sri Lanka.
- The lid of a pitcher plant acts as a trapping mechanism. During rainstorms, insects may see shelter on the underside of the lid, but when the lid is hit by rain drops, any insects fall down into the plant's digestive juices.
- A newly-discovered moth species in New Zealand is threatened by an open-cast coal mine.
- Evidence from a new sediment core suggests that Arctic warming may be enhanced by disappearance of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
