Loose Feathers #351

Piping Plover on the Fly / Photo by Steven Tucker (USFWS)

Birds and birding

• A new study of King Penguins found that normal tourist activities like walking up to penguins and photographing them can stress the birds, especially in colonies unused to human contact. The study recommends that ecotourists watch with binoculars at a distance.
• The USDA rounded up 750 Canada Geese at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens, New York; the geese will be gassed and their meat distributed to food banks. This move was part of the continuing program to protect airplanes by exterminating resident Canada Geese within New York City. (via 10,000 Birds)
• A better nonlethal solution to aircraft collisions may be on the way; a new study shows that geese react faster to an aircraft with lights on than one without lights.
• The US Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing whether the Black-capped Petrel needs protection under the Endangered Species Act. 
• Babblers that help other birds raise their chicks in cooperative breeding arrangements are most likely to help close kin.
• An expedition to Angola found several tracts of bird-rich old-growth forest; several rare or declining species were found among the birds there.
• The Boston Globe posts lists of bird sightings on Cape Cod.

Nature blogging

• Not Exactly Rocket Science: Urban noise can turn sparrow females into bad mums
• Bug Eric: Wasp Wednesday: Wasp vs. Bug 
• 10,000 Birds: iPhonescoping with the Meopta MeoPix iScoping Adapter
• life on six legs: Photographing Butterflies with a 30 Year Old Lens
• Beetles in the Bush: The importance of background and apparent light size
• March of the Fossil Penguins: Tour of the Penguin Skeleton VI: The Mandible

Environment and biodiversity

• Since the excellent series on USDA Wildlife Services in The Sacramento Bee, the agency has resisted calls to release more data on its activities. NRDC points out that one of the agency's claims, that 80% of its interactions with wildlife are nonlethal, is true if you consider all species. But if you narrow the scope to large predators — the subject of the SacBee reports — 98% of the cases involve lethal control measures. (See my posts on the SacBee series here and here.)
• NRDC's OnEarth Magazine has two articles this week on the western wild fires. One, by a former firefighter, argues that climate change plays a key role in increasingly severe fires. The second looks at the role of firefighting. Some commentary on the recent articles linking fires and heatwaves to climate change is available here and here.
• A California man waged a successful campaign against Ortho to persuade the chemical manufacturer to remove Monarch caterpillars from its pesticide advertising.
• The World Geography website has photos of wildlife overpasses around the world. Wildlife overpasses are bridges placed over highways in major wildlife areas so that animals can cross the highway without having to navigate fast-moving traffic.
• The USDA has declared the largest natural disaster area ever due to this summer's drought. The drought area covers over 1,000 counties in 26 states — basically the entire southwestern third of the country from California to the Mississippi River, part of the Midwest, and most of the Southeast.
• The heat this year has been so extreme that June set a record for the hottest 12-month period in history, for the third month in a row.
• My source of water, the Delaware and Raritan Canal, is taking a beating from the prolonged hot and dry weather.
• Black bears are being seen in South Brunswick Township near Kingston.
• Several New Jersey counties are using native copepods to control mosquito populations; the tiny crustaceans eat mosquito larvae.