Posts
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| Snowy Egret / Photo by Mary Ellen Urbanski (USFWS) |
- According to a new study, migrating Pink-footed Geese are able to detect and fly around or over offshore wind farms.
- The new eBird taxonomy update includes the placement of falcons and parrots together with passerines, a change made official in the latest AOU checklist supplement.
- Residents in Millville, New Jersey, were horrified to see Red-winged Blackbirds dying in the streets after a nearby farm poisoned them.
- A New Jersey Audubon program pays farmers to produce black oil sunflower seed, which is then sold in New Jersey Audubon nature centers as bird seed. The program helps to preserve the state's farmland.
- Runway expansion at the Sunshine Coast Airport in Australia threatens a colony of Eastern Ground Parrots. The Sunshine Coast population of this species has already shrunk from 300 to 4o parrots.
- A recent study found that for some songbirds, a little bit of stress was associated with a higher rate of survival.
- The evolution of wing lice followed the evolution of birds to fill different ecological niches.
- Tropical shade plantations with some native trees left standing provide better habitat for most birds than open farmland.
- Some Antarctic moss colonies grow on penguin poop to take advantage of a rich source of nitrogen.
- Eurasian Roller chicks vomit in self-defense; their parents can smell the vomit and stay away from the nest in response.
- Stricter regulation is leading to the adoption of new technologies to reduce seabird bycatch from commercial fisheries. However, bycatch remains a problem, as does overfishing.
- The Smaller Majority: Galapagos: The birds
- Bird Ecology Study Group: Crow anting in an anthill
- Sibley Guides: Determining the age of white egrets and herons in late summer
- Anything Larus: Louse Spots: A Sign of Poor Health?
- Audubon Guides: Ravenous Ravens
- Birding is Fun!: Birder Personality Profiles
- March of the Fossil Penguins: How smart was Paraptenodytes?
- Cicada Mania: Tibicen canicularis – Dog Star Rising
- South Jersey Butterfly B/Log: Double-Header Rarities
- Skeptical Science: Hansen's New Climate Dice - Hot, Loaded, and Misunderstood
- Earbirding: King and Clapper Rails
- Cleaning up polluted waterways poses some difficult questions, such as whether it is better to leave contaminants in place on a river bottom or risk stirring them up in order to remove them. The EPA is just starting a cleanup of the Passaic River near a factory that used to produce Agent Orange.
- Unusual deformities were found in pale grass blue butterflies (Zizeeria maha) from Fukushima that were larvae at the time of the tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster. Here are more photos of the deformed butterflies.
- Wind power accounted for a third of new electricity generation in the United States in 2011, but a lot of that growth depending on funding via the stimulus package. As a result of that and Romney's promise to end wind power subsidies, it is likely to be a politically potent issue for the 2012 election.
- The Forest Service released a new report on how climate change might affect northeastern forests.
- Greenland has already broken its record for summer melting, four weeks before the melting season ends. Meanwhile, the Northwest Passage is open, and the glacier at Glacier National Park may disappear within eight years.
- A Rutgers professor argues that there need to be tighter pollution controls in order to restore Barnegat Bay's health.
- A rare mongoose species was photographed by a camera trap in Indonesia.
- A beached fin whale died on a beach in Cornwall.
- Female hide beetles are attracted to male pheromones only when they accompanied by the smell of rotting flesh.
- A rocksnail species that was thought extinct has been rediscovered on the Cahaba River in Alabama, where it was living in the company of several other snail species, including a federally endangered species. The discovery was published in PLoS ONE.
- A Burmese python captured and killed in the Everglades was found to contain a record 87 eggs. I wonder how many of those would have lived to adulthood if the python had not been killed first.
- Analysis of shark tooth weapons from the Gilbert Islands shows that the waters around the islands were formerly home to shark species long since extirpated.
- A new water distribution plan could threaten farmers on the Sacramento River delta.
- Farmers in Oregon are worried about genetically-modified canola crops contaminating their specialty crops via pollination.
- New York City's chief naturalist leads evening walks in Alley Pond Park in Queens. The events include setting up a black light to watch for moths and other nocturnal insects.
