Loose Feathers #387

Wilson's Phalaropes in Flight / Photo Credit: Neil Mishler/USFWS

Birds and birding

• Guillemots covered in a mysterious sticky substance are once again washing up on England's southern coast.
• The American Bird Conservancy lists 10 ways to help migrating and breeding birds.
• Stone Curlews are having a tough time finding food this spring because of unusually cold weather.
• A Washington man claims to have been hit in the back of the head by an owl while he was walking through a Seattle park at night.
• Nature reserves act as a magnet for vagrant birds (and probably for birders looking for vagrant birds).
• It appears that female moas were so much bigger than males as a side effect of the increase in body size of both sexes.
• Swallows may have adapted to live around humans as a way of avoiding nest parasitism by cuckoos, which prefer to stay away from humans.
• Scientists have found one colony of Adélie Penguins that seems to have benefited from climate change, even as most other penguin colonies have suffered.
• Goosefish, which normally feed near the bottom, have been found preying on Dovekies, a type of seabird. Scientists now suspect that goosefish occasionally hunt close to the surface, where Dovekies feed on amphipods.

Nature and science blogging

• Sibley Guides: The white eyelid of American Dipper
• On the road: New species for El Salvador: Clapper Rail
• Extinction Countdown: Beautiful Striped Bat Identified as Entirely New Genus
• History of Geology: In Search of… the Sea Snake
• Culturing Science: Bermuda Bluebirds Aren’t Native: They Moved In 400 Years Ago
• Ars Technica: Weird Science keeps its testosterone steady after fighting with quails

Environment and biodiversity

• In an average year there are 250 oil pipeline accidents. Over the past 20 years, that has worked out to 2.5 million barrels of spilled oil costing $6.3 billion in property damage.
• The Senate confirmed Sally Jewell as head of the Interior Department.
• Over the next half-century, the Arctic will become a lot greener.
• Why is clean air important? In 2010, 7 million people died as a result of air pollution, with 1.2 million of those deaths occurring in China.
• Radioactive water is leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which suffered a meltdown following an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
• Japanese whalers took a record low number of whales this year, largely because of the efforts of Sea Shepherd.