Posts
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| Brown Pelican nest / Photo by Pete McGowan/USFWS |
- A seven-year study of Greater Prairie Chickens found that the birds were less affected by wind turbines than by the availability of native prairie habitat. Still, it is probably best to be cautious about intruding wind (or other energy) developments into important breeding areas for prairie chickens.
- A new study argues that short-lived birds like Great Tits will be able to adjust their breeding cycles to align with earlier availability of food resources in a warming climate. Birds with longer maturation and breeding cycles may not be able to evolve as quickly to meet the challenge.
- The Powdermill Avian Research Center has the longest-running bird banding program in the U.S. In addition to the standard banding process, the center swabs birds to test for West Nile Virus, conducts bioacoustics research, and has a flight tunnel to test how birds see human structures.
- A panel is researching ways to conserve the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard.
- Conservation measures in the UK have spurred a recovery of breeding Ring Ouzels.
- Researchers are developing a vaccine to protect birds from the West Nile Virus.
- A warmer climate makes snakes more active, and those snakes end up eating more birds.
- Bug Girl: Mad Hatterpillar: The Sequel!
- Arthropod Ecology: Help give this jumping spider a common name
- Flickr Blog: Exploring Antelope Canyon
- robertscribbler: Soot From Forest Fires: Yet One More Amplifying Feedback to Human-Caused Climate Change
- WolfeNotes: Tennessee Gas Pipeline Drilling Causes Sinkhole Road Collapse
- Coyote Crossing: The coast redwood is endangered
- mocosoco Birds: Great Swamp Butterflies, July 6, 2013
- Tetrapod Zoology: Historical ornithology 101, a Tet Zoo Guide
- ABA Blog: Meet Matt Daw, the Guy Who Found the New Mexico Rufous-necked Wood-Rail
- 10,000 Birds: Herring Gulls Enjoying a Puddle
- Birding Is Fun!: City Bird Census Proposal
- Outside My Window: Seeing Red
- View from the Cape: Boom time for dragonflies
- Deep Sea News: Missing Energy Found In Warming Deep Oceans
- Bloggers at the Scientific American Blog Network recommended a list of science books for summer reading. Not many bird-related books are on that list; check out the Birdbooker Report and the Birder's Library for information on the latest birding publications.
- National Moth Week is coming up fairly soon: July 20-28, 2013. De Korte Park in the Meadowlands will hold its second annual moth night on July 22.
- The Bureau of Land Management halted mining claims on public lands designated for large-scale solar projects.
- The neighborhood of Broad Channel in Queens is undergoing a street-raising project to reduce flooding from climate change and future storms.
- An oil train exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, last Saturday and devastated the town. Aside from the damage to buildings, oil leaking from the train may threaten the drinking water supply.
- European cities are experimenting with ways to make green transportation like electric buses run with the help of older transportation infrastructure.
- The National Archives has an exhibit on the EPA's Documerica Project from the 1970s.
- Periodical cicadas did not appear everywhere they were expected this year. They were notably absent in most of South Jersey. BHL has a post about the cicada's reproductive biology.
- Prickly pear, the native eastern cactus, is loaded with pollen.
- Earthquakes around fracking operations are triggered by seismic waves from distant powerful earthquakes. Normally these seismic waves would not be sufficient to cause an earthquake, but the injection of water into bedrock increases pressure at dormant faults.
- Native predators are not sufficient to control the growing population of invasive lionfish in the Atlantic and Caribbean.
