Posts
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| Gull-billed tern at Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge / Photo by R. Baak (USFWS) |
- Dead waterbirds are being found around industrial-scale solar energy installations in the California desert. These include ducks, grebes, and rails, as well as songbirds associated with wetland habitats. As the birds migrate over the desert, they may see the sun reflecting off the solar panels or mirrors and mistake them for a body of water. Great Blue Herons are among the casualties.
- The farm bill standoff is holding up funding for the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to maintain habitat for grassland birds.
- Artificial rafts covered in vegetation are rebuilding the breeding population of Black-throated Divers (a.k.a. Arctic Loon) in Scotland.
- Wild chili pepper seeds that pass through the gut of a Small-billed Elaenia are more likely to germinate and grow into plants.
- A team of conservationists has completed its eradication of feral rodents from South Georgia. The goal of the program was to improve the survival rate of the island's breeding birds, included the endemic South Georgia Pipit and South Georgia Pintail.
- The Ground Tit (Parus humilis) can survive in the harsh Tibetan plateau thanks to genetic adaptations for low-oxygen and cold environments.
- This year's survey of Atlantic Puffins in the Farne Islands found that their population is recovering from a recent crash.
- Some polyandrous shorebirds select mates on the basis of physical attributes rather than brain size; this may be because body size evolves faster than brain size in these species.
- A study suggests that bird and mammal brains have similar structures and connections.
- ABA Blog: The evolution of county listing
- 10,000 Birds: Black-throated Sparrow at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area
- The Net Naturalist: Playful Post – Wildlife Inspired Insults
- Beetles in the Bush: “Rare jewel beetles discovered in Mexico by team of scientists!”
- Bird Ecology Study Group: Save MacRitchie Forest: 13. Butterflies, jewels of the forest
- National Moth Week starts tomorrow, July 20, and runs through July 28. Follow the link to find an event near you or learn how to participate yourself. Here is an article on the East Brunswick group that helped get NMW started. Here is another article on the East Brunswick group.
- The Carpenter 1 Fire in Nevada threatens to wipe out the remaining populations of several rare species, including a rare chipmunk and a rare butterfly, the Mount Charleston Blue. (Audio interview with biologists here.)
- A new species of moth was discovered in China. You can read the open-access journal article describing the species (and see more photos of it) here.
- Another new moth species was found in Iran and likewise was published in Zookeys.
- Oregon rewrote its rules on when wolves may be killed by finding a compromise position between conservationists and ranchers.
- In the last ten years, the population of the endangered Iberian Lynx has tripled thanks to conservation efforts.
- A Western Bumblebee (Bombus occidentalis) was spotted in Seattle for the first time since the 1990s.
- Two groups of scientists are trying to restore the American Chestnut as a common tree in eastern forests, one through hybridization and the other through genetic modification.
- Climate change is putting low-lying historic sites at risk.
- Around 300 stingrays turned up dead on a beach in Veracruz, Mexico.
- The US Senate finally confirmed Gina McCarthy to head the EPA.
- Here is a profile of a South African lepidopterist who searches for (and sometimes finds) rare butterflies.
