Loose Feathers #404

Common Murre and Brandt's Cormorant / Photo by Roy W. Lowe (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

• Some birds, particularly woodpeckers, thrive in areas with emerald ash borer infestations because they eat the beetles.
• The NRA has launched an attack on conservationists and zoos that support a ban on lead bullets to protect California Condors.
• A new bird species, the Junin Tapaculo, was discovered in a Peruvian cloud forest.
• Climate change increases the number of parasitic flies infestating nestlings in South America, particularly Great Kiskadee, Greater Thornbird, and Lesser Thornbird.
• Corn Buntings, a species associated with agriculture, have disappeared from two islands in Scotland.
• Dippers in Wales show signs of exposure to flame retardants.

Science and nature blogging

• ABA Blog: 2013 AOU Check-List Changes
• Compound Eye: One flower 16 ways: creative decisions in nature photograph 
• Your Wildlife: How Many Ants Live in New York City?
• The Prairie Ecologist: It’s Bee Week!
• The Birdist: Ornithological Accuracy of the New Orleans Pelicans 
• 10,000 Birds: Storm Damage and Birds
• Extinction Countdown: Film Fakery: Does Shark Week Harm Conservation Efforts?
• The Smaller Majority: Scorpionflies 
• Hidden New Jersey: Exploring the Everglades of the North: ecocruising with the Hackensack Riverkeeper

Environment and biodiversity

• If you have not read it yet, you should read this opinion piece on SeaWorld and its treatment of orcas. A new documentary called Blackfish is shedding new light on an incident in which an orca killed its trainer.
• The mountain pine beetle infestation in Colorado is causing significant changes to the water cycle, including reducing the quality of drinking water.
• Many manatees, dolphins, and pelicans are dying in the estuaries around Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Scientists suspect that nitrogen pollution from rapid development in the region is to blame.
• Meanwhile, dolphins are dying in greater numbers than usual up and down the East Coast.
• The reactors at Fukushima in Japan continue to leak radioactive water into the Pacific.
• The National Marine Fisheries Service denied a Georgia aquarium permission to import 18 beluga whales, which would have gone to aquariums and theme parks around the country.
• A building near Bryant Park has beehives on its green roof.
• A fossil whale skull from the Miocene was found on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. The skull is part of a complete (or nearly complete) specimen.
• Tar sands mining in Alberta uses a tremendous amount of water.
• Conservationists are calling on the United States to place the lion on the Endangered Species List to prevent importation of lion skins. American hunters account for more than half of the lions shot each year.
• Timber rattlesnakes prey on the mice that carry Lyme disease.