Loose Feathers #414

Hermit Thrush / Photo credit: Bill Thompson/USFWS

Birds and birding

• With the end of the shutdown, national parks and other federal lands are opening to the public. On the first day that Forsythe NWR reopened, a birder found a Gray Kingbird there.
• Volunteer birders, including Nicholas Lund of The Birdist, are collecting dead birds outside buildings in DC to determine which buildings kill the most birds.
• The recent listing proposal for Red Knots should give the species extra protections, but endangered species laws themselves face threats at both the state and federal levels.
• Scientists in Ecuador found that playback of bird songs may harm birds by causing them to expend more energy repelling the presumed intruder.
• When seen by other birds, Common Cuckoos closely resemble birds of prey like the Sparrowhawk. An interesting finding is that this mimicry seems to be highly localized: cuckoos mimic the hawks that are in their immediate geographical area.
• Volunteers count migrating hawks at the Green Valley Forest Preserve's hawk watch in Illinois.
• BirdWatching Daily tells why seawatching is as important as hawk watching for conservation.
• The man who raped a birder in Central Park got a 30-year sentence.
• Swiss officials caught a man smuggling the eggs of rare parrots in his underwear.

Science and nature blogging

• Nemesis Bird: Lincoln’s Sparrow vs. Song Sparrow – PSU Fall Banding
• 10,000 Birds: Four wings good two wings better? 
• The Corvid Blog: I Am Not A Baby Crow! 
• Extinction Countdown: Century-Old Egg Answers Mystery about Critically Endangered Bird
• The Freiday Bird Blog: Watching a Rare Bird Disappear
• Myrmecos: How Field Naturalists Die 
• Bug Eric: Woodlouse Hunter
• ReWild: California is First State to Ban Lead Ammo in Hunters' Guns

Environment and biodiversity

• Genetic research shows that ants and bees most likely evolved from mud dauber wasps. In this view, the building of nest structures would have evolved first and from there other species evolved with more complex social arrangements.
• National parks lost a lot of revenue from admission fees and other sources during the shutdown.
• A class at Richard Stockton College is testing pollutants in Barnegat Bay to determine their sources.
• A new blog will cover wildlife conservation in California.
• Princeton, New Jersey, decided to conduct further studies on the local coyote population before decided whether to pursue a cull.
• New Jersey has a new senator, Cory Booker, who is currently mayor of the state's largest city. Grist puts Booker's environmental record into the context of his predecessor's and of Newark's long history of environmental advocacy.