Posts
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| Northern Gannet / Credit: USFWS |
- This week the NY Daily News reported that the Port Authority was shooting Snowy Owls at NYC-area airports (particularly JFK airport). This caused a furor, an online petition was started, and by the end of the day, the agency announced that it would work with New York to capture and relocate Snowy Owls at JFK and La Guardia. The Port Authority also announced that it already had permission to relocate owls trapped at Newark airport in New Jersey. Boston's Logan airport has long employed wildlife specialists to relocate Snowy Owls rather than killing them, with the help of Massachusetts Audubon.
- The Center for Biological Diversity argues that the Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo should be listed as endangered rather than threatened.
- A new regulation regarding wind energy development weakens existing protections for Bald and Golden Eagles.
- One problem with Amazon's drone delivery proposal is that the drones are likely to be attacked by raptors and other birds.
- A study found that Little Penguins can switch from their primary prey to alternate food sources, but their reproductive success falls if those alternate sources are not available.
- If a cuckoo fledges from a magpie nest as part of a mixed brood, the magpie parents are likely to stop feeding the baby cuckoo and focus on their own magpie fledglings.
- Eurasian Tree Sparrows can recognize eggs that are placed in their nest by other birds, but they do not always reject them.
- Chalk-browed Mockingbirds will attack Shiny Cowbirds that attempt to lay eggs in their nests. This does not stop the cowbirds from laying eggs, but it does stop them from destroying the mockingbirds' eggs.
- The Birdist: Lapland Longspurs at the Washington Monument
- Bruce Mactavish: 300 Snowy Owls in Newfoundland Weekend - An Explanation
- ABA Blog: THE TOP 10: Most Awesome Bird Names in the World
- Myrmecos: Crazy ants, the New York Times, and the failure of Americans to support basic research
- 10,000 Birds: The North Wind Doth Blow
- Birding Dude: Ugh...Gulls!
- Bird Ecology Study Group: Sex and the Birds: 8. Splendid Fairy-wren, monogamous and promiscuous
- Anything Larus: Ross's Gull: Lake Red Rock
- Hidden New Jersey: The Red-headed Woodpecker goes industrial
- A Maine seafood company was caught overharvesting sea scallops off the coast of New Jersey.
- River otters are becoming common again in New Jersey but are still hard to spot.
- An extremely rare shrub in California will retain its endangered species protections despite a petition to remove its listing.
- Dolphin deaths have tapered off in New Jersey, but only because the dolphins (along with the deadly morbillivirus) have migrated south.
- The gray wolf known as OR-7 made a brief return to California.
- An employee of USDA Wildlife Services shot a Mexican wolf, a animal protected under the Endangered Species Act.
- At least 22 pilot whales died when they became stranded off the coast of the Florida Everglades last week. The fate of the rest of the pod is unclear.
- NJ Audubon is handing the Weis Ecology Center over to the state DEP. Under the current plan, it is likely that most of the buildings will be removed.
- Photographer Daniel Beltrá documented the Deepwater Horizon oil spill from the air.
- An Asian cockroach species that can tolerate cold and snow was discovered living in Manhattan, the first documented of this species in the United States. While it is currently unknown how the species came to be there, it is likely that it came in on one of the nonnative ornamental plantings for the High Line.
- Grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone may lose their endangered species protections.
