Loose Feathers #449

Great Crested Flycatcher / Photo by Ken Sturm (USFWS).

Birds and birding news

• The USFWS will permit the Shiloh IV Wind Project to kill up to five eagles (mainly Golden Eagles) over the next five years without penalty. The permit requires that the energy company fix 133 utility poles to reduce electrocutions of birds of prey. Since the energy company should be fixing its utility poles anyway, this does not seem like much of a bargain, but it depends on how many birds the turbines kill.
• Some Arctic birds are breeding up to a week earlier in response to earlier snow melt.
• A Tufted Puffin was sighted off Machias Seal Island; this is the first sighting of one on the Atlantic coast since the 1830s.
• The Black Rail, like other birds that nest in high salt marshes, is threatened by sea level rise.
• Conservationists found a large population of rare Sarus Cranes in Myanmar.

Science and nature blogging

• Mark Avery: The curious case of Simon Barnes’s departure from The Times 
• South Jersey Butterfly B/Log: Satyrium Time, 2014
• Outside My Window: Take That, You Pesky Airplane!
• Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens: The Bountiful Buttonbush
• Charismatic Minifauna: Nature Zen: Orchid Bees are SHINY

Environment and biodiversity

• News coverage of pollinator declines generally focuses on honey bees, but native bees and other insects are just as important.
• The US Supreme Court upheld the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Loose Feathers #448

Piping Plover and Chicks / Photo by Kaiti Titherington/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• The Tricolored Blackbird population in California has fallen by 44% since 2011.
• Acacia seeds somehow traveled from Hawai'i to Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean; the most likely explanation is that a bird carried them there.
• Scientists are using feathers collected at clay lick sites to track the movements of the Scarlet Macaw population.
• A California Condor was spotted in San Mateo County, California, for the first time in over a century.
• A camera trap at Yasuni in Ecuador captured the first video of a Nocturnal Curassow.
• Caterpillars that eat multiple plant species are more susceptible to being eaten by birds than ones that specialize in a single host plant.
• DNA analysis showed how King Penguins settled on Crozet Islands.
• A black fly outbreak caused 70% of loons in northern Wisconsin to abandon their nests. The same insects have plagued efforts to establish an eastern migratory Whooping Crane population.

Science and nature blogging

• Laura's Birding Blog: Update on My Little Chickadee
• Charismatic Minifauna: Tequila, Booze, and Bats
• ABA Blog: Climate Change and Migratory Birds: New Concerns for an Old Problem
• Bug Eric: Eyed Elaters
• The Birdchaser: Neotropical Cormorant
• Shorebird Science: Death from Above
• Rob's Idaho Perspective: My Project of the Year – The Northern Goshawk

Environment and biodiversity

• This week was National Pollinator Week. Here are some resources for helping pollinators from the USDA-NRCS. As always, the Xerces Society has plant lists and other recommendations for each region within the U.S. and Canada.
• Nature photographers need to be aware of their potential impact on wildlife and ecosystems.
• Spiders that catch fish are present on every continent except Antarctica. Some fish they catch may be much larger than themselves.
• Obama has proposed a major expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument around several islands the U.S. controls in the Pacific Ocean.
• The City Room blog at the NY Times covers the life history of tent caterpillars.
• New Jersey has several old-growth forests around the state.
• Last week, Illinois became the first state to ban microbeads.

Loose Feathers #447

Nēnē and goslings at James Campbell NWR on Oahu / USFWS Photo

Birds and birding news

• The Nēnē family in the photo at the top of this post are the first breeding record on Oahu (pdf) since the 18th century. The Nēnē (also known as Hawaiian Goose) is an endangered species, and about 2,000 are alive in the wild. See this article for more images of the geese.
• Atlantic Puffin chicks are suffering from a lack of herring and hake in the Gulf of Maine. When those fish are not available, parents bring back butterfish, which are too large for the chicks to swallow. The decline in herring and hake seems to be linked to warmer ocean temperatures.
• Some readers may remember a report from a few weeks ago of trees bearing Black-crowned Night Heron nests being trimmed of the branches supporting their nests. Here is an update: none of the birds were killed (early reports erroneously mentioned birds being fed into a wood chipper), but several were injured and are being treated. It looks like the tree trimmer will be held accountable, but so far there is no indication the post office will be.
• Flickr recently changed the code it gives users to embed photos on other websites, and this affects how photos appear in eBird checklists.
• California Brown Pelicans are having a very bad breeding season so far.
• The June challenge for eBird calls for submitting complete checklists with breeding data.
• A new Guatemalan reserve will protect Highland Guan, Great Curassow, and Keel-billed Motmot, among other wildlife.
• Scientists split the Wakatobi Flowerpecker (found in Wakatobi islands in Indonesia) from the similar Grey-sided Flowerpecker.
• Two Black Vultures have been roosting around K Street in Washington, DC.
• The trail adjacent to the Edison Boat Basin will be renamed Riverside Park. The site is one of the better spots in Middlesex County (NJ) for finding unusual gulls, other waterbirds, and sometimes raptors.
• For readers in the DC area: The National Museum of Natural History is hosting an exhibition on bird extinction this summer, with an exhibition opening on June 24 that will feature Joel Greenberg, author of A Feathered River Across the Sky.

Science and nature blogging

• ABA Blog: 2014 AOU Check-list Proposals, Part 3 (full list here)
• Charismatic Minifauna: How to Search Your Hotel Room For Bed Bugs
• Bug Eric: A Flower Scarab, Euphoria fulgida 
• The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Roy Woodford Skimmer Shots
• Bird Ecology Study Group: Mating Zebra Doves and distinguishing the sexes

Environment and biodiversity

• This week, the EPA finally announced regulations limiting the amount of carbon dioxide that can be released by power plants. It was probably about the best that Obama could accomplish in the current political atmosphere, even though regulating carbon emissions from power plants has majority support in polls.
• The decline of Monarchs is most likely cause by the increasing agricultural use of herbicides and the elimination of milkweed patches for breeding and foraging. Milkweed patches have declined because more land is being planted with corn.
• This year's grasshopper emergence around Albuquerque is at a 20-year peak, and the grasshoppers are so abundant that they have been showing up on weather radar, much like birds do during migration. This spring's massive swarms were likely triggered by an exceptionally dry winter that did not destroy enough grasshopper eggs.
• Bees are able to detect polarization patterns, which help them identify flowers for foraging. (Unfortunately the article is illustrated with a honeybee instead of the species used in the study.)
• Scientists are trying to figure out why the bioluminescent dinoflagellates in Mosquito Bay (Puerto Rico) have suddenly stopped glowing. 
• An epidemic wasting disease has been killing many of the purple ochre sea stars along the Oregon coast. 
• Climate changes is bringing warmer temperatures fastest in the northeastern and southwestern U.S. Overall, average summer temperatures have warmed by 0.4°F per decade in the U.S.
• The massive Funny River fire in Alaska was enabled by a beetle infestation and climate change.
• El Niño is now 70% likely to occur this summer and will probably do significant harm to coral reefs.
• Brazil has saved a significant amount of greenhouse gas missions by slowing deforestation.
• The ocelot population in the U.S. numbers about 50, down from 100 a decade ago.
• NRDC has a petition to end the excesses of USDA Wildlife Services.
• Wolf OR-7, known for his travels through California, has been confirmed breeding in Oregon.