Loose Feathers #471

Great Egret / Photo by Steve Hillebrand (USFWS)

Birds and birding news

• Audubon Magazine has interesting profiles about three scientists from the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center: Sam Droege, who designs citizen science projects and currently photographs bees; Chan Robbins, who founded the Breeding Bird Survey; and Jessica Zelt, who runs the North American Bird Phenology Program.
• Scientists investigated whether modern penguins could shed light on whether Hesperornis was migratory. The short answer is no, but they learned about penguin bone growth patterns.
• Vultures are able to eat rotting meat (and the microbes that flourish there) because they have especially strong digestive systems.
• A new species of flycatcher, the Sulawesi Streaked Flycatcher (Muscicapa sodhii), was confirmed in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
• Scientists have linked colorful plumage in male birds to gene expression in females of the same species.
• Blue Tits assess the risk to themselves before defending their nestlings.
• Hummingbirds fly with aerodynamics that are more like insects than other birds.
• While American environmentalists fight the Keystone XL pipeline, a separate fight has been brewing over a proposed pipeline that would cut through a conservation area in British Columbia. The pipeline's proponents lost a court case this week against the protesters. Here is a post about the birds that live in the pipeline's path.

Science and nature blogging

• 10,000 Birds: Critically Endangered: Sociable Lapwing
• Birding New Jersey!: An Odd Sparrow
• Sibley Guides: A hawk in pigeon’s clothing
• Tetrapod Zoology: South America’s very many remarkable deer
• The Smaller Majority: Mozambique Diary: Not all flies fly
• Arthropod Ecology: Trophic cascades in fragmented forests
• Extinction Countdown: Giraffes under Threat: Populations Down 40 Percent in Just 15 Years
• Bug Eric: Springtails
• Ibycter: Photo session with a jumper
• The Prairie Ecologist: Hubbard Fellowship Blog - The Amazing Burying Beetle

Environment and biodiversity

• The federal government will designate critical habitat for Atlantic Sturgeon.
• An application for a solar farm on public lands near Mojave National Preserve was denied because of its expected environment impacts.
• Conservation groups are suing a county in California to end its contract with USDA Wildlife Services.
• A wolf spotted near the Grand Canyon was confirmed to be a Gray Wolf from the Rocky Mountains based on DNA extracted from its scat.
• The EPA will impose stricter limits on ozone pollution, which has been linked to asthma and heart disease.
• Martin O'Malley decided to allow fracking in Maryland.
• The shrinking glaciers at Glacier National Park are a symptom of much broader changes in the availability of water in western states.