Loose Feathers #575

Barred Owl / Photo by Andy French/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• The American Ornithologists’ Union and the Cooper Ornithological Society have merged to become the American Ornithological Society. The society promotes the study of ornithology and maintains the official checklists for North and South America.
• For a long time, ornithologists assumed that Northern Saw-whet Owls were non-migratory.
• The seabird breeding colony at Seahorse Key in Florida mysteriously disappeared two years ago.
• The team managing the rediscovered Night Parrot population is trying to protect the parrots from predation around water sources.
• A woman doing a photographic big year in Washington has photographed 285 of the state's 346 species.
• The true test of citizen science data (such as eBird checklists) is whether it is suitable for a given purpose. 
• Christmas Bird Counts started last weekend, with a soggy count in Washington, DC, among the first.
• Paleontologists have found a seabird-like fossil from the Cretaceous in the Canadian Arctic.
• A wet summer drove down the number of Blue Tits.
• Northern breeding birds, especially ones that migrate a long distance, are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
• The Rufous-headed Robin is rarely observed but may be more widespread than currently known.
• Up to 300 Red-winged Blackbirds were killed in southwestern New Jersey last week.

Science and nature blogging

• Extinction Countdown: The Worst and Best Wildlife Conservation Stories of 2016
• 10,000 Birds: The Bird With Four Sexes
• Mia McPherson's On The Wing Photography: Canada x Snow Goose Hybrid – Its Parentage Had Bewildered Me
• Backyard and Beyond: Gotham Unwatered
• Snapshots of Nature: It's Been a While... 

Environment and biodiversity

• Obama designated parts of the continental shelf in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans off-limits to fossil fuel drilling or exploration.
• Because of unusually warm temperatures around Churchill, Manitoba, the polar bears are wandering around without any snow or sea ice for hunting seals.
• It looks like the Trump administration will attack estimates of the social cost of carbon as part of its climate regulation rollback (even though recent research suggests that the Obama administration's estimates are too low).
• The Union of Concerned Scientists is concerned about Trump's choice to lead the Interior Department, Ryan Zinke.
• State and local governments may need to take more initiative on environmental issues with an actively anti-environmental administration. 
• Here is an informative article on how dams are selected for removal and what happens once they are gone.
• The Delaware River Basin Conservation Act created a federal program to oversee habitat restoration projects throughout the Delaware River watershed. 
• In the past week, a deer and a bear have received obituaries from the New York Times.