Posts
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| Short-eared Owl / Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS |
- This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count, which runs from February 17-20.
- The world's oldest known breeding bird, a 66-year-old Laysan Albatross, just hatched another chick.
- If you want to find birders or ornithologists to follow on Twitter, there is a crowd-sourced list in a Google document started by Jordan Rutter.
- Audio recorders suspended from drones may be an option for bird surveys in places that are difficult for a person to walk through.
- A stretch of I-84 in Idaho has been deadly for Barn Owls.
- A proposed redesign of the American Dream megamall in the Meadowlands could kill birds with reflective glass.
- Impact of climate change on mammals and birds is underestimated by current assessments.
- Desert songbirds, especially smaller species, may face an increased threat of dehydration during heat waves.
- New Jersey Audubon tagged a Great Egret with a transmitter, and people can follow his movements online. It spends its summers around the Arthur Kill and winters in South Carolina.
- Mia McPherson's On The Wing Photography: Pied-billed Grebes in Flight – Rare Sight to See & Photograph
- ABA Blog: THE TOP 10: Craziest ABA Area Vagrants of 2016
- The Last Word On Nothing: The Quaking Giant
- Vitrified Headers: Moths of Plainsboro, Fifth Edition
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino’s Life in the Meadowlands: It’s a Good Time to Plan Your Backyard Wildlife Garden
- The Prairie Ecologist: The Life of a Single Mom (Bee)
- 10,000 Birds: Mallard Complexity
- Congress continued its regulatory rollbacks by repealing the Stream Protection Rule that prevented mining companies from dumping waste in streams and valleys (which has been done repeatedly in Appalachia). Meanwhile, another bill would end the EPA, where longtime employees are calling their senators to get them to vote against Scott Pruitt.
- The crisis at California's Oroville Dam might have been prevented if dam operators had heeded environmental groups that warned about deficiencies in the emergency spillway and nearby counties that wanted the dam's management to account for the effects of climate change. The near-disaster could be the first of many due to the lack of oversight and maintenance of our aging dam infrastructure. The incident is also significant for the potential threat it represents to the availability of drinking water.
- Scientists are studying Diamondback Terrapins in Jamaica Bay as part of a marsh restoration project.
- A newly-discovered beetle travels by attaching itself to the back of an army ant.
- Salt marshes are in trouble from land use changes and from rising sea levels.
- Encroachment from trees, partly due to lower elephant numbers, may be to blame for the decline of the Hirola.
- Bison, which are at home on the prairies in both Canada and the U.S., have been reintroduced to Banff National Park in Alberta.
- Antarctic sea ice hit its record-lowest extent this week.
- Butterfly populations are declining more rapidly in urban areas than rural ones in Great Britain.
- A backyard effort has increased San Francisco's population of California Pipevine Swallowtails, a declining species that uses the native California Pipevine as a host plant.
- A new study emphasizes the importance of sea grass for suppressing pollution and providing habitat for marine life.
- Fossil evidence from Idaho suggests that life bounced back quickly after the mass extinction at the end of the Permian.
- Globalization has boosted invasive species introductions, with 37% of known invasive species being introduced from 1970-2014 and a peak of 585 in 1996.
- Scientists found over 20 contaminants in some sediment core samples from the Hackensack River.
