Loose Feathers #590

Sharp-tailed Grouse / Photo by Rick Bohn/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• Mature Golden Eagles will migrate north even through bad weather so that they arrive in time for nesting, while Golden Eagles that are too young to breed take their time.
• New studies are linking breeding populations of Semipalmated Sandpipers with specific wintering areas in South America.
• A newly-discovered fossil penguin foot shows that penguins diversified early in the Palaeogene. 
• A new citizen science project focuses on the songs of female birds.
• Birds at inland wetlands in Australia have benefited from this year's heavy rains.
• Here is a profile of Peter Dorosh, a birder and park employee at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. 
• Bird Studies Canada is adding survey data from remote areas of the boreal forest to eBird.
• A Common Yellowthroat got very lost and ended up in Japan.
• There are a few bird-related hashtag games on Twitter.

Science and nature blogging

• Deep Sea News: The Return to Silent Spring
• Biodiversity Heritage Library: Notes from William Brewster: The Evolving Field of Zoology
• The Rattling Crow: Encounters of the Sparrowhawk kind
• Backyard and Beyond: Obolaria virginica
• Bug Eric: Predator and Prey: Ants versus "Lions" and "Tigers"
• ABA Blog: A New World of Open Access
• Union Bay Watch: Storm Passing
• BirdsCaribbean: First Photographic Record of Kirtland’s Warbler in Cuba! 

Environment and biodiversity

• Cuts to the EPA in the proposed federal budget include a significant reduction for Superfund, a program helps states and local communities clean up the most toxic sites. Many Superfund sites are in low-income areas, and 46% of the people living within three miles of one are non-white. If you live in New Jersey, you probably live near one or more Superfund sites. (NJ politicians pledged to fight the cuts.)
• A study linked pollution from a coal-based energy plant in Pennsylvania to low birth weight in four wealthy New Jersey counties.
• There could be major outbreaks of Lyme disease this year.
• According to an ongoing study of Colorado's Black Bears, climate change rather than population growth is what sparks conflicts between bears and humans (such as raiding trash or killing domesticated animals). That has implications for management policies, including the use of hunting to reduce bear populations.
• The rare Quino Checkerspot is returning to San Diego NWR.
• Sea level rise is the most obvious threat to coastal salt marshes, but an overdose of nitrogen may also be harming them.
• New Jersey's DEP chief wants to create more forest management plans like the one for Sparta Mountain.
• The National Park Service published a new brochure on how climate change affects national parks (pdf).
• Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management changed its website's header image from a natural landscape to a wall of coal.
• For those in New Jersey, the Third Annual Raritan River Week will be at the end of April.