Posts
 |
| Black-billed Magpies / Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS |
- A new study using geolocators links declining Golden-winged Warbler populations to conditions on their wintering grounds. The relatively stable Midwestern breeding population winters in Central America, while the declining population in the Appalachian Mountains winters in northern South America.
- As the climate warms, 70% of King Penguins will be forced to find new breeding grounds over the next century.
- Introducing foxes to hunt invasive rabbits caused more problems than it solved in Chile's Humboldt Penguin Natural Reserve, but eliminating the rabbits by other means helped the penguins and native flora start to recover.
- A Republican amendment would undermine the Migratory Bird Treaty Act's protections.
- A birder writes about the challenges of counting large flocks of shorebirds.
- Birds help to spread the seeds of some rare wild chili plants. This can pose a problem for plants on islands like Guam where the native bird population has been decimated.
- Huge colonies of Adélie Penguins were discovered in Antarctica with the use of poop stains visible on satellite images.
- Yellow-billed Oxpeckers roost on their host animals overnight.
- A million birds per year are killed at a wetland in Iran that is an important migratory site for endangered species.
- The presence of kestrels can reduce the need for pesticides in agricultural areas since they prey on many insects and animals that damage crops.
- More geese have been wintering in Denmark because of an increase in corn production.
- Endangered vultures continue to be poisoned by poachers.
- Ecotourism works best for protecting wildlife if there are direct financial benefits for local people.
- A rare white morph Gyrfalcon is being seen in Newfoundland.
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino’s Life in the Meadowlands: Spicebush – The Perfect Native Plant
- Ryan Clark Ecology: Lessons From Learning Bryophytes
- Gulls to the Horizon: Status update on the presence of pseudo-mirrors and non-isolated mirrors in IJmuiden-ringed adult European Herring Gulls
- Stokes Birding Blog: Yellow-crowned Night-Heron nest building!
- Feathered Photography: Coot Chase
- mocosocoBirds: Eurasian Wigeon, Tundra Swans – Feb. 25, 2018
- Bird Ecology Study Group: Tomial Teeth in shrikes
- Backyard and Beyond: The Amateurs
- Arctic Sea Ice: Global sea ice records broken (yet again)
- A weather station on the northern end of Greenland recorded above-freezing temperatures for several days this week — temperatures it would not normally reach until the summer.
- Some experts expect that North Atlantic Right Whales will be extinct by 2040 due to declining birth rates and rising death rates. Causes of mortality include accidental entanglements in fishing lines and warmer ocean temperatures.
- While much of the attention to the U.S.-Mexico border concerns the border wall, communities on both sides lack basic infrastructure like effective sewage systems and clean drinking water.
- Latin American countries are working on a treaty to protect environmental and indigenous activists following a recent surge in murders.
- A recent EPA survey mapped the places in the U.S. that would be most and least resilient to climate change based on factors such as the likelihood of severe natural disasters, economic inequality, the effectiveness of local governments.
- The Trump administration wants to close the Biological Survey Unit, which maintains a specimen collection full of important historical data on wildlife distribution.
- Closing some roads through grizzly bear habitat could help the species recover.
- Native wildflowers in variable environments bank seeds underground to survive drought and other harsh conditions.
- Easter Island is creating a new marine protected area in its waters to protect rare species from commercial fishing.
- A reorganization plan for the EPA would merge an office that studies chemical safety with several unrelated agencies.
- Small streams provide vital habitat for many organisms and can filter water that flows into larger waterways.
- A carbon tax bill failed in Washington this week. If it passed, Washington would have been the first state with a carbon tax.
