Posts
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| Mallard / Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS |
- Saltmarsh Sparrows do not manipulate the sex ratios of their offspring to favor males or females even though birds have the ability to do this. However, they try to keep overall sex ratios balanced from year to year.
- The wintering population of Red Knots at Tierra del Fuego reached a record low of 9,840 birds. This year's population decline may be a result of low water temperatures that delayed horseshoe crab spawning in the Delaware Bay last spring.
- A new study from British Columbia reports on factors that cause changes in the nesting success of Song Sparrows.
- Birds of the French countryside such as Eurasian Skylark and Meadow Pipit have suffered major declines in the past two decades, most likely from the overuse of pesticides and monoculture crops.
- A study of museum specimens showed that migratory birds used to eat a richer variety of insects than they currently do.
- BirdLife Australia reports that the Australia's environmental laws contain too many loopholes to protect the country's birds.
- National parks are likely to become more important for protecting shifting bird populations under climate change.
- Eurasian Blackbirds in cities live longer but show more signs of stress and poor health.
- Scientists in Australia are asking people to mail them feathers from local wetlands as a way to track where the country's bird population comes from and where it goes. Banding and other tracking methods have not fared as well in Australia as elsewhere.
- An interview discusses hummingbird metabolism, which converts ingested nectar into usable energy almost right away.
- A Bald Eagle hatched in the nest at the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC.
- ABA Blog: 2018 AOS Classification Committee Proposals, Part 3
- Bryan Pfeiffer: The Death of a Hummingbird
- Mia McPherson's On The Wing Photography: Before Dawn Breaks The Courtship Displays Begin On Greater Sage-Grouse Leks
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Birding in the Meadowlands This Week: Spring Arrivals
- Birding Dude: Banded Herring Gull C47
- Snapshots of Nature: Wigeon
- Feathered Photography: Fighting Male Short-eared Owls
- Hipster Birders: Enjoying an Early Spring at Sauvie Island and Newport
- The last male Northern White Rhinoceros died this week. Two females of this subspecies remain, but the subspecies has been functionally extinct for some time now.
- A group of current and former EPA is organizing to prevent the proposed shrinking of the EPA (and the loss of institutional knowledge and enforcement ability that would go with it).
- The public comment period is open on Wyoming's proposal to allow grizzly bear hunting, which would be the first grizzly bear hunt in the Lower 48 states since the 1970s.
- The National Park Service plans to introduce 20-30 wolves over a 3-year span to rebuild the dwindling population at Isle Royale.
- Iceland's Hornstrandir Nature Reserve is giving scientists a glimpse of how Arctic Foxes might adapt to climate change.
