Posts
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| Green-tailed Towhee / Photo by Jacob W. Frank/NPS |
- This week, a group of observers at Tadoussac in Québec recorded 700,000 migrating warblers, including over 100,000 Cape May Warblers, over 100,000 Magnolia Warblers, and over 100,000 Bay-breasted Warblers. Their eBird checklist is extraordinary.
- Google maintains feeding stations for feral cats on its Silicon Valley campus, which in turn threatens nearby populations of Burrowing Owls.
- Common Pochards are among the many birds threatened by eating lead shot left over by hunters.
- Most alcids (and seabirds generally) migrate, but Whiskered Auklets stay close to their breeding colonies during the winter.
- The flightless Wake Island Rail became extinct as a result of World War II.
- Like many thrushes, Swainson's Thrushes have an ethereal song.
- Parasites make it harder for European Shags to fly and forage for their chicks.
- Western Snowy Plovers were spotted nesting at Clatsop Spit in Oregon for the first time since the 1980s.
- Toronto is warned park visitors to be careful of aggressive nesting Red-winged Blackbirds.
- A recent study tested why older male sparrows have more extra-pair offspring, and the results were inconclusive.
- Here is a Common Eider hunting underwater.
- The Peregrine Falcon chicks from the nest at 101 Hudson Street in Jersey City were banded this week. The chicks were originally from a nest on the old Goethals Bridge, which is being demolished, so they were transported to be fostered by the Jersey City pair.
- Seabirding: Tuesday May 29, 2018 - Tahiti Petrel - by Brian Patteson
- Bird Ecology Study Group: Lineated Barbet – new food source
- BugBlog: Chasing the climate: Broad-bodied chaser and the dragonflies of East Yorkshire
- Shorebirder: CT Big Day - May 16, 2018 - 193 species (new CT record!)
- Beetles In The Bush: When is an ant not an ant? When it’s a jumping spider, of course!
- The Rattling Crow: Moorhens building a brooding nest
- Vermont Center for Ecostudies: Field Guide to June 2018
- Anything Larus: 1st Cycle Laughing x Ring-billed Gull - Ohio
- Birds and Words: Spring Migration FOMO
- Numerous strands of evidence suggest widespread and precipitous declines of insects. The causes of these declines are unclear, but pesticide use seems to contribute.
- One obstacle to insect conservation is that so little is known about so many of them, including many of North America's native bees.
- China's ban on importing certain types of waste materials has led to a drop in how recycled material actually gets recycled.
- Expanding the border wall will harm biodiversity on both sides of the border and discourage the ecotourism that the region's economy depends on.
- Meanwhile Ryan Zinke claims that militarizing the border will protect the environment when all evidence points to the contrary.
- This week, a study showed that more than 4,600 deaths in Puerto Rico could be attributed to Hurricane Maria; the island's infrastructure has not been rebuilt safely and is likely to collapse in another storm.
- There is a new website on the moth family Sphingidae, also known as hawk moths or sphinx moths, with information on identification, host plants, parasites, and more.
- Ellicott City in Maryland suffered severe flooding this week, and the flooding seems to be a combination of an unusual (and possibly climate change-fueled) weather pattern and rapid real estate development upstream. For more, see this post about a previous flooding event in that city.
- Treating clothing with permethrin seems to stop most ticks that carry diseases.
- When stick insects are eaten by birds, some of their eggs pass through the bird unharmed and later hatch, which may help the insects with dispersal to new habitats.
- The New Jersey state legislature is considering whether to impose a ban or tax on plastic bags.
- A study found the the Raritan and Passaic Rivers in New Jersey are full of microplastics.
- The Murphy administration decided to cancel the proposed marina on the south end of Liberty State Park in Jersey City. The marina was a priority of the Christie administration, which wanted to monetize Liberty State Park, but opposed by local activists and environmentalists.
