Birds and birding news
- It was another bad summer for seabirds in Alaska, as volunteers collected nearly 9,200 seabird carcasses from around Alaska's coastline. Short-tailed Shearwaters had a particularly hard summer. Since die-offs have occurred in each of the past five years, it seems that there may be a link to warmer ocean temperatures.
- Over three hundred Chimney Swifts collided with the large glass windows of the NASCAR Hall of Fame on a single night this week.
- A study identified control of invasive rats as the best way to protect the Puaiohi, a thrush endemic to Kauai.
- Red-cockaded Woodpecker are changing their nesting times in response to climate change, but not all populations are changing the same way, and northern and eastern nesters are doing better than southwestern ones.
- New research shows that Phainopeplas fit a pattern called itinerant breeding, in which they breed in one place and then migrate somewhere else and breed again there. Only two other itinerant breeders are known, the Tricolored Blackbird and the Red-billed Quelea.
- A new species called the Spectacled Flowerpecker has been described from Borneo. The species was noted by birders ten years ago and finally was studied more closely this year.
- Barnacle Geese are thriving in the face of climate change by establishing breeding colonies further north.
- Each Little Penguin colony in Tasmania has its own foraging preferences, but all three pay attention to water temperature and depth.
- A judge issued an injunction against the Trump administration's management plan for Greater Sage-Grouse, which would have opened more sage-grouse habitat for resource extraction.
- Scientists are still debating the ethics of killing Barred Owls to save Northern Spotted Owls, even as more than 2,400 Barred Owls have been killed in an experiment to see if control is effective.
- Washington is preparing a new conservation plan for the Marbled Murrelet.
- Warmer nights seem to prompt Blue Tits to lay their eggs earlier in the spring.
- Fall migration can bring unexpected birds when some birds fly in the wrong direction.
- Corn Crakes are declining partly because of changes in agricultural practices.
- More intensive agriculture has led to lands being withdrawn from conservation programs, which hurts grassland birds.
- Recent studies have shown some of the genetic basis for plumage color.
- Gulls seem to be ubiquitous, but many species are in decline, especially in New England.
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