Posts
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| Masked Boobies / USFWS Photo |
- A genetic study confirms that the extinction of Carolina Parakeets was caused primarily by humans.
- The loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean could cause Dovekies to shift their migration to a route that would cost them less energy than their current one.
- New York City passed a bill to require that new construction and major renovations use bird-friendly building materials to reduce the number of birds killed by the city's skyscrapers. Renovations at the Javits Center showed that such materials could almost eliminate collisions.
- Audubon has a summary of the results of the 119th Christmas Bird Count, just in time for the 120th Christmas Bird Count, which starts tomorrow.
- The IUCN issued a new update to its Red List this week; one highlight was that the Guam Rail improved from extinct to critically endangered after the release of captive-bred birds on an island without Brown Tree Snakes.
- Debate continues over whether feeding birds is actually beneficial to them; the article suggests some best practices for those who maintain feeders.
- Laughing Gull nesting pairs in Virginia have dropped from 55,000 in 1993 to 20,000 in 2018 due to rising sea levels. These gulls are especially vulnerable to climate change because they nest in coastal marshes.
- Mosquitos carrying avian malaria are a threat to native songbirds in Hawaii.
- Excessive airplane noise causes birds to vocalize more loudly.
- The Hawaiian Goose, or Nene, has been downlisted from endangered to threatened but has not recovered its former abundance.
- Feathered dinosaurs, like modern birds, had to deal with feather parasites.
- A project in Virginia demonstrates the importance of native, warm-season grasses for wintering songbirds.
- A Bald Eagle was nearly drowned by an octopus at a fish farm on Vancouver Island.
- Photos show albatross chicks being attacked and eaten by house mice on Gough Island.
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino’s Life in the Meadowlands: 15 Things We Can All Do To Help Our Birds Right Now!
- 10,000 Birds: Birding Fraser`s Hill
- In Defense of Plants: The Sinewy American Hornbeam
- awkward botany: Pine Cones Are Like Hangars for Pine Tree Seeds
- On The Wing Photography: Focusing On Winter Redheads
- bird and moon: Four Seasons of Bird Watching
- Avian Hybrids: White-throated Sparrows influence gene expression in their offspring
- Chicago Ornithological Society: Dan's Feathursday Feature: Purple Sandpiper
- An endangered tree in India has been hard to propagate because its seeds are difficult to preserve.
- California will list the Foothill Yellow-legged Frog as endangered in response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity.
- An artist is creating detailed graphite drawings of at-risk species to call attention to the extinction crisis.
- For reforestation to be effective, it needs to be about restoring habitats and not just planting trees.
- A report on the state of the Arctic found numerous concerning changes, from record high temperatures to rapid melting of Greenland's ice sheet to thawing permafrost.
- Meanwhile, bushfires in Australia have emitted a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equal to almost half of the country's annual emissions.
- Addressing climate change will require a reduction in meat and dairy consumption; "peak meat" will probably need to happen by 2030 in wealthier countries.
- Activists were frustrated that climate justice is not being given greater attention at the UN climate talks in Madrid.
- An EU commission proposed a European Green Deal to help the European economy reduce its emissions and adapt to climate change.
- New York lost its climate change case against Exxon Mobil this week. The state argued that the company misled shareholders about the cost of climate change.
- The fracking boom has spurred the development of new plants that convert shale gas to plastic, and communities near the new plants are finding tiny plastic pellets in watersheds around the plants.
- Recycling of electronic waste is mostly done in Southeast Asia, often by people working for low pay in dangerous working conditions.
- In East Coast cities like Washington, climate change is reducing the average seasonal snowfall but increasing the potential for monster snowstorms.
- It seems that New Jersey's proposed single-use plastics ban might be stalled again due to lobbying from the plastics industry.
- The proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline would cut through the Appalachians and Piedmont to carry fracked gas to southeast North Carolina. Construction is currently held up because of lawsuits over the pipeline's environmental impacts, including to the Appalachian Trail.
