Loose Feathers #743

Masked Booby / USFWS Photo

Birds and birding news

• The coronavirus pandemic has made birding more complicated. EBird has some recommendations for safe birding. One option is backyard birding. The NJDEP has a list of best practices for outdoor recreation. The Sierra Club also has some guidelines.
• Most bird festivals and birding trips have been cancelled, but the World Series of Birding is still on, with a different set of rules to allow for social distancing.
• Many locations have closed their parks or restricted activities there for social distancing. In New Jersey, state lands are open, but some counties, like Ocean and Bergen have closed their parks. Most parks in the Chesapeake Bay region are still open.
• The University of Washington is looking for volunteers to study how bird behavior changes when people have to stay at home.
• Wetland loss forces Whooping Cranes to gather into larger flocks, which increases the threat posed by disease or severe weather. 
• Red-winged Blackbirds respond to the alarms calls made by Yellow Warblers when they see Brown-headed Cowbirds.
• Common Nightingales have shorter wings than they used to, which seems to be linked to climate change.
• The islands of Tristan da Cunha are home to endangered seabirds, and their waters need protection.

Science and nature blogging

• Vermont Center for Ecostudies: Field Guide to April
• On The Wing Photography: Smoke Phase Wild Turkey Hen Plus A Displaying Tom
• awkward botany: Weeds of Boise: Abandoned Pizza Hut on Ann Morrison Park Drive
• In Defense of Plants: Opossum Pollination of a Peculiar Parasite
• robertscribbler: Introduction — Climate of Pandemic
• 10,000 Birds: Blue-throated Frenzy
• Feathered Photography: Meet The Mated Pair Of Red-tailed Hawks, Together This Time  
• Myrm UK: A Very Different Myrmica 
• Birds Korea Blog: Opinion: One conservationist’s take on the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Arachnofiles: Arachnews: March 30, 2020 
• The Urban Nature Enthusiast: A Message in the Sky
• Avian Hybrids: How mountains, rivers and hybridization drove the evolution of the Blue-crowned Manakin 

Biodiversity and conservation

• Kelp forests are thriving around the Tierra del Fuego.
• Recent studies have found some form of counting ability across a broad array of animals. 
• The Mount Charleston Blue is threatened by the proposed expansion of a ski resort in Nevada.
• This Twitter thread (by a big cat biologist) does through all the things wrong with the Tiger King documentary. 
• A Harp Seal somehow ended up in a pond in Monmouth County.

Climate change and environmental politics

• If you wear masks or gloves as protection against the coronavirus, make sure to dispose of them properly to avoid contributing to the problem of plastic in the environment. 
• Several scientists have noted differences in the natural world due to noise reduction during the shutdown.
• The upcoming climate conference in Glasgow has been postponed due to the pandemic. The goal of this year's conference was to persuade parties to the Paris agreement to tighten their emissions targets.
• The Trump administration has taken advantage of the pandemic to sneak through as much of their anti-environmental agenda as possible. This week they rolled back fuel efficiency standards set during the Obama administration. There will probably be more like this to come.
• Some states increased penalties for protesting fossil fuel infrastructure to shut down actions like the protests against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
• Brazil is also cutting back on enforcing environmental laws.
• Some activists see similarities between the pandemic response and climate change, in that both require a mix of individual and collective action.
• The cost of solar energy keeps going down, and in sunny places it is one of the cheapest sources of electricity.