Posts
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| Cinnamon Teal x Blue-winged Teal hybrid / Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS |
- A bacterial infection has killed 11,000 Blue Tits in the past two weeks in Germany.
- Flamingos in Albania's Narta Lagoon have been unbothered by boaters since the country shut down in response to the pandemic.
- A new study traces brain evolution in birds from non-avian theropods to modern birds. Birds that evolved more recently, like parrots and corvids, tend to have proportionally larger brains.
- Great Tits can lower the temperature of their bills to conserve body heat.
- David Sibley thinks that birds make complex decisions and experience emotions.
- Millions of songbirds are taken from the wild in Indonesia every year to be used in bird singing competitions.
- Red Knots are due to arrive in the Mid-Atlantic in the next few weeks, and their migration remains a marvel of the avian world despite their decline in numbers.
- A composer writes about what he hears in the songs of chickadees.
- When a large tree fell in Panama (and took other trees with it), the number of hummingbirds in the area around the treefall increased.
- A spoof article in a predatory open-source journal asks what's the deal with birds.
- corvidresearch: The definitive guide for distinguishing American crows & common ravens
- Feathered Photography: Mating Red-tailed Hawks – The Rest Of The Story
- The Applied Ecologist's Blog: Bee pollen reveals how multiple threats could contribute to bee decline
- Los Angeles Junco Times: A Call for Community Science
- incidental naturalist: The Hudson’s Brant
- Backyard and Beyond: Raptor Wednesday: Earth Day Edition
- On The Wing Photography: Photographing Blooming Glacier Lilies
- Arachnofiles: Arachnews: April 20, 2020
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino's Life in the Meadowlands: The Time Is Now For Our Environment
- BugTracks: Green Wasps from a Green Island
- A study using tracking collars found that outdoor house cats do not range widely but kill more wildlife than their owners think, to the point of having a greater effect on wildlife than wild predators.
- Scientists found a fossil frog in Antarctica from 40 million years ago when the continent was much warmer. The same area has yielded fossils of water lilies and marsupials.
- A new study of global insect populations found a decline of 25% since 1990. Aquatic insects are among the few exceptions since their populations have rebounded as water pollution is reduced.
- Since the coronavirus shutdowns began, there have been a series of reports of animals taking advantage of the absence of humans. Some of it may simply be a result of people noticing things that were there all along; the reduction in traffic noise makes it easier to hear birdsong, for example.
- A new study suggests that climate change could cause sudden ecosystem collapses, and they could come sooner than expected.
- One ecosystem that is primed for collapse is San Francisco Bay and its watersheds, though less because of climate change than dams and other water diversion projects.
- Climate change is one of many ways that humans are changing how species evolve.
- Here is an interview with the authors of "Everyday Biodiversity" on appreciating nature during a pandemic.
- An unusual pale orca has been spotted in Puget Sound.
- This weekend is iNaturalist's annual City Nature Challenge. This year's version will be non-competitive because of coronavirus restrictions. Here are some guidelines for new iNaturalist users.
- This week was the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. Unfortunately the celebrations planned for the occasion had to move online, if they happened at all. The New York Times looked at what has gotten better and worse since 1970. One thing that has gotten worse is adherence to the precautionary principle, a key part of environmental legislation in the 1970s. The Trump administration is trying to roll back whatever progress has happened since the first Earth Day.
- The Superfund law is 40 years old this year, and progress has been slow due to a lack of funding and foot-dragging by hostile administrations.
- This week marked another anniversary, the 10th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico still have not completely recovered. Queen Bess Island has been restored using money from the spill settlement to benefit Brown Pelicans. Unfortunately a major spill could easily happen again, and the Trump administration has loosened the rules that were put in place to make offshore drilling less dangerous.
- Here is a summary of the climate change problem, including how scientists know it is happening and what to do about it.
- Like with climate change, federal and state officials were slow to act to control the pandemic, despite evidence showing that action was necessary.
- Another similarity between climate change and the coronavirus pandemic is that the protests of stay-at-home orders are being funded by the same groups pushing climate change denialism.
- Air pollution has contributed to disparities in coronavirus infection rates around New York City.
- Park closures due to the pandemic have unequal effects in communities that lack ready access to nature.
- During the pandemic, the air quality has improved in cities such as Manila because people are traveling less. Unfortunately Jakarta is an exception because of forest fires.
- A large coal company received money from the CARES Act that was meant for small businesses.
- Microplastics have been found in Antarctic sea ice, where krill forage for food.
- The collapse in oil prices could cause a decline in shale oil projects, and some wells could be abandoned and become environmental hazards. Now is as good a time as any to wind down dependence on fossil fuels and turn to clean energy.
- Treating clothes with permethrin significantly reduces tick bites, but the effectiveness of the permethrin declines over time as the clothes are washed and dried.
- The Supreme Court ruled that polluters still need to comply with the Clean Water Act even if they are pumping waste into the ground rather than into waterways.
- Rising sea levels could threaten the drinking water supply of communities that source their water from rivers like the Delaware that are partially tidal.
- Here are some of New Jersey's natural areas saved from development by environmentalists.
