Posts
 |
| Eastern Kingbird / photo by me |
- An encounter between a black birder and a woman with a dog off-leash in Central Park escalated into a racial incident when the woman called the police after the birder asked her to leash her dog. The incident illustrated why black birders feel uncomfortable birding or visiting natural areas. (Here is a piece on that subject from a few days before.) Christian Cooper, the birder involved, discussed the incident in an interview.
- Birders in New York City have been trying to get the city parks department to enforce its leashing rules in Central and Prospect Parks for years, as even leashed dogs can stress wildlife. This spring, even Green-Wood Cemetery has been overrun, to the point that the cemetery considered banning all visitors.
- This article dives into the reasons for the declines among North American birds, with a special focus on Maryland.
- Bird migration produces many casualties as birds crash into windows, but the problem is fixable.
- Here are some tips for avoiding Lyme Disease and other tick-borne pathogens while hiking and birding.
- Snowy Plovers have an unusual social structure in which males and females share incubation duties but females leave the chicks for the males to raise once they hatch.
- Last summer a Common Loon killed a Bald Eagle by stabbing it through the heart with its bill, most likely to protect its nest.
- The Red Knots mentioned on this blog have generally been the subspecies that migrates along the Atlantic Flyway, Calidris canutus rufa. Another subspecies, Calidris canutus roselaari, migrates along the Pacific Flyway and winters in northwestern Mexico.
- A Common Cuckoo was tracked flying 7,500 miles between its wintering grounds in Zambia to its breeding grounds in Mongolia.
- Another study found evidence of birds shifting their ranges with climate change. While some common species have expanded their ranges, the breeding ranges for Neotropical migrants like warblers are shrinking.
- The pandemic caused the cancellation of the usual spring field trips and birding festivals, but the birds still came through, and there has been increasing interest in birdwatching.
- The alarm calls of Oriental Tits let their chicks know which potential predator to watch out for.
- Wild cockatoos show the same aptitude as ones raised in captivity but are less motivated to participate in experiments.
- Migratory shorebirds are being hunted unsustainably at their stopover sites in southeast Asia.
- White Storks are nesting in the U.K. for the first time in 600 years.
- Every year, the staff of AMNH has a spring birding competition in Central Park, but this year they are doing the contest from their home cities because of the pandemic.
- A judge struck down oil and gas leases in Montana because the federal government failed to account for the effect on the Greater Sage-Grouse.
Science and nature blogging
- Avian Hybrids: Phylogenetics in the genomic era: Reconstructing the evolutionary tree of rails (family Rallidae)
- Feathered Photography: Trouble Looms For Utah’s American White Pelicans
- Bug Eric: A Case of Predator Mimicry in the Bee Fly Genus Epacmus? (Diptera: Bombyliidae)
- In Defense of Plants: A Herbaceous Conifer From the Triassic
- Kelly Brenner: How to Go Pond Dipping
- Chicago Ornithological Society: Exciting Montrose Plover News!
- mocosocoBirds: Mourning Warbler Gallery – May 28, 2020
Biodiversity and conservation
- Parts of the life cycle of the common eel are still a mystery, even as the species is rapidly declining.
- Translucence helps glass frogs camouflage themselves from predators.
- A new book examines the impact of pets and the pet trade on wildlife, from cats killing birds to pet amphibians introducing fungal diseases.
- Tree-planting programs are good, but doing it the wrong way can be counterproductive for both climate change and conservation.
- The above is partly because natural forests store more carbon than mass plantations.
- Brood IX periodic cicadas will emerge this year for the first time since 2003 in parts of Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina.
- New Zealand is attempting to rid itself of invasive mammals in an effort to protect endemic species.
- Researchers found 53 genes that may protect ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer.
- A network of sanctuaries protects chimpanzees that were rescued from the wildlife trade. While few of them are returned to the wild, the sanctuaries can build local support for protecting wild chimpanzees.
- The wildlife trade is a threat to biodiversity and includes all branches of the tree of life.
- A new frog species was named after a 16th-century printer whose name referenced frogs.
- Researchers were able to get close enough to a pod of narwhals to record their vocalizations.
- A new fungus species that attacks millipedes was discovered via Twitter.
Climate change and environmental politics
- California and many other states are suing the Trump administration over its decision to weaken fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. According to the state's attorney general, this is the 82nd lawsuit California has filed against the Trump administration.
- The Ninth Circuit ruled that cities and counties in California can sue fossil fuel companies for climate change damage in state court rather than federal court, where climate change suits are more likely to prevail.
- The dams that failed in Michigan last week are just three out of thousands of poorly maintained dams in the U.S. Removing the obsolete and unsafe ones could reduce the risk of disaster and benefit wildlife.
- Many lawns are sterile monocultures that mimic industrial agriculture but could be better for the environment by adding pollinator-friendly plants.
- Rising sea levels are killing the loblolly pine forests on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
- Scientists are still trying to understand how climate change will affect the world's trees. Theoretically, more carbon dioxide could make them grow faster, but prolonged droughts would kill many of them.
- Fracking presents some obvious dangers, like spills, but also creates an array of other dangers to wildlife, like habitat fragmentation and increased traffic.
