Loose Feathers #768

Great Horned Owl / Photo by Keegan Delurey/USFWS SCA

Birds and birding news

• Since Ron Pittaway retired from producing annual winter finch forecasts, the newly-created Finch Research Network will issue them. Their forecast for 2020-2021 is now online. 
• The mass mortality of migratory songbirds in New Mexico was probably caused by a lack of food due to a sudden cold snap.
  
• After the pandemic quieted noise pollution from traffic, San Francisco's White-crowned Sparrows sang higher-quality songs.
• A photographer documented 232 birds that died at the WildCare center in California after being caught by domestic cats. Studies estimate that outdoor cats kill over a billion birds per year in North America.
• Tracking devices show that birds migrate within the Neotropics as well as to and from the Neotropics.
  
• Plovers that raised chicks successfully were more likely to look for new mates than unsuccessful plover pairs.
• An Andean Condor pair in Ecuador has been unusually successful in raising chicks, but the species as a whole is still in trouble.
• Parks in the Bronx get less attention than Central Park but can be just as good for birding. 
• While birds return to the same site to breed, they do not return to the same sites for molting.
  
• Researchers are trying to figure out why birds crash into solar panels.
  

Science and nature blogging

• Avian Hybrids: The speciation cycle of Taiga and Tundra Bean Goose
• The City Birder: North Winds & Southbound Birds
• Red-tailed Hawk Project: We have breeding locations! 
• Vermont Center for Ecostudies: Mansfield Wrap-up: Bountiful Migrants and a Venerable Thrush
• On The Wing Photography: Male Brewer’s Blackbird And Thoughts On Changes
  

Biodiversity and conservation

• Atlantic White Cedar bogs are one of the characteristic habitats of the Pinelands, but the trees are being killed by sea level rise flooding the bogs with salt water.
• More frequent and severe wildfires are will change the forest types in the Cascades.
• The mass elephant deaths in Botswana may have been a result of drinking water contaminated by cyanobacteria.
• The fish population around Hawaii's coral reefs has declined by 45% over the past decade.
• This week iNaturalist reached 50 million observations. The most frequently reported species is Mallard, and plants make up the largest share of observations.
• A research team found 947 lichen species in the temperate rainforests of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska, a total that rivals lichen diversity in the tropics.
  

Climate change and environmental politics

• Despite extreme wildfires in the West and an unusually active hurricane season, the topics for the first presidential debate do not include climate change. In 2016 there were no climate-related questions in any of the debates.
• Destructive climate change is already locked in, and action now will affect how bad things will get.
• Since the beginning of the year, fires have burned 16% of the Pantanal in Brazil. The fires have been exacerbated by climate change because of a severe drought.
  
• Donors are urging Biden not to include people with ties to fossil fuels among his advisors. 
• Arctic sea ice reached its second-lowest minimum extent on September 15. The lowest record was set in the summer of 2012.
• The Trump administration nominated a climate change denialist to be the chief scientist for NOAA.
• The head of the Pebble mining company resigned after bragging about his influence with Alaskan officials like Lisa Murkowski.
• The new leadership of the EPA rejected its own scientists' findings about the pesticide chlorpyrifos to avoid regulating its use.
• Regulations issued under the Trump administration would make it impossible to hold companies accountable if there is another spill like the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
  
• New Jersey's legislature passed a ban on single-use plastics, including plastic bags, straws, and styrofoam containers, and also on paper grocery bags. The goal is to reduce the amount of waste generated by the state.
• New Jersey also passed an environmental justice law to restrict new pollution sources from building in communities that are already overburdened.