Alberta Ducks Update

The incident in which 500 ducks died in an oil waste pond is still under investigation. Of the hundreds of oiled ducks, only five survived the initial landing. Of those five, three have since died. In the meantime, another oiled duck was found by a hunter far away from the tailings pond.

On Tuesday evening, native hunter Roland Campbell discovered an oil-coated duck in Wood Buffalo Park, about 250 kilometres away from the tailings pond.

Campbell said he was shocked when he went to prepare a duck for his dinner.

"I assumed it was mud when I first killed it, it was covered in oil," he said.

"I took a better look at this duck and that's when I noticed he was all full of tar on his stomach and feet."

Campbell gave the duck to Environment Canada's office in Fort Chipewyan. Federal park rangers are out searching for other contaminated birds in the area.

The oil on the bird will be tested and compared with samples taken from the tailings pond belonging to Syncrude Canada.

The finding may indicate that other oiled ducks have yet to be found.

Loose Feathers #148

American Black Duck / Photo by Steve Maslowski (USFWS)

Bird news and links

• Continuing research posits a chemical mechanism that helps birds navigate according to Earth's magnetic field. The finding is based on laboratory experiments and has not been confirmed in actual birds.
• Three Asian vulture species could be extinct within 10 years unless the veterinary drug diclofenac is completely eliminated. The white-backed vulture has lost 99.9% of its population since 1992; long-billed vulture and slender-billed vulture have each lost about 97% of their populations. The drug has been banned by the Indian government, but it continues to be used.
  
• You might want to be careful of other visitors in national parks and wildlife refuges. The Bush administration wants to revoke the federal ban on carrying loaded and concealed weapons on federal parkland.
• Eating meat that contains fragments of lead shot may pose risks for humans as well as California condors.
• Greenland allowed an extra month of hunting at its seabird breeding colonies this year. Some of Greenland's indigenous people rely on seabird meat for their livelihood; others hunt for pleasure.
  
• Wings Over Wetlands tracks bird migration along the Africa-Europe flyways.
• Drilling in Arctic NWR has reared its ugly head once again, in the form of Sen. Ted Stevens. (See Gristmill for why this is pointless.)
  

Birds in the blogosphere

• Birdfreak: Bird Conservation Movement: An Introduction
• Tortoise Trail: Gambel's Quail Family
• Birdchick: New Mind Games To Play With Starlings
• 10,000 Birds: It takes guts…a feeding Black Kite
• BES Group: Blue-throated Bee-eater handling a bee
  

Environmental news and blogging

• Maryland's Department of Agriculture is trying to get residents to reduce their use of chemicals that are harmful to the Chesapeake watershed. Homeowners may contribute as much fertilizer runoff to the watershed as agriculture.
• The natural carbon cycle tends toward equilibrium because carbon dioxide emissions would be captured and recycled into the Earth's crust as sedimentary rock.
• Regulatory changes proposed at the EPA may make it easier to build coal-fired power plants close to national parks. Apparently the changes are opposed by the agency's staff experts.
  
• Island of Doubt: Why climate change is so tricky to cover
• Conservation Report: GREEN CONSERVATISM: The mechanism for conservatives to be relevant in the environmental debate
  

Carnivals and newsletters

• Friday Ark #189
• Festival of the Trees #23
  
• I and the Bird #74
• Tangled Bank #104
  
• Berry Go Round #4
• Birds in the News #128
  

Sabal Palm Action Alert

Audubon is asking birders to sign a petition to stop the border wall from cutting off the Sabal Palm sanctuary from the rest of the country and to request a full environmental review with public hearings.

(link via Birdchaser)

Ducks Trapped in Oil Waste

The Alberta Tar Sands mining projects have long been identified as a threat to boreal birds by the Boreal Songbird Initiative. Their requires an energy-intensive development process, which destroys habitat and releases large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Yesterday, an incident showed another type of environmental harm when 500 ducks landed and drowned in a pond filled with oil waste. Few birds survived.

"A completely oiled bird would likely sink immediately. We've recovered the ones that we could," said Steve Gaudet, a Syncrude staff member managing the recovery effort.

The company has said it normally has bird deterrents deployed on the three-kilometre-wide lake of waste from early spring until late fall. But the noisemakers and scarecrows were not in place because of the harsh winter weather last week, officials said.

The ducks involved were not identified to species in the article. A picture accompanying the article appears to be of an Anas sp. If anyone knows more about their identity, please leave a comment.

I and the Bird

Consworld has posted I and the Bird #74.