Loose Feathers #407

Black-billed Magpie / Photo by Ann Hough (USFWS)

Birds and birding

• Fifteen new bird species from the Amazon are being published in a special volume of Handbook of the Birds of the World. (I think this discovery may have been covered in previous articles.)
• An injured fledgling hawk from the Franklin Institute nest in Philadelphia has recovered with the help of a wildlife rescue center and has been released back into the wild.
• The North Jersey Record has a profile of Charlie Mayhood, a long-time New Jersey birder who died recently. 
• Research with Whooping Cranes suggests that younger birds migrate more successfully when they follow older birds, and the same may apply to breeding behavior as well. 
• Waterfowl are dying of avian botulism at Tule Lake NWR because of a prolonged drought affecting the Klamath Basin. Unlike other refuges in the region, Tule Lake's wetlands stay wet during droughts, so it attracts waterbirds from all over the region.
• Residents in the Polish town of Zywkowo have worked to improve habitat for White Storks, which nest on rooftops and nesting platforms. The town gets conservation funding from the EU and economic benefits from ecotourism.
• There is a new eBird portal for Central America. (Press release here.)
• A New Jersey man was arrested for shooting hawks.

Science and nature blogging

• Nemesis Bird: The Ultimate Guide to Migration Online
• Tales From A Wandering Albatross: The Cuteness Scale: A Poll
• Dynamic Ecology: In Praise of Boring, Local Field Sites
• Myrmecos: Velvet Ants Are Not Ant Mimics  
• Birding New Jersey: Point Breeze
• Not Exactly Rocket Science: The Amazing Story of a Mammal Virus That Became a Bird One 
• Extinction Countdown: Hellbender Head Start: Raising Giant Salamanders in the Bronx
• SciAm Guest Blog: A Feast of Cicadas
• Anole Annals: Anole Eats Morpho Butterfly
• Significant Figures: Peak Water in the American West
• Anything Larus: Variation in Ring-billed Gull Tail Bands

Environment and biodiversity

• The first wolf to be recorded in Kentucky in 150 years was shot by a hunter who says he thought it was a coyote. 
• When Wisconsin began its wolf hunt last year, it was presented as a way to reduce tensions over the presence of wolves in the state; instead, it has increased tensions even though 117 wolves were killed.
• Ocean acidification could create additional warming by reducing cloud formation.
• South Jersey Gas Co. wants to build a natural gas pipeline through the Pine Barrens as part of a project to convert the coal-fired power plant at Beesley Point on the Great Egg Harbor River. While converting the plant would reduce air pollution, running the pipeline through the Pinelands could threaten protected wetlands. 
• Developers want to build a resort two miles from the Grand Canyon; the big sticking point is where the resort's water will come from. 
• The massive Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park in California has been made worse by drought; the region received a record low amount of precipitation during the first half of this year. Despite the size and intensity of the fire, the Giant Sequoias in the area will probably survive it.
• The controversial badger cull is underway in the United Kingdom.
• Scientists have mapped the global distribution of the whale shark, the world's largest shark.
• The mass mortality of dolphins on the Atlantic Coast is probably linked to morbillivirus, but other contributing factors have not been ruled out.
• New state regulations in New Mexico would create a loophole for mining companies to pollute groundwater.
• Geologists discovered a massive canyon under an ice sheet in Greenland.
• Maryland backed off regulations to reduce nutrient runoff from chicken manure.
• A study found that wind turbines have a very small effect on property values within a half mile of a wind development but none on property values in the ten miles beyond that.

Photo of the Week

This photo shows butterflies puddling on a pile of scat at Negri-Nepote Native Grassland Preserve. Puddling is a common behavior among butterflies. While butterflies can supply their energy needs by sipping nectar at flowers, they must look elsewhere for other nutrients like minerals. Sometimes they do this in actual puddles or muddy patches, but they will just as readily feed from scat. In this case, it provided me with a butterfly lifer, a Hackberry Emperor. The Hackberry Emperor is one of several butterfly species that begins its life cycle on the leaves of hackberry trees, particularly American Hackberry. Other hackberry specialists include American Snout, which I have seen during past vists to Negri-Nepote, and Tawny Emperor.

Loose Feathers #406

Puerto Rican Parrots in a captive-breeding aviary / Photo by Danna Liurova (USFWS YAP)

Birds and birding news

• There is a good article on eBird in the New York Times this week.
• Birds learn how fast cars travel down a road and flush at a time appropriate for the speed limit when they are approached by a car.
• Here are seven endangered wildlife species, including several birds, that stand in the way of the Keystone XL pipeline.
• Puerto Rican Parrots are slowly recovering from near extinction. This year a record 51 parrots were born in captivity, and another 15 hatched in the wild. Scientists also found a new nest with eggs.
• The U.S. military is trying to reduce its use of lead ammunition to protect endangered birds.
• Old-time bird bloggers may remember Jonathan Trouern-Trend, who wrote about his bird observations while stationed in Iraq on his blog, Birding Babylon (later a book). Here is an update on the bird situation in Iraq.
• Here is a gallery of photos from a bird banding station in England.
• Atlantic Puffins and Little Terns are struggling to cope with climate change due to shifting food supplies and changes to their nesting habitats.
• Penguin numbers fluctuate with changes in climate, and they tend to be more numerous in cooler periods. For example, penguins thrived during the Little Ice Age.
• A USFWS study suggests that some forest interior birds benefit from foraging in younger regrown clearcuts prior to migration.
• Darker ventral feathers appear to provide a health benefit for Barn Swallows.

Science and nature blogging

• Not Exactly Rocket Science: Parasitic Bird Fights Evolutionary Arms Race… With Itself 
• Extinction Countdown: World’s Largest Owl Needs Equally Large Trees and Forests
• Earth Desk: What is a Sturgeon Moon?
• 10,000 Birds: Exploring the relationship between flamingos and grebes: The wonderful birds
• The Freiday Bird Blog: Fri-D: Adult vs. Juvenile Shorebirds
• Nemesis Bird: Photo Study: Herald Petrels in the Gulf Stream
• Outside My Window: Western Hummer Season
• The Birdist: Google Street View Birding II: Midway Atoll
• Bird Ecology Study Group: Ashy Tailorbird feeding a large Plaintive Cuckoo fledgling

Environment and biodiversity

• There are indications that the Keystone XL pipeline may not be as safe as advertised.
• New York is reintroducing Hellbender salamanders to streams in the western part of the state with the help of a captive-breeding program at the Bronx Zoo. Read more about Hellbenders from the NY DEC.
• Chris Christie vetoed the bill to allow commercial logging in state forests because it required the DEP to get certification from the Forest Stewardship Council. So now it is unclear if a revised version can pass.
• Lyme disease rates are much higher than previously reported, according to the CDC.
• Several species of Eupithecia moths in Hawaii catch and eat other insects during their larval stage. The Eupithecia moths in North America are herbivorous. The only carnivorous caterpillars I am aware of in North America are those of the Harvester butterfly.
• The USGS is inviting interested observers to record and submit insect sounds to the Atlas of North American Calling Insects on iNaturalist.
• New York City is introducing an Asian weevil to eat mile-a-minute weed in Pelham Bay Park and other parts of the city.
• There is evidence that the situation at the Fukushima nuclear reactor is much worse than Tepco is admitting, as radioactive water continues to leak from the plant.
• Immature male Humpback Whales join their elders in choruses, in a mating ritual that resembles a lek. 
• Here is a gallery of the wildlife found in and around Korea's Demilitarized Zone.
• New York City is home to all four known haplotypes of the American Cockroach, and the roaches' genetic diversity tends to cluster by neighborhood.
• This writer wants Hollywood to start portraying animals more accurately. For example, put animals in appropriate habitats and groupings (no penguins at the North Pole!) and respect natural gender arrangements (no male honeybees visiting flowers!).
• Scientists found a fossil of an early mammal.
• Older European forests are nearing the point where they cannot store any more carbon.
• Monarchs are scarce this number after facing a very difficult winter.
• A study found that urban wetlands like the New Jersey Meadowlands are efficient at capturing and storing carbon.
• Six more dead dolphins were found along the Jersey shore last weekend, raising the total since July 9 to 52. The deaths are part of a pattern affecting the entire Atlantic coast.

Loose Feathers #405

Tufted Puffins at Alaska Maritime Refuge / Photo by Steve Ebbert, USFWS

Birds and birding

• The Blakiston's fish owl (the world's largest owl) is an indicator species for the health of Russian old-growth forests. These owls are only present when there are a sufficient number of large, old trees and healthy stream corridors.
• Pennsylvania may remove the Bald Eagle from its state threatened list, and New Jersey may do the same next year.
• Chile is investigating why 20 Andean Condors turned up dead.
• A wildlife biologist connected to wind developers in California was sentenced this week for banding eagles without a permit. His permit had been revoked three years ago because he was not turning over his banding data to the USFWS, as is required of all bird banders.
• As the bony tails of birds shortened, their legs became more diverse.
• Female Blue Tits with bright blue crowns tend to take better care of their chicks.
• The Navy is trying to improve conditions for breeding Burrowing Owls at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station in California while also making sure the owls do not eat the endangered Least Terns that also breed there.
• Some Ospreys from Scotland are being released in Spain to boost the latter's breeding population.
• Additions to a nature reserve in Peru will help protect the Long-whiskered Owlet.
• A study of Ostrich necks suggests that the necks of sauropods may not have been as flexible as commonly thought.
• Six Northern Bald Ibises from Turkey are migrating south.

Science and nature blogging

• ABA Blog: Eastern Kingbird and Peregrine Falcon aerial battle 
• Rebecca in the Woods: Butterflies as Pests?
• 10,000 Birds: The Remotest Endemic Birds
• Greg Miller Birding: 2013 Impatient Birder’s Cheat Sheet to North America!
• Raptor Politics: Hen harrier on the brink of ‘extinction’ in England 
• Notes of Nature: Ivy on Walls 
• Beetles In The Bush: Tips for photographing shiny beetles on yellow flowers 
• View from the Cape: Checking your identifications...

Environment and biodiversity

• New Mexico is in the midst of a serious water crisis.
• The White House is currently getting a set of solar panels installed. Previously, Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed, but those were removed during the Reagan administration and never replaced.
• Scientists found a new species of carnivore in the Andean cloud forest. The olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina in family Procyonidae) had been missed because appears very similar to another species in the same genus even though specimens of the new species had been included in museum collections since the early 20th century.
• During the epoch preceding the last ice age, the sea level suddenly rose by 17 feet in response to climate change. That sudden change suggests that there may be instability in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets that result in sudden melting.
• D.C.'s Congressional Cemetery has hired goats to eat poison ivy and invasive species like kudzu.
• Chad has suspended a Chinese oil company due to oil spills. Oil spills and oil-related pollution are serious environmental and public health problems in Africa, at a scale that dwarfs most contemporary spills in North America.
• Speaking of oil pollution, there are elevated levels of toxins downstream from the Lac-Mégantic explosion. The railroad company involved in the disaster has been banned in Canada and has gone into bankruptcy.
• Earlier this week there was a story about an invasive, testicle-eating fish in Denmark, but that story was overhyped.
• Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, claims that he can build a pneumatic transportation system from San Francisco to Los Angeles for a tenth of the cost of the high-speed rail proposal, but there are reasons to be skeptical of Musk's claims.
• The Greater Newark Conservancy is an urban oasis.
• Another dead dolphin was found on the Jersey shore, part of a continuing trend this summer along the Atlantic coast.
• Barnhart, Texas, ran out of water due to drought exacerbated by overuse of water for fracking.

Photo of the Week: American Toad

This American Toad was near the top of the ridge in Schooley's Mountain Park on Saturday morning. After some initial skittishness, it let me approach fairly close and even moved towards me. This allowed for some close, wide-angled views of the toad in its habitat. During the breeding season, toads are found near wet areas. American Toads make a high-pitched trill while advertising for mates (a much different sound than the Fowler's Toad). Outside of the breeding season, toads retreat to drier areas like forests and meadows, where they forage for insects and worms.