Loose Feathers #770

Black-throated Blue Warbler / my photo

Birds and birding news

• The USFWS will list the Black Rail as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This species has been declining rapidly, particularly on the Atlantic coast. Unfortunately the Trump administration has stripped many of the protections for threatened species, so it remains to be seen how much good listing will do.
• The recent mass bird deaths in the Southwest show how a convergence of unusual events can lead to population declines and possibly extinctions.
• A new radar-based study shows the importance of migratory stopover habitat.
• Last Friday, between 1,000 and 1,500 migrating birds died after colliding with skyscrapers in Center City Philadelphia. Deaths like this can be avoided by shutting off lights on nights with heavy migration.
  

Science and nature blogging

• Feathered Photography: Red-breasted Nuthatch Foraging For Seeds On Douglas Fir Cones
• Shorebird Science: Counting phalaropes in Argentina: overcoming challenges and learning about dispersal
• Cool Green Science: Deformed Beaks: What We Know About An Alarming Bird Disease 
• How Beasties Behave: Introducing the burying beetle
• Vermont Center for Ecostudies: Field Guide to October 2020 
  

Biodiversity and conservation

• Every October features an online celebration of spiders and other arachnids. To follow along, see @arachtober or #arachtober on Twitter, or the Arachtober group on Flickr.
• Letting forests grow back naturally may be more effective for fighting climate change than tree-planting programs (and would probably be more beneficial to wildlife).
• DNA evidence suggests that Asian Giant Hornets have been introduced more than once.
  

Climate change and environmental politics

• Even as the effects of climate change are becoming harder to deny, Exxon plans to increase fossil fuel production, which will cause its greenhouse gas emissions to rise 17% by 2025. The fact the Exxon is able to do this shows the need for governments to take on oil and gas companies more directly.
• The August Complex wildfire has burned over 1 million acres, which make it the first gigafire.
• Fires are also burning through the Brazilian Pantanal and destroying indigenous territories.
• Environmental groups are trying to get public lands regulatory changes overturned on the grounds that the head of BLM was appointed illegally.
• The presidential campaign so far shows that Democrats are still too defensive about fighting climate change instead of making the full economic and existential case.
• Climate change is merging problems that used to be treated separately into one giant crisis.
  
• Canada plans to ban certain single-use plastics to reduce the problem of plastic waste. Only 10% of plastic has ever been recycled, and even plastic collected for recycling often ends up incinerated or buried in a landfill.
• The Trump administration's plans to expand oil drilling off the Atlantic Coast was opposed to every coastal state, and recently the permits for seismic blasts expired. So for now the drilling plan appears dead.
  

Loose Feathers #769

Black-crowned Night-Heron / Photo by Grayson Smith/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• The outcome of the November election will affect bird conservation, both directly through enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Endangered Species Act and indirectly through protections for public lands and water and action on climate change. The link explains some of the issues at stake.
• Some American Robins migrate long distances between their wintering and breeding grounds, while others stay in the same area year-round. A research project is currently tracking their movements.
  
• The White Stork Project is tracking the migration routes taken by captive-bred storks released in the UK. So far storks have been recorded as far south as Morocco.
• Pinyon Jays and Clark's Nutcrackers use similar habitats and both cache food to survive the winter.
• Melting ice revealed a lost colony of mummified Adelie Penguins that were frozen a millennium or more ago.
  
• Last year there were 85 incidents of birds being killed to support grouse hunting in the UK.
  

Science and nature blogging

• Arachnofiles: Arachnews: September 30, 2020.
• Backyard and Beyond: Sad Underwing 
• Ohio Birds and Biodiversity: Two cool and unusual moths
• On The Wing Photography: One Funny Snowy Egret Photo 
• Avian Hybrids: Non-coding DNA drives the evolution of avian beak morphology
• mocosocoBirds: Red Phalarope at Lake Parsippany; other records of interest – Sep. 26, 2020
• corvidresearch: Bill overhang in corvids 
  

Biodiversity and conservation

• Captive breeding has restored pygmy rabbits to the Columbia Basin, but the wild population is still vulnerable to wildfires and habitat fragmentation.
• Some beetles can withstand cyanide gas released by their millipede prey.
  

Climate change and environmental politics

• This week's presidential debate featured a question from a moderator about climate change for the first time since 2008, probably in response to public pressure.
  
• A 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court will make it much harder to act on climate change and other environmental issues.
• The Biden campaign made some concessions to activists who want to keep fossil executives and lobbyists out of his transition team and (potential) administration.
• Climate change is creating a warm layer near the ocean's surface that blocks the normal cycle of carbon, oxygen, and nutrients between the surface and the ocean floor.
  
• Here are four environment-related ballot issues in this November's election.
  
• Melting glaciers could lead to landslides in places where a glacier is supporting unstable rock formations.
• Environmental activists have noted a connection between police brutality and air pollution.
• Extreme wildfires make forests into carbon sources instead of carbon sinks, which makes reforestation less reliable for fighting climate change.
  

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.
  

Loose Feathers #767

Red-breasted Nuthatch / Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds have died in the Southwest over the past month in an unusual mass mortality event. The cause is unknown at this point, but possible contributors include smoke from western wildfires and a sudden cold snap in early September. The deaths were first noticed in New Mexico but have spread to neighboring states.
• NYC Audubon again organized volunteers to watch for birds trapped by the Tribute in Light memorial. The lights are turned off when more than 1,000 birds are trapped in a light beam for 20 minutes.
• Puerto Rican Parrots developed a new dialect in captivity during the captive-breeding program to save the species from extinction.
  
• Rodenticides can harm birds of prey when they catch or scavenge poisoned rodents.
• The Dolan Fire in California killed two California Condor chicks.
• Christian Cooper wrote a comic about race and birding.
  

Science and nature blogging

• Feathered Photography: White-crowned Sparrow – A Common Bird In An Uncommon Pose
• New Jersey Audubon Blog: Little Butterfly, Big Journey: A little bit about monarch migration and why it matters
• Avian Hybrids: Are we missing something? Exploring the diversity of white-eye species on the African mainland
• Wanstead Birder: The limits of low carbon birding in the UK 
  

Biodiversity and conservation

• The US and Canada have lost at least 65 plant species and subspecies since Europeans arrived in the Americas, and the actual number is probably higher.
• Someone destroyed over 17,000 Tiehm’s Buckwheat plants on a 21-acre plot where an Australian company wants to mine for lithium. Tiehm’s Buckwheat is a rare flower in need of protection and only grows in a small area of Nevada.
• Governments are failing to meet their goals under an agreement to stop the loss of biodiversity.
  
• The gray wolves that were transported to Isle Royale National Park have formed packs and reduced the island's moose population.
• European colonization led to a 56% decline in mammal populations of the American tropics through habitat destruction and overhunting.
  

Climate change and environmental politics

• The Trump administration picked a climate change denialist to run NOAA, which produces much of the government's climate research. 
• Climate change will force people to migrate away from the hardest-hit areas, both within the US and in Central America. Maps show how climate will affect where people can live in the US.
• Right now the world is warming faster than it has in millions of years.
  
• Oil companies need to increase plastic production to stay profitable as the world turns to renewable energy. The solution they proposed to dealing with plastic waste, recycling, has barely reduced the plastic in landfills.
  
• A photographer began documenting discarded plastic gloves in March and photographed 363 in four days in his neighborhood.
  
• Part of the plastic problem comes from synthetic clothing (like fleece) which shed microfibers that end up in waterways.
• The Gulf Stream circulation system appears to be slowing down, which is one of the consequences predicted by climate models. This will lead to a colder North Atlantic and higher salinity in the South Atlantic, among other things.
• In the context of recent wildfires, Gavin Newsom promised to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but many of his recent actions have been counterproductive.
  

Loose Feathers #766

Piping Plover / Photo by Matt Poole/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• Hummingbirds that live at higher altitudes spend more time in torpor at lower temperatures to conserve energy on cold nights. The lowest recorded temperature of a hummingbird in torpor is now 38°F, as opposed to their normal daytime temperature of 96°F.
• The Northwestern Crow is being merged with the American Crow because of hybridization between the two populations. 
• Ornithological groups are trying to reconcile the four main bird checklists (eBird/Clements, Howard and Moore, IOC, and HBW/BirdLife) into one global checklist because disagreements over taxonomy among the current checklists are hampering conservation work.
  
• When territory with granary trees opens, Acorn Woodpeckers spend days fighting to claim it, and the battles often involve coalitions.
• Poaching threatens the attempt to rebuild a Whooping Crane population in Louisiana and accounts for 25% of known Whooping Crane deaths in that state.
• A pair of Peregrine Falcons nested in New York's Taughannock Gorge this spring for the first time since 1946. The gorge was the site of a famous photo of a falcon eyrie taken by Arthur Allen in the 1930s.
• A new book recounts the field work behind the creation of a conservation plan for Blakiston's Fish-Owl.
  
• There is no scientific support for the claim that "regenerative ranching" will help grassland birds.
• Birds in nesting boxes around a single golf club consume 5.3 million insects in a breeding season.
  

Science and nature blogging

• 10,000 Birds: What are the Costs of Changing Bird Names?
  
• On The Wing Photography: I’m Just Mad About Sparrows
• Corvid Research: Crows removing ticks: helpfulness, opportunism, or something else? 
  

Biodiversity and conservation

• Here are 10 things to know about the illegal wildlife trade, which threatens the existence of many species and also poses risks for humans.
• Over 80% of the Boreal Forest remains intact in North America but requires protection from resource extraction like logging and fossil fuel mining.
• Posts on social media as well as iNaturalist are helping track the spread of invasive species.
• Americans have been spending more time observing nature since the pandemic started, and as a result eBird, iNaturalist, and other sites have had more submissions than usual.
  
• A new study argues that it is still possible to stop and even reverse biodiversity loss, but doing so would require both increased habitat protection and changes to the food system.
• Since 1993, conservation work has prevented the extinction of 48 bird and mammal species.
• Meanwhile, the Living Planet Report 2020 found that vertebrate animal populations declined by 68% over the past 50 years.
• The Cima Dome fire burned 43,000 acres of the Mojave National Preserve and killed 1.33 million Joshua trees.
  

Climate change and environmental politics

• Along with all the other ongoing crises, climate change has continued to be relevant, in the form of extreme weather. This week record-breaking wildfires raged throughout the West, forcing many people to evacuate and darkening the skies over the Bay Area and other coastal cities. The Creek Fire in California was fueled by trees killed in a five-year megadrought linked to climate change. Repeated intense fires could prevent forests from regenerating. As bad as this year's weather has been, it is going to get worse in future years.
• There are also record-breaking fires in the Arctic, and they are releasing carbon stored in northern peatlands.
  
• Heat waves are also deadly, especially when the overnight lows are high, and are another way that climate change exacerbates inequality. Heat waves have become more frequent and intense.
  
• Financial regulators are finally acknowledging that climate change is a risk to the American economy. Previous arguments than minimized the economic effects of climate change were based on flawed assumptions.
  
• There is a bipartisan bill to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas used in refrigerators and air conditioners.
• Aerial surveys show that Hurricane Laura released a significant amount of oil from the wells and refineries near Louisiana's coast.
• If current trends continue, the amount of plastic flowing into the ocean could triple in the next 20 years.
• Black Lives Matter protests have been met with excessive use of tear gas, and it is unclear how that will affect local waterways, which is a particular concern in Portland.