Posts
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| Western Grebe and chicks / Photo by Dan Nelson (USFWS) |
- The short and long-term effects of Hurricane Sandy on bird populations are still being tallied. Some rare birds showed up in Philadelphia on the morning after the storm passed. Jennifer Hanson has been tracking the Post-Sandy status of birding sites in New Jersey over at Today in NJ Birding History.
- Tanzania is still considering building a soda ash plant at Lake Natron, the world's most important breeding site for Lesser Flamingos. A recent report suggests that Tanzania would gain more economically from promoting ecotourism at the site than from soda ash.
- French scientists have found two previously unknown colonies of Emperor Penguins that together account for about 6,000 chicks near Mertz Glacier in Antarctica.
- Wildlife officials in Oregon are concerned that cormorants nesting at the mouth of the Columbia River are eating too many of the endangered fish that spawn in the river. The linked article tries to compare how predation by cormorants compares to other threats to juvenile fish.
- A Goffin's Cockatoo in captivity has been recorded using tools to reach food, even though this species does not use tools in the wild.
- Analysis of Microraptor fossils suggests that it was a nimble flier.
- Birds can become intoxicated from eating fermented berries.
- Just as North America is undergoing a winter finch irruption, British birders are enjoying an impressive movement of woodland birds to backyard feeders.
- One rare bird that has appeared in the UK is a Little Bunting.
- City birds use different techniques to escape cats than their rural counterparts do to escape raptors. It is not clear if this is sufficient to neutralize losses to household and feral cat predation.
- Not Exactly Rocket Science: Fairy wrens teach secret passwords to their unborn chicks to tell them apart from cuckoo impostors
- Outside My Window: Since 1600
- Birding Is Fun!: Audubon Birds App Update
- Sibley Guides: My trick to finding Rusty Blackbirds
- Extinction Countdown: Last 500 Ethiopian Wolves Endangered by Lack of Genetic Diversity
- President Obama's re-election this week means that his EPA will be able to proceed with regulations on greenhouse gas emissions if it chooses. However, what the administration will be able to accomplish on this front will be limited by Congressional opposition and the administration's embrace of an "all of the above" energy policy.
- Hurricane Sandy has entered the climate change conversation; whether it will spur significant action remains to be seen.
- One thing that may result from Sandy is the erection of barriers to protect New York Harbor from storm surges. There are various proposals floating around; one is to ring Manhattan and Brooklyn with artificial wetlands that would serve as parks most of the time but absorb some of the energy of storm surges that enter the harbor. Floodgates are another option.
- Monsoon failures may become more common in India thanks to climate change.
- Deforestation can be detected from space via a NASA satellite. Recent data shows extensive deforestation in South American and West Africa.
- A 2001-2002 drought in the Rocky Mountains made the mountain pine beetle infestation much worse.
- An extremely rare whale, the spade-toothed beaked whale, was found beached in New Zealand. It was the first time the species was recorded as a complete specimen, and it was only identified by DNA testing.
