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| Golden Eagle / Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS |
Birds and birding news
- Keas have a warble-like call that encourages other Keas to play, which may be how their social system is maintained.
- Endangered Crested Ibises join flocks of Little Egrets while foraging probably because the egrets can identify potential threats more quickly.
- USDA Wildlife Services killed 2.7 million animals in 2016, including 826,000 Red-winged Blackbirds and 12,000 cormorants. About 1 million of the total were non-native or invasive species, but many rare or endangered animals get caught in the slaughter (usually accidentally but not always).
- Conservationists are looking for volunteers to teach captive-raised Hawaiian Crows predator avoidance tricks before they are released to the wild.
- A new paper suggests using more sophisticated statistical models to evaluate bird population trends.
- Early-season grazing leads to sage-grouse population declines, but grazing later in the season may be benign.
- Conditions on a bird's wintering grounds influence its breeding success for some species like Savannah Sparrows. Warmer conditions are generally better but not if with combined with severe storms.
- A study using GPS monitoring devices found that some nonbreeding ravens stay around a single location while others travel widely in groups.
- A Night Parrot was photographed recently in Western Australia, the first sighting reported there in over a century. The species was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in Queensland a few years ago.
- Chandler Robbins, the ornithologist who founded the Breeding Bird Survey, died this week.
- Here is a list of bird photography best practices.
Science and nature blogging
- ABA Blog: Chandler Seymour Robbins, 1918–2017
- View from the Cape: Sea Ducks, Blue Mussels, and Jetties
- Net Results: The forgotten Detroit River Ivory Gull
- NY Harbor Nature: You See a Sick Seal on the Beach – What do you do?
- Bird Ecology Study Group: Common Kingfisher caught a dragonfly
- Arctic Sea Ice: Lowest maximum on record (again)
- The Web of Life: Introduced Species Develop Unexpected Relationships
- Tetrapod Zoology: Ornithoscelida Rises: A New Family Tree for Dinosaurs
Environment and biodiversity
- Congress voted to revoke an Obama administration rule and allow big-game hunting in national wildlife refuges in Alaska.
- New research explores the life cycle of venomous Lonomia moths.
- While the fate of the EPA hangs in the balance, it is worth remembering what things looked like when it was founded.
- The endangered listing for the Rusty-patched Bumblebee finally went into effect this week.
- Cheerios recently started a promotion of "bee-friendly" seed packets; unfortunately the packets contain seeds for plants that are considered invasive in parts of the U.S. Here are some suggestions for better ways to help bees.
- Sediment samples from a 22-mile stretch of the Hackensack River found a broad array of contaminants. Samples showed particularly high levels of mercury, including a reading of 760 ppm in a tributary near MetLife Stadium. The EPA is evaluating whether the river should be added to the Superfund program.
- A tree survey in San Francisco recorded about 125,000 street trees from 628 species. A tree map for San Francisco can be viewed here.
- Many New Jersey counties remain under a drought warning despite the late winter snowfall.
