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| Greater Sage-Grouse / Photo: Tom Koerner/USFWS |
Birds and birding news
- Audubon sent reporters to cover three teams competing in New Jersey Audubon's World Series of Birding: one adult team, one youth team, and one big sit team. The article is pretty good, but birds that only part of the team sees or hears are not "dirty birds" as the authors say repeatedly. The rules just limit the number a team can count.
- A study of songbirds in Missouri found that habitat restoration (including the use of controlled burns) leads to more successful nesting.
- Toxins in marine mammal carcasses might be why coastal California Condors produce fewer offspring than inland condors.
- Australia's most threatened species, like the King Island Scrubtit and the King Island Brown Thornbill, are monitored mostly by volunteers because of a lack of funding for conservation agencies.
- Over the past forty years, average daily temperatures on New York’s Whiteface Mountain have risen 3°F and birds have moved 270 feet up the mountain from their previous ranges in response.
- The US Fish and Wildlife Service is looking for reports of banded Piping Plovers.
Science and nature blogging
- 10,000 Birds: For the Birds: Midway Atoll Mouse Eradication and NEPA
- ABA Blog: The TOP 10: World Cup Team Crests Featuring Birds
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino’s Life in the Meadowlands: Fore the Bluebirds
- Birding New Jersey: How Many Waterthrushes?
- Union Bay Watch: An Owlet Adventure
- Gulls to the Horizon: Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull portraits – May/June 2018
Environment and biodiversity
- The rate at which Antarctica's ice melts has doubled over the past five years, so that a sea level rise of six inches is likely by the end of the century.
- The loss of ash trees to the invasive Emerald Ash Borer affects the production of baseball bats.
- A report argues that the UK could meet most of its plastic needs by recycling used plastic domestically instead of shipping most of it abroad.
- Painted Ladies have the longest recorded butterfly migrations, from sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean.
- The state of Washington will have to fix faulty culverts that block fish from migrating to their breeding grounds.
- A project is underway to create wildlife crossings along I-90 in Washington.
- Scent lures will help determine the size of Alberta's grizzly bear population.
- President Trump is the first president since 1941 not to name a science advisor, and the lack of scientific expertise in his administration extends well beyond that.
- The UK's annual Moth Night is taking place this weekend, June 14-16, with an emphasis on the family Pyralidae.
