Birds and birding news
- The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired many people to start birdwatching. The link includes tips for backyard birding.
- The Delaware Bay has a shortage of horseshoe crab eggs for migrating shorebirds to feed on since the waters have been too cold for the horseshoe crabs to breed.
- In Maine, there was a case of a Common Loon killing a Bald Eagle to protect its chicks.
- Here is a guide to identifying Henslow's Sparrows from Baird's and Grasshopper Sparrows.
- Since Florida reopened its beaches, Snowy Plover nests have been disturbed, mainly by dogs.
- Male Black-capped Chickadees can recognize individual females by their songs.
- Shape is one of the best clues for identifying birds, but it can be affected by a bird's posture.
- A new paper provides the hand-wing index (a measure of wing length) for over 10,000 bird species. One finding is that birds with proportionally longer wings tend to live in polar regions while birds in the tropics have shorter wings.
- Lesser Prairie-Chickens are thriving in an area along the Colorado-Kansas border thanks to a reintroduction program.
- When the pandemic started, scientists had just arrived at Gough Island to protect nesting albatrosses and had to be evacuated.
- A new study found that birds that forage along waterways ingest hundreds of pieces of microplastic a day.
- The Trump administration wants to weaken enforcement of Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but the rule change is currently held up in court.
- A research project is testing how nesting bluebirds respond to noise pollution.
- Urban birds would have more breeding success if more insects were available to feed their nestlings.
- Last Saturday, 28 dead birds were found outside a glass-covered condo building at the north end of Central Park.
Science and nature blogging
- Observations: East of Siberia: Owls and the Meaning of April
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino's Life in the Meadowlands: Native Plants Are More Important Than Ever
- awkward botany: Dispersal by Bulbils – A Bulbous Bluegrass Story
- Avian Hybrids: Conservation genetics in China: Comparing genetic diversity of Siberian and Sichuan Jays
- Corvid Research: The definitive guide for distinguishing American crows & common ravens
- Conserve Wildlife Blog: Ecological Lockdown for Horseshoe Crabs – A Delaware Bay 2020 Update
- Cool Green Science: What is the Best Type of Farm for Birding?
- The Prairie Ecologist: Welcome Back!
- BugTracks: The Yard List(s), Part 5
- iNaturalist: We’ve reached 1,000,000 observers!
Biodiversity and conservation
- A rabbit hemorrhagic virus is ravaging rabbits and hares in the southwestern US. The rabbit virus was first identified in China but was probably introduced there by the pet trade. So far only common species have died from the virus, but it could get into rarer rabbit species.
- Grasshoppers are aware of their own color when they look for a place to hide.
- The rare Tiehm's Buckwheat is threatened by a proposed open pit mine.
- Florida's rare Blue Calamintha Bee was found this spring for the first time in several years.
- Eastern Grape Leafhoppers feed on a wide range of plants but only lay their eggs on grapes.
Climate change and environmental politics
- The COVID-19 pandemic is also an environmental justice crisis, since it affects different parts of the population unequally, partly for environmental reasons. For example, air pollution worsens respiratory infections like the coronavirus. In New York City, the neighborhoods with the most cases tend to be those with environmental health hazards.
- Virus transmission is less likely outdoors, but people should still take precautions.
- A new study links major hurricanes to climate change, with a trend towards stronger storms over the past 40 years.
- Climate change makes a second Dust Bowl more likely, and similar conditions could occur every 20 years.
- New Jersey rejected a proposed fracked gas pipeline that would have run under Raritan Bay, with a compressor station in Franklin Township.
- Underwater landslides can be triggered by earthquakes hundreds of miles away, and they can cause oil spills at offshore drilling sites.
- BLM wants to open northwestern New Mexico to up to 3,000 new oil and gas wells.
- This week a series of dam failures flooded Midland, Michigan, including a Dow Chemical plant, which may have released toxins as a result. Heavier rain from climate change is likely to cause more dam failures in the future.
