Sora (Porzana carolina) / Photo by Mike Baird
Bird and birding news
- Twelve endangered puaiohi, or small Kauai thrush, were released on Kauai in Hawaii after being raised in captivity at the San Diego Zoo. The release is part of an effort to boost the species's population.
- Before it became a hawk-watching site, Hawk Mountain was a popular place for hunters to gather and shoot migrating raptors. That stopped 75 years ago thanks to the work of Rosalie Edge.
- Many bird species, especially kestrels, have been documented sharing nest boxes with barn owls. The reason for this is unclear, though it may be linked to a shortage of nesting cavities.
- Noise pollution is a growing threat to biodiversity because many species, birds especially, have evolved sensitive hearing to help them forage or find mates.
- Ospreys raised in Scotland were tracked by satellite as they migrated to Africa.
- The EPA announced that two bird-killing pesticides, disulfoton and methamidophos, will be removed from the US market.
- Salt marsh birds are threatened by climate change.
- The Cape Cod Times runs down a list of plants that can be helpful to birds. Fruit-bearing native plants can provide food for birds and for insects that birds might eat.
- The LA Times has a list of the 20 least-visited national parks according to last year's numbers. The list includes some well-known birding hotspots.
- Today in NJ Birding History: Bird Documentation in the Digital Age: Introduction
- Born Again Bird Watcher: Take a Seat
- Scienceray: The Largest Pigeon in The World: The Victoria Crowned Pigeon
- Bird Canada: Blog for the Boreal
- Lounge of the Lab Lemming: Have you seen this bird?
- Tails of Birding: Cackling Goose
- About Birds: The Fight for the Mountain Plover
- Round Robin: Gadget Alert! Closest Hummingbird Views Ever
- 10,000 Birds: Adult non-breeding Mediterranean Gulls in flight
- Outside My Window: Sharp-shin
- Some "scrubbers" that remove pollutants in power plant smokestacks cause serious water pollution instead.
- During the 19th and 20th centuries glaciers trapped many air and water pollutants in the ice; now that the glaciers are melting, those pollutants are getting released once again.
- Contractors at the closed Hanford nuclear weapons plant in Washington state must track down radioactive rabbit droppings to complete a thorough environmental cleanup. Rabbits had burrowed in contaminated parts of the site and then left their droppings in other areas.
- After two attempts, Australia has still not managed to fix a leak in an oil drilling rig in the Timor Sea. Hundreds of barrels of oil per day have been spilling from the leak for two months.
- Freshwater species currently face an extinction rate that is 4-6 times the extinction rate for land or marine species. That seems likely to worsen because of human freshwater consumption and climate change.
- Five large nonnative snake species pose a major threat to invade U.S. ecosystems: Burmese pythons, northern and southern African pythons, boa constrictors and yellow anacondas. Four other species pose lesser but still serious risks of invasion.
- The Arctic Ocean could have ice-free summers within ten years.
- Coffee and Conservation: Climate change and coffee: Blog Action Day
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