Northern Pintails / Photo by Wyman Meinzer (USFWS)
Birds and birding news
- Common Swifts have been clocked at a top speed of 69.3mph (111.6km/h) in level flight, making it the fastest known bird species in level flight. Peregrine Falcons can reach about three times that speed in gravity-assisted stoops.
- This week was the start of Syncrude's trial for an incident in 2008 in which 1600 waterfowl died in one of the company's oil tailings ponds. The trial has included video of ducks struggling to get out of the bitumen and being attacked by ravens.
- It appears that West Nile Virus was carried across the United States by mosquitos rather than birds.
- Researchers have proposed a mathematical explanation for the variations in bill length of Darwin's finches.
- Several environmental groups plan to sue a Hawaiian luxury resort because of seabird deaths caused by the resort's bright lights. The lights confuse endangered Newell's Shearwaters and Hawaiian Petrels during the fledging season.
- According to the Island Packet, "There's a tie that binds two creatures often seen during spring in the Lowcountry, and its red knot is quickly coming undone."
- Surveys around the Delaware Bay last spring counted 24,000 Red Knots, the highest count since 2003 but still well below where it should be for the population to stabilize. This year's winter count in Tierra del Fuego found 14,800 birds, consistent with winter totals in recent years.
- Starting on March 1, the Point at Cape Henlopen is closed to pedestrians to provide undisturbed habitat for beach nesting birds. It will reopen in September.
- The Whooping Crane flock at Aransas NWR remains at 263 cranes.
- Rosy-finches are a high altitude specialist in winter.
- The Drinking Bird: Guatemala: Requiem for a Grebe
- Wild Muse: Connecting bird watching with conservation
- Dinosaur Tracking: "Bird" Wrists Evolved Among Dinosaurs
- Round Robin: Shorebirding in Peru
- eBird: eBird Species Accounts: Cedar Waxwing
- Explaining Science to the Public: Songbird Study May Help Vocal Learning
- burdr: Syncrude Trial Begins for Duck Deaths
- Biological Ramblings: Gulling in Churchill: A Larophile's Dream
- The Obama administration will support an international ban on catching and selling Atlantic bluefin tuna, a species whose population has cratered because of overfishing.
- Using real corks in wine bottles helps preserve biodiverse oak cork forests in the Iberian peninsula and Morocco.
- Methane is leaking from a site in Siberia much faster than was expected, so current climate warming models may underestimate methane's contribution. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
- Despite recent bad press, the case for anthropogenic climate change remains strong. However, it is more difficult to establish a link between climate change and individual extreme weather events than it is between greenhouse gases and climate change.
- An Australian frog species thought to be extinct has been observed again for the first time since the 1970s.
- Conservation Maven: An innovative approach for monitoring tidal wetland restoration success
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