Scissor-tailed Flycatcher / Photo by Gary Kramer (USFWS)
Birds and birding news
- Nonnative Purple Swamphens are spreading through the wetlands of southern Florida despite an eradication program. The swamphens compete with the Purple Gallinule and other native marsh birds for resources.
- Teams competing in the World Series of Birding had to give up communications technology for sharing bird sightings (like Twitter and BirdsEye) during the competition.
- Lights Out Toronto has reduced the number of bird strikes against the city's buildings during migration.
- Small patches of forest in urban areas can be useful for migrating birds looking for food and a place to rest.
- Male Dark-eyed Juncos with average testosterone have the best survival and reproduction rates; high-testosterone males are more likely to be the genetic fathers of chicks raised in their nests but engage in more costly fights.
- Wild birds prefer conventionally grown seed over organic seed, according to one experiment. The difference may be that the conventional seed has more protein.
- Goose foraging behavior depends on personality; some geese search for food on their own, while others watch other geese to see if they have already found food.
- Using isotopic analysis, scientists determined that some seabird ectoparasites feed on the oil that coats feathers while others feed on the bird's blood.
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology is looking for volunteers to participate in their annual NestWatch.
- Richard Crossley is preparing a new field guide to American birds; in this short video he explains his approach to bird identification.
- A pair of Purple Herons is nesting in the UK for the first time.
- Eco-Logic on WBAI hosts an hour-long interview with David Sibley.
- Earbirding: Review: Songs of the Warblers
- WildBird on the Fly: 'World Series of Birding' in the news
- Fossil Penguins: Paraptenodytes – Simpson's great discovery
- Conservation Maven: Breaking the vulture monopoly on scavenger restaurants
- Tails of Birding: Forster's Tern Courtship
- Pic of the Day: 5/18/2010
- Cloudy Days and Netbook Nights: Real-time on the Social-web for the World Series of Birding
- Wildlife impacts from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are difficult to measure because they take place far from shore. Heavy oil came ashore for the first time this week.
- The US EPA ordered BP to use a less toxic oil dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico. BP's current dispersant is on the EPA's approved list, but it is being sprayed in unprecedented quantities.
- Mexico's Campeche Sound (including its shrimp industry) recovered within a few years of the Ixtoc 1 oil spill in 1980, so there is hope for a similar rebound in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill. However, no one knows how the large amount of dispersants being used now will affect recovery time.
- An unusually cold winter reduced the number of Burmese pythons in the Everglades. Snakes have been turning up dead in what should be their breeding season.
- This year had the warmest April on record.
- Atrazine, a common herbicide, reduced fish reproduction.
- A conservation agreement will protect 72 million hectares of boreal forest in Canada.
- Satellite data from NASA and Google Earth revealed that North Korea has been logging in a conservation area.
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