Birds and birding news
- Conservationists have successfully bred three species of endangered Old World vultures in captivity, raising hopes that the vultures might be saved from extinction.
- Watching attractively plumaged males perform courtship displays improves female Houbara Bustards' fertility and leads to healthier chicks.
- Studies of Zebra Finches are showing that vocal muscles are more important for song production than air pressure.
- Female Hihi, a rare New Zealand bird, survive inbreeding more easily than males do.
- Though they are flightless, ostriches use their wings and feathers to stop or change direction rapidly. This suggests a way in which flightless therapod dinosaurs may have used their feathers.
- Endangered Masked Bobwhites will get assistance through the federal economic stimulus program, which will pay for some habitat restoration projects.
- WNYC's Radiolab covers habitat management for Kirtland's Warblers. Radiolab's coverage has some problems, but I am posting the link for anyone who is interested. (Thanks to Nick Lund for sending the link.)
- The Ojai Raptor Center helps rescue and rehabilitate raptors year-round in Ventura County, California.
- Pollinators include many types of animals other than honey bees, such as hummingbirds, native bumblebees, flies, moths, and beetles.
- The Loom: What, If Anything, Is Big Bird?
- burdr: Leucistic Pileated Woodpecker
- Living the Scientific Life: Distressed Ravens Show That Consolation Is For The Birds, Too
- The Drinking Bird: ABA Shake-up
- 10,000 Birds: MLB Bird Logos
- Bird Canada: Tufted Finches?
- Teach me about birdwatching!: Birds on hats
- The federal government plans to pay some farmers around the gulf region to flood parts of their fields during the fall migration season. The idea is to give southbound migratory birds an alternative stopover habitat so that they will be less likely to require coastal wetlands contaminated by oil.
- Oil has been found beneath the shells of post-larval blue crabs in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Boreal Songbird Initiative has a report on Oil Spill and Birds – Part II.
- Cornell's Round Robin blog has had a series of posts on the oil spill, including Wilson's Plovers and the effects of oil on mangroves.
- Some of the cleaned Brown Pelicans are being released in Georgia because Hurricane Alex made releases in Texas too difficult.
- Where to put the waste left over from the oil spill clean-up is a major dilemma.
- A prehistoric giant sperm whale named Leviathan melvillei was recently discovered in Peru. It measured 43-59 feet in length and probably hunted medium-sized baleen whales. One science blogger has questioned whether Leviathan is a valid genus name for this species.
- One naturalists suggests that it is easier to care about species that have common names rather than just Latinized scientific ones.
- Controversy is brewing over whether to build an oil pipeline to transport tar sands oil from Alberta to refineries in Texas.
- Public health data shows that an average 4,267 Londoners die prematurely each year from air pollution.
- The U.K.'s Woodland Trust suggests planting more urban trees to improve quality of life. Trees reduce temperatures in the summer, improve air quality, and absorb some rainfall that could otherwise cause flooding or water pollution problems.
- New York City has begun a project to reduce the amount of nitrogen flowing into Jamaica Bay.
- Here is a gallery of fabulous photos taken by European Space Agency and NASA satellites in June. (Make sure to see #9 and #18.)
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