Western Snowy Plover Chicks and Egg / Credit: Ron LeValley/LeValley Photographs/USFWS
Birds and birding news
- The US Fish and Wildlife Service wants to double the number of West Coast beaches set aside as nesting areas for Western Snowy Plovers.
- David Sibley has posted an annotated list of field identifiable subspecies of North American Birds. As in the past, Sibley is skeptical about identifying subspecies in the field and urges birders to record the variation they see in written descriptions and images rather than just names.
- A researcher is tracking the movements of migratory animals from the International Space Station. The animals, some of which are insects, are fitted with tiny transmitters that broadcast their location to a receiver at the ISS.
- An albatross species that breeds on Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean is a unique species, genetically distinct from the Wandering Albatross.
- Cuckoos have evolved eggs to appear very similar to redstarts, which are good at recognizing eggs from other bird species, but dissimilar to Dunnocks, which do not recognize foreign eggs as readily. Both species frequently host cuckoo eggs.
- A recent study on Gray Catbirds in suburban areas found that domestic and feral cats were the top threat to baby catbirds; predation was so high that the adult catbirds were unable to replace their numbers from one generation to the next. This result emphasizes that domestic and feral outdoor cats currently kill more birds than wind turbines, which get more publicity. While cats killed the most baby catbirds, collisions with windows and buildings kill the most birds per year continent-wide.
- Net Results: More shade coffee birds and banding: part 1; part 2
- Sibley Guides: Distinguishing the subspecies of Purple Finch
- Sibley Guides: Distribution of Greater White-fronted Goose subspecies
- Pixiq: Hummingbird Photography in Costa Rica
- View from the Cape: Birder phrases: Pair of binoculars
- On the Road: Piping Plover courtship display
- Not Exactly Rocket Science: Vultures use tools. Ravens use vultures. Vultures are tools
- eBird News: Identification Pitfalls--Crows and Ravens
- 10,000 Birds: Leucistic Pileated Woodpecker
- Temperature increases resulting from climate change will probably drive Joshua Trees out of most of their current range over the next century.
- New York City is still struggling to clean up and replace the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island.
- The maximum extent of Arctic sea ice this winter was tied with 2006 for the lowest on record.
- Coastal Louisiana is again the site of an oil spill, this one smaller than the one that happened over the summer. So far the source of the spill is unnamed.
- An analysis by Norwegian technicians of BP's oil spill blames the extent of the spill on failures within the blowout preventer. The report urges the oil drilling industry to redesign blowout preventers to prevent such failures in the future.
- Bad Astronomy: The skies at night, are too darn bright
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