1. The big news this week in the birding world was the sighting of a Steller’s Sea-Eagle in southeastern Massachusetts on Monday. Bird News Items hustled down to Somerset, MA, Tuesday, pre-dawn, joining what would grow to be at least 150 birders and…after 7 chilly hours of searching…lots of Bald Eagles; no Steller’s: “We’ve never had one here” (via The Boston Globe)
More on this bird here: “Spectacularly Rare, Enormous Eagle Shows Up in North America, 5,000 Miles From Home” (via Science Alert)
2. No Christmas eggnog for these birds: Drunken parrots are causing mayhem in Australia’s far north after feasting on fermented mangos. Paul Murphy, a veterinary surgeon in Broome, Western Australia, said that the fallen tropical fruit was left to brew in the sun of the Kimberley region. “We’re hearing a few reports of [parrots] flying into windows and sitting on the floor, vulnerable to cats and other predators,” he said. Murphy said that red-wing parrots were vulnerable to the fermented sugars in the sweet fruit. “So far, we’ve seen about half a dozen [drunk birds] ,” he said. Murphy told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the birds’ “drunken behaviour” left them vulnerable to crashing into things and falling. It was unclear why red-winged parrots seemed to be the only birds affected. (via The Times)
3. Possibly the most extreme Christmas Bird Count: Many birders get up at the crack of dawn to begin tallying birds for Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count. But not Clare Kines. In fact, on Kines’s CBC route, there is no dawn. A typical CBC for Kines begins midmorning around 10:00 a.m. as he drives his SUV along the hardpacked snowy roads of Arctic Bay, Nunavut, Canada—located nearly 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Kines’s count circle is centered around his hometown of Arctic Bay, a village of 800 people. Arctic Bay is the third-most-northerly community in North America, and the CBC that Kines conducts represents the northernmost count circle in the world. In many years, Common Raven is the only species he tallies. (via Living Bird)
4. Speaking of CBC’s: The holidays aside, it’s the most wonderful time of the year for San Diego’s most dedicated, self-described bird nerds. On Saturday morning, 140 of them fanned out in birding parties from the tip of Point Loma to the South Bay and east into Bonita to comprehensively document the region’s bird population. Their wildlife adventures, locally orchestrated by the San Diego Audubon Society, are part of what’s known as the Christmas Bird Count. The local chapter is specifically focused on a 15-mile-diameter circle, centered on the Sweetwater River in Chula Vista. Regional data is validated by a local expert, entered into the digital platform eBird and later analyzed by researchers at Cornell University. (via Los Angeles Times)
5. Flipping migration: The year-round warmth of the Mediterranean and Africa is a wintertime draw for migratory birds in temperate regions of continental Europe. But at least one bird that breeds in Europe has turned migration on its head and is now heading north for the winter. For several decades, scientists and birdwatchers have observed that a small number of Eurasian Blackcaps, common warblers that breed across most of Europe, were changing their migratory itineraries. Instead of heading to the southern Mediterranean and Africa like most of their population, these pioneering blackcaps reversed their migration—flying from breeding locales across continental Europe to winter in the woods and backyards of the British Isles and southern Scandinavia. (via Living Bird)
6. A possible way to reduce collision risks: Billions of birds die each year from collisions with tall glass buildings, communication towers and power lines – a gobsmacking toll that's expected to increase as cities grow outwards and upwards. A recent study suggests there could be a way to fix our deadly mistakes – by installing 'acoustic lighthouses' that blast white noise in short bursts, stopping migratory birds on a collision course with towering metal structures, tall buildings, and possibly even wind turbines. Field trials testing two types of sound signals reduced bird activity around communication towers by up to 16 percent, and researchers think these acoustic lighthouses could reduce the risk of birds colliding with wind turbines, too. (via Science Alert)
7. Interesting: The working memory is the brain's ability to process information for a short period of time in a retrievable state. It is essential for performing complex cognitive tasks, such as thinking, planning, following instructions or solving problems. A team of researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) has now succeeded in investigating this special area of memory in birds in more detail and in comparing it to data storage in the mammalian brain. The scientists found that birds and monkeys -- despite their different brain architecture -- share the same central mechanisms and limits of working memory. (via Science Daily)
8. Technology again unlocking migratory paths: As the Arctic and the oceans warm due to climate change, understanding how a rapidly changing environment may affect birds making annual journeys between the Arctic and the high seas is vital to international conservation efforts. However, for some Arctic species, there are still many unknowns about their migration routes. Using telemetry to solve some mysteries of three related seabird species — the pomarine jaeger, parasitic jaeger and long-tailed jaeger — scientists discovered they took different paths across four oceans from a shared central Canadian high Arctic nesting location. These new tracking data add to growing evidence linking marine biodiversity in the Arctic region and the high seas to inform large scale marine biological diversity management in areas beyond national jurisdiction. (via Science Daily)
9. Owls in the D.C. area: In a social media post on Tuesday, the Fairfax County Police Department said its animal protection officers rescued a northern saw-whet owl on Nov. 17 in the Oakton area. The owl had flown into a home that was being built. Two officers caught the owl, checked it to make sure it wasn’t hurt and let it go. Northern saw-whet owls are the “smallest owl species,” experts said, and they are rarely seen in the D.C. region. Typically, the owls migrate through the area every spring and fall, experts said, to nesting grounds in forest areas in the northern parts of the United States and Canada. In D.C., a snowy owl was spotted last weekend just north of the McMillan reservoir near MedStar Washington Hospital Center, according to the city’s biologist, Dan Rauch. Snowy owls don’t normally inhabit the D.C. area. (via The Washington Post)
10. Female birds are some of the more underappreciated and challenging birds to see—many eschew the showy plumage and attention-grabbling behaviors that bring others into the limelight. But this neglect by birders, scientists, and photographers isn’t just a problem of philosophy or equality. Recent research has shown that lack of focus on the specific needs of female birds has profound consequences for species conservation—and that makes it a concern for Audubon. So, this year, Audubon asked photographers to seek out female birds and send in what they found. We were not disappointed. From the subtle beauty of an Anhinga to the raucous flock of Red Crossbills around a stream to the majesty of a Peregrine Falcon, the birds in this collection show us that there is plenty to discover if you commit to focusing on the females. (via Audubon)
12. Winter Reads - If you are looking for some great bird books for winter reading, Bird News Items recommends the following:
The Seabird’s Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet’s Great Ocean Voyagers by Adam Nicolson
A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul
Flights of Passage: An Illustrated Natural History of Bird Migration by Mike Unwin and David Tipling
The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent and Think by Jennifer Ackerman
The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds by Jon Dunn
What It’s Like To Be A Bird: From Flying To Nesting, Eating to Singing – What Birds Are Doing and Why by David Allen Sibley
A Christmas Photo
Photo by Jesús Mari Lekuona Sánchez, Partridge in search of a pear tree.
Bird Videos of the Week
By BBC Earth, “Baby Penguin Tries to Make Friends”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Suet Feeder Surprise.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Scenic View.
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!!