1. Male acorn woodpeckers that share mates with their brothers live longer lives, have better quality homes and father more baby woodpeckers than those that choose a monogamous lifestyle. Most acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) form lifelong partnerships with a single mate, but about a third of females and half of males opt for breeding in sibling groups, sharing one or more mates with their sisters or brothers. (via New Scientist)
2. The birds’ flashy, iridescent feathers heat up more than other types of feathers, possibly making it harder to stay cool in hot, sunny conditions. If so, the colorful plumes may be costly ornaments for luring mates, researchers report August 4 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The researchers examined 15 sunbird species preserved at the Field Museum in Chicago, heating the specimens under a lamp that mimics sunlight and then measuring the surface temperatures of feathers and the preserved birds’ skin. Iridescent feathers heated up more than feathers that had only pigment-based colors, the team found. (via Science News)
3. One way to do it: When a bearded vulture last year graced the UK with its presence, awed birdwatchers from across the country gathered in the Derbyshire moors in the hope of catching a glance. Now conservationists are hoping to make sightings of these magnificent birds more frequent by adding raw nature back into the countryside. No one wants to see dead livestock lying in the field, covered in flies, while on a picturesque countryside walk. And after the horrors of mad cow disease, it is strictly forbidden to leave dead farm animals out – they must be taken away and disposed of safely, usually burned. A solution from some bird-lovers is to build a “sky table”, on which they put carrion – dead foxes and deer – and leave it to be fed on by corvids and raptors. The grubs and maggots which feed on the decomposing body also provide food for smaller birds. (via The Guardian)
4. Artificial Intelligence at work: During the spring, a troublesome pattern plays out as marine birds along the California coast die from domoic acid poisoning, which is caused by harmful algal blooms. An early clue indicates when and where this problem starts spreading: rescued California brown pelicans, red-throated loons, and other species start turning up at wildlife rehabilitation centers with signs of neurological disease. Yet, though they pepper the state map, these centers are not interconnected enough to nip the issue in the bud. When staffers at one center diagnose a sick bird, others another 40 miles up the road might not be privy to that information. So researchers at UC Davis recently tested an early detection system that uses artificial intelligence to classify admissions to rehabilitation centers. (via Wired Magazine)
5. For our UK birders, now is the time for “Hippos”: With autumn migration beginning in earnest this month, it's time to scrutinize passage warblers as they undertake the long journey south. Among the commoner species on the move are two from Continental Europe which occur regularly in small numbers, yet remain scarce enough to qualify as notable finds anywhere in Britain and Ireland. Although very similar in appearance, Icterine and Melodious Warblers are 'doable' with practice and patience. Known colloquially as 'Hippos', Icterine and Melodious Warblers form the western species pair in the genus Hippolais (the 'tree warblers'). This genus is now half its former size, with Booted, Sykes's and Eastern and Western Olivaceous Warblers recently hived off into a separate genus, Iduna, along with three African species. (via BirdGuides)
6. The lure of sea birds: Pelagic birding is one of the most difficult types of birding because the birds are often distant, appearing and disappearing behind swells, and seen from a sometimes violently moving platform. Many of the species, which spend most of their lives out on the open ocean, rarely venturing close to land except to breed, are also very similar in appearance so that either excellent views or photographs are necessary for proper identification. The rewards, though, are potentially great. These are the waters where species that are seldom seen from land are to be found — albatrosses, storm-petrels, murrelets, and tropicbirds, to name a few. (via The Santa Barbara Independent)
7. And speaking of seabirds: Conservationists hope to gain new insights into one of the UK's rarest breeding seabirds. RSPB scientists spent a month catching and tagging Leach's storm petrels on the remote St Kilda archipelago over the summer. The group of islands and rocky sea stacks west of North Uist in the Western Isles hosts 94% of the UK population of the starling-sized bird - the largest colony in the northeast Atlantic. The birds spend daytime at sea, only returning to land, and the nests they make in burrows, at night - which was when they were tagged. There are serious concerns for the species because numbers have suffered from "severe decline". It is listed as vulnerable to global extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List. (via BBC News)
8. Bringing back the “mostly lost” birds to the Ozarks: A second phase to reintroduce a "mostly lost" bird to the Ozarks is set to happen soon. Missouri Department of Conservation, along with partners, will start their reintroduction efforts this month for the brown-headed nuthatch. The small songbird was locally extinct in Missouri because of the removal of shortleaf pine woodlands across the Ozarks at the start of the 20th century, according to MDC. "Millions of acres of pine woodland existed in the state prior to widespread logging that denuded the Ozarks in the late 1800s and early 1900s," MDC stated via news release. "The regenerated forest seen today is dominated by oaks and hickories that replaced pines after their removal."Pine woodlands were restored in Mark Twain National Forest, making the necessary habitat for brown-headed nuthatches. (via Springfield News Leader)
9. “Tassie devils” to the rescue: King Island, off Tasmania's north-west coast, is home to the three Australian birds most likely to next go extinct. University of Tasmania ecology doctoral student Matthew Fielding is more aware of this than most, having spent the past three years researching ways to stop the decline of these species. One seemingly strange idea his studies support is that introducing native predators to King Island could help boost native bird numbers. While making such a move would require extensive investigation, Fielding points out the desperation of the times. "We are in desperate need of novel approaches that can boost our currently inadequate conservation efforts," he said. (via ABC News)
10. And a bird feared extinct shows signs of recovery: A population of breeding Velvet Scoter in the Caucasus, previously thought to be extinct, is showing signs of recovery. Historically, Velvet Scoter was known as a breeding species in Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, but a rapid decline at the beginning of the 21st century led to the species's apparent extirpation from all three countries. After a decade without any sightings in Georgia, a few scoter were found by chance at Lake Tabatskuri in August 2014. With funding from the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP), researchers carried out a more detailed study in 2017, which confirmed that the species was present at just one (Lake Tabatskuri) of seven potential breeding lakes, and that a population of 25-35 pairs existed there. It transpired that a single, 1-ha island in the northern part of the lake was the only breeding location for Velvet Scoter in the entire country, as well as the wider Causasian region. (via Bird Guides)
11. The perils of migration: The risk of airplanes colliding with birds jumps by as much as 400% during periods of migration, according to new research from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and partners, who have been looking for patterns in bird-strike data from three New York City-area airports. “Out of all the bird strikes recorded at Kennedy, Newark and LaGuardia airports during a six-year period, the highest number occurred during migration, especially during the fall, perhaps due to many inexperienced young birds born earlier in the year,” said Cecilia Nilsson, who led the study as a Rose Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Lab, and is now at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Nilsson is first author of “Bird Strikes at Commercial Airports Explained by Citizen Science and Weather Radar Data,” which published Aug. 19 in the Journal of Applied Ecology. (via Cornell Chronicle)
12. Interesting study: For most birds, eyes are essential to life on the fly. They inform split-second aerobatic maneuvers amid dense branches and pinpoint distant predators or prey. Yet when studying how birds might adapt to our quickly changing world, ornithologists have largely overlooked eye size in favor of traits such as wing length and beak shape. Now, though, a lost “treasure trove” of avian eyeball measurements offers a new view. In 1982 University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Ritland, using pickled museum specimens, meticulously measured the eyeballs of nearly 2,800 species—a third of all terrestrial birds. He never published his data, but Ian Ausprey, a graduate student at the University of Florida and the Florida Museum of Natural History, has just given it a second look. (via Scientific American)
13. Helpful advice: If you ever find a young bird with scruffy feathers, hopping around looking sort of clueless, with no parents to be seen, you might think it’s in trouble and needs to be rescued. But that’s probably not the case. Most likely, you have just found a fledgling. Fledglings are the awkward teenagers of the bird world. They’re too old to live in a nest, but too young to fully take care of themselves. While injured birds and actual baby birds (without real feathers) may be in danger if you find them on the ground, fledglings belong outside of nests. If you need some help telling these categories apart, we have a guide here on what to do if you’ve found a bird that seems to need help. (via LifeHacker)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Eastern Bluebird.
Bird Videos of the Week
By New Scientist, “Magic trick reveals sharp memory and future planning in Eurasian jays”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - California Condor Chick.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Red-crowned Woodpeckers.