1. Let’s begin with one more story on John’s Oliver’s global quest for the putaketeke to win N.Z.’s “Bird of the Century” honors: A threatened bird called the pūteketeke landed the top spot in a New Zealand bird contest after comedian and talk show host John Oliver unleashed a zany, worldwide campaign on its behalf. The New Zealand conservation organization Forest & Bird held the contest for Bird of the Century, asking people in the country and abroad to vote for their favorite threatened species among dozens of contestants. The Last Week Tonight host said his staff asked Forest & Bird if they could campaign for the pūteketeke, a native water bird with a distinctive black-brown frill around its neck, and the group agreed. (via National Public Radio)
2. Roll Tide: On a map of the United States, you can barely see the skinny strip of land that is Fort Morgan, Ala. But the narrow peninsula — about 20 miles long and, in some places, less than a half-mile wide — is immensely important for migratory birds: It is the last land stop before they fly south across the Gulf of Mexico. Recently, the Banding Coalition of the Americas spent nine days in the dense vegetation of Fort Morgan, carefully capturing birds in mist nets, fitting them with tiny leg bands and releasing them back into the world to make their long journey across the water. (via The New York Times)
3. First you need to find it on a map: As a new type of ecotourism, bird watching has been gaining momentum year by year. Azerbaijan offers countless bird-watching destinations for nature lovers. The country has become popular among bird-watching enthusiasts from all over the world. The State Tourism Board has identified bird watching as an area to protect natural sites and attract tourists. All necessary conditions have been created for ornithologists and travellers to observe rare bird species throughout Azerbaijan with minimal negative impact on the environment. Beshbarmag Mount is a particularly popular bird spot along the Caspian Sea coast and serves as an important stopping point for migratory species, including the Imperial Eagle and Peregrine Falcon. (via AzerNews)
4. A paean to a BNI favorite – the Canada Jay: A bird descends through the falling snow above the mountains of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Its plumage is a near perfect match of the leaden clouds above. About the size of an American robin, the Canada jay alights on a branch and fixes its gaze on the pair of humans standing in snowshoes below. One of them, 81-year-old ornithologist Dan Strickland, has removed his glove in the late-winter cold. He repeats a series of squeaks made by loudly kissing the back of his hand. Soon, several more jays arrive. In less than two minutes, the first wild bird perches on his hand. (via Hakai Magazine)
5. “Brim with intelligence”…a Turkey Vulture? Yup, read on: To the general public, vultures may seem vaguely repulsive, Edward Gorey-type characters that skulk in bare trees waiting for something to die. But to researchers who study any of the 23 species in today’s vulture consortium, the birds brim with intelligence born of their exceptional vocation. Many animals feed on carrion opportunistically, when the occasion arises. Alone among vertebrates, vultures have taken scavenging professional. In lieu of hunting live prey, they seek out dead meat. That may seem easy — after all, everything dies. But because the time and place of an animal’s death are rarely predictable, the vulture’s reliance on carrion has forged, along with a flexible neck for poking into corpses and a featherless head for easy self-cleaning, a creative, cunning and wide-ranging mind. (via The New York Times)
6. Interesting question: From observation, controlled flight into terrain seems to be the most common failure. As with human-controlled aircraft, when vision becomes unexpectedly confused, birds fly into things, such as windows, with terrible regularity. Geese seem good at water landings, but I have watched them topple ignominiously when hitting a piece of weed or ice that didn’t register in their flight plan. Do winged animals like birds ever suffer comparable mishaps to those of human-made aircraft, such as aerodynamic stall, wing icing or hard landing? (via New Scientist)
7. Birding - Brightening up a gray day: Once you really see birds, they are all fascinating. Do you see that red dot on a herring gull’s lower mandible? The babies tap on that dot and the parent immediately regurgitates the food. And if you don’t want a gull to steal your chips, don’t hide them away and behave like a victim; you’ve got to stare the bird down. And did you know that blackbirds don’t sing in the dead of night – except in modern cities, where light pollution keeps them awake longer? Or that the Latin name for a thrush is turdus? Watching birds is a gateway into the natural world. They’re everywhere, and you don’t need any specialist equipment or knowledge to appreciate them: just open your eyes and a window, or better still, go for a walk. (via The Guardian)
8. Fighting the good (and difficult!) fight in Biscayne Bay: An island in Biscayne Bay’s northern basin that is home to marine birds is at risk because of increased boating activity, and Miami commissioners meeting on Thursday are set to decide whether or not to protect it. Mangrove Island is just across from Morningside Park. The area around it is a slow-speed zone, but environmental advocates say there are plenty of speeders on boats and personal watercrafts who are regularly disturbing the habitat. “This whole area is a slow-speed zone minimum wake, and every single day we see jet skis running through here,” said Laura Reynolds, the vice president of Friends of Biscayne Bay. It appears that those birds have now moved to Mangrove Island. In fact, The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission has deemed it an official rookery. It used to be peaceful here, but things changed after the pandemic. (via Local 10)
9. Studying the effects of weather conditions “in the moment” versus “averages” on nesting success: Cold snaps and heat waves associated with climate change lead to more deadly nest failures for songbirds, new Cornell research has found. Songbirds are already nesting earlier in spring because of warmer temperatures, but greater exposure to temperature variability is another danger that is especially perilous for nestlings, according to the study, “Inconsistent Shifts in Warming and Temperature Variability are Linked to Reduced Avian Fitness” published Nov. 16 in Nature Communications. (via Cornell Chronicle)
10. “Another window” opens on early avian evolution: The discovery of 27 avian footprints on the southern Australia coast — dating back to the Early Cretaceous when Australia was still connected to Antarctica — opens another window onto early avian evolution and possible migratory behavior. PLOS ONE published the discovery of some of the oldest, positively identified bird tracks in the Southern Hemisphere, dated to between 120 million and 128 million years ago. (via Science Daily)
11. Rare bird alert! A Cattle Tyrant makes first appearance ever in the U.S.: Corpus Christi is living up to its nickname as the birdiest city in America. A rare bird native to South America has been spotted in downtown Corpus Christi and that has dozens of bird enthusiasts flocking to the area to try and catch a glimpse. Turns out, a sight like this for the bird watching community is a big deal. It's also serious business for local tourism dollars. This latest bird sighting is one that will contribute to the millions of dollars estimated to come in to the border and coastal communities every year in the state of Texas from birding tourism. Joan Holt drove to Corpus Christi from Port Aransas and was armed with binoculars to view the Cattle Tyrant that was first spotted downtown on Sunday. (via Killii TV)
12. Whooping Cranes in the news: With assistance from the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation (LWFF), Audubon Nature Institute and the Dallas Zoo, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) added four new whooping cranes to its experimental population Sunday (Nov. 12) at LDWF’s White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area (WLWCA) in Vermilion Parish. LDWF and the Audubon Nature Institute have been longtime leaders in whooping crane conservation in Louisiana and continue to expand their partnership with the goal of establishing a self-sustaining population of whooping cranes in the state. (via Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries)
13. Yikes! Wild parakeets taking Brussels by storm: In the lively Brussels neighborhood of Flagey, you can be sure of two things: People will be lined up for fries at Frit Flagey, and pigeons will be nearby, pecking at scraps. Just a few hundred yards away, around dusk, a scene unfolds that feels distinctly less Belgian. Hundreds of electric-green parakeets, more commonly associated with the tropics of West Africa or India than gray, rainy Brussels, flock to a tree beside a pond. The number of rose-ringed parakeets in Brussels has swelled from just a few in the 1970s to about 10,000 today, becoming one of the most common birds in Brussels, after pigeons and sparrows. As populations of wild parakeets have grown — not only in Brussels but in London, Paris and more than 100 other cities in Europe — researchers are trying to understand how a tropical bird has flourished in cold climates. (via Yahoo! News)
14. Gold mines, mercury and tropical birds: The tropics are home to more than 75 percent of all species and are projected to support 50 percent of the world's human population by mid-century, but little is known about mercury pollution in these life-filled regions. A new study published in the journal Ecotoxicology sheds light on the problem by focusing on tropical birds. Researchers analyzed feathers collected from nine countries across Central America, South America and the West Indies and discovered some of the highest mercury concentrations ever found in songbirds, with one green kingfisher having 30 times the amount of mercury considered safe. In many cases, gold mining was the root of the problem. (via Phys Org)
15. Another take on solar storms’ effects on bird migration: Billions of birds migrate through the United States every spring and fall. Just-right conditions make the journey safer. Tailwinds are helpful, for example. Low cloud cover keeps the stars visible. And it’s best to avoid mass ejections of magnetized plasma from the Sun. Space weather such as solar winds and solar flares can interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, which birds use to navigate. Between 9% and 17% fewer birds migrate during severe space weather events. And in some cases, birds that did migrate had more difficulty navigating. The findings are timely, as the Sun is entering the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity. A lot of space weather makes for excellent atmospheric lights shows but could spell trouble for migrators. (via Eos)
16. Pretty specialized birding -spoiler alert, you need a boat: There are different forms of rarity in birding. There’s the classic, intuitive sort – a bird that is rare overall, like a California Condor. Then there are birds rare to your part of the world or for the time of year, like all these western birds that keep popping up, or the occasional mega rare European or Asian bird a lucky birder trips over now and again. There’s another category I don’t really mine very much, if ever – common birds in uncommon places. In this case, the common birds are various workaday New England songbirds, and the uncommon place is boats. What got me thinking about birds on boats, were some recent reports from a young biologist named Liam Waters. His boat is often over a hundred miles from shore, and while his seabird sightings have been appropriately interesting, it’s the songbird reports that have caught my eye. (via NPR Cape and Islands)
17. Backyard birding – winter tips: Researchers are discovering that birds’ menu choices change dramatically when they flip into fall mode. Many birds that spend the majority of the year eating insects, grubs and caterpillars turn to calorie-packed berries in autumn to furnish the energy boost they need. “Berries are really important food sources, especially at stopover sites,” says Susan Smith Pagano, associate professor of biology at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. But it’s not just any berries; Gallinat and other researchers have found that, when possible, songbirds prefer native berries. That’s where humans come in. Gardeners can help birds make smart food choices when it matters most by furnishing the right feast. (via The Washington Post)
18. Finally, for the architects among us, this from China: A sweeping roof designed to resemble a bird wing defines this restaurant, which Chinese studio Galaxy Arch has created on the grounds of an ancient temple on Dapi Mountain, China. Named Dapi Mountain Restaurant, the building is designed to provide a better experience for visitors to the peak in the Dapishan Scenic Area, which is a World Geological Heritage Site. Galaxy Arch's design is distinguished by the roof, which is informed by traditional clay sculptures made of local birds, nicknamed Gugu birds. These clay sculptures emulate the "gu gu" sound of the birds when air is blown into their tail. Dapi Mountain Restaurant fans out along the cliff edge and is intended to resemble the silhouetted wing of a Gugu bird perched on the mountain, ready to take flight. The entrances to the restaurant are positioned at either end, sheltered by the oversailing roof. (via Dezeen)
Bird Videos of the Week
By TVNZ Breakfast, “John Oliver’s püteketeke wins Bird of the Century”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Evening Grosbecks in Canada.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Clay-colored Thrush.