1. Let’s start with a nice story about a (Sarus) Crane’s friendship with a villager: A year ago Arif Gurjar found a sarus crane lying injured and bleeding in the fields of his farm in Mandka village, Uttar Pradesh. He told The Times how he brought it home where his wife, two children and parents helped him to nurse the bird back to health. With no vet in the area, they tried various home remedies. The one that worked was mixing mustard oil and turmeric into a paste, applying it to the wound and bandaging it. “In that time, he walked very, very slowly. After a month, we removed the bandage and found that he could stand on his feet,” Gurjar, 30, said. (via The Times)
2. Spring is ‘unfurling its annual magnificence weeks ahead of the norm” and it terrifies this NYT writer: Before the winter visitors had even packed their bags, the residents were choosing nest sites. Every time I walked out the back door, I startled a Carolina wren investigating the mesh bag of clothespins hanging on the line. I would gladly cede my clothesline to a wren family for the spring, but so far no domed nest has appeared among the clothespins. I figured the wrens were only doing what wrens normally do on any warm day in February: scouting out the options for a nesting season that would commence some time hence. Most songbirds seem to understand that warmth in winter is unlikely to last, that another Arctic blast is bound to stomp in before true spring finally shivers into green. Or maybe it’s just that winter always comes back quickly enough for them to give up on the idea of nesting. This year it didn’t. (via The New York Times)
3. Bird feeder hierarchy and the role of a bird’s social life: Anyone with a bird feeder knows that winter can be a season of high drama. With wild food sources hard to find, offerings of seed and suet can draw a crowd—and lots of tussling. Watch closely, and you’ll see winners and losers. Some birds stand their ground, and others flee at the first sign of conflict. Bigger birds tend to be victorious in these skirmishes, but a new study published in The Proceedings of the Royal Society considered a subtler factor that affects feeder hierarchy: social life. It turns out, the most social birds—the ones that tend to show up in a group—are the least likely to win a face-off against an outside challenger of comparable size. (via Audubon Magazine)
4. More great work from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Center for Conservation Media: The Center for Conservation Media worked with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the nation’s largest private conservation grant-maker, to produce four films about ongoing projects in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana supported by NFWF. Each of these pieces tells its own story. Together, they showcase the power of partnership to achieve conservation goals in working lands. (via The Cornell Lab)
5. ARU’s, BirdNET and managing for looming changes in the environment: The eastern black rail, a subspecies of bird that’s scattered in clusters along America’s eastern coastlines, is one of the most elusive creatures a wildlife biologist can choose to study. Adults are the size of a human hand, and are dark and shy, the better to hide among the dense marsh grasses under which they skulk and scurry. Hard-core birders try in vain to check this subspecies off their life lists; those who do usually hear the bird rather than see it. Professionals do little better: Christy Hand, a biologist with the state of South Carolina who’s been studying the eastern black rail for nearly 10 years, has seen only a few, each for just a few seconds. For the past decade, Hand has pursued these minute birds throughout her study area in the ACE Basin, named for the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto Rivers and one of the largest undeveloped estuaries along the U.S. Atlantic Coast. Though she is still unsure exactly how many eastern black rails live there—a few score? a few hundred?—they’ve inhabited her mind. (via The Atlantic)
6. More on the disturbing disease known as “plasticosis” from Science Alert: One of the most plastic-contaminated birds in the whole world is silently suffering from a novel, emerging disease scientists have coined 'plasticosis'. It's reportedly the first time researchers have ever documented and quantified the pathological effects of ingested plastic in wild animals, and it's got scientists stressing about the health of more than just one species. The new findings suggest sharp plastic fragments can literally tear some seabirds apart from the inside. Plastic pollution is thought to affect over 1,200 marine species at just about every level of the food web, and yet scientists still don't know what impact ingested or inhaled synthetic fibers and fragments are having on animal health. (via Science Alert)
7. Nice report on the newly renovated National Zoo’s Bird House, in Washington, D.C.: Have you ever looked at a duck? I mean really looked at one. If you have, then you’ve probably noticed how a duck somehow manages to appear graceful and goofy at the same time, with her rounded head nestled perfectly into her body and her rubbery feet flapping beneath the water. I indulged in this for a while this week during a tour of the National Zoo’s Bird House, in Northwest Washington, D.C. After six years of renovation, the exhibit will finally reopen on March 13. There, I met diving bufflehead ducks, friendly northern pintails, and charming ruddy ducks; I saw nonducks too, including shorebirds with their spindly circus legs and tiny fluttering warblers. (via The Atlantic)
8. Floridians take note! Shorebirds are nesting: Shorebird and seabird nesting season began February 15 all over Florida, so it’s important to protect the birds and their eggs. Susie Derheimer, a Coastal Environmental Specialist with Charlotte County, says the birds lay their eggs directly on the sand at the beach, so they are completely exposed and easy to miss. Charlotte and other counties mark nesting areas with line fencing. Derheimer asks that people who see a nest stay away from it. “Don’t go near it,” says Derheimer. “There could be some eggs outside of it, so always be aware. If you are near a nesting area, birds will become agitated, you’re too close, you need to move away. Certain birds will divebomb you, so you will know for sure you are disturbing the birds. Other birds are a little more passive and they will actually do a broken wing display. (via WUSF News)
9. USFW helping this rare woodpecker gain ground in Virginia: Piney Grove Preserve in Virginia is not an island. But 20 years ago, a rare bird was stranded there. At the time, the 3,200-acre preserve was home to the last two breeding pairs of red-cockaded woodpeckers in the state. Over decades, most of the state’s old-growth pine forests, which red-cockaded woodpeckers need to survive, had disappeared — removing a bridge to the species’ future. Although the federally protected bird is found in 10 other states in the southeastern and central U.S., Virginia is the farthest north. That's why state, nonprofit, university, and federal partners have collaborated for years in Virginia to not only restore the rare habitat the species depends upon, but also reintroduce birds from healthy populations in other parts of its range. (via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
10. Encouraging update on “Lights Out” efforts across the country: Lights Out launched slightly more than 20 years ago in the United States, and over the last eight years or so has rapidly gained traction across North America. The goal of the program is simple: Get property owners, building managers, and local governments to shut off, shield, or dimall unnecessary lighting during spring and fall migration when billions of night-flying migratory birds make their way north and south, in an effort to reduce bird-building collisions. Recently, Audubon set a goal to bring Lights Out to the 20 most-dangerous metropolitan areas for migratory birds, considering artificial light at night and numbers of birds passing through in migration. As of today, we have worked with local stakeholders and Audubon chapters to make sure Lights Out programs are in 18 of those top 20, the latest of which were Nashville, Tennessee and Miami, Florida. (via Audubon)
11. Helping one another – fairywrens behaving like…well, humans: What do superb fairywrens have in common with humans? They are more likely to help a family member in distress than a stranger. The study, from scientists at Monash University and the Australian National University, tracked the beloved songbirds in the first research to focus on understanding how animals that live in a multi-level society, like humans, decide to help one another when in need. When a member of a superb fairywren’s family is being attacked, the researchers found it will risk life and limb to distract the predator. The bird will raise an alarm call, or puff up its plumage and scurries around like a mouse in what is known as a “rodent run”. (via The Guardian)
12. This week’s H5N1 update – is it time for a flu vaccine? The wave of avian influenza H5N1—which so far has hit 76 countries, triggered national emergencies, and created the worst animal-disease outbreak in US history—keeps roaring through wild birds and commercial poultry. In the US, where losses are close to 60 million, industry experts are talking quietly about taking a step they have long resisted: vaccinating commercial chickens, laying hens, turkeys, and ducks against the flu. That doesn’t sound controversial; after all, flu shots for humans are routine, and chickens already receive a handful of vaccinations in the first days of their lives. But only a few countries routinely vaccinate poultry against avian influenza. Introducing a vaccine could trigger trade bans that would crush the enormous US export market, turn sectors of the poultry trade against each other, and possibly provoke consumer uneasiness about food safety. (via Wired)
13. Finally, don’t know much about the White-winged Flufftail? Well, here you go: Rails and crakes are often difficult to detect, concealed among wetland sedges and reeds and reluctant to break cover. The same is true of their near relatives, the flufftails – African endemics that are similar to small crakes and named after the stub of abraded tail feathers that juts out of their rear ends. Very rare and highly reclusive, perhaps the most cryptic of all is White-winged Flufftail. Flufftails are nine tiny waterbird species that belong to the family Sarothruridae, now split from the rail family Rallidae. All belong to the same genus (the family also includes two species of Madagascan woodrails and four species of New Guinean and Indonesian forest rails). Flufftails are shy birds, but White-winged singularly fails to herald its presence. Of the 10,369 species hosted by the bird-sound website Xeno-canto, there is no recording of White-winged Flufftail, and what recordings there are mostly circulate in academic circles. (via BirdLife International)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Black Skimmers, Longboat Key, FL.
Bird Videos of the Week
By Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Epic Red-tailed Hawk Nest Building by the Cornell Hawks”.
By Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Great Backyard Bird Count 2023: Thank You!”
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Bermuda Petrel Nest.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - DNA Results!