1. Hitchcockian: On a sunny Thursday afternoon along a tree-lined street in Rome, locals shielded themselves with umbrellas. Others pulled jackets above their heads in fear. Some grabbed wooden sticks for protection. The crows were out and the fight was on. Two black carrion crows swooped down on the unprotected head of a woman passing by. They yanked her gray hair with their beaks and hooked her shirt with their talons. Romans already must contend with a plague of predatory sea gulls, and a deluge of bird poop every year when up to a million starlings stop in the city during their yearly migration from Northern Europe. The annual attack of the crows is one ornithological headache they could do without. (via The New York Times)
2. Is California just trying to keep up with Florida?: Though they’re not enshrined as the state bird, as the California quail is, or protected as an endangered species, as the California condor is, there’s something quintessentially Californian about these boisterous, screeching, blue-and-gray birds that can be seen in parks, yards and wooded areas along the western part of the Golden State, as well as the Pacific Northwest and Baja California. “They’re incredibly intelligent birds” and play an important ecological role, Nicole Michel, the National Audubon Society’s director of quantitative science explained. They store acorns in caches, “and they can remember up to 200 different caches.” When the birds forget, and the conditions are right, some of those acorns become oak trees. (via Los Angeles Times)
3. 1899: A team of ornithologists from the American Bird Conservancy and Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology has captured the first-ever clear images and recorded the call of the Urich’s tyrannulet (Phyllomyias urichi). This is only the fourth time the species has been scientifically documented since it was first described in 1899. The Urich’s tyrannulet is a small, yellow-green flycatcher in the family Tyrannidae. The species is endemic to the Turimiquire region of northeastern Venezuela. It has a short bill, a long tail, a pinkish lower mandible, whitish lores, and yellowish wingbars. (via Sci News)
4. Sneaky little rascals: Siberian jays are sneaky little rascals. These tiny corvids can use bird lies to try and trick other flocks into leaving a territory, so that the interlopers can move in and nick their food. But it seems that other Siberian jays (Perisoreus infaustus) are also wise to this ruse. New research has found that breeding members of a family group can distinguish between the warning cries of their own flock, and the warning cries of would-be trespassers. They mate for life and tend to live in small flocks of fewer than 10 members, with one dominant breeding pair. Within this group, they have been found to exhibit nepotistic alarm calling: when danger is nearby in the form of a predator, they sound a cry that will alert family members, telling them to scarper. (via Science Alert, Science Direct)
5. Despite our fascination with birdsong, we are only beginning to figure out how this complicated behavior is being produced and which extraordinary specializations enabled songbirds to develop the diverse sound scape we can listen to every morning. Songbirds produce their beautiful songs using a special vocal organ unique to birds, the syrinx. It is surrounded by muscles that contract with superfast speed, two orders of magnitude faster than e.g. human leg muscles. "We found that songbirds have incredible fine control of their song, including frequency control below one Hertz," says Iris Adam, lead author on the study and Assistant Professor at Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark. (via Science Daily)
6. Good drones: Just picture it. The seemingly endless mass of black-browed albatrosses and penguins create a patchwork quilt of white, brown and black with pops of orange leading down to the choppy blue waters of the Atlantic. You traveled by air and sea to hike the rugged terrain in this particular spot in the Falkland Islands, this place cluttered by the noise of the albatrosses’ calls. Now, start counting. This boots-on-the-ground method has for decades been the traditional way in which wildlife biologists count seabird colonies, large and small. But the use of drones paired with emerging software technology is starting to change that, affording biologists a means of more quickly and accurately monitoring large seabird populations, a job researchers point out is important because these populations help, among other things, detect changes in the environment. (via Coastal Review)
7. Bad drones!: About 3,000 elegant tern eggs were abandoned at a southern California nesting island after a drone crashed and scared off the birds. Two drones were flown illegally over the Bolsa Chica ecological reserve in Huntington Beach in May and one of them went down in the wetlands, the Orange County Register said. Fearing an attack from a predator, several thousand terns abandoned their ground nests, according to the state department of fish and wildlife. Now, during the month when the birds would be overseeing their eggs as they begin to hatch, the sand is littered with egg shells. It’s one of the largest-scale abandonments of eggs ever at the coastal site about 100 miles (160 km) north of San Diego, according to the reserve manager, Melissa Loebl. (via The Guardian)
8. Remarkable: When under attack, people and animals alike have an inbuilt fight or flight instinct. But hatchlings of ground-nesting birds can neither flee nor defend themselves; their response in the face of danger is to hunker down and mute their cries. It turns out that this innate behavior does not just begin on hatching. Surprisingly, it is already evident while chicks are still in the egg. The study, in the journal Ibis, focused on Red-capped Plovers and Masked Lapwings, both shorebird species in southeastern Australia. Embryos of these birds typically emit embryonic calls—vocalizations from within the egg that occur in the last few days of incubation prior to hatching. (via Audubon)
9. The power of technology: A plump robin wearing a tiny metal backpack with an antenna hops around a suburban yard in Takoma Park, then plucks a cicada from the ground for a snack. Ecologist Emily Williams watches through binoculars from behind a bush. Once the bird moves on at season’s end, she’ll rely on the backpack to beam frequent location data to the Argos satellite, then back to Ms. Williams’ laptop, to track it. The goal is to unravel why some American robins migrate long distances, but others do not. With more precise information about nesting success and conditions in breeding and wintering grounds, “we should be able to tell the relative roles of genetics versus the environment in shaping why birds migrate,” said Ms. Williams. (via Christian Science Monitor)
10. For canaries, just seeing their feathered friends get sick may be enough to preemptively rev up their immune systems. Healthy birds housed within view of fellow fowl infected with a common pathogen mounted an immune response, despite not being infected themselves. Precisely how much these alterations actually protect the birds remains unclear, she says. Immune systems are like sentinels, patrolling the body for invaders and calling in the cavalry once a pathogen is detected. Traditionally, pathogens have to actually get into bodies to spur that sort of response. But some research has previously hinted that perceived threats can whip up immune cells. (via Royal Society Publishing, Science News)
11. It’s hard to describe how fragile a nestling is — its weightless, hollow bones; its tender, translucent skin; its veins visibly pulsing with every heartbeat. I tucked my fingers gently under the baby’s breast. It was cold and still, its head was down and its eyes were closed, but for an instant it lifted its head and gaped at me. I could see right down its tiny scarlet throat. The best thing to do for a healthy nestling is always to return it to the nest. If the parents are alive, they’ll start caring for their baby again. We peered up into our pine tree. No nest, at least not one low enough to see from the ground, and no sign of the baby’s parents. (via The New York Times)
12. This is cool: Puffins have returned to the Calf of Man for the first time in more than 30 years with the help of a special program using model "decoys" of the seabirds to help lure them back. It is though the population had declined due to an increase in brown rats, which prey on eggs. Now there is evidence of the puffins forming a colony on the Calf after they were spotted carrying nesting material. Warden Aron Sapsford described their return as "a piece of history". Following a program to eradicate the rats, an annual "decoy puffin" project, which sees models placed on cliff tops along with a sound system playing the bird's call, was set up in 2016 in a bid to attract them to nest in the area. (via The BBC)
Bonus: From friendly Antarctic penguins to the rainbow plumage of a Colombian hummingbird, The Guardian readers share their favorite images – and the lengths they went to to capture them. “I took this photo at the end of January in Balloch, Scotland. I have always wanted to take a picture of a male mandarin duck. It is the bird that made me want to start taking photographs. They are beautiful, with so many stunning colours. At the end of January, I had heard via Facebook that there was a pair of them up the road from me. I got up early and drove to Balloch. I had all but given up hope, when all of a sudden I saw the bright orange tail feathers of the duck in between some bushes on the river’s edge. I had to lean on a tree that was in the water to take the pictures. I then fell into the water and tore my trousers, but it was worth it”. Paul Fraser, 36, freshwater biologist, Callander, Scotland (via The Guardian)
Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Snowy Owl in June 2021.
Videos of the Week
By Grassland Bird Trust, “Grassland Conservation for Birds & People”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Ospreys learning to feed.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Owls on Hickory.