1. Birding paradise: After a canceled ski trip left me with spare time and an urge to travel, I hopped in the car and drove 8 hours to the far southern tip of Texas, where the Rio Grande River meets the Gulf of Mexico. This is one of the top birding sites in the Continental U.S. Amazingly, there was one room available at the famous Alamo Inn B&B (I suppose ski trips aren’t the only canceled trips in this era). The birding hotspots are concentrated along the easternmost 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, from Mission to South Padre Island. The region — a safe, friendly, and culturally vibrant home to 1.3 million people — was ground zero for Trump’s politicization of the border. In fact, several of the top birding sites were in danger of being cut off by his wall, a still-lingering threat that mobilized birders and local leaders to help save the area’s $500 million (low estimate) ecotourism economy. (via Daily Kos)
2. Whatever it takes for the Burrowing Owl: Settling into a new home can be tough for anyone. So scientists at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance have come up with some tricks to make transplanted burrowing owls feel like they are not alone in their new digs, playing owl sounds and scattering fake poop. Just dropping off the owls in prime habitat wasn’t enough, prior attempts showed. In a pilot program, scientists took pains to create the impression that owls already lived there so they’d stick around. And it worked. The scientists played recordings of owl calls before and after the new arrivals were released at four locations in Southern California. Wisinski used a syringe to squirt around fake owl poop — in reality, white paint. (via The Washington Post)
3. In the first days of the new year, on the marshy coastal edge of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, a hunter shot an American widgeon, a rusty-fronted duck with a pale beak and a brilliant green stripe. This was not a big deal; the state’s duck hunting season runs from Thanksgiving through the end of January. Neither was what happened next: Before taking it home, the hunter let a wildlife biologist affiliated with a government program swab the carcass for lab analysis. But what happened after that was a big deal indeed. After the sample went through its routine check at Clemson University, it made an unusual second stop at a federal lab halfway across the country, in Iowa. The news of what was in the sample percolated through a pyramid of agencies, and on January 14 the USDA revealed why it had attracted so much scrutiny: The South Carolina duck was carrying the Asian strain of H5N1 avian influenza, the first sighting of that pathogen in the continental US in years. (via Wired)
4. Bad news in Peru: A Lima zoo is racing to save dozens of seabirds, including protected penguins, left covered in oil after 6,000 barrels of crude spilled off Peru's coast in the aftermath of the Tonga tsunami. More than 40 birds, including Humboldt penguins – listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature – were brought to the Parque de Las Leyendas zoo after being rescued from polluted beaches and nature reserves. A team of veterinarians is caring for the birds, bathing them with special detergents to remove the suffocating oil. The animals have also been given anti-fungal and anti-bacterial drugs, as well as vitamins. (via Science Alert)
Another take on the story here.
5. The mystery of migration: Birds navigate in many ways, among them sight, smell, and even the stars. Perhaps most remarkably, they seem endowed with some kind of biological compass that helps them follow Earth’s magnetic field — an invisible field produced by the planet’s rotation and liquid-metal core. The mysteries of magnetic perception in birds have intrigued scientists for decades. Now we have some fresh clues into this astonishing ability. A new study in the journal Science suggests that Eurasian reed warblers — and likely other migratory songbirds — sense a specific aspect of Earth’s magnetic field, called the angle of inclination, to know where to roost on their journey north. It functions as a kind of magnetic address or “stop sign,” the researchers write, that tells the birds when they’ve arrived. (via Vox)
BNI recommends (again!) A World On The Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul.
6. Bird games: If you've spent more than five minutes online this month, you've likely either played Wordle or seen people sharing the results of their games. At this moment, that 6x5 grid of tiles seems virtually inescapable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wordle and its popularity have already inspired a slew of spinoffs. In fact, there's now one for the four-letter banding codes, or alpha codes, researchers use as shorthand for species' names—and it just so happened to be designed by Audubon's very own graphic designer Alex Tomlinson. Launched this week, BRDL has received rave reviews on Audubon Slack and Bird Twitter, so try your hand below to see if you can deduce which banding code is the mystery code of the day. If you're like most people and don't know your banding codes by heart, here's a full list. (via Audubon)
7. “Supertramps”: Beautiful "supertramp" birds in Southeast Asia are providing unique insights into how evolution is linked to flight ability and competition. New research testing decades-old theories has confirmed that the isolating effects of islands impact the evolution of even the species most accomplished at colonizing them — and in some surprising ways. Among the eye-opening findings is the discovery that these birds settle down more readily than would be expected — once they have colonized an island they tend to stay there rather than searching for others. (via Science Daily)
8. Do birds have a playlist?: The tweets of a little song sparrow and its "bird brain" are a lot more complex and akin to human language than anyone realized. A new study finds that male sparrows deliberately shuffle and mix their song repertoire possibly as a way to keep it interesting for their female audience. The research, from the lab of Stephen Nowicki, Duke University professor of biology and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, and colleagues at the University of Miami, shows that singing males keep track of the order of their songs and how often each one is sung for up to 30 minutes so they can curate both their current playlist and the next one. The findings appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Jan. 26. (via Phys Org)
9. Central Park comes through again: In 2018, there was the hot mandarin duck. In 2021, there was a snowy owl. And now this year, bird watchers are flocking to Central Park to see the latest aviary delight in New York City: a bald eagle. America's symbol has swooped in and is showing smaller prey who's boss. The bald eagle has been seen soaring over the reservoir and even hunting prey. David Barrett, perhaps better known on Twitter as Manhattan Bird Alert, has been following all the "bald eagle mania," as he called it. "We know it's 'Rover,' the one that had been visiting Brooklyn for a few years. We know it because of the tag on it, a metal tag, R-7," Barrett said. So when is the best time to try and catch a glimpse of the majestic ornithological find? "Between, say, the hours of 4 o'clock and sunset, that's the highest opportunity time to see the bald eagle on the Central Park Reservoir," according to Barrett. (via NBC New York)
10. Speaking of eagles, ZZ0768 going strong at 28 in the UK!: The UK's oldest white-tailed sea eagle has been identified on the Isle of Mull after being spotted in film shot for BBC Winterwatch. The male is called Skye, after the island where he hatched in 1994. Now in his 28th year, the bird of prey was identified by a British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) ring attached to a leg before he fully fledged. The number - ZZ0768 - was visible in footage shot by cameraman Jim Manthorpe for Winterwatch. Skye's mate of 25 years, Frisa, would be older at 30 years old, if ornithologists can confirm she is still alive. Frisa hatched on Mull in 1992. (via BBC)
11. On January 25, 2022 the National Audubon Society in New York announced a newly published study of birds in the eastern United States. The study is based on 90 years of data from citizen scientists who participated over decades in Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count. It shows a response from these birds to climate change and habitat availability. The researchers sorted 89 species of eastern U.S. birds into groups. All groups of birds were seen responding to climate-related changes in temperature and precipitation, as these factors affected their winter ranges. For example, large forest birds and woodpeckers are now wintering farther north than before. (via EarthSky)
12. Travel tip if you need the Agami Heron for your life list: Costa Rica Focus designs some of the best Costa Rica birding tours and bird photography tours for bird lovers and bird watchers. In line with the usual practice, they have announced their upcoming birding tour dubbed Quest for the Agami Heron. The new tour, Quest for the Agami Heron, takes participants to the only known Agami Heron nesting site in Central America. The spokesperson for the company, announcing the tour, said: “The best time to see this elusive, colorful Agami Heron is when they are nesting. They gather by the hundreds in remote areas to breed and raise their chicks. We are very lucky to have a large nesting site, right here in Costa Rica, the only known nesting colony in Central America.” (via Digital Journal)
Bird Photos of the Week
Photo by Rick Bunting, American Kestrel (Bainbridge, NY)
@USFWS, Coyote v. Trumpeter Swan.
Bird Videos of the Week
By Vox, “Why Some Animals are Shrinking”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Night Owls.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Day Owls.
I put my $ on the swan. Partner did his PhD on trumpeters in WY 30 ish years ago. They can break a leg with the leading edge of that wing.