1. Let’s begin with “…this remarkable biome” – the Cerrado in crisis: As we park at the Pico dos Pireneus trailhead, my passenger, Estevão Santos, points to a pair of large grassland birds that immediately call to mind dinosaurs. Since 2016 he’s been working on a book about the birds of central Brazil that contains years of his observations and field studies, which have yielded new information about bird ecology, behavior, and biogeography. “Birds have revealed the landscape to me,” Santos says. That landscape is no simple swath of habitat. The Cerrado, South America’s second-largest biome after the Amazon and Earth’s most biodiverse tropical savanna, is made up of at least 19 different kinds of ecosystems. It’s hard to find a researcher who studies this ancient biome and has not become enthralled with it. (via Audubon)
2. David Sibley on illustrating birds: You don’t need to spend hours honing your illustration (unless you want to). As the master illustrator David Sibley, of the widely popular Sibley field guides, describes in the interview below, the most important aspect of drawing a bird may just be that it changes how you see. (via The New York Times)
3. The odd tale of “Tuffy”, the young Red-tailed Hawk “kidnapped” by a Bald Eagle: “Tuffy”, the immature red-tailed hawk who was “adopted” by a family of bald eagles and studied closely by a group of astonished Bay Area birders, has been found dead. The fledgling raptor’s body was found on the ground Wednesday morning, following two days of increasing concern over the animal’s health. The cause of death was not immediately known but was most likely starvation, said Doug Gillard, a professor of anatomy and physiology at Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward. Gillard and others found the body Wednesday morning and showed it to a raptor rehabilitator. It was also discovered that Tuffy was female. Tuffy’s short life was heavily documented by birders in Santa Clara County after Gillard, a former Olympian hammer-thrower, photographed the hawk chick in the talons of a female bald eagle and posted images to a popular birding Facebook page in Northern California. (via Los Angeles Times)
4. Everything but the Ivory-billed: After a successful career providing wildlife researchers with tools to investigate many living creatures, in retirement Robert Hawkins has focused on birds -- all over the world. Hawkins' photography studio has no walls. With a pair of binoculars constantly at hand, he scarcely ever ventures outdoors without a camera. Even indoors, he is looking out the window of his high seaside apartment, watching for a gull or frigate bird to exhibit some novel behavior that he can capture on film. In 2005, within hours of the Department of Interior's announcement of the supposed rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker near Brinkley, Hawkins, of Sail Boat Key, Fla., called an old college friend who lived near where a suspect bird was seen, and the two men camped in the Big Woods to look for that bird. In later years, he returned to the state with a couple of bird-photography acolytes. Those trips had similar outcomes. But the sheer size and global scope of Hawkins' avian photographic portfolio outweighs his inability to snap a picture of a ghostlike bird many believe no longer exits. (via El Donado News-Times)
5. Stewart Island/Rakiura – a birding paradise: Just a few short hours after stepping foot on Stewart Island/Rakiura I have already checked three birds off my ‘must see’ list. Only meters from the ferry that’s carried me across the blustery Favaux Strait to this southernmost New Zealand community, a group of variable oystercatchers is foraging on the foreshore. These endemic coastal seabirds are so incredibly striking with their jet-black feathers, bright coral-pink legs, and vivid orange markings around the eyes, like fluorescent eyeliner. While continuing along the bay and through the small township of Oban – the only settled area of this remote island 30km south of NZ’s South Island – my attention is drawn to rustling leaves in a small tree just off the footpath. Upon closer inspection, there among the branches is not one, but two tui. (via Australian Georgraphic)
6. From a reader who is a writer and podcast producer on Harvard historian Jill Lepore's “The Last Archive”, a wonderful podcast on NYC’s efforts to eliminate monk parakeets (spoiler alert: bet on the parakeets): When invasive parakeets began to spread in New York City in the 1970s, the government decided it needed to kill them all. The Last Archive’s recent episode “Parakeet Panic” tells the story of the offbeat panic about wild parrots, and a history of anxieties about population growth. The episode is a meticulous, zany recreation of the panic about invasive monk parakeets in New York City in the 1970s. The state tried (and failed) to kill every last monk parakeet, but the birds outlasted them and now have a raucous colony in the gates of the largest cemetery in Brooklyn. (via The Last Archive)
7. Gotta love the ingenuity: Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist who studies how wild animals repurpose human materials, thought he had seen everything. In his research on the common coot, a water bird often found in Dutch canals, he had discovered nests containing windshield wipers, sunglasses, plastic carnations, condoms and envelopes used to package cocaine. Still, he was not prepared for what he found when he went to investigate a strange nest that had been spotted outside a hospital in Antwerp, Belgium, in July 2021. Nestled near the top of a sugar maple tree was a Eurasian magpie nest that resembled a cyberpunk porcupine, with thin metal rods sticking out in every direction. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he recalled. “These are birds making a nest with anti-bird spikes.” (via The New York Times)
8. And speaking of man-made materials in nests, this study looks at risks and benefits: We all discard a huge amount of plastic and other human-made materials into the environment, and these are often picked up by birds. New research has shown that 176 bird species around the world are now known to include a wide range of anthropogenic materials in their nests. This material found in birds' nests can be both beneficial and harmful say researchers. (via Science Daily)
9. Always sad to read these kinds of stories: National Trust rangers have described their “heartbreak and worry” after recovering more than 600 dead chicks at Britain’s largest mainland colony of Arctic terns. The trust said on Mondaythat Long Nanny, on the coast of Northumberland, had been hit by a suspected outbreak of avian flu during the peak of the breeding season. Long Nanny is home to the nation’s largest breeding colony of Arctic terns with 1,600 breeding pairs this year, the highest number since 2018. The lead ranger James Porteus said “the season started so well” but two weeks ago they started to notice some chicks were dying. (via The Guardian)
10. Vaccines for condors?: With a wingspan of 9.5 feet, California condors are the largest birds in North America. They also are one of the most critically endangered. Population numbers declined throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, reaching a nadir of just 22 birds remaining in the wild in 1982. Myriad factors, including hunting, lead poisoning, habitat loss and the use of DDT contributed to this decline. Now, these magnificent birds now face a new threat—highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses. To combat this current hazard, conservation biologists are turning to a strategy that we rely on to protect ourselves from infectious agents, vaccines. (via Forbes)
11. Birds, glass and your home: Each year in the United States, up to one billion birds die after colliding with glass. In many areas, it’s a two-pronged problem: Light pollution attracts and disorients migratory birds, most of which travel at night; in the morning, birds collide with reflective glass that hasn’t been made bird-friendly. While many people assume this is a city problem—what with all those city lights and gleaming glass spires—a landmark 2014 study on bird collisions reached a surprising conclusion. The authors estimate that of those birds killed annually by building collisions, roughly 44% of those deaths occurred at residences, 56% at low-rises, and less than 1% at high-rises. Residences were defined as one to three stories tall, low-rises as four to 11 stories tall, and high-rise buildings as 12 stories or higher. (via Treehugger)
12. From the NY Times series on birding, finding “a love of birding by ear”: Michael Hurben, 56, first got into birding in his 20s. He also got interested in Claire Strohmeyer, who happened to be a more experienced birder. On their third date, when she mentioned that she was going on a walk with the Audubon Society, Mr. Hurben knew he had met the woman for him. “I just lost it, because she had been doing this her whole life,” he said. But just as Mr. Hurben’s interest in birding, and in Ms. Strohmeyer, was blossoming, his vision began to deteriorate. “It used to really bother me to not see birds. I had to come to grips with that eventually.” Although Mr. Hurben can no longer see at night and has no peripheral vision, he found a love of birding by ear. With a powerful microphone, he could identify and capture recordings of many birds without having to see them: “I said, ‘If I hear this and I get a recording of it, even if I don’t see it, I’m going to be happy with that.’ (via The New York Times)
13. Finally, one (hard) way to see puffins: Eastern Egg Rock, a tiny, seemingly nondescript, barren atoll located in outer Muscongus Bay, is one of a handful of locations along the Maine coast where Atlantic puffins come to nest. But it hasn’t always been that way. The colorful seabirds stopped returning to the rock around 1890. A variety of circumstances had driven them from their natural roosting habitat. Until 1973, there was no reason to believe they would ever return. That summer, a team led by Stephen Kress began a painstaking effort to bring puffins back to the rock. For more than a decade, Project Puffin relocated chicks from Newfoundland and raised them on Eastern Egg Rock. The goal was to instill an instinctive desire to return to breed. Despite their diligent efforts, 12 years passed before puffin pairs returned. Today, around 150 puffin parents raise their chicks on the rock each year. (via Bangor Daily News)
Bird Videos of the Week
By CBS Sunday Morning, “The Secret World Of Owls”
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Manaaki weigh-in.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Lucifer Hummingbird.