1. A big number from big data: There are roughly 50 billion individual birds in the world, a new big data study by UNSW Sydney suggests - about six birds for every human on the planet. The study - which bases its findings on citizen science observations and detailed algorithms - estimates how many birds belong to 9700 different bird species, including flightless birds like emus and penguins. It found many iconic Australian birds are numbered in the millions, like the Rainbow Lorikeet (19 million), Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (10 million) and Laughing Kookaburra (3.4 million). But other natives, like the rare Black-breasted Buttonquail, only have around 100 members left. The findings are being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (via EurekaAlert)
2. Record breakers: Swifts aren't called "swifts" for nothing. They're known for being among the fastest migrating small birds around. When they aren't breeding, common swifts stay in the air most of the time--up to 10 months of the year. Scientists had thought they travel about 500 kilometers per day on average. Now, new evidence reported in the journal iScience on May 20 shows that's a conservative estimate. According to new tracking data, common swifts travel 570 kilometers (more than 350 miles) on an average day — but they are capable of going much farther and faster. The maximum recorded distance in the study was more than 830 kilometers (more than 500 miles) per day over nine days. (via EurekaAlert)
3. 100 years: Birders from across the globe travel to Port Aransas every winter, seeking a rare chance to see whoopers and other migratory species. There’s even a Whooping Crane Festival each February. But until now, the birds were just passing through. As the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week, two pairs of whooping cranes are nesting in Texas for the first time in more than a hundred years. These four birds aren’t part of the Aransas flock; instead, they’re from a nonmigratory population that was reintroduced to Louisiana’s White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area in 2011. They’ve built their nests on private land in Chambers County, roughly an hour east of Houston and four hours northeast of the Aransas refuge. For environmentalists, their presence is a hopeful sign that the endangered species is making a comeback. (via Texas Monthly)
4. Lights Out Update - Philadelphia: Nearly twenty buildings in Philadelphia are dimming their lights this spring after thousands of birds perished in the city's largest mass collision in recent history. The voluntary measure has been coordinated by "Bird Safe Philly" and continues until May 30 with the purpose of sparing the lives of some of the 100 million birds passing over the City of Brotherly Love on their semiannual migrations. To some, it might seem more intuitive to leave the lights on to help birds steer clear of buildings, but Robert Peck, a senior fellow at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, explains most migrating fowl navigate by light; the sun, the moon and the stars. (via CNN)
5. Brood X: As the emergence of 17-year cicadas, commonly referred to as Brood X, approaches, animal keepers are gearing up to keep an extra close eye on their charges, especially those that eat insects, to make sure they don't over-indulge. Local songbirds, including chickadees, bluebirds and cardinals, will take advantage of their abundance too, something Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center scientists are eager to study. Most of the songbirds that nest in and around Washington, D.C., feed their chicks insects. In a year where billions of extra numbers of extra-big bugs expected, scientists theorize more chicks should survive to adulthood. (via Smithsonian’s National Zoo)
6. What does Immanuel Kant know?: Immanuel Kant wrote that only humans are capable of appreciating beauty — a claim refuted soundly by the existence of the peacock. The peacock’s fabulous, extravagant tail was not crafted for our appreciation. As Charles Darwin understood, and as subsequent science has proved, the intended audience for the peacock’s beauty is the lady peacock, or peahen, who is most apt to mate with the male whose tail she finds most enthralling. Still, it’s hard for a human to resist a peacock’s allure. When the journalist Sean Flynn saw one sitting on a farm roof, he was awe-struck. “The feathers were “sparks of green and gold, copper and turquoise, burgundy and blue-black, all of them flashing and fading again with the slightest movement. … It was the most magnificent creature I had ever seen” he writes. (via The New York Times)
7. …And you don’t actually need to be in Alberta; many western states are home to these beautiful birds in Spring as well: Bird migration starts in early March, and it's in full swing on Alberta lakes where water birds like black-necked stilts are engaging in a courtship dance. With thin pink legs, black-and-white plumage and long black bills, black-necked stilts are striking, naturalist Brian Keating said. "These birds, they are something else," he said. Though dignified in appearance, they will jump up and down flapping their wings in the presence of predators in what is called a "popcorn display." Related to avocets, they primarily stick to shallow water, and Keating said they have a discernible walk when stalking prey. (via CBC)
8. You DO need to be in China for these birds this Spring: Birds' breeding season has arrived in Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northwest China. Birds like the great bustard, black grouse and grey heron have started their busy days of dating in grassland or lakes. In order to ensure the safety of bird breeding, the local Forest Public Security Bureau has strengthened the inspection of bird breeding places and other areas where wild animals cluster. Efforts have also been invested in raising people's awareness of bird love and bird protection by organizing a variety of publicity activities. (via CGTN)
9. The joy of seeing Red Kites: It is an extraordinarily beautiful bird. A head of pale blue tattering to a hood above bronze plumage, with a yellow beak that hooks black. Those eyes, were you lucky enough to get close, are cloud-pale and sharp with a full-stop pupil. Once, the red kite was better known as the dead kite. Like vultures, they suffer for being smart. The red kite was hunted to death for being vermin in England and Scotland in the 19th century. Its reintroduction in the 1990s was a triumph; those poisoning it today have to do it quietly. Or accidentally, whilst trying to illegally kill something else. Here I see dozens in a week. It’s always a thrill. Not just the bird, but its implication. (via The Guardian)
10. Citizen Science at the helm: When cruising-guide author and voyager Diana Doyle first approached me about contributing to her citizen-science project, Birding Aboard, I hesitated. I didn’t think I was qualified, having only just gotten into birding in a very amateur, casual way. I’m a sailor, not a birder. True, I’m a sailor who likes birds, especially the pretty ones and the comic ones, but I didn’t consider myself a birder, and certainly not any kind of scientist. Diana managed to persuade me, though, mostly by assuring me that I could just submit incidental sightings. In short, any and all sightings are valuable to the Birding Aboard project, which catalogs the birds of the open ocean that are so underrepresented in bird counts around the world for the simple reason that not very many people spend significant time offshore. (via Cruising World)
11. BNI Photo Tip: Wildlife photography can be a challenging endeavor, and one of the hardest techniques to master is capturing a bird in flight. Many birds are extremely agile on the wing, which makes them unpredictable and therefore difficult to track. Long lenses like the best lenses for bird photography are a must but, with birds regularly flying close (and sometimes into) the crowd, you don’t need to invest in a big 600mm lens for these displays. Anything above 200mm (in 35mm terms) will do – and unless you’re taking shots in particularly dark woodland, or at dusk, a fast aperture isn’t a must, either. (via Digital Camera World)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Juvenile Great Horned Owl.
Bird Videos of the Week
By William Morrow, “Jeff Guidry and His Eagle Named Freedom”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Savannah Osprey.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - American Kestrel Feeding.