1. We start with some cool stats from the Cornell Lab’s October Big Day: On 8 October, people in 185 countries around the world joined together to celebrate birds for October Big Day. More than 34,670 contributors reported an incredible 7,453 species on 80,000 checklists, setting THREE new records for the single biggest day in October birding history! An extra warm welcome to the 2,800 contributors around the world who eBirded for the first time on October Big Day. This year’s global team featured an astounding 2,000 more participants than last year, including 600 participants in Africa, 2,160 in Asia, 2,960 in Europe, and 5,460 in Central and South America. (via ebird)
2. Well, this is not surprising: Joan Strassmann can rattle off trivia about birds as quickly as a Peregrine falcon can blast through the sky. Did you know that Northern flickers coax their young to leave their nests by continuously shrieking? That American coots sometimes sneak eggs into other hens’ nests? Here’s another fun, feathered fact: Birdwatching—or even simply listening—can lead to an array of mental-health benefits in humans, including long-lasting stress relief. “The mental-health benefits are profound,” says Strassmann, who’s the author of the new book Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard. “Sitting outside and listening to the birds and getting to know their songs is really calming. And to me, the special thing about birds is that they can leave—they don’t have to be there, but they have chosen to be where you are, and at some point, they’ll move on.” (via Time)
3. Excellent mimics: On a dusky evening in 2007, while completing her Ph.D., Laura Kelley was traipsing through the backwoods of Queensland, Australia, when she heard her landlady shouting for her cat. Bonnie! Bonnie! Bonnie! came the call, just as it did every mealtime. Kelley peered across the property, hoping to say hello—but the woman was nowhere to be found. Only when Kelley gazed upward did she discover the true source of the sound: a spotted bowerbird perched in a nearby tree. Spotted bowerbirds are just one of hundreds of avian species that can mimic a whole menagerie of sounds—the laughter of children, the roar of a chainsaw, the wail of a police siren, the click of a camera shutter. There are birds that mimic other birds; there are birds that mimic more than one bird at once. (via The Atlantic)
4. The importance of coastal islands cannot be overemphasized: As day breaks on a hazy August morning, Virginia’s barrier islands rest lightly on the horizon. Through a peach-colored dawn, they seem to float on the coastal bays they shelter. It’s not yet six o’clock and Alexandra Wilke, a coastal scientist with The Nature Conservancy, is headed to one of the southern islands to check on a late brood of piping plover chicks. A federally endangered species, the plovers nest on pebble- and shell-covered beaches within reach of the sea and whatever predators happen to be prowling the area. A prolonged nor’easter in early May wiped out the plovers’ first nesting attempts, but eight plover couples and 27 pairs of another shorebird of conservation concern, American oystercatchers, successfully re-nested on the island to which we’re headed. (via Chesapeake Bay Magazine)
5. Found at last (in Papua New Guinea): A September expedition to Papua New Guinea confirmed via video the existence of the black-naped pheasant pigeon, a critically endangered species that has not been reported for 140 years. “For much of the trip, it seemed like we had no chance of finding this bird,” said Jordan Boersma, co-leader of the expedition and a postdoctoral researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The group captured the first-ever video and still photos of the bird, a large ground-dwelling species with a rust-colored back, a black head and body, and a bobbing pheasant-like tail. It may only exist far inland on Fergusson Island in hot, extremely rugged geothermal terrain laced with twisty rivers and dense with biting insects and leeches. (via Cornell Chronicle)
6. More than the Amur Falcon (177 species to be exact): A recent birding drive — Tokhü Emong Bird Count (TEBC), organised in Nagaland during Tokhü Emong post-harvest festival of the Lotha Nagas, has documented a total of 178 bird species in the state. Birders uploaded 84 checklists to eBird, an online platform to record their observations. This four-day drive organized Nov 4-7, 2022 comprises 18 eBirders from the north-eastern state of Nagaland, known as the “Falcon Capital of the World”. A total of 72 species, including an exciting record of Brown Shrike was reported on the first day of the drive. Seven species of warblers — Ashy-throated, Buff-barred, Yellow-browed, Dusky, Grey-cheeked, Greenish, and Yellow-bellied Warblers were reported. (via Down to Earth)
7. Gotcha: A Cuban citizen living in Madison, Wisconsin is charged with 3 counts of violating the Migratory Bird Trafficking Act in an indictment returned on October 12, 2022, by a federal grand jury sitting in Madison. The indictment is announced by Timothy M. O’Shea, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin. The indictment charges Iglesias with 3 counts of selling migratory birds, specifically Yellow-faced Grassquits, in violation of federal law. The charges against him are the result of an investigation by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Graber is handling the prosecution. (via U.S. Department of Justice)
8. Just in time: After more than two decades of pleas from conservation groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday announced protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a flamboyant, stocky bird that once covered America’s grasslands in the hundreds of thousands but whose population has since dwindled to roughly 30,000. Two populations of the chicken, which are a type of grouse, will be listed under the Endangered Species Act, providing the species federal protection when the rule takes effect in January, the wildlife agency said in a news release. The birds’ northern population — which are spread across the grasslands of central and western Kansas, central Oklahoma and the northeast panhandle of Texas — were designated as “threatened.” (via The New York Times)
9. More thoughts on the “U.S. State of the Birds” report: The new U.S. State of the Birds report presents a sobering picture about the health of our bird populations, with continuing declines in songbirds, shorebirds, and more. Yet there is also a hopeful story: the report found significant increases in populations of waterfowl, thanks to longstanding investments in conservation. This insight provides important lessons as we chart a path forward and continue to advocate for policies that will help bring birds back. Published by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, this report is the first look at our bird populations since 2019, when Science published a study that found a loss of nearly three billion North American birds since 1970. (via Audubon)
10. Irish Whiskey owner all in for birds: Endangered species like the Red Panda or the Whale Shark might be the glitzy stars of the conservation world, but Chris O’Dowd has thrown his support behind saving the common bird. The Irish actor has partnered with Redbreast Irish Whiskey and BirdLife International for a campaign to keep “common birds common,” kicking off on Nov. 17, Robin Redbreast Day. The redbreast not only adorns the label of the range of single malt whiskeys but is also the unofficial bird of Ireland, often seen on holiday cards perched on a branch of holly. “We can probably learn more about what’s happening with birds more from those that are common than those that are endangered,” said O’Dowd in an interview. (via Forbes)
11. Researchers bring “another perspective” to turbulence: A new study led by Swansea University has shown how the flight of birds can offer a meteorological insight into fine scale environmental conditions. Whilst all animals that fly need to respond to atmospheric turbulence, little is known about how this is accomplished, with traditional methods for measuring it in nature being logistically difficult and costly. Academics from Swansea University collaborated on a new approach with the University of Leeds, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz, which involved flying a small aircraft along and close to the track of pigeons as they travelled back to their loft, measuring the turbulence levels on the study site during each journey. (via Science Daily)
12. Then there’s this study from Nature: Understanding how weather conditions affect animal populations is essential to foresee population changes in times of global climate shifts. However, assessing year-round weather impacts on demographic parameters is hampered in migratory animals due to often unknown occurrence in space and time. Researchers have addressed this by coupling tracking and weather data to explain extensive variation in apparent survival across 19 years in a northern European population of little ringed plovers (Charadrius dubius). Over 90 percent of tracked individuals followed migration routes along the Indo-European flyway to south India. Building on capture–recapture histories of nearly 1400 individuals, we found that between-year variation in precipitation during post-breeding staging in northern South Asia explained 47 percent of variation in apparent adult survival. (via Nature)
13. A hospital just for falcons (in Qatar, of course): The Souq Waqif, Doha’s ancient marketplace, unspools from the nearby bay like a roll of precious fabric. A medieval maze of narrow alleyways linked to a wide main plaza, the Souq has long served as a trading post for Bedouin arriving by camel and travelers in small boats. But today, as one of the city’s last surviving historic urban spaces, the Souq also serves the rapidly modernizing emirate as a link to a history and a culture that is fading. Nowhere is that clash of past and present more apparent than at the market’s falcon hospital, a state-of-the-art medical facility dedicated to caring for animals that have been revered here for centuries. “In Qatar, falcons are a symbol of dignity, valor and pride,” said Dr. Ikdam M. Alkarkhi, the hospital’s Iraqi-educated director and veterinary consultant. (via Los Angeles Times)
14. And finally from Al Jazeer (yes, Al Jazeera) a nice piece on a favorite BNI topic - seabirds: Scientists are tracking the threats to seabirds from climate change, overfishing and other perils wrought by humans. Many species, though, are hard to study because they live in a marine wilderness or are scattered. But not the northern gannets that breed on Bonaventure Island off Canada’s Gaspe Peninsula. The small island is close to shore and home to more than 100,000 gannets in the breeding season, making this the world’s second-largest northern gannet colony. What’s more, these birds are easy to approach. (via Al Jazeera)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, American Goldfinch – Millennium Park, Boston, MA.
Bird Videos of the Week
By The Birders Show, “Visiting the Antpitta Capital of the World”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Surprise Visitors.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Tropical Feeder.
Positive news story about wetland birds. Yes very good news, but very bad news soon. Wetland birds have done very well because of a combination of regulation and positive governmental action.
All this is about to change. The developers have been fighting to remove most wetlands from protection under section 404 of the Navigation Act. There is no general wetlands protection law other than this. However, the Supreme Court has clearly signaled that it take away this authority in the next few months. It almost did once in the past and. The. Trump Court surely will.
A number of states piggyback on the Federal interpretation of 404, so those state laws will also essentially be repealed.
I can explain in more detail if you will carry the information. I was Chief Counsel of the Senate Agriculture Committee and know this area of law very well.