Birds are Back.
Bird News Items
1. Let's start with a fabulous collection of 2024 photos from the Cornell Lab's Macauly Library: For our 2025 photo essay we’re celebrating wonderful photos in five themes: the lush, flower-filled habitats of birds in Birdlife in Full Bloom; fun companion shots in Double Vision; the rainbow of birds in Colors of the Bird World; cuteness, vulnerability, and the bonds of family in The Next Generation; wet and wild times in Making a Splash; and an exclusive meet-and-greet with some of the world’s least-seen birds in Rarities. In the final section, we say thank you to all the photographers who make the Macaulay Library archive such a uniquely rich resource. (via All About Birds)
2. Road to Recovery (R2R) - "...doing the tough work on the ground" to bend the curve of avian population declines (worth your time): The word came in a cellphone text from finch researcher Matt Young, who was scouting along a forest road in northern Minnesota’s Sax-Zim Bog: “Grosbeaks coming in!” About a quarter-mile away scientist David Yeany was sitting in a makeshift blind, which was really an insulated ice-fishing pop-up shelter—perfect for staying warm in a frozen bog where winter temps can kiss minus 40. He was stationed at the platform seed feeders just outside the Sax-Zim Bog Welcome Center, a favorite foraging haunt of winter finches this time of year that draws clouds of Redpolls, siskins, crossbills…and Evening Grosbeaks. (via All About Birds)
By Richard Spitzer, Golden Eagle - Highway 131, Routt County, CO.
3. The Smithsonian on why moa mattered in New Zealand (moa, you ask?): Scientists can learn a lot about extinct animals by studying their footprints, bones and even teeth. But, while insightful, these artifacts don’t always paint a complete picture of an ancient creature’s diet or behavior. For that information, researchers often turn to another source: fossilized poop. Fossilized feces—also known as “coprolites”—can shed light on “the last day or two [of] behavior of an animal from hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago,” says Alexander Boast, a paleoecologist at Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, to Cosmos’ Evrim Yazgin. Boast and a team of researchers, for example, are using fossilized dung to learn more about the diets of extinct flightless birds called moa that once roamed around New Zealand. (via Smithsonia Mag)
4. Birding in the Bolivian Andres - jealous are we!: When we last saw our hero he had just arrived in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia. It was there that things began to go awry. After three days of birding in Cochabamba, our next stop would be La Paz, the Bolivian capital, and then onward to Lake Titicaca. The plan was that our birding guide, Dan Lane, and the two birders (including me) would fly to La Paz while our driver, Carlos, would drive from Cochabamba to La Paz in the van with all of our luggage and support gear. That would avoid a long dusty van ride for the birders and make sure all of our gear got to La Paz. That plan was at risk thanks to Morales. So it was uncertain whether any of us would be able to get to La Paz. There was even risk that we’d have to abandon our plans and drive back to Santa Cruz in order to leave Bolivia. So while we enjoyed a few days of birding in the mountains around Cochabamba, we kept an eye on the news and our Bolivian ground agent started investigating options. So stay tuned dear readers. (via Daily Kos)
5. Birding the Salton Sea: Equipped with scopes, binoculars and high-powered cameras, dozens of birders gathered at the Salton Sea State Recreation Area in Mecca for the annual Salton Sea Bird Festival. Hosted by the Sea and Desert Interpretive Association, San Diego Bird Alliance and the Audubon Society, in partnership with the Salton Sea State Recreation Area and the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, the festival took place on Saturday, Jan. 18. The annual event brings together birders, conservationists and nature enthusiasts to observe migratory species, discuss birding techniques, and, in recent years, to raise awareness of the environmental challenges facing California’s largest lake. As the Salton Sea continues to shrink due to declining water inflows and increasing salinity, experts warn of significant impacts on bird populations that rely on this vital stop along the Pacific Flyway. (via Calexico Chronicle)
6. "Resilience in the ruins" -a short NPR audio story on the Palisades fire, the loss of the Will Rogers State Historic Park, and somehow wildlife is already coming back: Will Rogers State Historic Park is a vast stretch of natural space in the Santa Monica Mountains. It's a treasure to Angelenos. People get married there, picnic there, and have kids' birthday parties on the great lawn. The park's namesake, Will Rogers, was a vaudeville performer, radio and movie star, and was known as America's "cowboy philosopher." His nearly century-old ranch house is the park's centerpiece. It's survived a near miss with wildfire before. Last week, as firestorm engulfed large parts of Los Angeles, this piece of American history was reduced to rubble. (via National Public Radio)
By Hap Ellis, Ruddy Duck - Jamaica Pond, Boston, MA.
7. Who's awake? Remembering night time owl surveys: Although the Maine Owl Monitoring Study was conducted in 2004 to 2013, I have lasting memories of my first night on the monitoring scene. It was a windless mid-January night with a looming full moon sketching tree shadows onto the snow. Superb listening conditions, indeed. My session would last from midnight to about 4 a.m. With excitement and hopeful expectations, I exited my pickup truck along a stretch of secondary road in Palermo. A resonant pair of great horned owls consorted nearby: “Who’s awake? Me too!!” I’d previously selected 10 stopping points during daylight hours. Consisting of varied habitats, the stops were located at least one mile apart. The monitoring protocols were straight-forward: listen passively for three minutes, before playing vocalizations of three species of owls, then waiting an additional three minutes for hooted replies. (via Midcoast Villager)
8. Apps versus guide books - you be the judge: I miss guidebooks. That’s a weird thing to say, considering I own most of them. It’s just that I primarily rely on apps and downloads for my birding resources in the field these days. My books remain on the shelf most of the time. I sometimes regret that. I don’t remember how old I was when I was gifted a used copy of “Birds: A Guide to the Most Familiar American Birds,” written by Herbert S. Zim in 1956. I cherished it for a few years, before a used copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s “Field Guide to the Birds” fell into my little hands. I was probably about 8 years old. From that day forward, I wanted to see every bird in the book. Some bird books can’t be replaced by an app. Books on how-to and where-to are still valuable. Guidebooks on advanced identification of difficult species can display troublesome birds side-by-side. That makes my books on gull, shorebird and hawk identification still useful, even as the pages slowly yellow with age. (via Bangor Daily News)
9. Travel tip - in this case to the North Platte River to see the amazing Sandhill Crane migration: Every year, hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes alight on the plains of Nebraska along the Platte River. “Experiencing the spring sandhill crane migration in Nebraska should be on every bird enthusiast’s bucket list,” says Amanda Hegg, senior conservation associate at the Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary near Kearney, Nebraska. “It’s truly one of the earth’s last great migrations,” she says. Each March and April, sandhill cranes, over a million of them, make the long trek from the southern U.S. and northern Mexico to their breeding grounds in Canada, Siberia and Alaska. By the numbers, there’s no larger wildlife migration in North America, and this movement ranks among the biggest on the planet. (via Birds & Blooms)
10. Or.. you can see thousands of Sandhills right now in Northern Alabama at the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Center: In flooded agricultural fields near the Tennessee River, tens of thousands of sandhill cranes stand tall among broken corn stalks and shallow water searching for corn, berries, seeds and insects. The sound and sight of so many cranes clustered together creates a chorus of trills, trumpets and honks throughout the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Center in northern Alabama during the winter. The annual migration of sandhill cranes brings bird-watchers in droves to see the tall birds up close, but also the chance to catch a glimpse of the rare and endangered whooping cranes that migrate in much smaller numbers to Wheeler. Alongside the cranes, plenty of other birds can be spotted at Wheeler, including geese, ducks, bald eagles, kestrels and hawks. “It’s a birder’s paradise,” park ranger David Young noted. (via Associated Press News)
By Hap Ellis, Dark-eyed Junco - Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, MA.
11. Good start: Dark Sky Week - protecting migrating birds over North Dakota: North Dakota lawmakers will consider a resolution Thursday that would establish a statewide Dark Sky Week to combat light pollution and protect migrating birds. Senate Concurrent Resolution 4004, which would designate April 21-28 as Dark Sky Week, encourages residents to participate by limiting or turning off nonessential lighting. North Dakota is centrally located within a major migratory pathway for birds. Each spring and fall, millions fly over the state, moving between their nesting and wintering grounds. During peak migration in mid-April, more than 35,000 birds may travel through North Dakota in a single night, Booher said. North Dakota is a critical stop for sandhill cranes, nuthatches, the American robin and waterfowl species like mallards. (via North Dakota Monitor)
12. And the winner is (spoiler alert: "Minnesota takes its loons very, very seriously."): The American Birding Association has named the common loon its 2025 “bird of the year.” The national honor bestowed upon the official state bird of Minnesota earlier this month confirms what Minnesotans already know well — just how special the loon is. The common loon is known for its haunting call as well as its spots and stripes in black and white. “An eerie yodel. A plaintive cry... There’s scarcely a more evocative sound of the northern wilderness, be that wilderness in Minnesota, Québec, Maine, or Iceland,” the ABA said. Minnesota has more loons — about 12,000 — than any other state except Alaska, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Each bird of the year is depicted by an artist. This year it’s Sam Zimmerman, an Ojibwe artist based in northern Minnesota, who often sees the birds outside his home. (via Star Tribune)
By Hap Ellis, Peregrine Falcon - Biddeford Pool, ME.
13. Egg prices and avian flu (possibly TMI): Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), commonly called the bird flu, is the general term for a group of viruses that usually spread between birds but can also infect mammals, including humans. The symptoms include those usually associated with the flu: fever, cough, sore throat, aches, and fatigue. With bird flu in particular, conjunctivitis is also common. One consequence of avian flu outbreaks is its impact on the production supply of grocery staples like eggs, leading to shortages that increase prices. In 2022, the USDA attributed record-high wholesale egg prices to reduced flock numbers thanks to the avian flu outbreak. (via USA Facts)
14. Let's finish with Bald Eagles highlighted in this photo-essay on our national bird from Daily Kos: The Daily Bucket: The Bald Eagle is officially our national bird — centuries after people thought it was. And it’s Friday, which in the old days was when Buckets were photo sequences. So I figured it was time our Raptor in Chief got its due. I shot these photos on the last day of 2024, which was sunny. Both felt like a good omen. So please enjoy 3 minutes and 33 seconds in Bald Eagle world. (And because you know that where I find birds I also find words, there will be some history below as well.) (via Daily Kos)
Bird Videos of the Week
Video by Associated Press, “Alabama refuge is a birder’s paradise as people flock to see thousands of migrating sandhill cranes”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - The Northern Royal Albatross chick started hatching on January 24! 🐣
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Evening Grosbeaks.