1. Come on, man!: In Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, “Birds Aren’t Real.” On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren’t Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral. Last month, Birds Aren’t Real adherents even protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo. The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds don’t exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren’t Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan. (via The New York Times)
2. Rockets and migratory birds: Celia Johnson, a retired social worker in her mid-70s, can still vividly describe childhood trips to the slender, sandy beach in Boca Chica Village, Texas. Thirty years ago, Johnson made sure to pass that dream on to her children by buying a three-bedroom brick ranch for her to retire there. “You were surrounded by nothing but nature. The beach was pristine and there were tons of different species of birds.” But the idyll was disrupted when SpaceX, the aerospace company, came to town in 2014 to build a commercial spaceport. The company’s presence, while welcomed by local politicians lured by the promise of taxable income and employment opportunities, has become a nightmare for many residents and wildlife conservationists attempting to protect the sensitive habitat surrounding the development. (via NBC News)
3. More on a great story we’ve noted: Suddenly, from the steep, shale-covered hills surrounding Taughannock Falls State Park, a dark gray bird with a white face, cream-colored underbelly and blue-gray wings dives toward movement near the end of a tree branch a few dozen feet down the cliff. Peregrine falcons, known for their diving speed of up to 200 miles per hour, typically hunt mid-flight and prey on other birds as well as bats, only occasionally going for a small rodent or insects. Andy Johnson, conservation film producer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, first discovered that the birds were back in early 2020. Because of their pattern of nesting in high places, these birds can be seen on the ledges and cliffs of Taughannock Falls. (via The Ithaca Voice)
4. Betting on rare birds: The day that Dallas May started to feel his family ranch’s fortunes solidify, after more than 40 years of raising cattle, was the day he got in his pickup to chase what appeared to be two poachers carrying weapons the size of rocket launchers. It turned out they were international bird experts from Cornell University’s famed ornithology lab, cradling enormous spotting scopes and hoping to see the elusive black rail. Word was out that while rising seas and hurricanes ravage the birds’ East Coast habitat, the threatened species was cooling it in marshes and ponds that break up 15,000 acres of May Ranch’s dryland operation. People were apparently willing to journey to a dusty corner of Colorado to pay homage to his eco-friendly land management that avoids plowing and employs animals as recycling ruminants. (via The Colorado Sun)
5. From teeny hummingbirds to giant whooping cranes, roughly half of the world’s more than 10,000 bird species migrate. Longer wings and beefed-up flying muscles often help these birds crisscross vast expanses of air. But a study of nearly all bird species suggests many migrators share another unexpected flight aid: lighter-colored feathers. Being a tad more lightly colored than non-migrating birds may help these long-distance fliers stay cool as they work hard under the hot sun to fly, researchers report December 6 in Current Biology. It’s known that color can help birds hide from predators by blending in, or attract mates by standing out. But color has subtler effects too, including regulating temperature by absorbing or reflecting light. (via Science News)
6. Incredibly moving (or heartbreaking?): An album consisting entirely of birdsong has debuted towards the top of Australia’s Aria chart, beating Mariah Carey, Michael Buble and Abba to get to No 5 one week after its release. Songs of Disappearance, a collaboration between multimedia duo the Bowerbird Collective and David Stewart, who has been recording the sounds of Australian birds for over four decades, features the calls and songs of 53 threatened species. With all proceeds donated to BirdLife Australia, it has sold just over 2,000 units, around 1,500 of them in presale – a far cry from the number that used to be required to enter the charts, before the music streaming era. (via The Guardian)
7. Raptors to the rescue: The Pajaro River slithers between the towns of Pajaro and Watsonville, which lie directly within the river’s natural floodplain. Although the river created the fertile soils that birthed this agricultural community, its floodwaters can wreak havoc on the region: a 1995 flood killed two people and destroyed $95 million worth of agricultural crops. Levee managers fight a constant battle with gopher and ground squirrel burrows, which weaken the dirt embankments that line the river to protect the region from floodwaters. Now, researchers and levee managers are testing whether simply attracting hawks and owls can keep rodent numbers down while supporting native wildlife. The program is inspiring other Bay Area municipalities like the city of Santa Cruz to explore wildlife-friendly levee management. (via Bay Nature)
8. The Paradise Parrot: Exactly 100 years ago today, a bird that had been relegated to extinction made a comeback. The exquisitely beautiful paradise parrot was rediscovered by Cyril Jerrard, a grazier from Gayndah in Queensland's Burnett district, on December 11, 1921.But its return was fleeting. Scattered pairs were seen around Gayndah until 1929. Some were seen around nearby Gin Gin in the 1930s. After that came only rumor and hope. Today, the paradise parrot has the tragic status of extinct. It's the only mainland Australian bird species known to have suffered that fate since colonization. On the 100th anniversary of the parrot's rediscovery, we might revisit the event and consider why the bird's resurrection was so brief. From that, we may gain insights into how to help the many species threatened with extinction today. (via Phys Org, Bird Life)
9. Meet a Crowtographer: “Crows are my jam.” So reads the first line of Colleen Wilson’s Instagram account. The Campbell River photographer isn't alone in her obsession with the jet-black birds — both common as muck and extraordinary in equal measure. People have flocked to Wilson’s social media pages, which boast 43,000 followers and a myriad of photos of the curious, intelligent and often pesky member of the corvid family. “There’s just so much about crows,” said Wilson, better known by her pseudonym The Crowtographer. “There’s the esthetics of them. Anything that is black is challenging to photograph, and the way light plays off crow’s feathers is really fascinating”. (via Nature Observer)
10. “The humble Budgerigar”: The humble budgerigar has transformed the red centre into a sea of green and gold. A massive murmuration – the phenomenon of thousands of birds flocking together – has swarmed the Northern Territory. Photographer Steve Pearce has captured the natural phenomenon, explaining the sheer quantity of the birds causes the air pressure to change. After a tough couple of years due to drought and bushfires, some inland Australian bird species are now thriving after a buoyant wet season. “You hear one budgie, that first fella comes in, he flies past, then another one, then it’s like over a short time, maybe five minutes, they all just turn up and start arriving en masse. “There’s a critical mass that sweeps in. It’s spectacular.” (via The Guardian AU)
11. Conserva Aves: BirdLife International, National Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and RedLAC members, have received $12 millionfrom the Bezos Earth Fund for their “Conserva Aves” (“Conserve Birds”) initiative, an innovative collaboration that aims to help nations meet their international climate and biodiversity pledges and close the gap in the protection of key biodiversity areas. Specifically, the $12 million grant will support local communities and Indigenous peoples to establish and strengthen 30-40 new protected sites (totaling 450-600,000 hectares, or 1.11 to 1.48 million acres) critical for threatened and migratory bird species in the Tropical Andes—in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Perú—by 2027. (via Audubon)
12. Mainers, get your snowshoes out: Maine is undertaking a statewide survey of wintering birds for the first time. The state is updating its Maine Bird Atlas project, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said Wednesday. The atlas is a statewide citizen science project that tracks bird species in the state. Maine is home to more than 190 wintering bird species, the wildlife department said. The department said it's looking for residents to share information about bird sightings by reporting them online. The atlas project began about three years ago, the Portland Press Herald reported. Previously, the last major similar effort was a breeding bird atlas in the late 1970s and early '80s, the paper reported. A state survey of wintering birds has never been attempted before. (via The Titusville Herald)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo By Hap Ellis, Little Blue Heron.
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