1. Welcome to the show, Hollywood: “I was at the premiere of The Little Mermaid a couple of weeks back,” says Kean Almryde, a marketing manager at Disney. “Scuttle, the bird in the cartoon version, was a seagull. In the new movie, it’s a northern gannet. I’m like, ‘What’s that about?’ So I did a little bit of research. I made a TikTok video explaining the decision behind changing Scuttle from a seagull to the northern gannet that ended up going viral! It has like 420,000 views.” The reason for the change? Animators wanted more underwater scenes, and unlike the air-bound seagull, a northern gannet can dive around 70 feet underwater. This research dovetailed perfectly with Almryde’s passion for birding, which was sparked during the pandemic and he says provides a respite from the hustle and bustle of the city. (via The Hollywood Reporter)
2. Are birds actually making music? Well, it depends: When a bird sings, you may think you’re hearing music. But are the melodies it’s making really music? Or is what we’re hearing merely a string of lilting calls that appeals to the human ear? Birdsong has inspired musicians from Bob Marley to Mozart and perhaps as far back as the first hunter-gatherers who banged out a beat. And a growing body of research is showing that the affinity human musicians feel toward birdsong has a strong scientific basis. Scientists are understanding more about avian species’ ability to learn, interpret and produce songs much like our own. Just like humans, birds learn songs from each other and practice to perfect them. (via The New York Times)
3. Bird flu researchers - a day at the “very icky beach”: It was a glorious day for field work on the shores of the Delaware Bay. The late afternoon sun cast a warm glow over the gently sloping beach. The dune grasses rustled in the breeze. The beach vines were in bloom. And the bird droppings were fresh and plentiful. “Here’s one,” said Pamela McKenzie, a researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, pointing a gloved finger at one tiny white splotch and then another. “There’s one, there’s one, there’s one.” For the next two hours, Dr. McKenzie and her colleagues crept along the shore, scooping up avian excrement. Their goal: to stay a step ahead of bird flu, a group of avian-adapted viruses that experts have long worried could evolve to spread easily among humans and potentially set off the next pandemic. (via The New York Times)
4. 3,300 years ago…in a quiet retreat for the royal family…birds!: A century ago, archaeologists excavated a 3,300-year-old Egyptian palace in Amarna, which was fleetingly the capital of Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten. Situated far from the crowded areas of Amarna, the North Palace offered a quiet retreat for the royal family. On the west wall of one extravagantly decorated chamber, today known as the Green Room, the excavators discovered a series of painted plaster panels showcased birds in a lush papyrus marsh. The artwork was so detailed and skillfully rendered that it was possible to pinpoint some of the bird species, including the pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) and the rock pigeon (Columba livia). Recently, two British researchers, Chris Stimpson, a zoologist at the Oxford University Musem of Natural History, and Barry Kemp, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, set out to identify the rest of the birds depicted in the panels.
5. Kelp gulls and southern right whales – a bizarre (and grim) turn in their relationship: Thousands of colossal southern right whales travel to the calm waters of Península Valdés off the coast of Argentina each year to breed and give birth. But if you venture out to see them, you may sometimes find your stomach turning for a reason that has nothing to do with sea sickness. For the past 50 years, the kelp gulls of Peninsula Valdés have been mercilessly pecking at any southern right whale that dares to swim to the surface to breathe. The birds gorge on skin and blubber ripped from the whales’ backs. Over the past few decades the problem has escalated, and is now so severe that it’s causing young southern right whale calves to die prematurely, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters. (via The New York Times)
6. Another reason why birds go astray (to the delight of birders!): Birders all over the world are fascinated by vagrants—birds that turn up in unexpected places, well outside their species’ normal ranges. Vagrancy can have many causes, from young birds getting lost due to inexperience to hurricanes blowing migrants off course. But ornithologists from the University of California recently found another reason that birds go astray. Drawing on six decades of bird-banding data, they demonstrated that vagrancy increases during periods of geomagnetic disturbance—a distortion of the Earth's magnetic field that can send birds' internal compasses spinning. (via Audubon)
7. Bird reproduction and climate: Climate change has been shown to affect the timing of reproduction in birds. Studies investigating the effects of higher temperatures have found that many bird species have started breeding earlier than in the past. However, little is known about the impact of climate change on bird offspring production. Now, a new study has examined changes in annual offspring production in 104 bird species around the world over a period of 50 years — from 1970 to 2019 during which global temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius. Published in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study assessed the findings of previous studies in a powerful statistical tool known as a meta-analysis. (via Mongabay)
8. “One man’s trash bird is another’s research query”: Why do some bird species seem to flourish alongside humans, eating our crumbs and nesting in our backyards, while others prefer to live as far as possible from dense human populations? Researcher Monte Neate-Clegg first began to ponder that question while attending the American Ornithological Society’s 2019 conference in Anchorage, Alaska. “I was staying at an Airbnb, and two of the birds I wanted to see in Anchorage, white-winged crossbills and boreal chickadees, were just in the yard,” says Neate-Clegg, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah. Although new and beautiful to him, the species are common in Anchorage — so omnipresent they’re typically ignored by residents. (via The Revelator)
9. Another global look at declining bird populations: Just about anywhere you look, there are birds. Penguins live in Antarctica, ptarmigan in the Arctic Circle. Rüppell’s vultures soar higher than Mt. Everest. Emperor penguins dive deeper than 1,800 feet. There are birds on mountains, birds in cities, birds in deserts, birds in oceans, birds on farm fields, and birds in parking lots. Given their ubiquity—and the enjoyment many people get from seeing and cataloging them—birds offer something that sets them apart from other creatures: an abundance of data. Birds are active year-round, they come in many shapes and colors, and they are relatively simple to identify and appealing to observe. Every year around the world, amateur birdwatchers record millions of sightings in databases that are available for analysis. All that monitoring has revealed some sobering trends. (via Ars Technica)
10. You gotta love this guy: A Texas man drove for hours with one hand on the steering wheel and the other clutching an egg, on a mission to save a life. He was working a job at a property in West Texas, near Odessa, when he accidentally ran over a bird’s nest, destroying all but one egg. Determined to salvage what he could, he grabbed the egg and took it home with him to Lufkin — roughly 500 miles east — delicately holding it, keeping it warm during the long journey. But even after transporting the egg from one end of the state to the other, the road trip wasn’t over yet. The egg soon hatched and a chick emerged, “but the couple wondered who could raise the baby.” They couldn’t find anywhere nearby to bring the bird, so the man’s wife made a roughly 170-mile drive northwest to the Rogers rehab center. (via Fort Worth Star Telegram)
11. And if you liked that guy, how about these two brothers and their bird ambulance?: Low-hanging wires, heavy traffic and people who love flying kites have made Delhi a dangerous place for its wild birds. It prompted two brothers to spend the past five years rescuing the Indian capital’s sick and injured birds in an initiative that has already saved an estimated 50,000 animals. Amit and Abhishek Jain used their own earnings to adapt a motorbike into their distinctive bird ambulance. Then, as support grew, they set up the Vidyasagar Jeev Daya Parivar Trust last year. (via The Guardian)
12. It only took 150 million years: In 1993, “Jurassic Park” helped inspire 9-year-old Stephen Brusatte to become a paleontologist. So Dr. Brusatte was thrilled to advise the producers of last year’s “Jurassic World: Dominion” on what scientists had learned about dinosaurs since he was a child. He was especially happy to see one of the most important discoveries make it to the screen: dinosaurs that sported feathers. But judging from the emails he has been receiving, some moviegoers did not share his excitement. “A lot of people thought it was made up,” said Dr. Brusatte, a professor at the University of Edinburgh. “They thought it was filmmakers trying to do something crazy.” (via The New York Times)
13. This is a fun piece, complete with yet another shout-out to Merlin: I am officially calling it – spring migration is over. With migrating birds, as with people, there are always stragglers and wanderers who keep things interesting, but for all intents and purposes, it’s now simply breeding season. Lucky for us, over three hundred cumulative bird species have been recorded in June around here. So it seemed like a good time to get acquainted with some of our breeding birds, and in particular their sounds, this being radio and all. First, let’s take a hike in some relatively mature woods – some place like Nickerson State Park or West Barnstable Conservation Area. Among the taller oaks and pines, listen for the delightful, Indulating whistle of one of our latest arriving songbirds, the Eastern Wood-Pewee. (via Cape and Islands)
14. Finally, fun podcast from Scientific American on the amazing elephant bird: The elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate. (via Scientific American)
Bird Videos of the Week
By The Birders Show, ”Our Top Birding Moments of 2022”.
Mary Smark - Early Morning Eagles.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Nesting Hawks.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Albatross.