Need one more stocking stuffer? Bird News Items is your answer!
1. It being 2 days before Christmas and the birding world focused on Christmas Bird Counts, let’s begin with a short history: Prior to the turn of the 20th century, hunters engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas "Side Hunt." They would choose sides and go afield with their guns—whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won. Conservation was in its beginning stages in that era, and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declining bird populations. Beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an early officer in the then-nascent Audubon Society, proposed a new holiday tradition—a "Christmas Bird Census" that would count birds during the holidays rather than hunt them. (via Audubon)
2. All counts are local, but what if the Arctic is your local “patch”:Many birders get up at the crack of dawn to begin tallying birds for Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count. But not Clare Kines. In fact, on Kines’s CBC route, there is no dawn. A typical CBC for Kines begins midmorning around 10:00 a.m. as he drives his SUV along the hardpacked snowy roads of Arctic Bay, Nunavut, Canada—located nearly 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. “It’s twilight [during the middle of the day],” Kines says, explaining that there’s an advantage to waiting until later in the morning to find birds during winter in the High Arctic. “Think of the sky after sunset. Our twilight lasts longer as the sun skims by below the horizon. Light enough you don’t need headlights to drive.” (via Audubon)
3. The feel-good story of the year? From the BBC – a must read: It was mid-August, and Barbara Steininger, an Austrian biologist, was sitting in a rattling ultralight aircraft, flying across southern Germany. To her far left she could see a second aircraft and in it her colleague, Helena Wehner, a German geographer. Between them, flying in a perfect V formation, were 35 bald ibises: large, black, striking-looking birds with long beaks and halo-like tufts of feathers. They had been raised by the women as part of a conservation project, and would follow them anywhere. Right now, they were off on a 2,300km-journey (1,430 miles) to Spain, to a new winter camp, after their old one in Italy became inaccessible due to climate change. (via BBC)
4. Meet the delightful Mister Grouse: When Bill Hartline bought 50 acres of forested land outside Muncy, Pa., he was looking for a bit of solitude and a place to eventually build a new home in retirement. But during a camping trip there in early 2020, he discovered the wooded plot wasn’t as lonely as he thought. That evening, a ruffed grouse — a crow-size bird with a tiny mohawk and mottled feathers — appeared at his feet. “I crouched down and said, ‘Hello.’ He cooed back and started following me around,” Mr. Hartline, 66, said. “Three years later, he’s still following me around.” That’s putting it mildly. Mister Grouse, as he has named the bird, seems to ingratiate himself into everything Mr. Hartline does. Mister Grouse rides the tractor, hops up on ladders and enjoys the campfire from atop Mr. Hartline’s shoulders. (via The New York Times)
5. Flaco the NYC owl a “peeping Tom”? Say it ain’t so: One recent morning, Reilly Richardson woke up to being watched. She jumped out of bed, went to the window of her Manhattan apartment and fell to the floor when she saw the peeper. “It absolutely scared the you-know-what out of me,” she recalls about the 2-foot-tall owl staring back at her. “It’s New York City. It’s the last thing you expect to see.” Richardson, 31, and an actor, didn’t know it then, but her feathered visitor was Flaco, an orange-eyed Eurasian eagle-owl who became a New York celebrity after he escaped a zoo in February and turned leafy Central Park into his home. He’s drawn binocular-toting crowds who couldn’t help but root for a creature, like them, trying to make it in the big city. (via The Wall Street Journal)
6. Are Wandering Albatrosses using “infrasound” to shape foraging strategies?: Previous research has shown that seabirds not only seek information about where to find food, but how to do so efficiently. We discovered that the way wandering albatrosses use their sense of sound may be crucial. Our study looked at how these birds respond to a very low-frequency type of sound called infrasound, which can travel for thousands of kilometres. While it's typically inaudible to humans, we know that some animals can hear infrasound. When waves crash together or against coastlines, they create a frequency of infrasound called microbarums. This was the type of infrasound our study looked at. (via Science Alert)
7. Speaking of Albatrosses, studying seabirds’ “breakups” reminds researchers of, well, divorce: Scientists who study animals sternly warn their trainees about the dangers of describing research subjects in human terms. Sometimes, though, the parallels are impossible to ignore. “Human beings and seabirds are very different, but there are some things that we definitely share,” says Fionnuala McCully, a PhD candidate studying seabirds at the University of Liverpool in England. “We’re both long-lived, we’re both comparatively slow breeders, and we both thrive off cooperation and compatibility.” And many species of seabirds choose to mate for life, as humans often do. Also like people, these mostly monogamous birds sometimes call it quits with their partners. When scientists like McCully study these bird breakups, the word they use to describe them is divorce. Several recent studies reveal the strikingly humanlike reasons for some seabird splits. (via Hakai Magazine)
8. 9,000 square miles of “stopover hotspots” across just the eastern U.S. (note: click through to the paper for the study): As migrating birds travel back and forth between summer breeding grounds and winter rangers, places along the route provide important opportunities to rest and refuel. But where the birds choose to stopover is often a mystery. In a recent study, researchers used weather radar imagery to maps these stopovers. They found over 9,000 square miles of land across the eastern United States served as stopover hotspots. These hot spots mostly consisted deciduous forests and isolated pockets of forest. Most of these lands were unprotected, researchers found, although protected landscapes had a higher density of stopover areas. And the spots birds choose in the fall are often different than the ones they choose in the spring. (via The Wildlife Society)
9. From the Norwegian Institute For Nature Research: a good example of focusing on a local stopover to help global migrants along their way: Over the last centuries, wetlands all over the world have had to give way to ‘more useful’ types of land - seen from man’s perspective. The Morava River floodplains, located in the most western part of Slovakia, are no exception. River regulation, agricultural drainage, and plowing the alluvial meadows to arable land has had a major impact on the unique wetland ecosystems in the area, resulting in a dramatic decrease in biodiversity. But now we all know better. Wetlands are not only extremely useful, providing a range of essential ecological, economic, and cultural benefits commonly referred to as ecosystem services. Wetlands are also hot spots for biodiversity, supporting a vast number of plant and animal species, many of which are endangered. (via Partner Science Norway)
10. Looking back over 126,000 years to grasp humans’ role in bird species extinction (spoiler alert – might be even worse than we thought): Since humans began to spread across the world, they have caused the extinction of more than 1,400 species of birds. The new figure — published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications — is double previous estimates. The equivalent of 12% of all bird species that exist today have disappeared. The research reveals the true scale of both the magnitude of these human-driven extinction waves (due to deforestation, mass hunting and the introduction of invasive species) and their implications for biodiversity. (via El Pais)
11. Bravo USF&W!: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to increase the size of two protected areas on the Texas coast, saying the expansions would protect the habitat of several bird species, including the endangered whooping crane and Attwater’s prairie chicken. The federal agency’s proposal for Aransas National Wildlife Refuge calls for adding up to 95,000 acres to the 115,240-acre area. The agency also is proposing adding up to 55,000 acres to Big Boggy National Wildlife Refuge, a significant expansion of the existing 4,526-acre refuge. Plans call for acquiring land through voluntary transactions or conservation easements from willing sellers and donors. (via San Antonio Express News)
12. Latest on the Avian Flu from NY Times: Over the last three years, a highly contagious, often deadly form of bird flu has taken a staggering toll on animals around the globe. The virus, known as H5N1, has infected birds in more than 80 countries. It has infiltrated big commercial poultry farms and tiny backyard henhouses, affecting 72 million farmed birds in the United States alone, according to the Department of Agriculture. It has struck a wide range of wild bird species, killing gulls and ternsby the thousand. And it has turned up repeatedly in mammals, including foxes, skunks, bears, cats, sea lions and dolphins. The virus is not done yet. It is surging again in Europe and North America and causing mass animal mortality events in South America. It also appears to be spreading in the Antarctic region for the first time. (via The New York Times)
13. Latest “Lights out” story – the Gateway Arch in St. Louis gets new lighting (note that they turn off the lights for the entire month of May): The Gateway Arch has a new look, courtesy of a lighting system that is more energy-efficient and friendlier to water fowl. The new, 1,200-watt LED lights switched on Tuesday use 60% less energy than the 7,000-watt xenon arc bulbs they replace. The new system also illuminates the monument more precisely, sending less light into the night sky, where it can be dangerously disorienting for birds traveling the Mississippi Flyway, a key migration route. (via STLPR National Public Radio)
14. That’s $35 billion – with a “B” - Can it be the market for “migratory bird tourism”?: The migratory birds tourism market is poised to reach a valuation of US$ 12 Billion in 2022. Sales are projected to increase at a 7% CAGR, with the market size reaching US$ 35 Billion by 2032. The migration of birds mainly takes place during the harsh winters which are extremely difficult for most of the living beings to survive. These migratory flights usually start from northern to the southern part of the world. Birds migrate majorly because of scarcity of food during extremely cold temperatures and breeding. There are various species of birds that migrate because of unsuitable conditions for survival during extreme climatic shift to several locations. These birds travel large distances across countries and sometimes continents. These unique species attracts birdwatchers by their elegance and magnificence. (via Market Research Blog)
15. Finally, a fun look at birds through Legos and ink: Roy Scholten has been interested in birds ever since he can remember. In his 50 Birds series, the Netherlands-based artist and printmaker has created handmade prints of local species including pied flycatchers, skylarks and blue-headed wagtails. Each print is made using Lego letterpress, combining individual building blocks into stamps to recreate the birds’ shapes and patterns, a technique perfected over the past decade by his frequent collaborator, the artist Martijn van der Blom. “Birds are daily reminders of the richness of our natural surroundings. They can fly! How cool is that!” says Scholten. “Sadly most species are in decline, which makes it all the more worthwhile to really look and appreciate them.” (via The Guardian)
Happy Holidays to all!
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