1. Embracing fire: On the right spring morning you might see Liza Grotelueschen walk the edge of a blackened grassland, stamping out any lingering embers. But don’t mistake the retired educator for an enemy of fire. Quite the opposite: She’s a staunch believer in its power to rejuvenate the Nebraska prairie she loves. Grotelueschen is a member of the Loess Canyons Rangeland Alliance (LCRA), a cooperative burn association made up of 75 landowners who share time and equipment to save their disappearing grasslands. Long before her time, Nebraska’s grasslands burned every few years, ignited by lightning or by Indigenous people to attract game animals that graze on new growth. These regular blazes incinerated seeds and woody seedlings sprouting amid the grass, relegating trees to rocky or wet places. (via Audubon Magazine)
2. Pelican Paradise: On a sunny mid-June afternoon with a tickling breeze, dozens of brown pelicans soared overhead like an avian Cirque du Soleil. Some birds carried nesting material in their comically long bills; others scanned the light chop for a meal. The arrival of nesting East Coast brown pelicans on the Chesapeake Bay, the northernmost point in their spring migration, is an uplifting chapter in the often bleak tale of climate change and declining wildlife diversity. Though pelicans — and their deep throat pouches — have existed for at least 30 million years, they do not appear in the Eastern Shore’s historical records. Neither the region’s Native Americans nor English explorer John Smith, who mapped out the waterway in 1608, mention the prehistoric-looking bird. (via The Washington Post)
3. A precarious relationship: In the northeastern United States, most natural grasslands have been developed or converted to farmland. So grassland songbirds like bobolinks and Savannah sparrows nest and care for their chicks in farm fields, in the path of mowers and equipment. “The cutting or the picking can destroy the habitat that covers them, it can sometimes suck them out of the nests and fling them far away, or actually kill them in the machinery,” says Noah Perlut of the University of New England. Perlut has been studying how the timing of hay harvests affects grassland songbirds. And he’s partnered with farmers to develop ways to time their mowing to protect birds. (via Yale Climate Connections)
4. Helping Bobwhites recover: In early March, 1,350 members of the Park Cities Quail Coalition flooded Armstrong Field House on the Dallas campus of Southern Methodist University for an annual fundraising event billed as “Conservation’s Greatest Night.” The oil and real estate high-rollers in attendance bid up prices on donated prizes, such as a quail hunt on Texas’s famed King Ranch, including travel on Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’s team plane. When the dinner dishes were cleared and the bidding concluded, Park Cities had raised more than $1.5 million. Since 2006, the group has raised $15 million to improve the prospects of the feathered rocket known as the Northern Bobwhite. Hunters from big-city billionaires to Midwest family farmers have long prized the rush of a covey of a dozen bobwhite taking wing at once. (via Living Bird Magazine)
5. “Wings of thunder”: With the water in the Great Salt Lake at the lowest level ever, surrounding areas are also drying up. One of those areas the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. The rest stop for millions of birds has a lot more dry spots than it had in past decades. The refuge sits on 80,000 acres and a lot of it is thirsty these days. Managers said the refuge is very different from what it was 30 years ago and they’re getting a better picture of how that’s affecting bird populations at the popular attraction for birders. “People used to call it wings of thunder, because of what it would sound like.” said Erin Holmes the project manager at the Bear River Migratory Refuge. “And we don’t have that now because we’re not able to provide that.” (via KSL 5 News)
6. A disorienting death sentence: We all know about light and noise pollution — we consider it a nuisance. It might be harder to see the stars in the night sky or difficult to hear your colleagues talking over the sound of pneumatic drills on the street outside your office. For animals though, it's more than annoying. It's a disorienting death sentence with catastrophic consequences. That's the premise of author and Atlantic writerEd Yong's riveting article "Our Blinding, Blaring World" excerpted from his recently released book "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us." Yong, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic. (via National Public Radio WBUR)
7. Certainly one way to eliminate genetic questions: Birds, as the saying goes, are what they eat. And knowing exactly what they eat can help conservationists protect critical food sources and track environmental change. But until recently, sussing out birds’ grocery lists was cumbersome, requiring close observation to determine which type of berry a songbird snatched up or what kind of fish dangled from a seabird’s bill. Biologists are increasingly turning to genetic tools to eliminate the guesswork of figuring out avian fare. Analyzing human stool reveals hidden identities of microbes that live in our guts. With birds, the process works similar to a barcode scanner in a grocery store. (via Audubon Magazine)
8. And then there’s light pollution in NYC: The spotted bird looked out with big curious eyes, held in the deft hand of wildlife rehabilitator Tristan Higginbotham. It was found days earlier, dazed and unable to fly on the sidewalk in Williamsburg, Brooklyn after smashing into a building. Higginbotham gently released the bird near the floor, and we waited eagerly to see if it would pass the fly test. In a flurry of flapping wings, it took off and settled on a branch near the ceiling. A few days of rest and anti-inflammatory medication at the Wild Bird Fund, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Manhattan, had restored the ovenbird to full health. Each spring and fall migration season, Higginbotham and other wildlife rehabilitators ready themselves for the carnage. Somewhere between 90,000 and 230,000 birds die from collisions in New York City each year, the NYC Audubon Society estimates. (via Science Line)
9. Critical habitat for 300 species: On hot summer days, flocks of birds either paddle on the tranquil waters or perch among the lush reeds at Nandagang wetland in Cangzhou city, North China's Hebei province. As an important coastal wetland in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Nandagang is a major waypoint and rest stop for migratory birds in Northeast Asia. Every year, more than 300 species of birds, numbering about 100,000, pass through the wetland. The period from May to July is the peak season for bird breeding there. However, due to the severe shortage of rain and high temperatures this year, there are many challenges for bird reproduction in the wetland. In order to create a viable environment for migratory birds, wetland conservationists have taken a slew of timely measures. (via China Daily)
10. The skill of sketching: Birders spend countless hours in nature dedicated to the practice of observation, whether walking and spotting birds with the naked eye or stopping to carefully study a bird’s features, its beak shape, or plumage patterns through binoculars. Coincidentally, professional artists spend a lot of time in focused observation, too. You don’t have to be an artist to practice observation like an artist; in fact, incorporating a few time-tested sketching techniques can even change the way birders build relationships with birds and the natural world. That includes learning the skill of sketching, and that’s exactly what sketching is: a skill, not a gift or talent that you either have or don’t. As with picking up any other new skill, all it takes is time and practice. (via Living Bird Magazine)
11. Two warblers peeped over the scaffolding. Our guide pointed out the vibrant orange coat and black crown of the Blackburnian warbler and the gold neck and white “eyebrows” of the yellow-throated warbler. The warblers weren’t in trees, though. They were in murals. Viewing bird murals in Manhattan is not entirely dissimilar from birding: You never know exactly what you’ll find. The Audubon Mural Project in Hamilton Heights and Washington Heights is a joint initiative of the National Audubon Society and the Gitler & gallery, pronounced “Gitler and,” funds artists to create murals of North American birds facing catastrophic habitat loss hastened by climate change. (via The Washington Post)
12. Bird Items Book Recommendations: From flamingos to frigatebirds, our feathered friends take centre stage in National Geographic’s pick of the nine best new books for bird-lovers. (via National Geographic)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Wilson’s Storm-Petrel, Off Kennebunkport, ME.
Bird Videos of the Week
By Santa Barbara Audubon Society, “Birds of Lake Los Carneros”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Sneak Peak.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Tropical Feeder.