Crowded Cormorants.
Bird News Items
1. Let’s start with an Opinion piece in the NYT by three philosophy professors on the effort to protect the Spotted Owl: Very soon, the federal government may authorize the killing of nearly a half-million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest in a desperate bid to save the northern spotted owl. The killing could go on for decades. As philosophers in Oregon whose work focuses on scientific and ethical issues regarding animals and the environment, we believe that the reasons given for this mass slaughter are deeply problematic. More broadly, this attempt to pick ecological winners and losers in a rapidly changing world shows how ill equipped the Endangered Species Act is to protect rare and important ecosystems. (via The New York Times)
2. Truly remarkable (a must read): Culasso is blind, but his hearing is so acute (he has absolute pitch) he can identify over 3,000 components of birdsong and differentiate among more than 700 species in his native South America (he's Uruguayan). Ten years ago, he won a $45,000 prize in a National Geographic competition by accurately identifying 15 random bird calls. I met him at the Explorers Club Global Summit in the Azores last month, where he was making a presentation. He has expanded his sound library (you can find him on Spotify) to other sounds of nature; he spent two months in Antarctica recording icebergs calving, seals and birdlife. But birding, and making it available to all, is his primary focus, and as a consultant, he works with ecolodges to create infrastructure that enables people with blindness or low vision to walk nature trails through rainforests. He trains people on how to guide a blind person in the field. And he has created beautiful soundscapes to be played in the public spaces of lodges and in museums in South America. (via Travel Weekly)
By Hap Ellis, Osprey (on an unusual nesting site) - Pulpit Harbor, North Haven, ME.
3. The power of local Indigenous communities protecting the red siskin in Guyana: During an expedition to southern Guyana in 2000, researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Kansas were surprised to see a red siskin flying overhead. A small bird with a bright red chest, the red siskin (Spinus cucullatus) had never been observed outside Venezuela, Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago. And even in those countries, sightings were extremely rare. For the Guyana expedition, it was the Wapichan, Macushi and Wai Wai — local Indigenous communities in this region known as South Rupununi — who were essential to helping the scientists understand their findings. The partnership sparked a decades-long community-led conservation movement that has protected the red siskin and helped locals reconnect with nature. (via Mongabay)
4. Lost and found (some 600 miles later) - cool story: It had been three months without a peep, and the ecologist Matt Herring thought Gloria had perished. He had captured the elusive bird on 22 October 2023, on a property north of Balranald in New South Wales – the first Australian painted-snipe to be fitted with a satellite tracker. But contact had been lost, and there was a sticky complication: Gloria’s tracker had been financed by a successful crowdfunding campaign. Herring started preparing an obituary for the avian pioneer for her species. And then she reappeared – more than 1,000km north of where she was first captured, near Birdsville in outback Queensland. Herring guesses the tiny solar panel on the two-gram tracker may have been obscured by one of the bird’s feathers, causing the outage. (via The Guardian)
5. Given it’s Summer Olympics time, The Washington Post asks which bird would win gold in a bird Olympics: Welcome to the bird Olympics, where we try to figure out the avian world’s fastest fliers. If you think you already know the answer — peregrine falcon — you’d be incorrect. At 240 mph, the peregrine’s downward swoop holds the record for the fastest velocity in the animal kingdom. But when flying horizontally, the falcon moves at just 68 mph. One could argue that the peregrine falcon isn’t good at flying so much as it’s good at falling. So, we gathered a few of the fast flappers to see who would win in a fair flight. Of course, these Games are purely hypothetical — it would be hard enough to get all of our contenders in the same location, much less to persuade them to fly at the same altitude or perform at their physical limit. Before we get to the main event below, let’s meet the flock. (via The Washington Post)
6. Is there a downside in back yard feeding? Yes, say these researchers: New research led by an NAU alumnus shows that backyard bird feeders, although put out with the best of intentions, is changing the chemistry of local ecosystems, including introducing a potentially harmful amount of phosphorus into the environment. The study, published Aug. 7 in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, shows that, collectively, the millions of household bird feeders throughout the world add up to a large transfer of additional nutrients into local environments. This artificial supplementing of a natural process may lead to unanticipated ecological impacts. "The seeds, nuts and grains provided for birds are rich with fats and proteins," said NAU alumnus Andrew Abraham, a researcher from Aarhus University in Denmark and lead author of the study. "Yet most of this nutrient-rich bird food is sourced on the global market and transported thousands of kilometers to feeder stations.” (via Phys Org)
By Hap Ellis, Bald Eagle - Penobscot Bay, ME.
7. Not sure who it is they are trying to fool here: China has uncovered a new military surveillance and reconnaissance drone that perfectly resembles a small bird. Showcased during the founding anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the biomimetic drone was made to look like an Eurasian tree sparrow and is believed to be an ornithopter. It replicates the wing-flapping motion of a bird in flight, making it virtually indistinguishable from real birds at a distance. Though its technical specifications are not publicly available, ornithopters in general can reportedly carry small, advanced sensors for effective surveillance of enemy forces. They can also be armed with micro-warheads to strike enemy assets, especially those in cover. (via The Defense Post)
8. These Staten Island summer campers are lucky to have this science teacher: Each week, summer campers at the Children’s Aid Goodhue Community Center grab their binoculars and head out for a walk in nature. They help document the hundreds of species that make their way through the 26 acres of woodlands surrounding them. Kids may quickly encounter several house finches eating at feeders set up by Anthony Ciancimino, a public school teacher and avid birder who leads the science program at the summer camp, and runs after-school programs during the school year. “It’s a small bird with a reddish belly,” Ciancimino said. Ciancimino first started birding when he was about seven years old and received a bird feeder as a gift. Within minutes of filling it, he identified a visiting downy woodpecker. (via NY1)
9. Bird flu update - lessons from covid: Almost two years after the first signs of bird flu in the United States, we are still flying blind. Indications that H5N1 may have jumped to mammals first appeared in 2022, when the virus killed hundreds of seals in New England and Quebec that summer, and then that fall there was a mass infection event at a Spanish mink farm. Epidemiologists have been warning about the risks of an overdue bird flu pandemic for decades, and so each new development arrived like the next beat in an already familiar story, almost too perfectly plotted to alarm. The outbreaks on American dairy farms began this March and the first human case in the United States since then was identified in April, which means that it has now been more than three full months since a pathogen long identified as among the most worrisome potential sources of a new pandemic infected an American this year. There is still nothing like a serious plan to even properly monitor the spread. (via The New York Times)
10. It isn’t easy for Piping Plovers - especially in NYC!: Sections of the Rockaway Peninsula, a coastal strip of land in southern Queens, look like beach towns more than the concrete and steel landscape of much of New York City. On a mile-long stretch of the boardwalk in Edgemere, a neighborhood in the Rockaways that was a thriving resort destination a century ago, you can still see open skies, dunes and the ocean. But for most of the summer, the beach here is closed. Since 1996, this swath of sand and surf has been reserved for much of the spring and summer for nesting coastal piping plovers, which are endangered in New York and protected federally by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Along the Eastern Seaboard, from barrier islands to private and public beaches on the mainland, efforts are being made to provide safe habitats for them. (via The New York Times)
11. For the life listers among us, another cut on AOS’s latest classification changes: Since 1886, a committee of the American Ornithologists’ Union—now called American Ornithological Society, or AOS—has been responsible for keeping the official, standardized list of North American bird species. Every summer this committee, usually referred to as the AOS Checklist Committee, publishes a supplement to summarize their latest work. This may result in changing some names or changing how some birds are classified, with two or more species being combined (“lumped”) into one, or with one species being separated (“split”) into two or more. Avid birders watch for this annual report to see if it will change their own personal life lists. (via Audubon)
By Hap Ellis, Black Guillemot - Islesboro, ME.
12. Fires and birds - back in the news unfortunately: As California faces another catastrophic wildfire season — with risk levels recently elevated — many of the state’s birds are in danger. So far in 2024, wildfires have burned more than 790,000 acres in California, more than twice the area damaged in all of 2023. Across fire-touched land, animals and their ecosystems — including birds living in the state’s forests — are impacted in many ways. Perhaps the biggest fire-related risk for birds is smoke. Olivia Sanderfoot, a researcher at UCLA who studies the effects of smoke on bird populations in California, said the smoke from these large fires is “unprecedented,” with “climate change changing the frequency and intensity of those fires.” (via The San Francisco Chronicle)
13. Rare Bird Alert: Dominik Mosur was mimicking the sound of a bird call while on a walk through the park by San Francisco’s Pine Lake last Monday afternoon when something stunning happened: A tiny little bird, with vermilion red underparts and a dark chestnut crown, popped up into his view. For the first known time in California, Mosur had spotted a slate-throated redstart, a species of bird seen in Mexico and South America. Mosur dropped down to his knees on the trail and began taking pictures before putting the word out. Within the hour, two to three dozen birders gathered. It was the rarest sighting of his more than two decades of bird watching — and big news for the birding community. (via The San Francisco Chronicle)
14. Book Review: I began reading Courtney Ellis’ Looking Up around the time my mother was hospitalized and then died. And around the time a house wren took up residence in our Rose of Sharon bush in the front yard. The bird’s sweet singing as well as its raucous calls when our cat was lying casually on the sidewalk nearby seemed to coincide with both the sweetness of people who loved my mom and spoke kindly about her and the harshness of death. Ellis’s book is the perfect pairing of these two things: hopelessness and darkness with the beauty of God’s creatures that call us into hope. She found her way into birding as the pandemic brought her low at the same time her beloved grandfather died. The birds pointed her toward the hope and love of God that she knew well as pastor of Presbyterian Church of the Master in California, but that as a grieving granddaughter seemed hidden. She pairs specific birds with topics that bring readers through the grief process. (via The Banner)
15. Finally, another great story about farmers converting croplands to grasslands: The National Audubon Society proudly announces that the Hoskin Family Farm in east-central North Dakota is the state's newest Audubon Certified bird-friendly habitat. The certification goes to owners Greg Hoskin and his daughter, Nici Flann, and recognizes them for managing their land for birds and biodiversity. Located 25 miles northwest of Jamestown in the heart of the Prairie Pothole Region, the Hoskin Family Farm spans native prairie, restored prairie, and wetlands. Working with multiple conservation organizations, Flann and her father have converted 200 acres of cropland back to grasslands replete with native flowers. They also permanently protected the farm’s natural habitats through grassland and wetland conservation easements through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (via Audubon)
Bird Videos of the Week
Video by 7News, “‘We struggle a lot’ Cormorants continue to wreak havoc on Lake Ontario”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Albatross weigh-in.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Hellgate Osprey Nest.