Easter Chicks.
Bird News Items
1. Let's start with another article on the birds and birding in the "The Residence": Netflix’s new miniseries “The Residence” features many of the hallmarks of other Shondaland productions: recognizable actors, quips, scandal, trysts, murder, mystery. It also has something a bit unusual for a Shondaland show, or really any show: a lot of bird talk. When Detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) is called to the White House to investigate the death of a staff member, her first thoughts are not about the crime but about birds. “Teddy Roosevelt was already known as a prominent birder before he became president,” she says, adding that Roosevelt kept a journal of all the birds he saw on the White House grounds as president and that she’s already seen a screech owl and a purple grackle. The script goes on to name-check numerous other birds, notably the falcon, mockingbird and Malaysian rail-babbler. It turns out that Cupp’s bird obsession is not just a quirk of the character, but central to her skills as a detective and to the plot (and climax) of the show. (via The Washington Post)
2. "Epic" is the appropriate word!: A high-pitched, staccato whistle rang out across the shore. To Bruce Beehler’s teenage ears, the sound was unfamiliar. It was 1969, and he stood with his mom along the rocky coast of Maine visiting a town called Corea. Since about the age of 8, he had been flipping through field guides and falling in love with large shorebirds. But as a kid growing up in Baltimore, even as he prepared to enter his senior year of high school, Beehler had never seen one. Immediately, he tried to catch a glimpse of the bird responsible for the piping call. Then, he saw it: a large shorebird with dark gray and brown plumage and a long, curved bill that bent down toward the earth. It flew between rocky islands, feeding among the algae. In Flight of the Godwit, set to release on April 15, he details his recent four-year-long trek to trace these birds’ movements. (via Smithsonian Magazine)
By Hap Ellis, Wood Stork - Wakodahatchee Wetlands, Delray Beach, FL.
3. Garbage didn't deter these Magellanic penguins: When Pablo “Popi” Borboroglu first visited a remote stretch of shoreline along the eastern coast of Patagonia, in 2008, the National Geographic Explorer was surprised to find penguins making a home there. The Argentine biologist was responding to a call from a nearby rancher who had seen several of the flightless birds on his property. When he arrived, Borboroglu found trash, broken glass, abandoned cars, and burned-out campfires on the ground. “The place was a disaster,” he recalls. “It was full of garbage.” Amid the squalor, however, under bushes and in small, cavelike burrows, he discovered something astonishing: 12 Magellanic penguins living among the debris. Each seabird was about one and a half feet tall, with a distinctive white band encircling its eyes and neck. While Magellanic penguins are known to breed in and around South America on rocky, sandy beaches before migrating each winter to the open ocean as far north as Brazil and Peru, the nearest established colony was located more than 80 miles south. Yet these intrepid travelers had arrived and coupled up, a sign that they were breeding on a beach teeming with hazards. (via National Geographic)
4. The intelligence of crows is legendary: Crows sometimes have a bad rap: they’re said to be loud and disruptive, and myths surrounding the birds tend to link them to death or misfortune. But crows deserve more love and charity, says Andreas Nieder, a neurophysiologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. They not only can be incredibly cute, cuddly and social but also are extremely smart—especially when it comes to geometry, as Nieder has found. In a paper published on Friday in Science Advances, Nieder and his colleagues report that crows display an impressive aptitude at distinguishing shapes by using geometric irregularities as a cognitive cue. These crows could even discern quite subtle differences. (via Scientific American)
5. Zugunruhe, polymorphism and other tongue-twisters from the world of birds: They’re sometimes called technical terms, eight-dollar-words, jargon, or just plain gobbledygook. But hidden inside those multisyllabic ornithological utterances are keys to fascinating behaviors, time machines to take you back to ancient Greek and Latin, and sly insights to the minds of scientists at work. In this recurring feature by illustrator Rosemary Mosco we break down a few of the “birdwords” we enjoy the most. (Mosco took over our Birdword column in 2024; you might also like our archive of pre-2024 Birdwords written by Living Bird staff writers.) (via Living Bird Magazine)
6. Snakeskins do what again? You might be surprised: For decades, ornithologists have observed birds like Great Crested Flycatchers and Northern House Wrens draping their nests with an unusual material: shed snakeskin. But they could never understand why—until now. In a study published in December in the journal The American Naturalist, a team of researchers at Cornell University and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology found evidence that cavity-nesting birds use snake sheds to deter would-be predators from eating their eggs and nestlings. The use of snakeskin in bird nests was long viewed more as a curiosity than a subject worthy of scientific pursuit. But Vanya Rohwer, the study’s lead author, believed there must be some ecological motivation behind the behavior. (via Living Bird Magazine)
By Hap Ellis, Song Sparrow - Millennium Park, Boston, MA.
7. Chicagoans loves their Piping Plovers: Easter may be right around the corner, but for Chicago’s piping plover lovers, Friday felt more like Christmas morning. Two endangered Great Lakes piping plovers have been confirmed at Montrose Beach. One has been identified by his leg bands as Pippin, a bachelor male who hung out at Montrose in summer 2024. The second bird was ID'd as “Uncle Larry,” a 2023 Michigan hatchling who spent 2024 at a site in the Upper Peninsula. A small cluster of plover watchers gathered Friday afternoon, setting up scopes to get a view of the birds, which were resting along a protected stretch of beach after their long journey north. “It lifts my heart every year when they come back,” said Janet Pellegrini, a long-time birder and a volunteer plover monitor. Matthew Dolkart, who’s snapped numerous iconic photos of Chicago’s piping plovers, said arrival day was always a thrill. (via WTTW News)
8. More than 1 million notes from about 100,000 songs - what one study gleaned from 21,000 hours of audio data: If you thought only humans had unique musical tastes that differed drastically across geographies and generations, think again. Researchers have long suspected that migration and population dynamics shape the musical repertoire of songbirds. Now, they have empirical evidence to back up this hypothesis. A new study published in the journal Current Biology provides insights into how age, population dynamics and migration are key factors that determine how birdsong evolves over time. With the help of artificial intelligence models, the team behind the research found that “demographic variation affects vocal cultures” for great tits (Parus major) in Oxfordshire in the U.K. (via Mongabay)
9. New study confirms the tremendous value in/of "Citizens Science" (yes, think eBird): Platforms such as iNaturalist and eBird encourage people to observe and document nature, but how accurate is the ecological data that they collect? In a new study published in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice March 28, researchers from the University of California, Davis, show that citizen science data from iNaturalist and eBird can reliably capture known seasonal patterns of bird migration in Northern California and Nevada — from year-round residents such as California Scrub-Jays, to transient migrants such as the Western Tanager and the Pectoral Sandpiper. (via U.C. Davis)
10. Fun Rare Bird story from a favorite columnist: It’s a classic birding bummer — sometimes a rare bird comes to light too late for birders to see it, to the chagrin of those who missed out. Usually, it’s a non-birder with a camera going through old photos, then putting a photo on social media. Case in point, the other day someone sent me a secondhand photo of a real doozy, a Yellow-nosed Albatross, that someone took up in Truro over 3 years ago, but never shared with anyone. With less than 10 previous state records, many a birder longs to add this rare ocean wanderer to their life list. But I’m not here to talk about this albatross — today’s bird-that-got-away makes that albatross look like a pigeon in rarity terms. And how it came to light makes the story even harder to believe. (via Cape and Islands, NPR)
By Hap Ellis, Ruby-crowned Kinglet - Millennium Park, Boston, MA.
11. A paean to U10 and the American Herring Gull: One mid-September afternoon on a beach in northern Massachusetts, I witnessed a crime. I was tempted to dip my toes in the still-warm sea, but I’m a birder, so I got distracted taking photos of gulls. One individual caught my eye: It had a metal band around one ankle and a plastic band around the other, put there by researchers to help study the species. Finding a banded bird is a lucky break. I knew that if I could make out the numbers stamped on the bands, I could contribute to science by reporting them to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Bird Banding Lab. Giddy, I zoomed in on the gull’s legs and started snapping. My photos were timestamped with the exact moment of the misdeed. On September 17, 2022, at 1:26 pm, the American Herring Gull with a leg band marked U10 yanked open a tote bag emblazoned with the word BEACH, pulled out a bag of goldfish crackers, and stabbed the package with its beak, scattering the salty snacks all over the sand. The bag’s owners yelled and ran over. Embarrassed, I lowered my camera and slunk away. (via Audubon)
12. Another look at MacArthur's classic study on warbler foraging (if only he had fecal meta-barcoding!): A spat between birds at a backyard birdfeeder highlights the sometimes fierce competition for resources that animals face in the natural world, but some ecologically similar species appear to coexist peacefully. A classic study in songbirds by Robert MacArthur, one of the founders of modern ecology, suggested that similar wood warblers—insect-eating, colorful forest songbirds—can live in the same trees because they actually occupy slightly different locations in the tree and presumably eat different insects. Now, a new study is using modern techniques to revisit MacArthur's observations, which are still used as an example in today's biology textbooks. (via Phys Org)
13. 25 species of parrots in the US - Colorful friends or troublesome crop-killers: Invasive European starlings cause millions of dollars in damage to American fruit crops, a litany of destruction encompassing apples, blueberries, cherries, figs, grapes, peaches, and strawberries. Besides causing direct losses from their voracious appetites, starlings peck and slash at fruits, reducing product quality and increasing its susceptibility to diseases and pests. USDA estimates these birds cause about $800 million in agricultural damage annually. Starlings are not the only winged invader on U.S. shores, as wild parrot and parakeet sightings have risen in recent years. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird and National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count calculated almost 120,000 unique parrot encounters between 2002 and 2016. According to the April 2019 edition of the Journal of Ornithology, at least 56 parrot species are flourishing in 43 U.S. states. The monk parakeet, red-crowned Amazon, and Nanday parakeet are most frequently sighted, with most species living in major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago. (via Growing Produce)
By Hap Ellis, Wood Duck - Brookline, MA.
14. Finally, The Washington Post has a fun audio lineup of common bird songs (if you don't have the Merlin app, you need to get it!): Birdsong can signal the start of spring before the leaves bud and the flowers bloom. Every place has a unique sound, which changes across the seasons as birds migrate from their winter nesting grounds to their summer homes. Enter a county in the contiguous United States below to hear the birds passing through your area this spring, and see the changing pitch of their calls as the months progress. (Birdsong recordings are from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.) (via The Washington Post)
Bird Videos of Week
Video by BBC Earth, “Ostrich Chicks Get First Ever Drink of Water”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Northern Albatross Chick.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - American Kestrel Cam Family.