1. Let’s start with the New York Times’ report on its summer birding invitation: eBird generally receives fewer submissions in the summer than it does during the spring and fall migratory seasons, and much of the data comes from popular bird-watching locations, like parks and nature preserves. So this summer, The New York Times collaborated with the lab on a citizen science project, inviting readers to make birding part of their daily routines and to share their observations with researchers. Participants were encouraged to continue birding throughout the slow season and to venture beyond their favorite bird-watching haunts. A video summarizing the project was shown during The New York Times Climate Forward event on Thursday, where leaders in business, science and public policy discussed climate change and efforts to deal with it. (via The New York Times)
2. Unite The Parks – One man’s quest: A juvenile Bald Eagle soars high above Lowell Young on a sunny day in Yosemite National Park. The sight fills the former longtime president of Yosemite Area Audubon Society with admiration as he peers up at the majestic bird from a meadow rimmed by fragrant ponderosa pines. “This is where I belong,” he says. The eagle doesn’t know its habitat has fewer protections just south, in Sierra National Forest. At age 88, Young hopes to ensure that it and countless other species can mature in an ecosystem that’s more equally preserved on both sides of the invisible boundary. Working with a grassroots group called Unite the Parks, the octogenarian has spent the past decade as one leading advocate for an ambitious proposal to convert the national forest and a smaller chunk of adjoining federal public land into a national monument. (via Audubon)
3. Problem-solving may be the missing link between …what, you might wonder? Read on: Birds can make an array of noises, from elegant trills to ear-piercing squawks—and nearly everything in between. One reason for this wide range is their ability to imitate new vocalizations and communicate with them, a process known as vocal learning. Humans do this, too, when first developing language skills. “Learning new sequences of sounds helps to successfully communicate with others and is often useful when you’re going to meet new members of your species that you haven’t met before,” Michael Goldstein, a psychologist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study, says to Popular Science’s Jocelyn Solis-Moreira. (via Smithsonian Magazine)
4. The beautiful Golden-winged Warbler’s future in New Jersey? Not everyone agrees: One of New Jersey’s rarest birds might be saved by creating specialized habitat in a publicly owned tract of forest in Sussex County. But that involves felling part of the forest, a policy that’s strongly opposed by some conservationists. New Jersey’s population of the golden-winged warbler, a tiny bird that migrates to the northeastern United States from South America for a few months each summer, dropped to only 13 pairs in 2022, down from around 100 pairs in 2000, according to state records. The best hope for pulling the bird back from the brink of state extinction, says the naturalist group New Jersey Audubon, is to create a type of woodland called “early-successional habitat.” (via New Jersey Spotlight News)
5. You don’t want to argue with a lobster boat captain who has 2 million Tiktok followers, but…: There’s some rather dramatic nighttime footage on social media of hundreds of small songbirds swirling around a Maine lobster boat. The boat captain, a popular TikTok content producer, suggested it’s a harbinger of how intense Hurricane Lee is going to be when it hits here on Saturday. They are not. The video was posted by Jacob Knowles, a lobsterman out of Gouldsboro who has more than 2 million followers on Tiktok where he showcases his day-to-day life working on the water. Attempts to reach Knowles were not successful. In his recent bird video, which had been viewed more than 160,000 times by Friday afternoon, he is seen catching birds, pointing at birds landing on his boat and saying neither he nor his father has ever seen anything like it during their combined times at sea. Their only explanation? The approaching hurricane. Link here the tiktok video. (via Bangor Daily News)
6. Speaking of birds and hurricanes, more from fun writer Bob Duchesne at the Bangor Daily News: I suppose you’re wondering what hurricanes do to bird migration. Nothing good, I can assure you. But birds have been dealing with hurricanes since the dawn of time. Surely, they have a strategy. They do, but it’s far from foolproof. Migration is dangerous. Many birds are killed by storms, although many more are killed by cats and collisions. As long as enough birds survive to reproduce, the species will continue. The big question is not how the birds can survive one hurricane. The big question is how they will deal with the more frequent and severe hurricanes we’re now experiencing. (via Bangor Daily News)
7. More on the power and potential of Cornell Lab’s BirdCast: For a long time, scientists couldn’t say for sure the birds were even taking a journey. In the 1800s, European naturalists could not explain how local birds disappeared during the winter. They first got an inkling that birds migrated long distances when a stork showed up in a German village in 1822 with a thin spear through its neck. The so-called arrow stork, or pfeilstorch in German, was one of 25 storks that have survived an attack while living in Central Africa and then turned up in Europe. Identifying the origins of the arrows eventually led to theories about long-distance migration. Today, birds are “tagged” in less invasive ways that help scientists follow their movements. Researchers attach bands to bird legs or small radio devices to avian backs. But those methods still only capture small parts of populations. And for a long time, to measure migrations of large numbers of birds, scientists had to aim telescopes at the full moon and make careful tallies of silhouettes passing over the orb. (via Smithsonian Magazine)
8. And speaking of the Cornell Lab, jumpstart your raptor ID skills with eBird: How many times have you viewed a hawk from afar and wondered what it was? In September, every eligible checklist you submit gives you a chance to win free access to the Be a Better Birder: Hawk and Raptor Identification Course. Jumpstart your hawk and raptor ID skills with this recently updated course from the Cornell Lab’s Bird Academy. Packed with cutting-edge practice tools to help you identify a variety of raptors both perched and in-flight—including vultures, eagles, kites, falcons, and more! Ten lucky eBirders will get this course for free from their September eBirding. If you like taking part in the eBirder of the Month Challenges, here are even more excuses to motivate yourself to get out birding. Each month of 2023 will feature a different Bird Academy course offering—tune in at the start of October to see what’s on tap for next month. (via eBird)
9. Light pollution and evolutionary adaptation: The bright lights of big cities could be causing an evolutionary adaptation for smaller eyes in some birds, a new study indicates. Researchers found that two common songbirds, the Northern Cardinal and Carolina Wren, that live year-round in the urban core of San Antonio, Texas, had eyes about 5% smaller than members of the same species from the less bright outskirts. Researchers found no eye-size difference for two species of migratory birds, the Painted Bunting and White-eyed Vireo, no matter which part of the city they lived in for most of the year. The findings, published in Global Change Biology, have implications for conservation efforts amid the rapid decline of bird populations across the U.S. (via WSU Insider)
10. From Climate Week, a new initiative that is “…hemispheric, innovative and visionary”: The Americas Flyway Initiative (AFI) is a hemispheric, innovative, and visionary approach led by The National Audubon Society, BirdLife International, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) to protect, conserve, and restore nature and address the biodiversity loss and climate change crisis across the Americas. After ten months of evolving from concept to action, AFI was officially presented at The Climate Week in New York as a cohesive and relevant opportunity for synergy, integration, and harmonious coexistence that unites people and nature beyond borders, seeking healthy and prosperous environments. (via BirdLife)
11. More from Climate Week – some criticism of the host city: New York's annual Climate Week is underway, bringing together activists, politicians and business leaders for hundreds of events aimed at addressing the planetary crisis. But the bright lights that give the "city that never sleeps" its iconic glow have long been a source of frustration for campaigners, something at odds with the spirit of conservation embodied by the yearly summit, which takes place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. According to US Department of Energy figures, outdoor lighting in the United States consumes enough energy annually to power 35 million homes. At any given time, only one percent of artificial light reaches human eyes, the department says. (via Barron’s)
12. Need a Whooping Crane for your life or year list? You might head to North Dakota: Whooping cranes are in the midst of their fall migration and sightings will increase as they make their way through North Dakota over the next several weeks. Anyone seeing these endangered birds as they move through the state should report sightings so the birds can be tracked. The whooping cranes that do travel through North Dakota are part of a population of about 500 birds on their way from nesting grounds at Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada to wintering grounds in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, a distance of about 2,500 miles. Whooping cranes typically migrate singly, or in groups of two to three birds, and may be associated with sandhill cranes. (via North Dakota Game and Fish)
13. Currawongs - “…evil-eyed marauders or simply clever characters”?: One year I built myself a little nest in a green tent, surrounded by moonahs and gumtrees. Inside, I had an old embroidered tablecloth, its coloured threads stitched in swirls. I had crocheted rugs, a bean bag, a small seat and a floor covering. From the tent I felt and heard the beauty in many small things: the way the light came through the fabric walls; the birds, so close to me, feeding in the wet soil; the magpies singing all morning from high up in the dry branches of the gumtree; tiny wrens of yellow and grey, a mass of them flitting in the tea tree; wattlebirds clacking; and the lift and lilt of the currawongs carolling. Currawong whip! There was the symphony of the other birds behind them, but the sense of presence, the uplift and the swirl, the heft and weight of existence, that came from the currawongs. (via The Guardian)
14. 10 birds actually “changed the world”? Well yes, according to this new book: ‘Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’’ asks the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” during the surreal tea party attended by Alice, the March Hare and the Dormouse. No one is able to guess the answer—perhaps because, as Alice complains, there isn’t one. Nonetheless, generations of readers have proposed their own solutions. The novelist Aldous Huxley, for example, joked that he knew precisely what a raven and a writing desk had in common: “There is a ‘b’ in both and an ‘n’ in neither.” I prefer the less nonsensical but equally funny answer: Because Poe wrote on both.” (via The Wall Street Journal)
15. Finally, can a simple foul ball be cause for alarm? Apparently, yes, if you’re a Dodger fan: The moment produced pause, puns and fun on the fly. Oh, and reminders of a similar intrusion that immediately preceded the Dodgers’ demise in last year’s National League Division Series. David Peralta lifted a towering fly ball down the left-field line in fowl, er, foul territory Wednesday against the Detroit Tigers that nearly struck a duck. Or was that a goose on the loose? Turns out either name is accurate. (via Yahoo! News)
Bird Videos of the Week
By BBC Earth, “Roadrunner’s Race Against Time”.
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TikTok by That Good News Girl, “Puffling Patrol”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Rufous Motmot.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Great Horned Owls.