1. Let’s start with an article in the FT on migration and possible “life lessons” for us humans: Migrating geese share the work of leading the flock and stay together through regular communication. As a result, they suffer the miserable fate of featuring in talks by motivational speakers. Teams, workforces or whole business clusters should be more like those geese, the boosters claim. I once knew a boss who honed his goose speech to such perfection he even honked an air horn at key moments. I sometimes think of this man when watching bird flocks. It is a good time of year for this, whether you are observing snow geese in the US or Asian cranes in Japan. As for me, I was tramping through the fields near a relative’s house in Northumberland when I startled 100 or so pink-footed geese. (via Financial Times)
2. Fun podcast with a master falconer right here in the Kansas grasslands!: Monte Markley read “My Side of the Mountain” as a kid and was captivated by the story of a boy and his falcon. He’s now a master falconer, training his bird on the grasslands of Kansas. (via WSIU News)
3. Nice piece on birding by a Duke undergrad: I have a nemesis (a bird that defies my searching). Actually, I have several, but I have been preoccupied with this particular nemesis for months. I have seen an evening grosbeak exactly once, in a zoo, which emphatically does not count. For years, I have been fixated on-and-off (mostly on) with the possibility of seeing one in the wild. They have thick, conical beaks. The males are sunset-colored. (But good luck finding one at sunset, even though the first recorded sighting supposedly happened at twilight, hence their name.) Evening grosbeaks usually live in Canada and the northern U.S., but they are known to irrupt into areas farther south. Irruptions often occur in response to lower supplies of seeds and cones in a bird’s typical range, making it possible to predict bird irruptions, at least if you’re the famous finch forecaster. (via Duke University)
4. Sadly, how could this not be the case with all the plastic in our oceans: Scientists have found a new disease in wild birds caused solely by plastic pollution. Termed plasticosis, the disease is caused by small pieces of plastic inflaming the digestive tract. It is thought that seabirds eat the plastic when fishing and then accidentally feed it directly to their chicks. Over time, the persistent inflammation scars and deforms the tissue and the birds struggle to digest food and grow properly, affecting their ability to survive. A team of scientists from Australia and the UK decided to name the new disease after seeing widespread scarring in flesh-footed shearwater birds on Australia’s Lord Howe Island. (via The Independent)
5. Found again – after 24 years - in Madagascar!: Bird lovers are celebrating after a species some feared extinct was spotted alive by scientists for the first time in 24 years. The dusky tetraka is a songbird with a distinctive yellow throat that is native to Madagascar. Three of them have been sighted in a rainforest in the island's north-east, but in an unexpected habitat. The ground-dwelling birds were in thick vegetation near a rocky river - perhaps a good spot to find grubs and insects. (via BBC)
6. Flamingos, personalities and friendships – what one researcher found: New research found that flamingos form cliques based on their personality. More submissive birds hung out with each other whereas louder, outgoing birds had their own groups. Understanding flamingo social structure could help zoo keepers when moving birds between zoos. If you were to spend time among a flock of flamingos, you might notice it's not all that different from your high school days. Some flamingos are pushy and loud, some are quiet and submissive, but all of them have a unique personality and tend to form cliques based around each other's quirks, according to new research. (via Business Insider)
7. Let’s hope this helps, given the huge amount of offshore wind power that is in various planning stages globally: The number of seabirds killed by colliding with wind turbines could be reduced by painting black and white stripes on the blades and poles. Graham Martin at the University of Birmingham, UK, and Alex Banks at Natural England, a public body that has a say in planning applications for offshore wind farms in England, wanted to devise a pattern that could be easily painted on to offshore turbines to reduce their impact on bird life. Between 140,00 and 328,000 birds are killed each year by onshore wind turbines in the US, according to one estimate. It is harder to estimate how many marine birds are killed by offshore wind turbines each year, says Martin, as the birds fall into the ocean. (via New Scientist)
8. Everything you might want to know about bird strikes on planes (including, yes, it’s safer): Pilots and air safety officials started paying close attention to airplanes that strike wildlife in 2009 after a US Airways jet with 155 people on board hit a flock of Canada geese and lost power as it climbed out of New York's LaGuardia Airport. In what came to be called the "Miracle on the Hudson," pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger glided the aircraft into the Hudson River and everyone on board survived. The Federal Aviation Administration had been collecting data on wildlife strikes since 1990 and U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife biologists had been involved since 1995. But after that near disaster in New York in 2009, data began to pour in about animal strikes. (via USA Today)
9. Is Maine on any birder’s bucket list? Maybe it should be: I was at Sax-Zim Bog, west of Duluth and south of Hibbing. Even though the area is remote and sparsely populated, with virtually no tourist amenities, it’s famous among birders because it’s known for attracting owls. Great gray owls and northern hawk-owls come down from Canada in winter. After 20 years of longing, I finally knocked Sax-Zim Bog off my bucket list. But it left me wondering. Is Maine on the bucket list of other people across the country? Are there places in Maine that birders have always wanted to visit? Does Maine have anything to offer that can’t be found elsewhere? Yes. (via Bangor Daily News)
10. Interesting study on Eurasian Woodcock feathers (you be the judge!): You’ve met the darkest bird ever discovered, now it’s time to meet the brightest – a brown woodcock has been discovered with white feathers that reflect 30 percent more light than any other bird known to mankind. The dazzling display is used to communicate in low light, allowing it to be seen in the darkest conditions. The feathers may give scientists new insights into poorly understood birds that are mainly active during the evening and night. While birds that are active during the day have bright, colorful plumages that most of us know and love – think peacocks and birds-of-paradise – night birds often forgo the colors for a more muted appearance. As a result, scientists believed that they communicated with sounds and chemicals as opposed to bright displays. (via IFL Science)
11. Blazing on…this week’s bird flu article: In late 2021, Tufts University virologist Wendy Puryear began to worry. The avian flu virus was behaving oddly. It usually passes through wild birds with little harm. But in Europe, a highly pathogenic strain known as H5N1 was killing a range of avian species, such as Mute Swans in France and a White-tailed Eagle in Scotland, and infecting mammals like otters and foxes. Then it hopped across the Atlantic. By now, USDA’s National Wildlife Disease Program has detected the virus in nearly 150 avian species, such as Canada Geese, Brown Pelicans, Red-tailed Hawks, and Snowy Owls, and recorded thousands of dead birds. More than 55 million poultry have died—some from flu and others culled to contain it—at a cost of billions of dollars. (via Audubon Magazine)
12. Saving Spotted owls in Canada: Canada’s environment minister plans to use a rare emergency order to protect the last of an endangered owl species in an area where critical old-growth forest is slated for further clearcutting. Before industrial logging in south-west British Columbia, there were nearly 1,000 spotted owls in the old-growth forests, according to the Wilderness Committee. Now, only one wild-born northern spotted owl remains. Two others, part of a breeding programme, were recently released into the wild. The British Columbia government announced its spotted owl recovery strategy in 2006, but the populations have failed to recover – largely because the stately did not identify critical habitats for the owls, Ecojustice said. (via The Guardian)
13. On the studies front, 11,000 hours on a supercomputer, eBird Status & Trends data, and smart Ohio State researchers resulted in this interesting study: With hundreds of species migrating south for the winter and north for summer breeding, birds' ecosystem function patterns change over space and time -- creating a serious analytical challenge. But two scientists from The Ohio State University have established what could be considered a baseline map of annual avian functional and species diversity patterns in the U.S., logging 11,000 code-running hours at the Ohio Supercomputer Center to produce their findings. And what they found was a stunner: Functional diversity patterns in the West, where species and functional richness are both highest during the breeding season, are the polar opposite of what is seen in the East, where functional diversity is lowest when species richness is high. (via Science Daily)
14. And also this research work regarding some very old (and very small!) teeth: Lonely northern cliffs from which scientists have pulled the bones of Alaska dinosaurs also hold the fossilized remains of birds. Lauren Keller is studying the tiny specks of teeth and bones from birds that died more than 70 million years ago in what is now northern Alaska. Keller is a graduate student working with Patrick Druckenmiller from the University of Alaska Museum of the North. Druckenmiller is one of the researchers who has helped recover the bones of hadrosaurs and other dinosaurs from bluffs of the Colville River in northern Alaska. (via The Cordova Times)
15. BNI Book review: Three years ago, headlines delivered shocking news: nearly three billion birds in North America have vanished over the past fifty years. No species has been spared, from the most delicate jeweled hummingbirds to scrappy black crows, from a rainbow of warblers to common birds such as owls and sparrows. In a desperate race against time, scientists, conservationists, birders, wildlife officers, and philanthropists are scrambling to halt the collapse of species with bold, experimental, and sometimes risky rescue missions. Through this compelling drama, A Wing and a Prayer offers hope and an urgent call to action: Birds are dying at an unprecedented pace. But there are encouraging breakthroughs across the hemisphere and still time to change course, if we act quickly. (via Simon & Schuester)
16. Finally, this fun story from the Washington Post about a “joyful moment” …saving a raven: A large raven had been shot by a pellet gun and was found hobbling around a parking lot of a used car dealership in Chantilly, Va. Civil rights lawyer Catherine Sevcenko got a call about the two-foot-tall, injured bird. People seem to find her in situations like this. Sevcenko has cared for injured and orphaned songbirds over the past 10 years at her home in Alexandria, Va., as well as other places. (via The Washington Post)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Rick Bunting, Rough-legged Hawk, Bainbridge, NY.
Bird Videos of the Week
By National Geographic Wild, “Australian pelicans Take a Walk”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - City Hawk.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Royal Albatross Chick.