1. Birds of Prey to the rescue at this weekend’s 150th Open Championship: Every golfer playing at the Open Championship this week will be thrilled to see an eagle. Yet so too will thousands of fans. Situated on the east coast of Scotland, St Andrews may be affectionately known as the 'home of golf,' but it's a residence shared by some highly disruptive roommates: seagulls. While spectators politely observe the quiet signs held up by stewards as players take their shots, the seabirds — milling above the famous yellow leaderboard at the 18th hole — make an impressive racket. Yet in the skies over the nearby food court and grandstands, not a single gull in sight. This is the result of some nifty recruitment by event organizers: four birds of prey. Fans navigating the Old Course across the week will grow accustomed to seeing a pair of hawks — a red-backed and a Harris — an Indian eagle-owl and a tawny eagle. (via CNN)
2. Moonbeams: When Billie Holiday sang What a Little Moonlight Can Do, she might as well have been describing the foraging patterns of Black Swifts, because recent research shows that moonbeams peepin’ through can affect how high the swifts swoop in their insect-eating nighttime runs. For the research, scientists equipped Black Swifts with data loggers to track their migrations from Colorado’s Rocky Mountains to Brazil’s Amazon basin and back. Over the course of that year, the researchers noticed that the swifts shifted their nocturnal foraging in relation to the amount of moonlight. During a full moon, the sleek black birds soared more than 13,000 feet in elevation (or more than 2 miles high). But during a full lunar eclipse in South America on the night of January 20, 2019, the swifts descended to around 3,000 feet in altitude. (via Living Bird Magazine)
3. Even if you’ve never heard of Plains-wanderers, encouraging news down under: Researchers from Australia's La Trobe University have discovered a major breeding event in the plains-wander, a crucial sign that the native bird's population is being slowly brought back from the brink of extinction. The finding, published in a governmental report released on Sunday (July 10), revealed a survey of plains-wanderers in the Australian state of Victoria's north, which showed that the number of birds in the area had more than doubled from under 50 to over 100 since 2018. (via Strait Times)
4. Summer vacation began for Karsyn Sterns when school let out at 1 p.m. on May 25. By 2:15, the 11-year-old was on the road headed west, her father, Stephon, behind the wheel of his Toyota RAV 4 hybrid. “Her goal was to get to Arizona,” said Stephon. Treasure awaited: the Grace’s warbler, the Harris’s hawk and dozens of other birds. The rising seventh-grader and avid nature photographer from Dumfries, Va., was embarking on an epic road trip across the American West. “We set out to photograph as many birds as we could,” said Stephon, 56. This has become a regular thing for the pair, ever since Karsyn was 6 and Stephon handed her his old camera after buying a new one for himself. (via The Washington Post)
5. In ancient Flores, an island in eastern Indonesia, “hobbit”-size humans shared the landscape with an immense bird. At more than five feet tall, the Ice Age stork Leptoptilos robustus would have towered over the three-foot-tall Homo floresiensis, who lived more than 60,000 years ago. Paleontologists previously thought the big bird was a flightless species that had adapted to live in an isolated island ecosystem. But newly analyzed fossils including wing bones, presented in the journal Royal Society Open Science, have changed the story. Despite the stork’s size, its 12-foot wingspan likely would have allowed it to soar overhead. (via National Geographic)
6. All that hammering: The brain of a woodpecker experiences a seemingly catastrophic impact every time beak meets wood. "When you see these birds in action, hitting their head against a tree quite violently, then as humans we start wondering how does this bird avoid getting headaches or brain damage," says Sam Van Wassenbergh, a researcher at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. In the past, scientists have suggested the bird's brain is protected from the impacts, perhaps by a skull that acts as a cushion, or a beak that absorbs some of the force, or a tongue that wraps around the brain. But Van Wassenberg wasn't convinced. "We went to four different zoos in Europe where they had woodpeckers and we recorded them at very high frame rates, while they were pecking," he says. The videos, part of a study published in the journal Current Biology, revealed some remarkable details. (via National Public Radio)
7. And now seals too!: The highly pathogenic avian influenza strain that has whipped through flocks of domestic poultry and wild birds this year may also be to blame for a spike in seal strandings in Maine, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Samples from four recently stranded seals — all of which died or were sick enough to require euthanasia — tested positive for the virus. Scientists have now found the virus in a variety of wild mammals in North America, including foxes, bobcats, skunks and raccoons. (via The New York Times)
8. More kudos for Merlin’s sound app: Birding-by-ear is my sole superpower. As superpowers go, it’s not as useful as invisibility or, say, predicting winning lottery numbers, but I’ll take it. I don’t recognize 100 percent of all the bird noises in Maine. I’m probably down somewhere around 99 percent. So I was shocked to hear an unknown bird noise this week. It sounded like a raptor, but not one that I recognized. It was my perfect opportunity to try out Merlin — a free app for smartphones that can identify bird sounds. I held my phone in the direction of the weird call, and Merlin instantly told me it was a sharp-shinned hawk. I’ve seen hundreds of these small woodland hawks, but they seldom make any noise except near a nest. Seconds later, a male flew over, as the female continued calling from the backside of the grove, confirming the identification. Thus, today, I am here to recommend Merlin, an app offered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology from its website at Merlin.AllAboutBirds.org. I don’t do so lightly. (via Bangor Daily News)
9. A study published by The American Naturalist, and in which Faculty of Science and Technology researcher David López-Idiáquez participated, explored whether climate change alters the plumage coloration of the blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus). The work, which was conducted over a 15-year period (2005–2019) focused on two populations of blue tits in the south of France, one located on the outskirts of Montpellier and the other in the northwest of the island of Corsica. Each year between 2005 and 2019, all breeding blue tits in each populationwere captured. As a result, researchers from the two institutions were able to gather more than 5,800 observations on the coloring and other characteristics of the blue tits. (via Physical Org)
10. So long to peoples’ names: Bewick’s Wren. Forster’s Tern. Gambel’s Quail. Henslow’s Sparrow. Say’s Phoebe. Wilson’s Phalarope. What do these birds have in common? They’re all named for people—for now. there’s growing support in the birding community from hobbyists to professional ornithologists alike to rename these six species and the roughly 145 other birds that bear honorifics. Today the English Bird Names Committee of the American Ornithological Society (AOS), which officially determines the common names used by millions of birders and scientists across North and Central America, is in the process of crafting guidelines for defining harmful names. The committee will also determine priorities for settling on new monikers; considerations may include bestowing descriptive names that highlight unique avian attributes, restoring lost names, or referencing Latin names. (via Audubon)
11. From Audubon: When hungry Atlantic Puffin chicks tell us that forage fish stocks are low or hard to find, our Coasts and Conservation Policy teams have pushed to make sure that fisheries are managed in such a way that birds will have enough to eat. When the songs of Western Meadowlarks become less frequent because our prairies are converted to monocrops and parking lots, our Conservation Ranching team makes sure that ranchers across the West have access to land-management practices that sustain grassland birds, while also ensuring that their products have a market through partnerships with retailers such as Panorama Meats. But in addition to being messengers, birds bring us so much joy. Take, for example, the people who flocked to Montrose Beach in Chicago to watch as the first Piping Plovers in more than 70 years nested there. Although Monty, the beloved duo’s male, died this spring, one of their chicks has since returned to the Great Lakes, where it successfully fledged the first Ohio Piping Plover chicks in more than 80 years. (via Audubon View)
12. Book recommendation: A University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa American studies and art history professor emeritus is expanding awareness around the fragility of Hawaiʻi’s flora and fauna with his latest published work. Joseph Stanton released the poetry book Prevailing Winds, this spring. The collection of poems are based on the award winning author’s fascination with works of art and nature, and spotlights many bright and some hauntingly dark glimpses. “I have been especially concerned with drawing attention to Hawaiian honeycreepers and other birds in these islands that have gone extinct or are in danger of extinction,” Stanton explained. “I am hoping that readers will find that what has interested me is of interest to them.” (via University of Hawaii News)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Barred Owl, Kennebunkport ME.
Bird Videos of the Week
By GeoBeats Animals, Crow Games.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Fledgling Firsts.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Ready to Fly!