1. Archbold Biological Station, famous for its Florida Scrub Jay research, is also helping this endangered woodpecker: “Is that them?” I mouth to Greg Thompson, the Archbold Biological Station scientist spearheading this project. He nods. We make our way along a path that Thompson had carefully cleared of crunchy palmetto fronds and pine cones. I hold my breath, creeping through the gathering dusk to my spot. Thompson tiptoes to a longleaf pine with a white ring painted around its trunk, the mark of a nesting tree. He raises something like a butterfly net attached to an extendable pole, slowly, quietly, until it reaches a hole in the trunk about 20 feet up. Mary Marine, a research assistant, appears from among the palmettos in a plaid shirt and rubber boots and begins slapping the tree trunk until a little bird about the length of a dollar bill dives out of the hole and into Thompson’s net. Moments later, Thompson is cradling a rather irritated red-cockaded woodpecker in his hand. (via Smithsonian Magazine)
2. A necropsy on Flaco, the escaped Eurasian eagle owl who captivated NYC for weeks, revealed traces of four different rat poisons commonly used in the city, as well as feral pigeon herpesvirus. Raptors and rat poison are the subject of this piece from the Cornell Lab’s All About Birds: In Berkeley, California, a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk lay dead in a pool of its own blood on the sidewalk. Paul Randall and his eight-year-old son Gabe were walking their dog when they discovered the corpse of the bird, which had hatched just two months earlier. Owens Viani and the Randall family had expected to see the young Cooper’s Hawks fledge and go on their way. They hadn’t expected to find one of the juveniles sprawled dead on the concrete, the victim of a massive hemorrhage. The culprit behind the gruesome death was a rat poison called brodifacoum, according to tests contracted by WildCare, a Marin County wildlife rehabilitation group. One of a group of killing agents known as second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, brodifacoum is one of the most widely used rat poisons in America. (via All About Birds)
By Hap Ellis, Blackpoll Warbler - Joan Durante Community Park, Longboat Key, FL.
3. Speaking of Flaco, Lawmakers in New York rename the “Bird Safe Building Act” the “FLACO Act”: The untimely death of New York City’s beloved Flaco the owl has prompted renewed calls to make New York safer for birds, and rightfully so. As an architect, I’ve seen the positive impact of measures designed to protect the bird population. So I support Senator Hoylman-Sigal’s two pieces of legislation—the FLACO Act and the Dark Skies Protection Act. Yet, I also urge the senator and his colleagues to go even further. Now is the time to require the installation of bird-friendly glass in new buildings and substantial retrofits across New York and regulate the use of artificial lighting, which disorients migratory birds in flight and attracts them to urban areas. Addressing these issues is part of a larger effort to limit the negative effects of the built environment on the natural habitats of migratory species that cross our city and state. (via The Architect’s Newspaper)
4. Decades of conservation efforts paying off in Wellington, NZ, to the delight of residents: Some time in the pre-dawn darkness, the commotion starts. From her bed, Danae Mossman hears the noise building: loud romantic liaisons, vomiting, squeals, the sound of bodies hitting the pool at full tilt. Things get particularly loud between midnight and 4am, Mossman says, “when they are getting busy”. Mossman’s hard-partying housemates are a flock of kororā, or little penguin, the world’s smallest, which have formed a growing colony beneath her house in the Wellington suburb of Karaka Bays on the Miramar peninsula. They use her lily ponds for pool parties, and during nesting season, they create a stink. New Zealand’s Department of Conservation encouraged the birds to move to specially built nests closer to the sea, but so far they have shown no desire to leave. (via The Guardian)
5. A paean to the Swainson’s Hawk, a remarkable migrant that winters in Argentina and breeds across the western U.S. (round trips that can be as much as 12,000 miles): With long legs and large wings, the white stork is a prominent star of the pageant that is animal migration. Flying from Europe towards Africa in autumn, and then back again in spring, birds can be seen taking to the sky in conspicuous flocks that herald the changing of the seasons. Now, a study from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, has an explanation for how this collective phenomenon forms: the storks are choosing to fly together. With data on lifetime migrations of 158 storks, the study provides the first evidence of the social preference of storks during migration. In a paper, appearing in Current Biology, the researchers show that storks chose routes that were heavily trafficked by other storks. Yet, young storks tuned their routes to social hot-spots more than adults did. (via Phys Org)
6. Frugivores are struggling: Fruit-eating birds — also known as frugivores — come in many colors and sizes, from the tiny yellow Palm tanager and the bright Blue red-legged honeycreeper (Thraupis palmarum) to the Toucan-like black, gray, white and orange Great hornbill (Buceros bicornis). They are also essential to the preservation of tropical forests, with 70 to 90 percent of their tree species depending on frugivores to eat, spread and excrete their seeds. This, in turn, allows forests to serve an important role storing carbon and reducing the impact of human-caused climate change. Yet according to a recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change, frugivores are struggling to perform this essential ecological service because of human activity. (via Salon Magazine)
By Hap Ellis, Cape May Warbler - Joan Durante Community Park, Longboat Key, FL
7. Wisdom is the oldest living wild bird, at 72 years, and she is looking for a new mate: The world's oldest known wild bird is courting new mates on a remote island off Hawaii after potentially losing her lifelong sweetheart, researchers say. The female albatross, nicknamed Wisdom, is likely in her 70s and has been cruising around the North Pacific Ocean since the Eisenhower administration, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Biologists first identified Wisdom in 1956 and put a band on her right leg that is still attached today. The albatross was already mature when she was banded, meaning she could be 72 years old — two decades older than the average lifespan of her species. (via Live Science)
8. Spring means lots of festivals like this: Bird call: The third week in May is to bird lovers what fall is to pumpkin spice fanatics. Spring migration is upon us. What birdie will show up this year? Who will be blown off-course and spend a few days recuperating in the Pikes Peak region? Nobody knows until a tiny, yellow-rumped warbler is spotted picking through twigs and leaves in a random backyard. The Pikes Peak Birding & Nature Festival once again will celebrate our winged creatures with dozens of field trips, seminars and workshops. Volunteer birders from around the region will guide field trips to locations such as Rainbow Gulch, Chico Basin Ranch, Kettle Creek Lakes, Mueller State Park, Brett Grey Ranch and Bluestem Prairie Open Space. (via The Gazette)
9. And then there’s the competitive side to birding: Competitive birding dates back to at least the 1950s, when the record for most species seen in one year in the continental U.S. and Canada, after going unbeaten for over a decade, was broken by three different people between 1952 and 1956. Legendary field guide author Roger Tory Peterson led one of these record-breaking efforts, seeing 572 bird species in 1953, an achievement documented in his book, “Wild America.” This tradition of the “big year” eventually reached Hollywood: Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin star in “The Big Year,” a movie inspired by the three-man race to break the record in 1998. Birders using the internet and smartphones now regularly exceed 700 species in a year, some without even leaving the lower 48 states. Worldwide, at least two people have completed big years of over 6,000 species. (via Daily Hampshire Gazette)
By Hap Ellis, Hooded Warbler - Joan Durante Community Park, Longboat Key, FL
10. Nice piece on bird song and music from Wisconsin Public Radio (with a shout out to the Merlin app): There is a long history in classical music of composers emulating birdsong, from Antonio Vivaldi’s “Goldfinch Concerto” to Amy Beach’s “A Hermit Thrush at Morn.” Ottorini Respighi’s “The Birds” also comes to mind, with the hen scratching around on the ground and the dove’s soft call. Other pieces capture the feeling that a bird’s song might convey, like François Couperin’s “Le Rossignol-en-Amour” (The Nightingale in Love.) One of the earliest bird pieces was a pop song of its time: “Le Chant des Oiseaux” (The Song of the Birds) by Clement Janequin, which has the choir emulating several different bird songs. (Janequin, by the way, was a famous Parisian songwriter born in 1485!) Another of that ilk is Thomas Weelkes’s “The Nightingale, the Organ of Delight,” of 1608, in which the choir sings about the blackbird, thrush and lark. (via Wisconsin Public Radio)
11. More on Lights Out: Spring bird migration has begun. Under cover of darkness, 2.5–3.5 billion birds will fly northward to their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, now is one of the most important times of year to keep birds safe by reducing non-essential lighting at night and treating window glass so birds can see it and avoid deadly collisions. To help prevent collisions, turn out non-essential lighting from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. or draw curtains to keep light inside. Add shields to external lighting to direct light downward and out of the skies. Taking these steps from February 15 to June 15 will save birds during spring migration. Reducing light pollution year-round will benefit wildlife, human health, and energy savings. (via Phys Org)
12. Max Plank Institute study offers “the first clues” that White Storks are actually choosing to fly together: With long legs and large wings, the white stork is a prominent star of the pageant that is animal migration. Flying from Europe towards Africa in autumn, and then back again in spring, birds can be seen taking to the sky in conspicuous flocks that herald the changing of the seasons. Now, a study from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, has an explanation for how this collective phenomenon forms: the storks are choosing to fly together. With data on lifetime migrations of 158 storks, the study provides the first evidence of the social preference of storks during migration. In a paper, appearing in Current Biology, the researchers show that storks chose routes that were heavily trafficked by other storks. Yet, young storks tuned their routes to social hot-spots more than adults did. (via Phys Org)
By Hap Ellis, Golden-winged Warbler - Joan Durante Community Park, Longboat Key, FL.
13. Hank Williams’ hit “Your Cheating Heart” apparently applies to (older) Blue Tits too: Forget puppy love — in the world of blue tits, it’s the older, experienced males who win the game of extra-marital affairs. A new study sheds light on why young male blue tits struggle with mating outside of their primary partnerships. researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany spent 15 years observing a wild population of blue tits. Researchers carefully studied blue tits over many years to understand the mating patterns. In a controlled intervention, they removed the majority of older males from the population. This allowed scientists to directly observe if young males had more success fathering extra-pair offspring in the absence of competition from their elders. The removal of older males led to a significant increase in the reproductive success of younger males. This indicates that competition with older, more experienced birds is one of the primary reasons young males struggle with extra-pair paternity. (via Earth)
14. Nesting birds in your yard or woods?: If you live in a city or suburb, it can be hard to feel surrounded by nature. But next time you step outside, pause, look and listen — even in the most densely populated areas, birds are almost omnipresent. And no matter where you live, that can be a kind of magic, especially during nesting season. “Rarely do we get this opportunity to get a front-row seat to a wild organism starting its life,” says Brian Evans, a migratory bird ecologist and project lead at the bird observatory at the Smithsonian National Zoo. “All we have to do is start noticing.” But having an avian neighbor can raise a host of questions, including how best to monitor a nest, how to keep it safe and what to do in case of nest abandonment. According to Chad Witko, a senior coordinator of avian biology at the National Audubon Society, the answer to most questions is usually to leave the nest alone. If you feel you must intervene, call a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in your area. “[Birds] have enough problems as it is,” he says. “It’s good to not let our good intentions do more harm.” (via The Washington Post)
By Hap Ellis, Yellow-throated Warbler - Joan Durante Community Park, Longboat Key, FL.
15. NFL Draft and the need for trained raptors - why you ask?: The players preparing for the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit aren't the only ones touting a hefty resume. Cersei and Yahtzee are two birds of prey taking on the tall task of poop duty ahead of the draft. The two birds essentially serve as scarecrows, perched on the arms of their owners, Paul Thomas and Terese of ScAir Force Falconry. Contracted by Bedrock Detroit, the experts use various tools, aside from the birds of prey, to keep smaller birds from pooping all over the side of buildings and making a mess. Thomas says they've been at it a few weeks already and are contracted to be around for months following the draft. (via CBS News)
16. Finally, 40 minutes outside of Cali, Columbia’s third largest city, there is this hidden gem: “The Sonso Lagoon is a hidden paradise in the Cauca Valley, 40 minutes from Cali, the third-largest city in Colombia. At more than 5000 acres, the laguna is the largest wetland in the region. Community researchers have logged more than 200 species of birds in the area, a wonder for tourists who come from different parts of the world to delight in the variety of the landscape. There, once travelers have left behind the bustle of Cali and the pressure of the clock, they discover a story of community entrepreneurship. Artisanal fishermen, midwives, and young people of the area teamed up several years ago to promote ecotourism, preserve this natural paradise, and share it with those who come from outside to enjoy it sustainably. (via Audubon)
Bird Videos of the Week
Video by National Geographic, “Emperor penguin chicks jump off a 50-ft cliff in Antartica”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - “Protect the Arctic”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Guess the nest!