1. Heat is top of mind this month, so let’s start with a Washington Post story on baby birds and the unrelenting heat enveloping Phoneix: Heather Mitchell drove 30 miles across Phoenix last week with the temperature above 110 degrees, sitting next to a cheeping baby grackle that had dropped from its nest. Someone had posted about the fallen bird to a neighborhood group and Mitchell refused to let the tiny bundle of feathers die in the heat. “I was like, ‘Okay, my husband’s home. He’ll take the kids. I’ll take the grackle,’” Mitchell told a volunteer manning the intake desk at Liberty Wildlife, an animal rehabilitation center in Phoenix. The shelter has been a frenzy of activity this month during the record-breaking run of extreme temperatures that’s been taxing for humans and wildlife alike. Mitchell’s great-tailed grackle was the 7,109th animal that the shelter has taken in this year — and more were lining up behind. (via The Washington Post)
2. “…tiny, secretive, furiously destructive” – can only be House Wrens: The drama started the first time a house wren showed up, nearly a decade ago. House wrens are the feathered agents of chaos: tiny, secretive, furiously destructive. I love their magnificent courtship song, but my heart always sinks when I hear the first house wren of springtime announcing his arrival after the long migration from South America. Once he gets here, the year-round inhabitants are in trouble. Birds naturally compete for nesting territory, especially when resources are scarce. Some, like house sparrows and European starlings, will also destroy other birds’ nests, and even other birds’ babies, to clear the way for their own. The wrens have their reasons. And as I watch my human neighbors poisoning the habitat our wild neighbors share, I begin to see their point. There is not enough here to go around. Still, I can’t help wishing it were otherwise. (via The New York Times)
3. “And the answer is yes, we found it” (unfortunately): In 2020, Tufts Wildlife Clinic Director Maureen Murray published a study that showed 100% of red-tailed hawks tested at the clinic were positive for exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs). Such exposure occurs when these chemicals are used to kill mice or rats, which eat the poison, and the birds eat the poisoned prey. “The point of our new study is to answer a simple question: would we be able to find evidence of bromethalin exposure in birds of prey coming into the clinic? And the answer is yes, we found it.” Murray and coauthor Elena Cox, a fellow in wildlife medicine and education, sampled the birds in the same way as the birds in the 2020 AR study. They found evidence of bromethalin exposure in about 30% of the birds of prey that were sampled. (via Futurity)
4. “So a lot of something can be bad, but the absence of something can also be bad” - more on the study we mentioned last week on seabird die-offs in the Pacific Northwest: A new study from the University of Washington found that persistent heat waves in the marine environment linked to climate change are leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of seabirds several months later. The researchers also found that these mass die-offs of seabirds used to happen once a decade, but are now happening more frequently. That includes five consecutive years, from 2014 to 2019, when millions of seabirds washed up on beaches stretching from California to Alaska. To make their findings, the scientists used nearly 30 years of surveys of bird carcasses spanning more than a thousand beaches along the West Coast, including Oregon. (via Oregon Public Broadcasting)
5. The importance of swamps: A nice piece on birds and swamps: Banish thoughts of deep shadows, dark water and lurking creatures. There’s a lot more to swamps than you might think. Found in flood plains along streams and rivers, swamps provide food control and natural filtration to keep local ecosystems healthy. Not to mention, there are plenty of birds in swamps and other animals live and thrive in these haunts. But even the most celebrated swamps have identity issues. The Great Dismal Swamp, for example, is a name that may not entice visitors, but Deloras Freeman, the visitor services manager, says many folks enjoy the national wildlife refuge in Virginia and North Carolina. And once you explore a swamp, you’ll glimpse some of nature’s most stunning critters, especially birds uniquely suited for this habitat of woods and water. (via Birds and Blooms)
6. Follow those ants!: To better understand Equatorial Guinea’s tropical birds, ornithologists Luke L. Powell and Patricia Rodrigues scan the ground rather than the trees. They are searching for nests of driver ants. These voracious predators will march out of their underground nests and fan out into a meters-wide swarm, flushing out insects and worms from undergrowth. From the trees, birds swoop down to catch the fleeing insects. And where the ant swarms go, the birds follow. Swarms make humming and “tick tick tick” sounds, says Powell, of the University of Porto in Portugal. It is the sound of the ants — and of animals scurrying in panic (SN: 8/12/02). “Then you hear the sounds of birds chirping at the edge [of the swarm], communicating.” (via Science News)
7. If you are in or around Houston, look up! You might see 200,000 Purple Martins: The Purple Martins are in Houston gathering by the thousands for the return trip home. Every year the songbirds migrate from South America to North America in the spring. As summer comes to an end, they gather for the return trip home to South America. In Houston, the Purple Martins have returned to an area near Willowbrook Plaza. There could be as many as 300,000 birds to gather before they start to fly home to South America. "People have described it as a National Geographic moment," said Mary Anne Morris, the education director for the Houston Audubon Society. "Probably at this point there are about 200,000 Purple Martins. Everywhere you look. And they swirl and descend into the trees in kind of a tornado effect or like a hurricane. It's a spectacle.”
8. Griffon Vulture chicks take wing; conservationists ecstatic: He flies! After hatching in February, a baby Israeli griffon vulture famed in certain Facebook circles has taken wing. He (or she) was almost immediately followed by a second baby griffon vulture from a nearby nest. Then, perhaps in envious emulation of the other chicks, and despite being two weeks younger, a third vulture chick precociously made the great leap into the skies. All this action took place in mid-July under the watchful eye of the 24/7 Israeli Raptor Nest Cam, which monitors the birds' lives and development. Though now able to aviate, the juveniles will continue to be nurtured by their doting parents for some time to come, say experts at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. (via Haaretz)
9. Who wouldn’t sign up for this summer internship? (A short podcast): Along with a team of professional scientists, the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation, in Saranac Lake, relies on a crew of student interns to monitor loons on the region’s waterways. Emma Borys is an Education & Outreach intern this summer. She grew up in Connecticut, and is a junior majoring in environmental biology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. At ESF she is the president of the school’s Birding Club. As part of our on-going series on birds and birding, Todd Moe caught up with Emma, who says she discovered her love for wildlife and birds at Earthplace Nature Center in Connecticut, where she worked as a preschool teacher, summer camp counselor, and animal care technician. She is excited to be working with loons and the staff at the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation this summer. (via NCPR)
10. Avian flu update: Millions of wild birds may have died from bird flu globally in the latest outbreak, researchers have said, as the viral disease ravages South America, with 200,000 deaths recorded in Peru alone. The highly infectious variant of H5N1, which gained momentum in the winter of 2021, caused Europe’s worst bird flu outbreak before spreading globally. The disease reached South America in November 2022, and has now been reported on every continent except Oceania and Antarctica. Working out how many wild birds have died is difficult because so many carcasses are never found or counted. Michelle Wille, from the University of Sydney, co-authored research that is believed to be the first attempt to assess numbers on a global scale. It documents deaths since October 2021. “We estimate the scale of mortality among wild birds is in the millions rather than tens of thousands reported,” the paper says. (via The Guardian)
11. Biodiversity and renewable fuels in conflict: In the Great Plains, corn and soybeans, the raw feedstocks used for bioethanol and bio-diesel production, have expanded in recent years following incentives for the production of renewable fuels. The region has also seen surges in oil and natural gas production. Both types of development have led to widespread conversion or modification of grasslands, which provide habitat for numerous bird species, many of which are recognized as species of conservation concern. A new study from U.S. Geological Survey biologists shows that grassland birds in North Dakota have responded more negatively to the expansion of corn and soybeans as compared with oil and gas development and other types of agriculture. (via USGS)
12. Kittiwake hotels! – this time near “nearshore” wind projects – hope it helps: Offshore wind farm maker Ørsted and marine engineer Red7Marine have teamed up and successfully installed three nearshore artificial nesting structures along the East Coast of England to provide a home to endangered Kittiwakes and other flight species while producing clean and renewable electricity. Dubbed a first of their kind, the artificial bird nests on the nearshore wind farm aim to support vulnerable species in decline while enabling the green and renewable energy jumpstarted by Ørsted for its Hornsea 3 project. Two of the artificial nesting structures are located approximately 1 kilometer from the shoreline of South Beach, Lowestoft, and the third is 1.4 kilometers from the shoreline of the Minsmere Nature Reserve, Suffolk. (via DesignBoom)
13. Finally, what’s going on here - Spoonbills in D.C.?: Blooming water lilies aren’t the only pink beauties drawing people to Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens right now. Two roseate spoonbills—tall, pale pink birds with, as their name implies, spoon-shaped bills—have also been wading in the park’s marsh for a few weeks now, drawing the attention of birders and photographers who have been flocking to see them. The birds, which Audubon calls “gorgeous at a distance and bizarre up close,” are common in coastal Florida and Texas. While they’re known to wander north—some have been reported as far north as Michigan—it’s quite rare to see the birds inside the District. Their first reported spotting in DC was in 2021. (via Washingtonian)
Bird Videos of the Week
By Channel 4 News, “Dead and Dying Birds Wash up on British Beaches as Avian Flu Sweeps Through”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Magpie.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Hairy Woodpeckers.