1. Let’s start with a lovely piece by a volunteer at Vermont’s Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation: “Try not to talk to the birds,” a wildlife rehabilitator said. Impossible, I thought, opening an incubator door. Inside, there were several baby American robins, huddled together in a nest made from a sour cream container and a knitted cozy. They craned their necks toward me and waved their heads back and forth as if to say: Feed me, lady. This past summer, new songbirds arrived every week at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, where an incredible team at the Center for Wild Bird Rehabilitation nursed them back to health. I volunteered there as a baby bird feeder, though I was the furthest thing from a birder when I began in June. I didn’t yet know that goldfinches change color at different times of year, that cardinals often mate for life or that Eastern phoebes, like the ones who nested on our porch this year, can raise two broods in a summer. (via WBUR News)
2. “Urban heat island effect” shrinks species diversity in China: In a recent study published in “Science of the Total Environment,” scientists at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology and Zhejiang University found that the surface urban heat island effect had implications on bird diversity in China, causing them to migrate from urban to suburban areas in the 336 Chinese cities studied. “The urban heat island effect occurs when urban areas become ‘islands’ of higher temperatures which occurs when they have little green vegetation and abundant heat-retaining surfaces such as asphalt, concrete or steel,” said Frank La Sorte, senior research associate at the Lab of Ornithology and one of the authors on the paper. (via The Cornell Daily Sun)
3. Only 120 copies; only 5 in Canada and 1 happens to be in this New Brunswick library. What could it be?: Once a month, Kenda Clark-Gorey dons white gloves to carefully turn a single page of a book. It's not just any book. It's the very rare Birds of America by John James Audubon. There were only 120 copies printed, and what's even more remarkable is that New Brunswick's Legislative Library has a copy. "The only one in Atlantic Canada and one of five in Canada," said Clark-Gorey, the legislative librarian. "It draws visitors. People who love birds, people who are artists." Birds of America is a four-volume collection of Audubon's efforts to find and illustrate every bird in North America. He spent twelve years, from 1827-1838, traveling across the continent to paint 490 birds on 435 plates. (via CBC News)
4. Interesting study: New research indicates that severe space weather events, such as solar flares, disrupt birds' navigational skills during long migrations. Previous research has indicated that when flying at night, birds (and many other animals) use Earth's magnetic field for navigation. Because solar events disrupt the magnetic field — as well as produce auroras — birds have more difficulty navigating during them. The new study analyzed images taken from 37 NEXRAD Doppler weather radar stations, which can detect groups of migrating birds, as well as data from ground-based magnetometers, to study 23 years of bird migration across the U.S. Great Plains. The 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) span from North Dakota to Texas is considered a major migratory corridor for birds. (via Yahoo News)
5. How an obsession led to a Feminist Bird Club: Early in the pandemic, Emily Tallo started trying to spot birds because it’s a free activity you can do anywhere. Since then, she’s learned a lot about birds and their environments, and she loves sharing her “bird obsession” with newcomers through Feminist Bird Club’s Chicago Chapter. “I love the moment where someone sees like, a yellow warbler for the first time, and we all talk about how it’s so small and cute,” said Tallo, of Hyde Park. “I love being the person who gets to point that out to someone.” Feminist Bird Club was founded in New York in 2016 with the goal of creating a “community-focused space” for birders that was “more accessible, more beginner-friendly, more inclusive than your typical bird club,” said Ren Dean, a coordinator for the Chicago chapter. (via Block Club Chicago)
6. Oh (no!) Canada: Canadian cabinet ministers have rejected a plea by the country’s environment minister to save an endangered owl, casting doubt on the species’ survival in the coming years. The Wilderness Committee environmental advocacy group announced on Wednesday that federal ministers had rejected a request for an emergency order to protect the northern spotted owl – a request submitted by environment minister Steven Guilbeault. The Wilderness Committee has for years lobbied the federal government to intervene in the destruction of spotted owl habitat. In February 2023, Guilbeault said the spotted owl was facing “imminent threats to its survival” and told environmental groups he would recommend an emergency order to block further destruction of its habitat in British Columbia. (via The Guardian)
7. The Smithsonian Magazine on the McCormick Place bird kills last week: In an average year, about 1,000 to 2,000 migratory birds die from striking a lakeside Chicago convention center, reports Clare Marie Schneider for NPR. But on one single night last week, at least 961 birds were killed after crashing into the building’s glass exterior. “It was just like a carpet of dead birds at the windows there,” David Willard, a retired bird division collections manager at the Chicago Field Museum, tells Todd Richmond of the Associated Press. “A normal night would be zero to 15 [dead] birds. It was just kind of a shocking outlier to what we’ve experienced,” he tells the news service. Museum volunteers have tracked bird deaths at the building for four decades, and they say no other single night has been so deadly. (via Smithsonian Magazine)
8. But here’s part of the problem with collisions – the sheer volume of migrating birds over Illinois that week: Millions of birds are migrating south for the winter, with more than 10 million crossing over the state of Illinois in just the last 24 hours alone. According to BirdCast, more than 13.5 million birds crossed Illinois between 4 a.m. Wednesday and 4 a.m. Thursday. Nearly 55 million were in flight over the state as of 4 a.m. Thursday, according to the data website. These escalating numbers come as migrations southward are steadily increase, with peak numbers expected in coming days and lasting through the beginning of November. According to EBird, a variety of warblers are traversing the state, including the Chestnut-sided Warbler, the Black-and-white Warbler and the Black-throated Green Warbler. Several species of thrushes, including the Gray-cheeked Thursh and the Swainson’s Thrush, typically cross Illinois at this time of year. (via NBC 5 Chicago)
9. Back 18,000 years ago or maybe even 53 million years ago…: Between 53 million and 18,000 years ago, carnivores known as terror birds stalked the grasslands of South America. These flightless avians, some of which stood more than 10-feet-tall, strutted over the wide prehistoric planes, chasing down prey and tearing off chunks with deep, hooked beaks. Now, thanks to newly discovered terror bird footprints, paleontologists have a better idea of how these hunters caught their prey in the first place. The six-million-years-old prints hint that some of these giant birds kicked at their prey and pinned it down, similar to the tactic of earlier dinosaurs like Velociraptor. The tracks, described recently in Scientific Reports, are the first definitive terror bird footprints. Found along the Atlantic shore in the Río Negro Formation of Patagonian Argentina, they were not easy to spot. The rock layers containing the prints are submerged by the tides twice daily. (via National Geographic)
10. Avian flu update - Using CRISPR to protect chickens: Scientists have used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR to create chickens that have some resistance to avian influenza, according to a new study that was published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. The study suggests that genetic engineering could potentially be one tool for reducing the toll of bird flu, a group of viruses that pose grave dangers to both animals and humans. But the study also highlights the limitations and potential risks of the approach, scientists said. Some breakthrough infections still occurred, especially when gene-edited chickens were exposed to very high doses of the virus, the researchers found. (via The New York Times)
11. Guinness World Records take note (and maybe the Pentagon, too): Chinese researchers from the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) have developed a ‘flapping wing’ bird drone, celebrated in the country as a significant scientific achievement. The drone also broke its previous Guinness World Record in the flight time. Also known as a ‘bionic drone,’ the UAVs are based on mechanics that replicate the intricate flying mechanism of real birds, becoming part of a global technological pursuit by various other developers. Called ‘Xinge,’ the drone broke the flight duration record of its predecessor by nearly one-and-a-half hours, which the NPU has hailed as a “technological leap.” Other universities elsewhere in the world have developed such bionic drones. Still, the Chinese product has explicitly been advertised to have diverse applications in various “environments,” suggesting a military role. (via The Eurasia Times)
12. House sparrows and redlining? Unfortunately not a surprising conclusion: On a recent afternoon in L.A.’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, Christian Benitez and Eric M. Wood stood outside a corner liquor store searching for birds. The researchers spotted a house sparrow and pulled binoculars to their eyes. “They’re all over the shrubbery in Boyle Heights,” said Wood, an associate professor of ecology at Cal State Los Angeles. Among the most ubiquitous and abundant songbirds in the world, house sparrows are urban creatures that thrive where people do. They’re resilient, adaptable and aggressive, and are found around buildings and streets, scavenging food crumbs or nesting in roof tiles. (via Los Angeles Times)
13. Sadness in the Adirondacks: The American three-toed woodpecker was always rare in New York, but warmer winters in the Adirondacks—probably the bird’s only stronghold in the state—may have pushed this winter-tolerant species farther north forever. “The three-toed woodpecker is gone from the Adirondacks only in the last decade,” said ornithologist Jeremy Kirchman, the curator of birds and mammals at the New York State Museum. The bird, he said, may be the first to leave New York because of a warming climate. As Kirchman and others monitoring climate change in the Adirondacks realize, this small, unflashy species will also probably not be the last boreal bird to dwindle in the Adirondacks and then disappear from the region. (via Adirondack Explorer)
14. Smuggler’s Blues (which, btw, is also a great song by the late Glenn Frey): A 53-year-old Eufaula man and a Georgia Doctor turned themselves into Atlanta authorities this week after attorneys unsealed an indictment accusing the men of smuggling taxidermied birds and eggs into the country. Dr. John Waldrop of Columbus, Georgia, and Toney Jones of Eufaula are charged with conspiracy to smuggle goods into the United States, violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and money laundering conspiracy. According to the United States Department of Justice, an indictment unsealed on Wednesday, October 11, alleges that between 2016 and 2020, Dr. Waldrop and Jones used online sites like eBay and Etsy to buy hundreds of taxidermied bird mounts and thousands of live eggs from approximately 11 countries, importing and collecting protected avian species such as canary, dipper, duck, eagle, falcon, grouse, gull, hawk, heron, hoopoe, kestrel, kinglet, lapwing, murre, owl, parrot, pochard, rail, teal, snipe, spoonbill, vulture and woodpecker. (via WDHN News)
15. Finally, cocaine and birding? Well, as it turns out, it was sequential. Read on: I used to do cocaine. A lot of it. It might not be immediately apparent what that fact has to do with birding, but my near-daily nadir for several years was the shameful feeling of staying up all night doing drugs and not going to bed until the birds started chirping. The sound was a shrill reminder that I was a complete mess. I’d mutter, “Goddamn birds!” which really meant, “I’m a piece of garbage.” That was the most aware of birds I ever was until I thankfully quit doing coke. Soon after, I started to pay more attention to birds in other contexts. I’ve visited Martha’s Vineyard for decades, renting a shack made out of popsicle sticks in the dunes of Aquinnah. In my late thirties, I’d arrive on the island and immediately run down to the beach to see if the conservationists had placed enclosures to protect the endangered piping plovers on our stretch of beach. It was also on the Vineyard that I formed an intense brotherly bond with a year-round local and naturalist named Michael Stutz, who is a lifelong birder. (via Boston Magazine)
Bird Videos of the Week
By Voice of America, “BirdCast Radar Forecasts Bird Migration in Real Time”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Birds of Canada.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Cocoa Woodcreeper.