1. Let’s start this morning with an extraordinary tweet of an amazing Central African bird that is known for its bill “clattering”:
2. Concern in Berkeley: Annie, the female peregrine falcon that’s lived atop UC Berkeley’s Campanile since late 2016 with her mate Grinnell, hasn’t been seen for at least a week, and her absence indicates that she likely has been injured, killed or has abandoned the territory, according to Cal Falcons, a group of bird experts and volunteers who monitor and are ambassadors for the campus’s well-known raptors. Annie and Grinnell arrived on campus as a pair and chose the bell tower as their home. Annie was preparing their nest box for another season of raising chicks; typically, she lays eggs in March. But it’s been since the start of last week that Annie, a strong, swift and fierce defender of her territory, a capable mother and a much-loved member of the campus community, was seen at or around the tower. (Berkeley News)
3. Staring at the moon: What do birds get up to at night? It was a simple question that puzzled scientists for hundreds of years. Ornithologist George Lowery started quantifying this in the 1950s, organizing massive campaigns to collect nationwide data from these lunar observations. Between twilight and dawn, Lowery’s crew would look up at the full moon and mark the pathways and flight directions and number of birds they saw. Because technology was relatively crude at the time, they correlated the moon face with a circular clock face and marked the “time” (referring to location) that the bird entered and exited at. “What we’re trying to do is automate that with our little robot,” says Wesley Honeycutt, a research associate at the University of Oklahoma. The researchers have already been able to glean a great deal of information from the data they have so far. (via Popular Science)
4. Some fun facts about introduced species: What would you say if I told you that in the late 1920s a 66-page report was generated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding the relocation and transplanting of native avian species outside their native range, as well as introducing foreign gamebirds into North America? These shadowy shipments could be described as “… cloaked in darkness,” going back as far as the Colonial times and well into the 1920s. The bulletin tells of these attempts, or rather, biological experiments, across the country without the knowledge of ornithologists. The only records were of those that were buried in the back of newspapers, insignificant blurbs in sportsmen’s periodicals, and the hazy memories of men who were involved or experienced such rare encounters. Yes, we all know there have been both game- and non-gamebirds introduced successfully into the United States. Some were intentional, others were accidents. (via Field Ethods)
5. More NYC avian delights: Most people refer to the four acres of green space behind the main branch of the New York Public Library as Bryant Park, but to city birders, it’s Doodletown. That’s because every year around the beginning of March, the first migratory bird to arrive in the city, the American woodcock, also known as the bogsucker, mudbat, or timberdoodle, shows up there — and to judge by bird Twitter, the species spends its layover almost exclusively there. With the woodcock’s mottled-brown egg-shaped body, long beak, and swaggering walk, few birds in New York City are stranger than this one. On eBird, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s birding app, 1,121 woodcock sightings are recorded citywide, and 586 of those are in Bryant Park. (via Curbed)
6. The thrill of understanding a single bird’s migration: Right about now, songbirds in Brazil are shifting on their perches, feeling mysterious impulses that will soon make them leap off their branches and head toward Alaska. One of these birds is the olive-sided flycatcher, about as tall as your hand, with a blocky body and head. With good fortune, these birds will in a few months be fluttering into a forest swamp in Alaska, Canada or the Rocky Mountains, with a mission of replicating. Julie Hagelin has pulled on her Xtratufs to visit spruce wetlands in Alaska in search of the olive-sided flycatcher. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist is co-author of a recent paper in which she and her colleagues have identified important areas that flycatchers from Alaska use when they leave each fall. (via Juneau Empire)
No better book on migration than Scott Weidensaul’s, A world on the Wing: the Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds.
7. This is pretty cool: Milly Formby wanted to better understand life as a bird, so she learned how to fly. Not by growing wings, or developing a superpower, but by getting her pilot's licence. She is about to embark on a 20,000-kilometre trip around the coast of mainland Australia and is believed to be the first woman to do so. And one day, she has a dream to fly all the way from Australia to Siberia. It is all in an effort to raise awareness for the migratory shorebird, many which are critically endangered. (via ABC News)
8. When people think of extinct animals, they may picture taxidermy, skeletons, 19th-century illustrations or perhaps grainy black-and-white photographs. Until very recently, these were our only ways to encounter lost beings. However, technological advances are making it possible to encounter extinct species in new ways. With a few clicks, we can listen to their voices. In September 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended removing 23 apparently extinct species from the endangered species list. Of the birds listed as likely extinct, six were recorded while they were still present: the Bachman’s warbler, ivory-billed woodpecker and four native Hawaiian and Pacific Island species: the bridled white-eye, Kauai Oo, large Kauai thrush (kama’o), and po’ouli. (via EarthSky)
9. A photo bonus: Photographing birds can be difficult, with no shortage of early morning wake-ups, frustrating weather conditions, and uncooperative subjects. But capturing compelling images of young birds presents its own set of challenges. Chicks can be even more unpredictable than adults, have funny behaviors—peeping or begging for food for hours on end—and move suddenly, disrupting an otherwise beautifully in-focus image. Photographing parents with chicks also requires extra patience (feedings occur quickly and infrequently) and hypervigilance to any sign of stress in the parents or chicks. Taking pictures of baby birds from a responsible distance and with a telephoto lens is the best way to avoid causing harm to adults or young. (via Audubon Magazine)
10. And a book review: There's much to admire about birds: They can soar through the skies, build durable nests and some can even sing. But can they smell? For a long time, it was widely believed that birds have no sense of smell. But that didn't sit right with evolutionary biologist Danielle Whittaker. She began researching and found that birds are not only able to smell but that scent is integral to their behavior and lives, influencing everything from building a nest to picking a mate. Her findings are out now in a newly released book titled "The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent." The notion that birds can’t smell has persisted for more than a century despite being disproved by Whittaker and others. That’s partly because humans devalue their own sense of smell, she says. Whittaker decided to do her own experiments to prove birds use scents in many ways. (via WBUR)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Great Egret, Wakodahatchee Wetlands (Delray Beach, FL).
Bird Videos of the Week
By Jay Bradley, “Birders in Ithaca and Beyond Take on the Great Backyard Bird Count”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Barred Owl Cam.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Hours Old!