1. Let’s start with an excellent PBS visit with ornithologist, poet and newly-minted MacArthur Fellow, Drew Lanham: Drew Lanham refers to himself as a ‘rare bird.’ The ornithologist, naturalist and writer says he believes conservation efforts must be a blending of rigorous science and evocative art. Lanham is among the new class of MacArthur Fellows, an honor often called ‘The Genius Award.’ Jeffrey Brown traveled to South Carolina to speak with Lanham for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. (via PBS)
Click here for Drew’s piece on the Whimbrels returning to South Carolina’s Deveaux Bank Wildness on a Whim: Reflections on Whimbrel in the South Carolina Lowcountry | All About Birds All About Birds
2. This week’s avian flu article comes from the MIT Technology Review: How worried should we be about bird flu? Some have warned that avian flu will be the next deadly pandemic. Others have said the risk is no different from what it was a few years ago. There’s no denying that outbreaks of the virus have had a huge impact on birds in recent months, and that the current outbreak is significantly worse than what we’ve seen in the past. Bird flu has been found in a range of mammals, too, including cats, foxes, otters, seals, and sea lions—and appears to have spread in a mink farm in Spain. We’ve also seen a small number of cases in people. It is undoubtedly worrying. But there’s no need to panic. Yet. (via MIT Technology Review)
3. Yikes! Taking hording to the next level – Acorn Woodpecker style: Exterminator Nick Castro was inspecting a home for mealworms when he discovered something … nuts. Tens of thousands of acorns came cascading out from behind a bedroom wall. “Unreal,” Castro posted on his company’s Facebook page. As he reached behind the wall, the little oak nuts kept spilling out. Castro – who owns Nick’s Extreme Pest Control in Santa Rosa, California – said he filled a total of eight garbage bags with 700lbs of acorns. They had been stashed there by acorn woodpeckers – peculiar little birds with a shock of red feathers on their head – who are prodigious acorn collectors. Normally, the birds store thousands of acorns in small holes they drill into dying tree stumps, which they protect with outsize pluck. “But that instinct to fit an acorn in a hole and store it is pretty strong with these guys,” explained Angela Brierly, a PhD researcher at Old Dominion University who studies the species at the Hastings Natural History Reservation. (via The Guardian)
4. 30 per week/300 in 10 weeks – Birding 101 at UC Davis: I was a plant girl. As an undergraduate student at UC Davis, I’ve spent my summers restoring wetlands with native plants, summiting peaks to study alpine cushion plants, and dissecting seeds in labs. Animals were never in the picture, and birds were no exception. So when I kept seeing “Bird ID skills needed” on botanyposition advertisements, I knew my plant-only class days were over. Enter “Laboratory in Biology & Conservation of Wild Birds, (WFC 111L).” The course is led by this year’s UC Davis Teaching Prize winner, Professor John Eadie in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. What a whirlwind. (via UC Davis)
5. Latin American researchers marginalized?: Two years ago, a group of ornithologists was outraged by the publication of a paper that highlighted how much scientists still don’t know about birds from Latin America and the Caribbean. Many criticized the authors—based at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom—for citing few studies by scientists from the region and from journals that don’t publish in English. Others said the paper, published in Ornithological Advances, perpetuated an elitist, exclusionary, “northern” approach that has overlooked the knowledge produced by Latin American experts and Indigenous people. Yesterday, their resolve bore fruit in two papers published in Ornithological Applications. (via Science)
6. Back in the USA (Maine, to be specific): It’s back. The Steller’s sea eagle was sighted and photographed last Saturday in Arrowsic, not far from where it achieved fame and fortune last winter. You’ll recall that this is one of the largest raptors in the world, big enough to swallow a bald eagle whole. It’s native to Siberia and northern Japan, rarely wandering. But this one gets around. Despite its size, the sea eagle is elusive. It’s not particularly uncomfortable around people. It just likes cold, rugged coastlines people find uncomfortable. After leaving Maine last winter, it spent much of the summer in Newfoundland. I expect it’ll tease Mainers again for a while or drift farther south and torment Massachusetts. (via Bangor Daily Post)
7. One “beefy behemoth” (albeit, 60 million years ago): New Zealand has been a haven for earthbound birds for eons. The absence of terrestrial predators allowed flightless parrots, kiwis and moas to thrive. Now researchers are adding two prehistoric penguins to this grounded aviary. One species is a beefy behemoth that waddled along the New Zealand coastline nearly 60 million years ago. At almost 350 pounds, it weighed as much as an adult gorilla and is the heaviest penguin known to science. Alan Tennyson, a paleontologist at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, discovered the supersize seabird’s bones in 2017. They were deposited on a beach in Otago known for large, cannonball-shaped concretions. The churn of the tide cracked open several of these 57-million-year-old boulders, revealing bits of fossilized bones inside. (via The New York Times)
8. A birdseye look at the beauty of birds’ eyes: Feathers steal the show, but there’s another feature every bird has that also comes in a rainbow of colors: their eyes. And, somewhat surprisingly, scientists know very little about the hows and whys behind all this variety. A recent study shines a spotlight on the diversity of avian eye color while calling on scientists to further investigate the incredible array of hues: red, yellow, blue, pink, white. The eyes of the underappreciated Rock Pigeon fade from orange at the edge to yellow around the pupil, while a juvenile Osprey’s orange eyes turn yellow at maturity. Brown Pelicans’ brown peepers lighten to blue during the breeding season while herons’ eyes can redden. Where male Wood Ducks sport red eyes, females show dark brown. (via Audubon)
9. The Cornell Lab’s game-changing app, Merlin, at the center of a humorous exchange in the NYT: Problem: My fiancée, Edie, is a bird-watcher. Often when we’re walking, she’ll stop and demand silence to use her birding app, which identifies birds by sound. This interrupts our chats, and the app records me saying dumb things. Please order Edie to stop. Solution: Since her app seems to routinely capture you “saying dumb things,” how much of this is actual conversation and how much is you just chirping out every thought you have? Look, you both should try not to be rude. Talk, yes, but listen, too, and appreciate silence. But if you really thought I would rule against a bird-watcher called Edie, then you obviously don’t know me or my love for Wes Anderson-style characters at all. (via The New York Times)
10. And speaking of New York, an exotic escapee delights Big Apple birders: David Barrett was at the gym on Thursday night when the first reports began to trickle in: there was an owl on the sidewalk of 5th Avenue, just south of Central Park. A longtime resident of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and an avid birder since 2010, Barrett, 59, is used to receiving breaking news tips about birds. As the proprietor of the popular Twitter account Manhattan Bird Alert, he receives and transmits a steady stream of information about bird sightings, as well as photos and videos taken by a network of contributors around the city. So it wasn’t until Barrett saw a photo of the owl in question later that evening that he realized this was no typical urban wildlife encounter. “I said: ‘That’s a Eurasian eagle owl,’ they’re not native to the US, so how could we have one here?” (via The Guardian)
11. Most birders will recognize the behavior of these male cardinals, and everyone will appreciate the Wood Ducks: Every winter brings a renewed interest in birdwatching in our house. My favorite has always been the cardinals. The brilliant red feathers of the male are easily spotted while they rest on branches or munch on bird seed. The females’ color is more subtle with only a hint of red in their plumage, but their bright beak usually gives away their hiding spot. Several pairs of wood ducks have been making their home on the peaceful waterway. Growing up, I had never seen wood ducks, only mallards. On the farm, the environment is a very suitable habitat. At first sight, I was surprised by their feathers. On the male, I noticed bold markings of white and black on his body and iridescent green feathers on his head. I also noted the prominent crest at the back of its head. The female is much more muted to blend in with the surroundings. (via Farm and Dairy)
12. Polygamy has its benefits, according to this new study: According to a study led by the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, bird species that engage in multiple sexual partnerships have fewer damaging mutations. This study, published in Evolution, provides the first evidence of how polygamy enhances the efficiency of natural selection in wild populations. The majority of birds form a bond with a solitary mate each mating season, while certain species like swans or geese mate for life. In contrast, some bird species are polygamous, having several partners per breeding season, however, it is unclear why they have evolved a different mating system. (via Science Tech Daily)
13. 73 wind turbines near Ohio’s Magee Marsh Wildlife Area (home to what sponsors call “The Biggest Week in American Birding”) seems like a very bad idea: The fate of a proposed 73-turbine wind project in northwest Ohio near the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, a site that hosts a large birdwatching festival each year, could be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court, which is expected to hear a challenge to the proposal on Wednesday. The Emerson Creek Wind Project could generate 847,000 to 952,000 megawatt hours of electricity a year, at a time when the average temperature in Ohio has increased by 2.7 degrees since 1970, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit that uses big data to communicate the effects of climate change. Extremes in temperatures and storms are expected to affect agriculture, water and the economy. (via Cleveland News)
14. GUILTY!!: A man who repeatedly admitted scheming to smuggle finches from Guyana into New York for birdsong competitions was sentenced on Thursday to a year and a day in prison. It was Insaf Ali’s second time being sentenced in a Brooklyn federal court for a crime related to bird trafficking, and he vowed it would be his last. “I’m going to stay away from the birds,” Ali pledged in a video he submitted to the court, “because it’s trouble.” Ali, 62, pleaded guilty last summer to conspiring to import wildlife illegally. He was stopped at the John F Kennedy airport in January 2022 with two packs of hair curlers that smugglers use to slip the small birds past customs officials. He was previously arrested in 2018 carrying finch-stuffed hair curlers in his socks at JFK, authorities said. In that case, he pleaded guilty to smuggling and was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $7,800 fine. (via The Guardian)
15. A Goffin’s cockatoo and its “tool box” get ready for work: The Goffin’s cockatoo is the handyman of the avian kingdom. This crested, white-feathered Indonesian bird crafts what are essentially crowbars, ice picks, and spoons to pry open its favorite fruits, making it one of very few species to not only use tools, but fashion an entire tool set. Now, researchers have shown the cockatoos appear to plan ahead for the job, toting with them the tools needed to solve a puzzle. Outside of humans, carrying tools for a future job has only been seen in one other animal—a population of wild chimpanzees in the Congo Basin. It’s “a fine example of the clever use of experiment and observations to explore a tricky area of psychology: Can an animal think ahead like we do?” (via Science)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis – Sandhill Crane, Celery Fields, Sarasota County, FL.
Bird Videos of the Week
By BBC News, “Palm Cockatoo: Why a Unique ‘Drumming’ Bird is in Peril”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Cocoa Woodcreeper.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Tufted Titmouse.