1. This doesn’t happen every day: A new species of owl has just been described from Príncipe Island, part of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe in Central Africa. Scientists were first able to confirm its presence in 2016, although suspicions of its occurrence gained traction back in 1998, and testimonies from local people suggesting its existence could be traced back as far as 1928. The new owl species was described in the open-access journal ZooKeys based on multiple lines of evidence such as morphology, plumage colour and pattern, vocalisations, and genetics. (via EurekaAlert)
2. No surprise to anyone who loves crows: A facet of complex thought long believed to be unique to humans may be for the birds, too. Crows can learn a skill previously believed to distinguish the minds and communication of humans from other animals, according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. The research could help bolster evidence that recursion, defined in the study as the cognitive ability to embed a structure within similar structures, is a skill that some animals, like some monkeys and birds, can learn. (via The Wall Street Journal)
3. Stunning photography (must see): On a hike one day, photographer Xavier Bou, who is based in Barcelona, wondered if the flight paths of birds could be captured on paper. Through research he realized they could – and represented in a single image. Since then he’s recorded the labyrinthine patterns created by birds on the wing, a project published next month as a book called Ornithographies (Lynx Edicions). “We’re at a point in history where conservation is no longer an eccentric hobby,” says Bou. “It is a necessity. I hope Ornithographies encourages people to become aware of the birds around us… just raise your head and – who knows – maybe a beautiful formation of migrating geese will pass by.” (via The Guardian)
4. Search continues: The humidity was thick around 5 in the morning as birders in northeastern Louisiana geared up for a search expedition. After a second-straight stormy night, mosquitoes swarmed. We donned our headlamps, grabbed our hiking poles and headed north into the forest. We had to be in the “hot zone” by first light. This, indeed, was no ordinary hike: For those in the know, it was a quest generations in the making—and one reasonable observers might describe as unthinkable. All was silence except when Courtman warned of sharp logs and poison ivy, noted bear prints or named the rhythmic sounds of birds, one by one, as they woke. Among them, Courtman hoped, was the creature he’d sought for years: The Lord God Bird. (via CNN)
5. “Lights out” on Maui: In 1886, after meeting the inventor Thomas Edison in New York, Hawaii’s King Kalakaua enthusiastically began electrifying the grounds of his new residence — and within a year, 325 incandescent lights had the Iolani Palace fully aglow. The king wouldn’t be able to pull off the same feat these days on Maui. Much of the island’s outdoor illumination soon could violate a new ordinance intended to help the island’s winged population. Fines could reach $1,000 a day. The measure restricts outdoor lighting in an effort to keep endangered birds — and Maui has some of the world’s rarest — from crashing into spotlighted buildings. But Bill 21, signed into law last week, is ruffling feathers because its provisions also could keep flagpoles, church steeples, swimming pools and even luaus in the dark. (via The Washington Post)
6. A Fall migration primer: How'd you sleep last night? As you slumbered, birds swept the skies above you. Roughly 1,000 birds crossed over Suffolk County, MA, Tuesday night as part of the birds' annual fall migration, according to BirdCast, a migration tracker with Cornell University's ornithology lab. Neil Hayward, a famed lifelong birder and author of "Lost Among the Birds: Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year," joins us to talk about what we can see and hear during this migration. Hayward also serves on the board of the Brookline Bird Club and the American Birding Association. (via WBUR)
7. There is something advantageous about…: Two populations of flycatchers that evolved on different remote islands separately developed the same trait – all-black feathers – according to a new study that used machine learning to understand the process that shaped the birds’ genome. “The chestnut-bellied flycatcher is not as well-known as Darwin’s finches,” said Leonardo Campagna, an evolutionary geneticist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and lead author of “Selective Sweeps on Different Pigmentation Genes Mediate Convergent Evolution of Island Melanism in Two Incipient Bird Species,” which published Nov. 1 in PLOS Genetics. “But this complex of birds has also gone through many evolutionary changes, many of which involve changes in the coloration and patterning of their plumage,” he said. (via Cornell Chronicle)
8. Smart jays: The old saying states a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush but it appears Eurasian jays may beg to differ: researchers have found the corvids shun an immediate reward for a tastier, but delayed, treat. What’s more, the team found the birds that showed the most self-control scored higher on a variety of cognitive tests, suggesting they were more intelligent. Over a series of trials the birds were taught the symbols related to how available the treat in the drawer was – while one drawer offered an immediately available treat, another drawer’s contents were only available after a delay, and those in a third drawer remained unavailable. The birds were also taught that once they chose a treat, the other options were removed. (via The Guardian)
9. This is such a cool bird: Nagaland is undertaking the first avian documentation exercise to go beyond Amur falcons, the migratory raptor that put the State on the world birding map. The four-day Tokhü Emong Bird Count (TEBC) from Friday has been timed with the post-harvest Tokhü Emong festival of the Lothas, the Naga community that dominates Wokha district, arguably the most preferred stopover of the Amur falcons while travelling from east Asia to southern Africa. The event is a collaboration among the Wokha Forest Division, the Divisional Management Unit of the Nagaland Forest Management Project (NFMP) and Bird Count India. (via The Hindu)
A must read: the chapter on the Amur Falcons in Scott Weidensaul’s A World on the Wing.
10. Musings on rare birds sightings: After I filed my report last week about the Vermilion Flycatcher I found in Brewster, it went viral — for reasons not clear to me, this rare bird story grew wings. Beginning here with the Weekly Bird Report, it next made the Cape Cod Times, then a couple of Boston TV news stations, then the Boston Globe. Eventually it went national when USA Today picked up the story, bringing news of our little lost Cape Cod bird to half-interested hotel guests all over the country. The bird has since moved on, but it had a wild media ride during its stay. It wasn’t even the rarest bird on the Cape in the last few months — that honor goes to a Common Redshank, an attractive Eurasian sandpiper never before seen on the East Coast, and one of just a few North American records. But because it was in an off-limits part of Monomoy refuge in Chatham, that monumentally rare bird was kept secret from birders for several months, including me, killing its chances at becoming a media star. (via WCAI)
11. Lessons from – yes - a hurricane: On October 29, 2012, after cutting a deadly and destructive path through the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in the United States near Atlantic City, New Jersey. The storm devastated communities in the Northeast, causing more than 100 deaths and an estimated $65 billion in damage. As it dissipated, leaving transformed coastal landscapes in its wake, biologists began investigating whether the hurricane had been equally calamitous for birds. In the 10 years since Sandy, a complicated picture has emerged from those efforts. For some birds, the hurricane destroyed critical stopover habitat, imperiling already vulnerable populations and requiring rapid intervention. Others appeared to have been unaffected. Perhaps most surprising, Hurricane Sandy gave certain threatened shorebirds a needed boost, leaving behind beaches that were battered but exactly to their liking. Today scientists are using lessons learned from the storm to help make better conservation decisions. (via Audubon)
12. Age-old question: To feed or not to feed? Feeding the birds during fall and winter months is a much-loved tradition for many Nova Scotians, but there is increasing concern about the role that could play in the spread of bird flu and other diseases. Anyone looking for definitive advice on the safety of their feeders will be disappointed, however, with at least one bird expert calling it a "controversial topic." Diane LeBlanc, president of the Nova Scotia Bird Society, says avian influenza usually spreads through waterfowl so the risk of it spreading at feeders is very low unless ducks are nearby. But a wildlife biologist and president of Nature Nova Scotia, Bob Bancroft, told CBC Radio's Maritime Noon that bird feeders encourage birds to congregate and could expose them to a host of diseases including salmonella, trichomonosis (also known as trichomoniasis) and avian influenza. (via CBC)
13. And finally, this week’s avian bird flu story: In early September, scientists at the University of Florida confirmed that a bottlenose dolphin, found dead in a canal on the Gulf Coast in March, carried a highly pathogenic kind of avian influenza. Its brain was inflamed. True to its label, this virus is skilled at infecting birds, but it sometimes goes farther afield. A few months after the dolphin’s death, another mammal, a porpoise, was found stranded and weak on the west coast of Sweden. It subsequently died, bearing the same virus. Between these events there was another concerning case in Colorado, when a man tested positive for bird flu. He was a state prison inmate, at work in a prerelease job that involved culling birds on a poultry farm where the infection had struck. Later analysis questioned whether the Colorado man was truly infected or whether a testing swab had merely picked up a big load of virus in his nose. (via The New York Times)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Red-tail Hawk, Millennium Park, Boston, MA.
Bird Videos of the Week
By PBS, “Woodpeckers: The Hole Story”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Bermuda Petrels (known as Cahows) return.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Cardinal Continued.