1. Male tanagers are meant to be noticed. Many species of the small, tropical bird sport deep black feathers and splashes of eye-catching color — electric yellows, traffic-cone oranges and nearly neon scarlets. To achieve this flashiness, the birds must spend time and energy foraging for, and metabolizing, plants that contain special color pigments, which make their way into the feathers. But some birds may be guilty of false advertising. Male tanagers have microstructures in their feathers that enhance their colors, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports. These microstructures, like evolution’s own Instagram filters, may make the males seem as if they are more attractive than they truly are. (via The New York Times)
2. When a bird flu virus struck a major poultry farm in Russia earlier this year, it was a reminder that the coronavirus causing the pandemic was not the only dangerous virus out there. The authorities quickly tested the birds and moved into high gear, killing 800,000 chickens, disposing of the carcasses and cleaning the farm to stop the potential spread to other chicken farms. But they were also concerned for humans. In the short period from Dec. 25, 2020, to Jan. 14 of this year, more than seven million birds were lost to H5N8 outbreaks in Europe and Asia. Of course, to put the numbers in context, humans consume about 65 billion chickens each year, and one estimate puts the number of chickens on the globe at any one time at 23 billion. (via The New York Times)
3. It’s tempting to compare bird migration to marathon running. In both, participants prepare intensely and undergo an extreme test of endurance. But the similarities stop there. Though marathon runners push the human body to its limits—during the 26.2-mile race, core temperatures spike to 102 degrees Fahrenheit and the heart pumps three to four times more blood than usual—birds radically change their bodies and their metabolism for the main event. In just weeks or months, they undergo physical transformation unmatched by human gains from years of training. To fly vast distances between breeding and wintering grounds, birds can shrink their internal organs, rapidly gain and burn through fat stores, barely sleep, and more. (via Audubon Magazine)
4. Grim news from Northern Italy: It seemed like just another violation of coronavirus social-distance restrictions when the Italian police broke up a luncheon of about 20 people last week near the northern city of Brescia. But then they stumbled onto an illegal massacre on the menu. The authorities caught the group in a local government building preparing a cookout of about 65 protected migratory birds, mostly finches, including two hawfinches, a shy species, and one brambling, known by its orange breast and white rump. They recognized the protected species, officers said, by the shape of their bills. Some are globally threatened. (via The New York Times)
5. While they may not have the same inherent majesty of a pride of lions or a racing cheetah, a scrum of vultures feeding at a carcass on the African savanna is every bit as iconic of that continent as the graceful, swaying gait of a giraffe. What’s more, vultures play an incredibly important ecological role—hence the reason for deep alarm among conservationists about the growing collapse of Africa’s once-abundant vulture populations. Seven of Africa’s ten vulture species are now listed as endangered or critically endangered, with some populations falling by as much as 97% in the last few years. (via Living Bird Magazine)
6. Interesting study from Oxford and others: Blackcaps typically visit Britain and Ireland during the spring and summer months to breed before migrating south to wintering areas in the Mediterranean. But, a study from Oxford University, the British Trust for Ornithology and the Max Planck Institute, has found the small warblers have expanded their wintering range northward across Europe and are now frequently found in Britain and Ireland in the winter months. The study reveals, these birds are not breeders merely staying put. Instead, these wintering Blackcaps overwhelmingly originate from breeding locations across Europe, and are undertaking a highly atypical north-westward migration to our shores each autumn. (via The Oxford News)
7. Cool technology in action: In the clear skies above the Tasmanian midlands, a young wedge-tailed eagle soars upwards on a thermal. Wyatt is his name, and in eight hours he had flown an extraordinary 225 kilometres. Wyatt’s location was pinpointed using a tiny GPS tracking system attached to his back that regularly sent text messages to the mobile phone of University of Tasmania post-doctoral researcher Dr. James Pay. These data points have been strung together into mesmerising flight videos. The GPS tracking system allows Dr. Pay to find out what types of habitats wedge-tailed eagles preferred, and if this might shed light on the pattern of their deaths. (via The Sydney Morning Herald)
8. Language is one of the most remarkable abilities humans have. It allows us to express complex meanings and transmit knowledge from generation to generation. An important question in human biology is how this ability evolved, the aspects that make language special can be elucidated by comparing them to the communication systems of other animals. "For instance, take how children learn to speak and how birds learn to sing: unlike most animal communication systems, juvenile birdsong and the child speech only develop properly in presence of adult tutors. Without the vocal support from adults, the great range of sounds available to humans and songbirds does not develop properly", the researchers note. (via EurekaAlert)
9. And then there is this from Down Under: Nearly 200 endangered orange-bellied parrots have begun their annual migration from Tasmania to the Australian mainland, the largest number to make the trip since monitoring started in the early 1990s. Researchers working on Tasmania’s orange-bellied parrot program said 192 birds were counted at the end of the breeding season in Melaleuca in the state’s south-west and several had made it to the mainland. It is more good news for one of the world’s most endangered parrots whose numbers dropped to just 17 five years ago. (via The Guardian)
10. Wonderful Book Review: Traversing Florida in 1831 in search of specimens for The Birds of America, John James Audubon came across an osprey-sized bird he had never seen before, the “Caracara Eagle,” as he called it—a northern crested caracara, in today’s terminology. Audubon was so taken with the caracara’s appearance—the orange, dark-capped face, the dark glossy upper plumage (“edged with umber”), the white underfeathers visible in flight, the black-tipped tail—that he included it twice in the same painting, from different angles, so that his viewers could fully appreciate its beauty. A Most Remarkable Creature is Mr. Meiburg’s extended love letter to that particular species as well as all caracaras anywhere. (via The Wall Street Journal)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Marbled Godwit.
Bird Videos of the Week
By Hawaii Dept. of Land and Natural Resources, “Success! Lehua Island is Rat Free”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Black-headed Grosbeak and Scott’s Oriole.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Osprey Chicks!