The best Christmas gifts last all year… just like a subscription to Bird News Items!
1. Let’s start with an in depth look at the Pinyon Jay and its critical relationship with piñon-juniper ecosystems: In a patch of piñon pines, Bianca Sicich, a graduate student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, hides in a blind holding a string. The string is attached to the door of a homemade trap of PVC and wire that she’s baited with sunflower seeds and a few piñon nuts. She sits there quietly for hours, awaiting a flock of Pinyon Jays, a species critical to the piñon-juniper ecosystem's survival. If she’s successful in capturing birds in her trap, she will tag them with radio transmitters to follow their movements across large home territories. Through this and other studies, Sicich wants to learn whether Pinyon Jays will have enough food if piñon pines, the birds’ main food source, stop producing seed as the climate warms and drought intensifies. (via Audubon)
2. The “surprising” health benefits of bird-watching are no surprise to most birders: Tammah Watts remembers the exact moment she became a bird-watcher. It was April of 2007. She was stuck in her house, struggling with chronic pain resulting from complications after a surgery. The pain had become so debilitating that Ms. Watts, formerly an avid biker and hiker, couldn’t hold a pencil or pick up a cup at times. It had forced her to leave her job as a therapist and confined her to her home, where she had sunk into a deep depression. Then one day, she looked out her kitchen window. She didn’t know that it was called a yellow warbler, or really anything about birds at all, but she was entranced. Every day she watched it jump from branch to branch, barely discernible from the yellow blossoms of the tipu tree. And over time, this bird led her to others in her yard and brought Ms. Watts out of her pain and sadness and back into the world. (via The New York Times)
3. Last minute Christmas shopping? Check out this helpful review of binoculars from the Cornell Lab: Reviewing binoculars is inherently subjective, while the goal of reviews is to be as objective as possible. For this review we combined the two approaches: Our ratings are based on qualitative evaluations of binocular performance as well as a quantitative analysis of ratings from a wide range of people. Full disclosure: Celestron and Zeiss have sponsorship agreements with the Lab. (via All About Birds)
4. Good on ya, mate! Parrots migration protected from wind turbines in Tasmania: Plans for a major new wind farm in Australia were given the thumbs up this month — on the provision its turbines go offline for five months a year to protect a parrot species. One of the approval conditions relates to the Orange-bellied parrot, which the Australian government says is critically endangered. “Unless otherwise approved in writing by the EPA Board, all WTG [wind turbine generators] must be shut down during the northern OBP migration period (1 March to 31 May inclusive) and the southern OBP migration period (15 September to 15 November inclusive),” the EPA document says. (via CNBC News)
5. Nice example of the increasing role acoustic monitoring can play in understanding bird migration: Deninu Kųę́ First Nation (DKFN) with the National Audubon Society, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – NWT Chapter (CPAWS-NWT), and Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) are excited to report on results from DKFN’s summer 2021 passive acoustic monitoring surveys for birds within the Slave River Delta with the use of automated recording units (ARUs). The ARU’s, provided by the National Audubon Society’s Boreal Conservation Program, record audio of the surrounding landscape, including bird songs and calls, at preprogrammed times and store the recordings until they can be retrieved at a later date. That data can then be analyzed to determine the presence of birds in the area and serve as an archive of the overall bioacoustics landscape. A link to the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library is here. (via Audubon)
6. Next time you happen to be in Beijing: Among the nine most important migratory bird routes in the world, the East Asia-Australia route is the most diverse and crowded one, and Beijing falls right on this route. With the improvement of Beijing's ecological environment in the past 10 years, the Chinese capital is hosting an increasing numbers of birds, a total of 503 species. As a result, birdwatching has become a popular activity in the city. (via CGTN)
7. When pelicans and fishing collide (in Tampa Bay): A coalition of Florida environmental groups on Thursday, Dec. 15th, urged federal wildlife officials to intervene to prevent more seabirds from becoming entangled in fishing gear at the popular Skyway Fishing Pier State Park. In a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, six advocacy organizations said the state environmental agencies that oversee pier operations haven’t taken adequate steps to minimize bird entanglements and claimed a century-old federal law to protect migratory birds is being violated. At least 1,000 birds needed veterinary care and 500 have died since January 2021 after they were hooked or wrapped in fishing gear at the busy angling spot beside the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The letter from the environmental groups is here. (via Tampa Bay Times)
8. Trying to save Hawaiian forest birds: The Department of the Interior today announced a multiagency strategy that seeks to prevent imminent extinction of Hawaiian forest birds imperiled by mosquito-borne avian malaria. The strategy includes more than $14 million in funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other appropriations to address avian malaria, which causes widespread mortality of endemic honeycreepers and other forest birds. Hawaiian forest birds are an integral ecological and cultural component to the Hawaiian Islands. They are representative of the health of the forest and remain a cultural connection between the Native Hawaiian Community and the Hawaiian Islands. (via The Mirage)
9. This is concerning: A growing number of sick and dying birds are being found on North Carolina’s barrier islands, and the National Park Service is warning people not to touch them. It’s suspected the migrating seabirds are suffering the effects of diseases, some of which can be transmitted to humans, experts say. “There is normally some die off associated with these winter flocks due to stresses from migration and diseases such as avian flu or the more infectious highly pathogenic avian influenza,” the Cape Lookout National Seashore reported in a news release. (via The News & Observer)
10. But then there is this encouraging post-Ian report from Southwest Florida: Shorebirds are returning in record numbers to the beaches most devastated by Hurricane Ian — further good news for the large birding community in Southwest Florida. The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation recently completed its monthly shorebird surveys on the islands and found a noticeable spike in total bird numbers as well as a slight increase in species diversity. In October, just under 2,000 birds representing 24 species were seen. The most recent count saw the number of birds more than double to 4,734 and three more species were represented – including an early bird. (via WLRN News)
11. Sad to see stories like this: Last Sunday, police in a Minneapolis suburb brought a sick bald eagle they’d found lying in the snow near a landfill to the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center. The eagle was barely moving when it was picked up, which is abnormal behavior for the revered birds — and a sign of poisoning from pentobarbital, a chemical used to euthanize animals. At first, the case seemed typical to the Raptor Center staff. They’d even seen a few cases of pentobarbital poisoning before. But usually, the calls are for one bird. So the next morning, on Dec. 5, when the center received a second call about a bald eagle in the same condition as the first, found in the same area in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., the case became anything but typical. (via The Washington Post)
12. OK, this is not exactly news, but we love Golden-crowned Kinglets: From my kitchen window in Decatur the other morning, I watched with delight as a tiny, energetic little songbird flitted among the boughs of a holly tree, occasionally hovering to peck something from the evergreen leaves and twigs. From its minuscule size, I knew at once that it was one of two kinglet species — ruby-crowned and golden-crowned — that inhabit Georgia during winter. A closer look revealed a lemon-yellow crest atop the cute little bird’s head, identifying it as a female golden-crowned kinglet. (The male has an orange crown patch.) (via Atlanta Journal Constitution)
13. Fun pics of very small birds: The class Aves, the taxonomic group containing all birds, is an astonishingly diverse one. Birds can be found on all of the world’s seven continents, from snow petrels of the South Pole to roadrunners of the Mojave desert. The 11,000+ different species come in a dizzying array of colours and shapes, with disparate behaviours, habitats, and lifestyles. They may be completely flightless or spend almost their whole lives on the wing. They may burrow into the ground, dive into the oceans, or sunbathe on beaches. They also vary vastly in size. There is a hefty 155kg weight difference between the smallest and largest bird, and a 3.7m difference between the smallest and largest wingspan. In this list we tell you all about the very smallest members of the bird class, their distribution, diets and fascinating lifestyles. (via Discover Wildlife)
14. Plus some beautiful pics from down under: Bird lovers, rejoice. From over 5,600 photos, the winners of the BirdLife Australia Photography Awards have been announced. While the participating photographers can hail from any country, each image in the contest must be taken on Australian territory and feature an Australian bird species. This makes the contest a fascinating way to learn more about the striking avian life that lives in Australia. (via My Modern Met)
15. And finally a wonderful essay on birds as “vitalizing elements and markers of medieval places” in England: In one of the oldest poems in English literature, there is a beautiful moment when a lone sailor, battling against stormy winter seas and his troubled soul, describes how birds have replaced human company for him on the ‘ice-cold way’ – an admission that carries both comfort and sardonic misery. His entertainment is the ‘swan’s song’, men’s laughter is now ‘the gannet’s sound and curlew’s cry’, and the warming tonic of mead is echoed in the ‘gull’s singing’. Where ‘storms beat stone cliffs’, a white-tailed sea eagle yells with the roar of crashing waves. The Seafarer not only provides us with one of our first ornithological references in the English language, but also, most powerfully, the earliest written description of birds evoking place, being associated with a distinct landscape. This poem is not alone, however, in suggesting to us how birds could inspire a feeling for place more than 1,000 years ago. There are other glimpses, beyond the realms of poetry. We need only look around us, at real places. Hidden in the names of towns and villages are the ghostly traces of birds conjuring powerful identities for people in the landscapes and settlements of early medieval England. (via Aeon)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Roseate Spoonbill – Longboat Key, FL.
Bird Videos of the Week
By New Scientist, “Watch this Robot Bird use a Talon-like Claw to Land Safety on a Perch”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Sapsucker Woods.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Mexico Acorn Woodpeckers.