1. A new record: 7,682 species on Global Big Day: Participants from a staggering 201 countries took part in the event, which is co-ordinated by eBird, with almost 52,000 birders submitting checklists on the day. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of birding took place in the US, where close to 70,000 checklists were submitted by participants. In second place was Canada, with 12,920 checklists. Colombia, which has fully embraced the Global Big Day event in recent years, came out on top in terms of number of species recorded within its boundaries. The 1,538 species seen fought off competition from Peru (1,430) and Ecuador (1,119). Fourth-placed Brazil recorded 1,054 species, with India's 823 earning it fifth spot and equating to 58% of bird species ever recorded in the country. (via Bird Guides)
2. 150,000 nesting pairs: The birds weren’t supposed to be there. A length of rope strung along the island’s rocky ground clearly demarcated a pathway, the boundary separating tens of thousands of gannets from my group of eight humans. If anyone had explained this to the gannets, though, they weren’t letting on. Four sat stubbornly on the pathway I wanted to move along, their icy-blue eyes pitiless and their long, white necks stretched toward me, threatening with their scissor-like bills. I remembered the advice from our guide, Maggie, not to linger, lest they fixate on our legs. Too late. I stepped onto the path and a bill spiked my calf. I was on Bass Rock, the tiny Scottish island from which the northern gannet gets its scientific name, Morus bassanus. (via The Washington Post)
3. Refuge in the mountains: Cooler, higher locales may not be very welcoming to some hummingbirds trying to escape rising temperatures and other effects of climate change. Anna’s hummingbirds live no higher than about 2,600 meters above sea level. If the birds attempt to expand their range to include higher altitudes, they may struggle to fly well in the thinner air. These hummingbirds have expanded their range in the past. Once only found in Southern California, the birds now live as far north as Vancouver, says Austin Spence, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis. That expansion is probably due to climate change and people using feeders to attract hummingbirds. (via Science News)
4. Remembering an early pioneer in bird conservation: One of the greatest friends the wrens, robins and chickadees of Washington ever had was the author of a book with the wonderful title “Birds Through an Opera-Glass.” Her name was Florence Merriam Bailey and she was among the first to champion a radical idea: If you want to learn about birds, it’s better to look at a live one through a pair of binoculars than to hold a dead one in your hands. “I think she’s a really interesting person,” said Lisa Alexander, executive director of an organization Bailey helped found in 1897, the Audubon Naturalist Society, in Chevy Chase, Md. The group is celebrating its 125th anniversary with a gala gathering on June 2. In the late 19th century, Americans were wiping out entire bird populations to satisfy the human desire to adorn hats, scarves and coats with feathers. Bailey decried the insatiable hunger the millinery trade had for birds. (via The Washington Post)
5. Scientists are obsessed: The rocks clink together under the steps of Vince Cavalieri as he walks along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Small waves lap against the edges of his boots. The birds who've stolen Cavalieri's heart and been the focus of his career for over a decade are the Great Lakes piping plover, Charadrius melodus, a federally registered endangered species known to nest only along the Great Lakes and predominantly at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The birds stand just 7 inches tall and weigh only 50 grams, or the weight of two AA batteries. Their call is a unique, two-noted "peep-lo" whistle, which Henry David Thoreau reminisced in his 1865 work "Cape Cod" "most perfectly revives the impression which the beach has made." (via Detroit Free Press)
6. But not everyone in the Hamptons is obsessed: Last year when the Suffolk County Parks and Recreation Department closed Shinnecock East because of nesting piping plovers, its Facebook page lit up with angry comments. "These birds are nowhere near endangered. They have taken over every beach on the island!" wrote one user. Others see a government conspiracy at work. "It's called crowd control. They make you think you have freedoms!" wrote another poster. Sound familiar? Echo chambers of ignorance are an unfortunate fact of life in 2022. They persist because of the way the algorithms curate our online existences. If you think plovers are part of a government conspiracy to keep you from enjoying the beach, then odds are you'll find a handful of people online to agree with you. Thankfully the Town of East Hampton Natural Resources Department is using statistics and not Facebook comments to manage plover nesting areas. (via The East Hampton Star)
7. On the “Lights Out” front: New York State agencies today announced two initiatives designed to protect and foster increased appreciation for birds - a new 'Lights Out' initiative to help protect migrating birds as they navigate night skies, and the launch of the Capital Region segment of the New York State Birding Trail to highlight the State's world-class and wide-ranging birding opportunities. State buildings participating in Lights Out will keep non-essential outdoor lighting from affecting the ability of birds to migrate successfully, both in the Capital Region and throughout New York. (via New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation)
8. 47,000 years ago: Proteins extracted from fragments of prehistoric eggshell found in the Australian sands confirm that the continent's earliest humans consumed the eggs of a two-meter tall bird that disappeared into extinction over 47,000 years ago. Burn marks discovered on scraps of ancient shell several years ago suggested the first Australians cooked and ate large eggs from a long-extinct bird—leading to fierce debate over the species that laid them. Now, an international team led by scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Turin have placed the animal on the evolutionary tree by comparing the protein sequences from powdered egg fossils to those encoded in the genomes of living avian species. (via Phys Org)
9. A mystery: An urgent call for help as wildlife rescuers are flooded with an influx of sick and injured pelicans over the past few weeks. The wildlife experts at the International Bird Rescue in Fairfield, CA have been swamped caring for Pelicans, it seems the majestic water bird that was once on the brink of extinction has hit some troubling times yet again. Wildlife experts added that they’ve seen dozens of brown pelicans pouring in weak, hungry and injured from searching for food. “This is a brown pelican crisis happening right here in California,” said JD Bergeron, CEO International Bird Rescue. The live bird cam shows the full house of Pelicans being treated in Southern California….more than 200 since mid-May. Now, malnourished Pelicans are being found in the Bay Area, three more arrived to the bird hospital Thursday afternoon. (via NBC Bay Area)
10. The remarkable and secretive Sora: Standing in a high-quality marsh during the peak of migration, you might be surrounded by hundreds of Soras—but you could leave without encountering a single one. As Soras move between their breeding grounds in the north-central U.S. and Canada to their wintering range along southern shores, Mexico, and beyond, they traverse nearly the entire continent. But because they hide in wetland reeds to survive, Soras are rarely spotted. Greg Kearns, park naturalist at Patuxent River Park in Maryland, has seen his fair share of Soras and then some. In the past 35 years, at part of their effort called Project Sora, he and his team have tagged more than 6,000 of these elusive birds in Patuxent’s marshlands and wild rice beds. Scientists like Kearns are uncovering the secrets of these birds, including their fantastic migrations. (via Audubon)
11. Birds can help: Twenty years after the invasive emerald ash borer was detected in North America, researchers are finding that woodpeckers, working in tandem with introduced wasps, can help to control the pest’s spread. Not long after scientists first observed the beetles on North American trees, they noticed that woodpeckers—especially Downy, Hairy, and Red-bellied—were prolific predators. Project Feederwatch, a community science organization, found between 2002 and 2011 that Red-bellied populations spiked where ash borers proliferated. While they and other woodpeckers didn’t save the trees, they severely crimped the pest’s numbers, typically killing about 40 percent of emerald ash borers in a given area. (via Audubon)
12. Travel notes: Point Pelee (Ontario) in May a must: A camera in one hand, binoculars in another, birdwatchers have flocked to Point Pelee. The national park is one of North America's top spots for birdwatchers who are hoping to tick off a rare sighting on their proverbial or literal lists. Harrow resident Donny Moore, who moved to Canada 14 years ago from Ireland, first recognized the importance of Point Pelee through his photography work. "I didn't notice how good [the birding] was. I started just saying, "Oh that's a cool bird, I'll take a picture of that," and then I found out that this was the Mecca for birding. That really got me into it - and it really is a draw," he said. Moore has a large social media presence thanks to his nature photography, where he often highlights birds that he spots throughout Essex County. (via CBC)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Northern Cardinal, Arnold Arboretum (Boston, MA).
Bird Videos of the Week
By Animalogic, “Killer Queen”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Lunchtime for Kestrels.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Dinnertime for Condors.