1. The elegant trogon, befitting its name, is clever. One can perch in a tree 10 feet overhead and draw little attention, though it’s come dressed for it, with a striking yellow beak, blush red breast topped with a white collar and metallic green back tapering, like tuxedo tails, to finely barred tail feathers. In my desire to find unexpected, wondrous and uncrowded places in the United States, I learned that the trogon comes north, often visiting a section of southeast Arizona that looks, from a bird’s point of view, a lot like the highlands of Mexico. These are “sky islands,” isolated mountain formations separated by seas of desert that are uniquely biodiverse, offering habitats from scrub and grasslands to pine and fir forests as they rise. (via The New York Times)
2. Scientists have long theorized that falcons’ distinctive dark plumage beneath their eyes, known as the “malar stripe,” evolved to prevent sunlight from obstructing their vision. Much like how American athletes don “eye black” to help them catch whizzing balls, the inky feathers improve avians’ ability to pinpoint and target agile prey—at least that was the theory. Until this month there was no empirical evidence to prove the hypothesis. Now, researchers at the University of Capetown have published the first scientific study giving weight to the theory in Biology Letters. They found the larger and darker the malar stripe, the more likely the raptor lived in a habitat with greater solar radiation. (via Popular Science)
3. Another blight seems to be killing the birds in the D.C. Metro Area, now living under the once in a 17-year hum of the Brood X cicadas — first written about by William Bartram in 1732 in Philadelphia before the Unites States won its independence from Great Britain. Could this new blight be due to the birds eating the cicadas that have been waiting under pesticide soaked ground for 17 years to come out again to breed? Reports of blind and dead birds have been coming in from southern Maryland, the District of Columbia and across Northern Virginia into the West Virginia Panhandle since May, according to a recent report from the U.S. Geological Survey, which is now urging people to stop filling bird feeders and bird baths in case the cause is a communicable disease. (via New American Journal, USGS)
4. Remarkable: It may seem like science fiction but researchers at University of California, San Diego proved it’s possible. The new study has recreated a complex bird song complete with pitch, tone and volume from nothing more than the bird’s brain activity. The research was focused on zebra finches, which are small, beautifully colored birds that are native to Australia. The experts implanted silicone chips into the birds brains to record the brain activity controlling vocal muscles while they sang. The readings were then fed into a computer algorithm where computers recreated the bird songs. The idea is to build a “vocal prosthetic” where someone can recreate their own verbal words simply by thinking them. (via Earth)
5. Less than 400 critically endangered regent honeyeaters, a woodland songbird, are left in the wild so conservationists are supporting the bird with a captive breeding program. The striking yellow and black bird, known for its ability to mimic the songs of other birds, were once seen in large flocks where fledglings would hear the calls of other honeyeaters. But as numbers have dwindled, scientists think males in the wild are forgetting how to sing their love songs, with potential knock-on effects on their ability to find a mate. Now a study that tracked 285 birds released between 2008 and 2017 has found captive fledglings taught how to sing in their aviaries either through song played through speakers or by nearby adults had a better chance of survival. (via The Guardian)
6. Pity the great Indian bustard. The majestic, endangered bird is massive, making it slow to maneuver in flight. It has poor frontal vision, and an unfortunate habit of scanning the earth while flying across the flat grasslands of India’s western borders. That combination too often sets it on a fatal collision course with power lines. Pity also, if you will, the plight of India’s renewable energy developers. The wide-open region that’s home to the rare bird has long been an ideal location for wind and solar projects. In an effort to save the great Indian bustard from flying into power lines, a Supreme Court order is asking for transmission lines in a large swathe of the region to go underground. Before taking sides, though, be aware that the issue is more nuanced than a straightforward clash pitting industry against nature. (via Bloomberg Green)
7. Gulls have been residents of cities and towns for decades. The birds were first recorded to be nesting in Bristol, UK for example, in 1972. Rock, who is also a member of the international Gull Research Organisation, recalls that in 1980, when he was first starting out studying the birds, there were around 100 pairs in the city. Now, he estimates there are 2,500 pairs, with 2,900 pairs in nearby Gloucester and 3,200 pairs in Cardiff. Even cities far inland are now home to gulls. St Paul in Minnesota, hundreds of miles from the Great Lakes, is home to gulls, as is Minsk in Belarus, which is hundreds of miles from the Baltic. (via BBC)
8. Listen to the mockingbird. He copies all sorts of other bird songs, repeating, repeating, over and over, sometimes for hours. But now, listen more closely. You’ll hear that this virtuoso bird isn’t just copying other species’ tunes. He’s sampling them, like a DJ, and transposing, bending, tweaking them into his own quite deliberate form. It turned out that no humans had specifically articulated what these birds were doing, so my colleagues and I decided to delve deep into the mockingbird’s process, using the analytical tools of three different disciplines at once: biology, music and neuroscience. Our paper, published in early May in Frontiers in Psychology, argues that the mockingbird, one of the American birds with the most complex of songs, uses musical techniques familiar to composers from many kinds of human music. (via Scientific American, Frontiers in Psychology)
9. Important question for the coming renewables world: Dr. Murgatroyd and her colleagues from Hawkwatch International have come up with a commercial tool that tells developers where Verreaux's eagles are most likely to fly within a given area so that the firms can position their wind turbines away from those places. It's based on tracking data she collected after fitting GPS devices to more than a dozen eagles. The tool also needs to consider where eagle nests are located, so surveys to plot these must be carried out in and around any land earmarked for new wind turbines. Dr Murgatroyd has used it to analyse the locations of wind turbines that were built before the technology was available. This revealed that many eagle fatalities associated with those turbines occurred in places that the model would correctly have labelled as high risk. (via BBC)
10. For two summers in a rugged corner of Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains, the roar of rushing whitewater filled the air. But where the loud sounds prevailed, only gentle streams flowed by. These phantom rivers were part of an experiment led by ecologist Dylan Gomes of Boise State University. He and colleagues were testing a hypothesis that the sounds of nature influence where animals lived and how they forage. “There’s a lot of research suggesting that [human] noise negatively affects [animals], from communication to foraging to reproduction, and even survival,” Gomes says. For example, the sounds of highway traffic can drive migrating birds away from their regular rest stops (SN: 2/9/15). (via Science News)
11. UK BNI readers take note: Birdwatchers on the Isles of Scilly could not believe their luck on Monday, when they caught a glimpse of the first Egyptian vulture on British shores in more than 150 years. It is thought the endangered giant vulture, native to southern Europe, northern Africa and parts of Asia, flew over from France to the isles off the Cornish coast after getting confused while migrating. Identifiable by its distinctive yellow face and feathers, the bird has only been seen in the wild twice before in Britain, with the last recorded sighting in 1868. Populations have dwindled in the past century across the bird’s natural habitats, with around 18,000 to 57,000 thought to exist worldwide. (via INews)
Bonus: Birds are among our planet’s most ubiquitous and captivating windows into the natural world. Join us for a virtual presentation by world-renowned ornithologist John W. Fitzpatrick and author/columnist Scott Weidensaul as they examine the ways in which bird populations represent sensitive natural barometers of environmental health and how some of our most iconic species are experiencing alarming declines. You will also discover how birds are extremely resilient, demonstrating time and again their ability to successfully bounce back after we heed their signals and adjust how we treat our precious planet. (via eCornell)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Common Terns.
Bird Videos of the Week
By The Nature Conservancy, “Birds are Why He Flies Free and Stays Hopeful”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Hawk POV.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Ospreys at 61 days.