1. Let’s start with a fun piece on tracking the Passerina ciris through Citizen Science: People often journey hundreds of miles to see a painted bunting for themselves. "It's unbelievable, the colors. It's like, unreal, isn't it?" said Gerry Atkinson, 80, who traveled from Ontario, Canada, to Sarasota, where she just saw one of the songbirds for the first time. The male birds' feathers are a bold combination of red, blue, green and yellow. The females and juvenile males are a vivid green. In French, these birds, known by the scientific name Passerina ciris, are called "nonpareil," which means "unrivaled." Birdwatchers gather almost every day in winter under a gazebo, near the Nature Center at Celery Fields, pointing their cameras or binoculars toward bird feeders filled with white millet. It can take a little patience, but one or two painted buntings will often stop by. (via WUSF News)
2. And then there’s the “Carpinteros” in Mexico - always fun to see - and watch - in western U.S. too: Many years ago I bought a house in a little Mexican community situated at the edge of a huge forest. Among the many birds visiting my backyard were carpinteros — woodpeckers. These were acorn woodpeckers, easily identified from afar by their bright red caps. But even if you couldn’t see one, you could immediately identify a carpintero bellotero, as they are called here, by its less than melodious cry. Never would you be tempted to use the word “song” to describe its rasping “RAKA! RAKA! RAKA!” squawk, so unlike the cheery “ha-ha-ha HA ha!” of its American cousin Woody, whose famous call appears to have been modeled on that of the pileated woodpecker. If these birds normally eat acorns, I thought, they might also like peanuts. So I put out a plate of peanuts. Sure enough, they were gone within an hour… all eaten by squirrels! I decided to elevate the plate, suspending it in the air at the end of a long string. This worked. The little redheads came, and I learned a few things about carpinteros. (via Mexico News Daily)
3. Twitcher alert: Scotts get tough in grouse moors: Grouse moors across Scotland will be required to hold licences and could face shooting bans as part of radical measures to combat bird of prey persecution passed by MSPs on Thursday. The Scottish parliament voted for the controls amid intense pressure from conservation scientists and campaigners after decades of illegal attacks on birds of prey by gamekeepers instructed to protect grouse on shooting estates from being eaten. The wildlife management and muirburn bill includes a ban on snaring of foxes and rabbits in Scotland, the licensing of muirburn – the technique where heather is selectively burned to produce shoots for grouse to eat – and the licensing and tagging of traps used to catch crows, weasels, moles and stoats. (via The Guardian)
4. Understanding the intricacies of our own brains through songbirds: A symphony of synapses fires every time a songbird sings. For Erich Jarvis, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, the neural pathways he finds particularly interesting inside a birds’ brain are those that enable the bird to make new sounds from listening to their environment. This is an ability known as vocal learning, and is perhaps most notably exhibited when a parrot mimics a person’s speech (or profanity). Humans too have the capacity for vocal learning — it’s a foundation of human language. As do elephants, who scientists discovered can imitate the sounds of passing trucks. Jarvis, who is also a scientific investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, studies the molecular and genetic processes involved in how certain species of birds copy, modify, and produce new sounds. (via STAT News)
5. UCLA ecologists’ study in East Africa finds one trend may not be absolute: As global temperatures rise, animals — especially birds — have been decreasing in size. Many ecologists believe this trend may be a universal rule of climate change. It aligns with Bergmann’s rule, first described in 1847, which states that animal and bird populations of larger size are generally found in colder environments. Larger bodies have a smaller surface-to-volume ratio, which helps animals conserve body heat and energy more efficiently. A new UCLA-led study in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, one of the world’s tropical biodiversity hotspots, provides evidence that this trend is not absolute, finding that birds in the region increased in size by an average of 4.1% over the last 36 years as temperatures rose. (via UCLA Newsroom)
6. That’s one way! A family hooked on birds thanks to “smart” bird feeders: My parents, who live in Virginia, have become avid bird watchers in the past five years. They have multiple birdhouses and feeders in their backyard, and they like to snap pictures of different species from their bay window. But their pictures were always grainy, zoomed-in iPhone photos that never quite represented the vibrant reds of the cardinals or the deep blue plumage of the barn swallows — two regulars to the feeder closest to their window. So I got them this smart bird feeder in the hopes that it would allow them to spot their avian friends more easily. It’s a fairly simple gadget — it’s just a plastic bird feeder with a motion-sensor camera attached to it. The camera functions like a Ring doorbell: It faces outward from the feeder, toward the feeding area, which gives you a livestream of the front porch, so to speak, and all of its visitors straight to your phone. It’s powered by an included solar panel, so you don’t have to worry about finding an outlet or keeping it charged. The bird feeder is meant to be used with an app, also called Birdfy. (via The Strategist)
7. Apps for parrots? A new study is looking into what they can teach us about what birds can do: Parrots have much in common with toddlers. The brainy birds can learn to recognize colors and shapes, manipulate objects, build large vocabularies and make their needs known at improbably high volumes. So owners of pet parrots sometimes turn to a strategy familiar to parents: reaching for the closest available screen. And some owners have found that they can keep their birds occupied with mobile games, drawing apps and music-making programs designed for young children. “Kids apps are quite popular,” said Rébecca Kleinberger, a scientist at Northeastern University who studies how animals interact with technology. But apps designed for humans may not be ideal for parrots, which tend to use their tongues to interact with touch screens. That results in a variety of unique touch behaviors. (via The New York Times)
8. Promising - Using MOTUS networks offshore to track birds around wind projects: For centuries, people have tracked birds to answer questions about their lives and populations. But although tracking technology has evolved rapidly in recent decades — from aluminum leg bands with embossed numbers to light-sensitive geolocators — researchers who study bird behavior and migration still face a big obstacle: the ocean “We really have no way to know where birds are when they’re offshore,” said Emily Argo, fish and wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and recovery lead for the federally protected red knot and piping plover in Virginia. Now that’s starting to change with the emergence of another kind of technology. Along the eastern seaboard of the U.S., where wind speeds are consistently high, and the continental shelf is relatively wide, flat, and shallow, offshore wind farms are starting to come online to support the transition to renewable energy.
9. Thinking of putting a birdhouse in your garden or yard - keep expectations in check: A highlight for any Southern bird enthusiast is seeing their favorite birds congregate in the yard or garden, whether they are enjoying specialty bushes, birdhouses, or bird baths. Providing migrating birds with the right resources is helpful in bringing them to your yard, so it can be frustrating if despite your best efforts–there are no birds. So, why aren’t birds using your birdhouse? A few factors might be at play, according to American Bird Conservancy’s Senior Conservation Scientist David Wiedenfeld. (via Southern Living)
10. What Flaco’s death can teach us: The recent death of Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from New York City’s famed Central Park Zoo last year, brought new attention to the issue of bird strikes: Experts estimate that roughly a billion birds die in the U.S. every year in collisions with buildings and skyscrapers. At Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Environmental Studies, which is part of VCU Life Sciences, we asked avian ecologist and associate professor Lesley Bulluck, Ph.D., for some insight – and some Virginia connections, including how the VCU campus and students are participating in research. (via VCU News)
11. In praise of Swida dogwoods: Our 2024 Bringing Nature Home Plants of the Year, the Swida dogwoods, are an important group of plants for many reasons, but they are especially significant for a number of songbird species that nest in Maine. Red-osier, Silky, and Gray Dogwoods all form hedges and thickets in wetlands and field edges, which creates important habitats for species that utilize thickets and adjacent open habitats, like Eastern Bluebirds. Alternate-leaved and Round-leaved Dogwoods are more often found in forest understories, a layer missing in many forests that often have only a dense canopy and groundcover, and an important habitat for mid-story foragers like Great Crested Flycatchers and Black-throated Green Warblers. (via Maine Audubon)
12. Maple syrup lovers take note: Shopping for a jug of maple syrup, you might have noticed a little yellow sticker adorned with a red bird, marking the bottle as “bird friendly.” It’s a program that grew out of Vermont Audubon a decade ago to encourage sugarmakers to manage their forests with birds in mind. Today, the Bird-Friendly Maple program works with nearly 90 producers in Vermont and others in Maine, New Yorkand Connecticut. And soon it will expand to several more states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded the National Audubon Society $2 million earlier this month. (via Vermont Public Radio)
13. For readers in or from Iowa this morning: Chances are, you've already heard the early birds — that cacophony of sound as the sun rises and sets in your neighborhood. Spring birds are singing, whistling and trilling their boasts of new territories and love. Robins, wrens and finches are calling out and letting you know about the first stirrings of the spring migration. Turkey vultures are beginning to soar over Kansas skies, as are the first purple martins. But the best is yet to come. "My favorite times of the year are spring and fall," said Dr. Dan Witt, a retired urologist from Hoisington. (via KMU Wichita)
14. Spring is here, as are early migrants and also “overshoots” - as in a Swallow-tailed Kite on Cape Cod!: Though it sure feels wintery as I type this on the first day of astronomical spring, blustery and high 30s, the season of spring overshoots began with a tropical hawk, a Swallow-tailed Kite ultimately photographed over Orleans on Monday by Abby Hipp. Likely that same bird was first seen on Saturday over Eastward Ho golf course in Chatham, right at the start of the strong southerly weekend winds. These most striking and graceful of hawks don’t nest within eight states of here, but somehow there are 11 March records for New England, 7 of those here on the Cape and Islands. I looked at recent sightings in eBird, and this is the only Swallow-tailed Kite this side of Kitty Hawk North Carolina right now. (via Cape and Islands NPR)
15. Finaly, discovery in Australia (spoiler alert: not a bird, but it wasn’t a bird dropping either): A researcher camping on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, has discovered a new genus of fluffy longhorn beetle after almost mistaking it for bird droppings due to its hairy, white appearance, the University of Queensland said. Images released by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) shows the beetle, named Excastra albopilosa, which was discovered by PhD candidate James Tweed. “I was walking through the campsite at Binna Burra Lodge one morning and something on a lomandra leaf caught my eye,” Tweed told the University of Queensland. “To my amazement, I saw the most extraordinary and fluffiest longhorn beetle I had ever seen," he said. Tweed was unable to identify the beetle on the spot and instead took pictures and posted them on various Facebook groups. (via Yahoo! News)
Editor’s Note: We thank John Fitzpatrick, former Executive Director of Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for sharing a few of his terrific photographs from a trip to Belize
Bird Videos of the Week
By The Birders, “Antippas, The Ghosts of the Forest”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Greater Yellownape.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Cuban Green Woodpecker.