1. Surtsey – nature’s creation off Iceland: Now just shy of 60 years old, the new island of Surtsey, off Iceland, holds clues to a fundamental mystery: What did the Earth look like when it was just born? How does life colonize bare rock? In 1963, a volcano erupted underneath the cold waters of the North Atlantic, 10 miles off Iceland’s southwest coast. The eruption lasted for four years. Eventually, the lava and ash cooled into a black-and-tan island named Surtsey, and the first fragile seeds of life started to wash ashore. Every year since the island came into being, scientists have visited Surtsey to track its ecological development.
Visits to Surtsey require a permit—casual sightseeing stops are strictly prohibited—in order to preserve the island’s ecological integrity. Even today, a researchers’ red-roofed hut and an abandoned lighthouse foundation are the only buildings on Surtsey. Though most of the island is barren, a heart-shaped patch of green in the southwest corner supports lush growth and hundreds of bird nests. (via All About Birds)
2. Piecing together prehistory Down Under: As far back as I can remember I’ve been fascinated with dinosaurs and megafauna, and I’ve wanted to know more about them. From at least the age of five, I knew I wanted to be a palaeontologist. That interest has stayed with me over the years. After graduating from Adelaide University with a Bachelor of Science in evolutionary biology, I came to Flinders University in 2016 and took on a project with Professor Trevor Worthy looking at 20 million-year-old fossils of rails, a type of waterbird, from New Zealand. That was my introduction to bird fossils. I then went on to do a PhD project from 2017 to 2021 on Australian eagle fossils from across different time periods, and I’ve been working on them ever since. (via Cosmos Magazine)
3. More on the power of Motus Wildlife Tracking System: Since 1960, Birds Canada has been working to conserve wild birds through sound science, on-the-ground actions, innovative partnerships, public engagement and science-based advocacy. With their Ontario-based headquarters located on the north shore of Lake Erie in Port Rowan, the non-profit organization currently has about 50 employees working across Canada. Birds Canada works on a diverse array of conservation endeavors from community science projects like the Canadian Lakes Loon Survey and the Christmas Bird Count to education, outreach and monitoring research at Long Point Bird Observatory. They compile data gathered by more than 70,000 citizen scientists across Canada to identify significant impacts to bird populations and take direct conservation actions to work towards reversing bird declines. (via Audubon)
4. Well, if this is what it takes: Many dread the smell of dog urine, including Australian predators like foxes. Deakin University ecologists are testing the utility of dog urine to protect the nests of a vulnerable shorebird. Weighing about 100 grams, the small but mighty hooded plover remains an icon of Australia's beaches. For more than 30 years, researchers from Deakin's Center for Integrative Ecology, within the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, in collaboration with BirdLife Australia, have been working to halt their decline. The species play a critical role in our sandy shore food webs, helping it to function as an ecosystem which provides many benefits, for example keeping beaches clean of excess seaweed. (via Physical Org)
5. One small step for a beautiful bird: Once extinct in the wild, the California Condor now soars across the western United States thanks to successful breeding in captivity that allowed their later reintroduction to the wild. Now, a dedicated team is poised to do the same for the bright red and blue Guam Kingfisher. Endemic to Guam and extirpated on the island since 1988, these birds may soon fly free on a Pacific island—one more than 3,000 miles from their native home. As with most of the native bird species on Guam, by the 1980s the kingfisher was wiped out by invasive brown tree snakes, which were introduced to the U.S. territory shortly after World War II, creating a “silent forest” devoid of bird song. Today, nearly 140 Sihek live in 25 facilities around the world, but their survival depends on a successful reintroduction to the wild. (via Audubon)
6. This is good news: A record eight whooping crane chicks have taken wing in Louisiana after hatching in the wild. It’s not just a state record for fledglings of the world’s rarest crane, but one for any flock reintroduced to the wild to help save the endangered birds, the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said Thursday. The previous record was set in 2018, when six wild-hatched birds fledged in the flock that was taught to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida by following ultralight aircraft, Louisiana wildlilfe biologist Sara Zimorski said in an email. That also was Louisiana's previous record wild fledgling year, at five. (via The Washington Post, AP News)
7. More of these “green carpets” needed: Hundreds of millions of birds are on the move across the U.S. as they wing their way south to warmer climes during the annual fall migration season. Plenty will use Chicago as a stopover point on the Mississippi Flyway, a route that connects summer breeding grounds in Canada and the U.S. to wintering enclaves in Mexico and Central and South America. Like any good host, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County has done its best to make sure the guests feel welcome. In the last decade, the district has increased by 10-fold the amount of acreage undergoing habitat restoration, all part of an effort to recreate the region’s historic ecosystems, which supported diverse flora and wildlife. (via WTTW News)
8. And speaking of migration, another example of its many hazards: With the biannual migration of birds across Israel underway, experts are warning that commercial flights in and out of Ben Gurion Airport are at risk of striking birds and sustaining damage, presenting a serious safety risk for passengers. Sitting on the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia, the Jewish state’s narrow airspace is crossed by 500 million birds twice a year, in one of the largest global migrations on earth. With airports finally overcoming a summer of flight delays, overcrowding and lost luggage, Jewish National Fund experts are warning that the mass migration poses a security risk to travelers, urging aviation authorities to alter flight paths for the months of September and October. (via Times of Israel)
9. More neurons, less fuel: Birds have impressive cognitive abilities and show a high level of intelligence. Compared to mammals of about the same size, the brains of birds also contain many more neurons. Now a new study reported in Current Biology on September 8 helps to explain how birds can afford to maintain more brain cells: their neurons get by on less fuel in the form of glucose. "What surprised us the most is not, per se, that the neurons consume less glucose — this could have been expected by differences in the size of their neurons," says Kaya von Eugen of Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. "But the magnitude of difference is so large that the size difference cannot be the only contributing factor. This implies there must be something additionally different in the bird brain that allows them to keep the costs so low." (via Science Daily)
10. The (continuing) mysteries of flight: People have been fascinated by bird flight for centuries, but exactly how birds can be so agile in the air remains mysterious. Researchers at UC Davis are modeling aerodynamics to describe how gulls can change the shape of their wings to control their response to gusts or other disturbances. The lessons could one day apply to uncrewed aerial vehicles or other flying machines. “Birds easily perform challenging maneuvers and they’re adaptable, so what exactly about their flight is most useful to implement in future aircraft?” said Christina Harvey, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Davis, and lead author on the paper. (via UC Davis)
11. This week’s concerning bird flu item: A bottlenose dolphin found dead in a Florida canal this past spring tested positive for a highly virulent strain of bird flu. The announcement came a week after Swedish officials reported that they had found the same type of avian influenza in a stranded porpoise. This version of the virus, which has spread widely among North American and European birds, has affected an unusually broad array of species. But these findings represent the first two documented cases in cetaceans, a group of marine mammals that includes dolphins, porpoises and whales. It is too soon to say how commonly the virus infects cetaceans, but its discovery in two different species on two different continents suggests that there have almost certainly been other cases. (via The New York Times)
12. The BPOTY bird photographer of the year: The bird photographer of the year winners for 2022 have been unveiled. An image of a rock ptarmigan in winter plumage taking flight above the snow-covered mountains of Tysfjord, Norway, has taken the grand prize in the world’s largest bird photography competition, which saw more than 20,000 entries from all over the world. (via The Guardian, BPoty)
13. BNI Book Review from the NYT: A new release from Michael DeForge should be met with trumpet blasts across the length and breadth of the book world. With his artistry, intellect and wit, it’s a mystery why he hasn’t been dubbed the next Dan Clowes or Chris Ware by now. Like two of its predecessors, “Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero” and “Leaving Richard’s Valley,” “Birds of Maine” began as a webcomic. Its subject is absurd: an imaginary society of birds living on the moon. They may have left their home planet behind, but these are Earth birds with Earth concerns. They’re alternately jealous of and attracted to one another’s plumage and wingspans. They’ve created an internet out of terraformed fungus, which they use to communicate and record their history. Three adolescents are at the center of many of the book’s strips, and they act like teenagers everywhere. They form a band, but worry that their songs are monotonous: “They can’t all be about alerting other birds to nearby food sources.” (via The New York Times)
14. We’ll end with a wonderful piece from The Times in London: The warbler family’s song is a familiar springtime soundtrack but now, like the absence of rain, their music was just about to drift away from the garden for another year. All at once my sore throat, the parched ground and the oppressive heat seemed to concentrate on these flitting little birds. My ears tuned in to their musical syrinxes (the bird equivalent of our larynx), which bird experts say is the exact size of a raindrop. So tiny yet so much melody. In the past weeks the chiff chaffs’ calls have disappeared, the blackcaps’ refrains have ceased and the garden warblers’ conversational chatter has faded: one by one the species have taken their songs, lifted into the high air to set off on their journeys, abandoning us to this dry, oppressive heat, crinkled grass and cracked ground.
Our human senses, beset with the hubbub of our techno-world, have become too distracted to listen properly, I thought. Research tells us that by stepping into the “Umwelt” — what scientists call the world of sensory perception of other animals — we might deepen our empathy, notice how we bombard them with stimuli of our own making. It’s no longer simply the wash of the wind or the waves they must compete with but the storm of human traffic. We’ve altered their sonic world as well as disrupting the climate. Those lovely, feathered sprites darting about among their cool dome of branches with their lemon-soft voices, weigh less than 10g. And they’re about to set off across the desiccated dehesas of Spain, and then on across the Sahara, flying at night to avoid the heat, resting at oases or in the shade of a stone; all that way, to their winter quarters in sub-Saharan and even South Africa. (via The Times)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Kennebunkport, ME.
Bird Videos of the Week
By Curiosity Stream, “True Facts: Parasitic Birds”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Georgia Owls.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Northern Royal Albatross.