1. There are life listers with “nemesis” birds, and then there is Peter Kaestner and his “nemesis” birds: In the world of birding, Peter Kaestner stands alone. No one has seen and identified more birds than Mr. Kaestner, a retired U.S. diplomat who aspires to become the first birder to spot 10,000 of the planet’s roughly 11,000 avian species. With 9,697 on his eBird list so far, he is getting close. Yet for all the birds he has looked for and found, there remain a few that he has looked for and not found. He doesn’t forget them. There was the Congo peacock — a rare multicolored pheasant of the Central African rainforest — that he missed in 1978, when his traveling party was stymied by a crash on the remote airstrip that they planned to search. There was a black-browed albatross he pursued off the German coast in 2015, some 300 miles and a four-hour ferry ride from Mr. Kaestner’s home in Frankfurt at the time. (via The New York Times)
2. “Shared stewardship” maps and why they are important – a great piece from the New York Times: America’s birds are in trouble. Since 1970,nearly 3 billion birds have vanished from the skies over North America. Most of those losses have been in migratory species, which may breed in the United States or Canada in the summer before heading elsewhere for the winter. Many spend more time living on Caribbean beaches or in Costa Rican forests than they do in American backyards. “They’re really visitors to North America,” said Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, co-director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Protecting these birds will require working across international borders and safeguarding all of their habitats, many of which are under threat. If migrating birds lose their winter refuges, the consequences will ripple across the hemisphere. (via The New York Times)
3. From Scientific American, how scientists are working to help migrating birds find safe passage in the night: The night of May 23, 2022, was an exciting one for me. I was at my house in northern Colorado, winding down for the day. My phone buzzed. I pulled up the alert. It showed that a large movement of migratory birds was coming my way, and they might just fly right over my house. I stepped outside on that cool, calm, and cloudy night and turned my ears to the sky. I could already hear them flying overhead: dozens of Swainson’s Thrushes. I rushed inside and turned on my audio recorder. Before the sun came up the following morning, my microphone captured nearly 1,200 nocturnal flight calls, nearly twice as many as I counted any other night that spring. And I was ready for it. (via Scientific American)
4. “…a recipe for disaster” – H5N1 threatens Antarctica: Last fall, the virus, known as H5N1, finally arrived in South America. It raced quickly down the Pacific coast and killed wild birds and marine mammals in staggering numbers. Peru and Chile alone have reported more than 500,000 dead seabirds and 25,000 dead sea lions, according toa new report, which was published last week by OFFLU, a global network of flu experts. Now, scientists are worried that the virus will make its way to Antarctica, one of only two continents — along with Australia — that have not yet been hit by the pathogen. “The negative impact of this virus on Antarctic wildlife could be immense — likely worse than that on South American wildlife,” the report warns. (via The New York Times)
5. Let’s hear it for the sand lance! Atlantic Puffins love them: On remote islands off the Maine coast, a unique bird held its own this year in the face of climate change. Atlantic puffins — clownish seabirds with colorful bills and waddling gaits — had their second consecutive rebound year for fledging chicks after suffering a catastrophic 2021, said scientists who monitor the birds. The news flies in the face of environmental trends, as scientists have said warming waters off New England jeopardize the birds because that reduces the kind of fish they need to feed their chicks. One fish, though — the sand lance — has remained in abundance this year, allowing puffins to thrive, said Don Lyons, director of conservation science at National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute in Bremen, Maine. He said it’s a sign the impact of climate change on ecosystems is not always as tidy as we think. (via Associated Press)
6. Grassland birds in peril: When Reed Cammack hears the first meadowlark of spring, he knows his family has made it through another cold, snowy winter on the western South Dakota prairie. Nothing's better, he says, than getting up at sunrise as the birds light up the area with song. "It's part of the flora and fauna of our Great Plains, and it's beautiful to hear," says Cammack, 42, a sixth-generation rancher who raises cattle on 4,047 hectares (10,000 acres) of mostly unaltered native grasslands. But the number of returning birds has dropped steeply, despite seemingly ideal habitat. "There are quite a few I don't see any more, and I don't know for sure why," says Cammack's 92-year-old grandfather, Floyd, whose family has allowed conservation groups to install a high-tech tracking tower and conduct bird surveys. (via Voice of America News)
7. Two weeks ago we noted Peregrine Falcon numbers were falling in the Yukon. Here’s better news from Iowa: A small silhouette dotted the sky in Waverly in 2003. If you squinted at it, you might’ve been able to make out pointed wings backlit by the sun, powerfully commanding the air with strong pumps. It hovered over a waterway and cast a shadow atop some pheasants scattered there. Richard Woods patiently watched the scene from the ground. He startled the pheasants, causing them to take flight — and then, the hunt was on for his peregrine falcon flying above. The raptor folded its wings and dropped hundreds of feet in seconds. It zeroed in on a pheasant and swiftly knocked into it midair. The stunned prey bounced onto the roadway below, where about a dozen observers with the North American Falconers Association watched in awe. (via The Gazette)
8. Pink Flamingos seemingly everywhere in Florida: From yard art to paintings, sculptures, mailboxes, T-shirts, ties, socks and underwear, the likeness of a flamingo can show up nearly anywhere in Florida. Flamingos even adorn Florida's highly coveted lottery tickets, but there's still doubt that the bird ever lived here. This week flamingos showed up in the flesh as dozens of the birds were reported along the west coast of Florida this week ― just as Hurricane Idalia chugged northward through the Gulf of Mexico. One sighting was at the Sanibel Causeway. It was the first time a flamingo had ever been documented in places like Alachua County. One scientist thinks the birds are from the Yucatan, that they were traveling from Mexico to Cuba, and that Idalia simply blew them off course. (via News-Press)
9. Nice primer on a cool bird – the Clark’s Nutcracker: Their long bill is indicative of a preference for pine nuts. “The Clark’s nutcrackers are famous for their relationship with whitebark pines,” says Hilary Turner, program coordinator for the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation. This threatened pine species—along with limber pines, Douglas firs, pinyon and ponderosa pines—provide food for the nutcrackers, which, in turn, disperse the seeds. Hiding one to 14 seeds at a time in trenches in the soil, near rocks or in tree crevices, “A single bird can cache up to 98,000 white pine seeds per year,” says Taza Schaming, research associate for the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative. “They don’t recover all of those seeds, and some grow into trees,” Hilary says. Plus, some of these seeds provide food for rodents and other wildlife. (via Birds and Blooms)
10. A “paean” to the Osprey: Look up in the sky, it’s the hawk that fishes! One can almost hear the opening bars of Superman, the television series, as we gaze up into the sky and watch our local osprey as they glide above, searching for food. The handle “the hawk that fishes” is extremely apropos according to osprey expert Dr. Alan Poole. He has been an associate of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and editor of Birds of North America for over two decades. Poole is also an author of two books (one for children) with osprey as the theme. Poole gave an in-depth presentation at the Marion Natural History Museum on August 16. Poole asked the audience to consider the osprey a master fisherman, with long hook-like talons and eyesight designed to see fish just below the water’s surface. It is totally dependent on fish as a food source and water supply, he noted. (via Wanderer)
11. “Lights Out” comes to San Diego: A new “Lights Out, San Diego” campaign by the San Diego Audubon Society is calling on county residents to switch off non-essential lighting at night to help migratory bird species who are threatened by it. Turns out San Diego County actually has more bird species than anywhere else in the entire United States and is also on the “Pacific Flyway,” a path millions of migratory birds use to fly south in the winter and north in the spring. “We’re trying to build coalitions and find out what the best option is (to create darker skies) for a variety of reasons, including that, in San Diego, we are on a critical spot on the migratory bird path,” said Andrew Meyer, director of conservation for San Diego Audubon Society. (via San Diego News)
12. Rat poison’s toll: There's nothing quite like having a rodent problem in your home. Most people will do anything to get rid of them. Australians usually reach forrat poison, without a second thought. Most of these poisons—sold at supermarkets and hardware stores—are "second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides" (SGARs) also known as single-dose anticoagulants. These extremely powerful poisons stay in the body for many months. It takes only a single feed to kill a rodent, usually within a week. With the rodent problem solved, our house is once again our castle, and all is well. Right? Unfortunately, use of rat poison is leading to the wide-scale poisoning of Australia's nocturnal predatory birds, including the crowd favorite tawny frogmouth and Australia's largest owl, the majestic powerful owl. Our new research reveals the alarming extent of the problem. (via Phys Org)
13. Rare Bird Alert: An eruption of…Cliff Swallows!: Europe is set to experience an unprecedented arrival of American Cliff Swallows following a major displacement in north-east North America during the second half of August. In Newfoundland, what has been described as an "exceptional" influx of the species took place from 20 August. Thought to be the largest-ever such arrival in the Canadian region, many hundreds of birds are believed to have arrived, with numerous groups of between five and 20 birds noted as well as a couple of larger, three-figure flocks also seen. It is presumed that a spell of strong south-westerly winds from the Mid-Atlantic United States into Canada caused the displacement. (via Bird Guides)
14. Finally, remember “All that Breathes”, the movie about the brothers in Delhi who were saving injured Black Kites? An update: The tale of two brothers saving hundreds of birds — the carnivorous black kites injured by glass-coated strings on kites flown in the skies of Delhi — was nominated for an Academy Award this year. The film All that Breathes, directed by Shaunak Sen and featuring the bird-saving siblings Nadeem Shehzad and Muhammad Saud, was a critical darling. Even though it didn't garner an Oscar, it won both the Golden Eye award for top documentary in Cannes and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2022. It's currently available for viewing on HBO and Max. NPR caught up with the brothers over a video call from their home to find out how their lives have changed since their Oscar run. (via National Public Radio)
Bird Videos of the Week
By Nature with Gabe, “Birding the Top eBird Hotspot in Illinois”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Chestnut-headed Oropendolas.
Cornell Live Bird Cam -Red-bellied Woodpecker.