1. A complex look at the brain of a plain-tailed wren to lead off: A fundamental feature of vocal communication is taking turns: when one person says something, the other person listens and then responds. Turn-taking requires precise coordination of the timing of signals between individuals. How do the brains of two individuals synchronize their activity patterns for rapid turn-taking during vocal communication? Researchers addressed this question in a recently published paper by studying turn-taking in a specialist, the plain-tailed wren (Pheugopedius euophrys), which sings precisely timed duets. Their findings demonstrate the ability to coordinate relies on sensory cues from one partner that temporarily inhibit vocalizations in the other. (via Scientific American)
2. This is fun – a whimsical look at AI & Birding in the future: We’re climbing the steps of the bird tower — the soft shuffle of Willa’s sneakers on the wood ascend first, the dull metal march of my feet follow close behind. It’s 5:30 on a Sunday morning, and we’re the first ones here — unless you count the birds, which I will, very soon. It’s windy at the top, clouds rushing across blue, droneless skies. Willa adjusts the old fishing hat on my head, tugging at the frayed edges. It belonged to her grandfather, and she doesn’t want it to be swept into the lake. She tilts her head, robin-like, and smiles. “It looks good on you.” I’ll take her word for it. (via Nature)
3. Yet another reason to love Barn Owls: Birds are good for more than controlling crop pests in Southern California’s Ventura County, where Barn Owls and other raptors protect an entirely different resource—56 flood-control dams and 40 miles of earthen levees—from burrow damage by ground squirrels and gophers. (See related article: At Orchards and Vineyards, Birds Are Outperforming Pesticices.) Ventura County had been using rodenticides to control squirrels and gophers for years, but managers were concerned that non-target animals—such as coyotes, bobcats, and mountain lions—might eat the bait or poisoned rodents. Several years ago they investigated a program in neighboring Santa Barbara County using raptor perches to attract hawks, owls, and falcons that control pests. (via Living Bird)
4. Progress in Florida for wildlife protection: On April 27 the Florida legislature passed the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act with bipartisan, unanimous support: 40-0 in the state senate, and 115-0 in the state house. On June 29, Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law. The act seeks to secure wildlife habitat; protect the headwaters of major watersheds; sustain working farms, lands, and forests; and protect coastal estuaries. Scientists at Florida’s Archbold Biological Station say the bill benefits birds as well. The act will protect critical habitat on cattle ranches, which are vital for grassland-dependent birds such as the endangered Florida Grasshopper Sparrow. It will also protect landscape linkages by connecting bird habitats to each other, which is important for the endangered Florida Scrub-Jay, as scrub-jays must be able to move between patches of oak scrub for the genetic mixing that prevents inbreeding among isolated populations. (via Living Bird)
5. More on this subject: Almost 200 years ago, the renowned U.S. naturalist John James Audubon hid a decaying pig carcass under a pile of brush to test vultures' sense of smell. When the birds overlooked the pig—while one flocked to a nearly odorless stuffed deer skin— he took it as proof that they rely on vision, not smell, to find their food. His experiment cemented a commonly held idea. Now, that dogma is being eroded by new findings about birds' behavior and their molecular hardware. One study showed that storks home in on the smell of freshly mown grass; another documented scores of functional olfactory receptors, in multiple bird species. Olfaction in birds is more widespread than most people have realized. (via Science)
6. “Twitchers” delight: Fewer than 50 of these marsh-loving little birds have been spotted in UK in the past half century. the song, emerging from low in the dense vegetation, sounded like a cross between a bush cricket and a sewing machine. Some might find it monotonous, but for me, it was strangely compelling. Now, all we had to do was find the bird itself. Binoculars were scanned. Telescopes pointed. Cameras powered up. Then, an excited shout: the river warbler was back in view. My dog-eared book on the status of Britain’s birds, from the early 1970s, includes just one record of river warbler, from Fair Isle in 1961. Since then, fewer than 50 have reached the UK. So, not surprisingly, this bird attracted crowds of twitchers, some of whom had travelled long distances to see it. (via The Guardian)
7. Last year, two men in Indonesian Borneo noticed a red-eyed bird during one of their daily forest foraging trips. The bird was unfamiliar, so they decided to capture it to take a closer look. Once it was in hand, they snapped some pictures and texted them to a local birdwatching group called BW Galeatus for help identifying it. An impromptu game of ornithological telephone began. BW Galeatus’s Teguh Willy Nugroho sent the photos to his friend Panji Gusti Akbar, an ornithologist who works with Indonesian birding tour and community science nonprofit Birdpacker. Akbar, in turn, passed the photos on to three more ornithologists. He waited for their verdict, pacing his house in excitement. One after the other, responses came in: Yes, this was the Black-browed Babbler, a bird last positively identified 170 years ago, well before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. (via Audubon)
8. Country diary: The soft, sandy soil is damp after the heavy overnight rain. I follow the narrow track downhill, splashing through large muddy puddles, and head out across the heathland. The sun pierces through the lifting cloud and shines on a tree pipit, singing from the top of a tall silver birch. The pipit’s trills and whistles carry across the undulating heather and scattered trees. The song ends with falling glissandos as the bird flutters down, out of sight among some ferns. Tree pipits are getting harder to find on these Sussex heaths, especially in West Sussex. A 1967-70 survey estimated a breeding population of around 600 pairs across East and West Sussex. That fell to 90 pairs by 2010. It reflects a steep decline across England, although they are on the rise in Scotland. (via The Guardian)
9. The stories of enigmatic birds told in indigenous folklore aren't just fascinating tales, they may be a way to preserve languages and cultures at risk of extinction. In the farthest reach of the southern cone of South America, along the wind-and-rain-whipped coast of Tierra Del Fuego, the Yaghan people have a story about the Magellanic woodpecker, a big showy bird they call lana. A boy and his sister were picking red berries away from their village. Attracted to each other, they finally gave in to their desires. The moment they did they were turned into a male and female woodpecker. That story was told by Christina Calderon, a 94-year-old woman who is one of 1,600 Yaghan people, but is also the last person for whom Yaghan is their first language. In this case it was lesson about a taboo, which could reduce genetic fitness. (via BBC)
10. More than 500 acres of Atlantic Forest, including the area where the last known Stresemann's Bristlefront was detected, will be added to the Mata do Passarinho, or “Songbird Forest,” Reserve in Brazil. American Bird Conservancy (ABC) partner Fundação Biodiversitas (Biodiversitas) has taken ownership of the added acreage, which consists of two rare fragments of intact Atlantic Forest. This biome is one of the most threatened in the world, with less than10 percent of its original area remaining. (via ABC Birds)
11. A year after pandemic precautions all but halted work to raise the world’s most endangered cranes for release into the wild, the efforts are back in gear. Fourteen long-legged, fuzzy brown whooping crane chicks — one more than in 2019 — are following their parents or costumed surrogates in facilities from New Orleans to Calgary, Canada. Adult whooping cranes are white with black wingtips and red caps, and at 5 feet high are the tallest birds in North America. Only about 800 exist, all descendants of about 15 that survived hunters and habitat loss in a flock that migrates between Texas and Alberta, Canada. (via The Washington Post)
Bonus. A fun look at nesting Piping Plovers in Chicago: A pair of piping plovers appeared on a busy Chicago beach two years ago, and filmmaker Bob Dolgan recorded the human effort to protect the birds’ nest. The result: a documentary film. GLN’s Nick Austin spoke with Dolgan about his work chronicling “Monty and Rose,” the plover pair that’s inspired so much conservation of habitat in Chicago. “The goal of the film was to show how people and birds can interact and co-exist,” Dolgan said. “The fact that this could happen in a metropolis and in the center of Chicago with that very stunning backdrop of the skyscrapers and Lake Michigan, those were all goals of mine to hopefully show in the film and to tell the plovers’ story.” A full-length documentary is coming soon. (via Great Lakes Now)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Rick Bunting, Bald Eagle.
Bird Videos of the Week
By PBS Nature, “Super Hummingbirds”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Rivoli’s Hummingbird.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Curious Critter.