1. It was 1996, Bill Clinton was president, and endangered bald eagles were dying in his home state of Arkansas. Twenty-nine were found dead at a man-made reservoir called DeGray Lake, before deaths spread to two other lakes. But what really puzzled scientists was how the eagles acted before they died. The stately birds were suddenly flying straight into cliff faces. They hit trees. Their wings drooped. Even on solid ground, they stumbled around as if drunk. But as the toll rose, to more than 70 eagles in total, the mass die-off of America’s national bird in the president’s home state took on outsize symbolic importance. Now, in an extraordinarily exhaustive new study, scientists have pinpointed the cause of death for those bald eagles in Arkansas: algae. (via The Atlantic)
2. Birdwatching certainly isn’t new. The term itself is thought to be coined in 1901 by ornithologist Edmund Selous with his book Bird Watching, which popularized the then-radical idea that birds were best observed while alive. Since March of 2020, though, the pastime's popularity has ticked up considerably. Sales of bird feeders and feed are soaring, with $2.2 billion in projected sales for 2021, according to a recent report. Cornell Lab of Ornithology has seen a sustained above-average growth in citizen-submitted bird sightings to eBird, In February 2021, "we had more people eBirding in a single month than ever before," told eBird project leader Jenna Curtis. (via Oprah Daily)
3. This extraordinary image, taken as dusk approaches, looks like a soaring bird from a fantasy film. In reality, it is a murmuration – a huge swarm of starlings moving and pulsating as a single spectacular mass in the sky. Murmurations can comprise up to hundreds of thousands of flying starlings, though few are quite as dramatic as this one. Starlings are thought to form murmurations to protect themselves from predators, such as peregrine falcons, since it is much harder to single out an individual among such large numbers. How the birds manage to avoid collisions is still a bit of a mystery, but one idea suggests that when certain starlings initiate a turn, the decision spreads through the rest of the murmuration like a wave. (via New Scientists)
4. BNI Would is not surprised: The social isolation necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic has pushed many people to escape into the outdoors and reconnect with nature. Research suggests that spending more time in nature and with animals can help people relax and even lessen physical and mental stress. And the more birds, the better, according to the study, which analyzed data from the "2012 European quality of Life Survey" on life satisfaction in more than 26,000 adults from 26 European countries. A 10 percent increase in the number of bird species in peoples' surroundings increased their life satisfaction as much as an extra 10 percent in the bank, the study found. (via The Hill)
5. Must read WSJ book review last week: Long before we put bands on birds to track their journeys, these “arrow-storks” told of an annual trip that might take them from northern Europe to the southern coasts of Africa and back. Later, they bore the first satellite transmitters as migration studies flew into uncharted terrain. It is here that David Tipling and Mike Unwin’s magnificent “Flights of Passage: An Illustrated Natural History of Bird Migration” steps in. There is no one better at dressing the natural-history stage than Mr. Weidensaul. Mr. Weidensaul takes us to places we’ll likely never go, then deftly steps back to let us experience the scene. In an era when travel, for most, has sputtered to a stop, “A World on the Wing” is a bracing tonic. (via Wall Street Journal)
6. NYC Birders girding for, well, more birders: This spring, longtime Central Park birder and naturalist Gabriel Willow is feeling a little less nervous than he did a year ago. Now that people are being vaccinated and are more aware of safety protocols, “we’re going to see even more people outside birding this spring,” he predicts, including him. “Normally, in spring migration, the park is really crowded with regular birders,” said longtime birder MaryJane Boland, walking the section of the park known as The Ramble. It’s “even more crowded this year because of the new ones.” (via The Washington Post)
7. If you are not from NYC, but going there to bird, this could be helpful: The birds of summer are flocking back to New York City in their millions. Within the next couple of weeks, waves of birds will be winging in from the south, returning to their breeding grounds in city parks, stopping off on their way further north or - most tantalizing for the hordes of city birdwatchers – blown off course. The city, surprisingly for some, is an ornithology hotspot at this time of year. The Atlantic Flyway – a kind of bird highway in the sky – carries hundreds of thousands of migrants over NYC. Here are some of New York City's best birding spots to head to this spring, identified by the NYC Audubon. (via The Patch, NYC Audubon)
8. Speciation – the emergence of a new species – is a slow and steady process that plays out over millions of years among a stranded group of creatures, isolated from the rest of their kind by geographical barriers and left to evolve on their own. Or so it was generally thought. New research published March 25 challenges the typical model of speciation by documenting how a recently discovered songbird in South America traveled a very rare evolutionary path. The study delves into the origins of the Iberá seedeater in northern Argentina, which appears to have formed from a unique mixing and matching of existing genetic traits among 10 or more other species of seedeaters in the same area. (via Cornell Chronicle)
9. The bird was olive-green and yellow with a chunky beak. No one knew where she came from. But she probably wasn’t supposed to be here. She just appeared one day, tattered and listless. She must have been flying quite some time before she found us. For weeks the R/V Atlantis had been stationed on the open sea some 40 miles from shore. Erik Cordes, an ecologist at Temple University, was leading a team of scientists from about half a dozen labs on a mission to explore life along the continental margin in the Pacific Ocean. During that cruise, these researchers studied hundreds of creatures, many new species, some unknown to science. But that bitty bird bewitched me. Who was Homeslice, and why was she there? (via Audubon)
10. Covid, hunting and Snow Geese: As the world shut down and we locked ourselves in our homes, snow geese in Canada took the opportunity to gorge themselves on corn crops. The well-fed geese could spell additional trouble for the fragile Arctic ecosystems where they breed. "There was a lot of fat in these birds," said Frédéric LeTourneux, a doctoral student in biology at Laval University in Quebec City. LeTourneaux's research focuses on how changes in hunting regulations have affected snow goose populations. They found that geese seen in 2020 were comparable in terms of fatness to those seen in the spring of 2019, which was already a good year for the geese. LeTourneaux said the team believes the large decrease in hunting led to a less stressful food stopover for the geese during the pandemic. (via Inside Science)
Bird Photo of the Week
Photo by Hap Ellis, Tri-colored Heron.
Bird Videos of the Week
By Science Magazine, “Plumage and song split two nearly identical birds into different species”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Yellow-headed Caracara.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Black-chested Jays.