1. Magnificent: Deep in the Altai Mountains, where Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia meet, Kazakh people have for centuries developed and nurtured a special bond with golden eagles, training the birds to hunt foxes and other small animals. Alankush, an eagle hunter, animal herder and father of two, said that he looks after his eagle “as if she were a baby.” The ancient custom of hunting with eagles on horseback is traditionally passed down from father to son at a young age and is considered a great source of pride. “All Kazakhs love to train eagles,” said Alankush. “Now we keep eagles mostly because it’s a traditional sport.” (via The New York Times)
2. As a University of Queensland researcher examined a 4600-year-old Egyptian painting last year, a speckled goose caught his eye. UQ scientist Dr Anthony Romilio said the strange but beautiful bird was quite unlike modern red-breasted geese (Branta ruficollis), with distinct, bold colors and patterns on its body, face, breast, wings and legs. “The painting, Meidum Geese, has been admired since its discovery in the 1800s and described as ‘Egypt’s Mona Lisa’,” he said. “Apparently no-one realized it depicted an unknown species. (via The Met, University of Queensland)
3. Oh dear: Black-and-white tuxedos may be the conventional dress code in the penguin world, but one dashing individual is breaking the status quo with an à la mode yellow coat. A wildlife photographer captured images of the rare penguin on a remote island in South Georgia in December 2019 and only recently released the photos. A king penguin "walked up straight to our direction in the middle of a chaos full of sea elephants and Antarctic fur seals, and thousands of other king penguins," the photographer from Belgium, Yves Adams wrote on an Instagram post. "How lucky could I be!"(via Live Science)
4. And speaking of unusual: An extremely rare, half-male, half-female northern cardinal in northwestern Pennsylvania has been documented in photos by a lifelong birder in northwestern Pennsylvania. James Hill III, a retired ornithologist who spends much of his time contributing to citizen science by birdwatching and uploading his bird counts and photos to eBird. The bird, which appears split right down the middle with bright red, male plumage on the right and buff-brown, female plumage on the left, is a bilateral gynandromorph of a northern cardinal. Some ornithologists have estimated birds like the cardinal photographed by Hill over the weekend to be at least a 1 in 10,000 chance, maybe even a 1 in a million chance. (via Penn Live)
5. When birds spot a predator, they get loud. They’ll call out noisily, getting other birds to join in, and sometimes even mob whatever beast is threatening them. But one bird makes these noises all by itself. Australia’s male superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae), renowned for its complex vocal mimicry, has now been found to imitate the many layered sounds of a mobbing flock when it’s wooing a female mate. Scientists didn’t set out to capture this imitation. They were recording the mating songs of 11 males in the Sherbrooke Forest of southeastern Australia when they suddenly heard the sounds of a mobbing flock—coming straight out of the pheasant-size songbirds. (via Science Mag)
6. When researchers following in the boots of biologist Joseph Grinnell, who a century ago created a pioneering survey of California wildlife, began sampling birds and small mammals in the Mojave Desert, they expected the harsh conditions would magnify population changes driven by the climate crisis. The goal is to revisit the same areas Grinnell and his students observed between 1904 and 1940, comparing new data with old. "If there was going to be any place where we would see these physical impacts, it should be there," he says. There were, at least among birds. Thirty-nine of 135 species counted by Grinnell were less common and less widespread. The 61 sites sampled lost, on average, 43 percent of the species that were there a century ago. Only one species, the common raven, increased. (via Wired)
7. She could be any of a million Laysan albatross returning each fall to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, a group of three tiny islands formed from coral reefs in the North Pacific. Here, a thousand miles north of Honolulu, scores of brilliant white seabirds dot the islands’ exposed fields, each sitting atop a single, soda can–size egg. Both males and females sport the same charcoal-smudged eyes and chocolate-brown wings, which can span six and a half feet. But one bird stands out: Wisdom. Sporting the red ankle band Z333, she is at least 70 this year, the oldest-known wild bird in history. (via National Geographic)
Bird News Items highly recommends The Seabird’s Cry by Adam Nicolson a beautiful, lyrical, even poetic look at seabirds including the remarkable albatross.
8. To make a long story short, I'm a late 20 something living in Portland, Oregon. A couple months ago, I was watching a nature program about crows. The program mentioned that if you feed and befriend them, crows will bring you small gifts. I figured that since I was furloughed and had lots of time- why not make some crow friends. My plan worked a little too well and the resident five crows in my neighborhood have turned into an army 15 strong. Lately, the crows have started defending me. My neighbor came over for a socially distanced chat (me on my porch her in my yard) and the crows started dive bombing her. They would not stop until she left my yard. (via Reddit)
9. On a cold, rainy evening in December, a terrified pigeon crash-landed onto a table in the outdoor seating area of a retro-themed bar in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn. Circling overhead was a Cooper’s hawk that had accidentally dropped the bird and certainly wanted its dinner back. New Yorkers are rarely confronted so dramatically with the fact that thousands of pigeons are owned by a dwindling fraternity of their neighbors. Though keeping pigeons was once commonplace — it was cinematic shorthand for “working-class loner,” like Marlon Brando’s dockworker in “On the Waterfront” — the hobby is now almost prohibitively expensive in the city. (via The New York Times)
Bird Photo of the Week
By Hap Ellis, Ruddy Turnstone.
Bird Videos of the Week
By Ruth Lee Productions, “Hummingbird Sleeping While Hanging Upside Down”.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Red-shafted Northern Flicker.
Cornell Live Bird Cam - Royal Albatross and chick.