Posts
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| Greater Sage-Grouse / Photo by Jeannie Stafford (USFWS) |
- A new fossil bird, Eocypselus rowei, helps to clarify the evolutionary relationship between hummingbirds and swifts.
- Climate change is making it easier for elk to spend the winter in high elevation canyons on the Colorado Plateau, which does not bode well for the Red-faced Warbler and other birds.
- The world's rarest duck, the Madagascar Pochard, is becoming a little less rare through a captive breeding program.
- In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt prepared a list of 93 bird species that he had seen in and around the White House grounds. The full list is here (pdf).
- A pair of Bald Eagles is nesting on a toxic site in Ridgefield Park that is slated for remediation. Since remediation involves the stripping of all vegetation and a layer of soil, planners now need to decide what to do about the nest tree (once the nesting season is done). One option is to replace it with an artificial nesting platform; another is to leave the tree and the area around it untouched while remediating the rest of the property.
- California's proposed plan for Big Basin State Park would have significant impacts on the local breeding population of Marbled Murrelets.
- Scientists have built a model of seabird behavior during migration based on three years of tracking data from Manx Shearwaters.
- Seabirds provide a means for tracking ocean pollution through feather and blood samples.
- Fossil caenagnathids, feathered dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous, show a range of speciation akin to Darwin's finches.
- Round Robin: 294 Species and One Shattered Record on “Almost Perfect” Big Day
- Earbirding: “Russet-backed” vs. “Olive-backed” Swainson’s Thrushes
- Safari Ecology: Indian house crows and invasive aliens
- All Things Birds Blog: Sandy Hook Opens and Birders Rejoice
- Tetrapod Zoology: Herring gull eats sea star, and other tales of larid gastronomy
- Five unique populations of butterflies have disappeared from southern Florida in the past decade.
- The US Fish and Wildlife Service plans to strip endangered species protections from the Gray Wolf in most of the Lower 48 (with the exception of the Mexican Gray Wolf population).
- Sandy Hook reopened this week for the first time since Hurricane Sandy. Some infrastructure is still in bad shape, particularly the sewer system.
- Meanwhile, staff at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge needs to decide whether to repair the breach in the West Pond.
- Warren County has New Jersey's largest population of the rare Bog Turtle.
- Climate change could significantly reduce the amount of drinking water available in the DC area.
- BP was rebuked by Norway for a spill at one of its North Sea oil rigs last year.
- The EU imposed a two-year ban on three neonicotinoid pesticides in an attempt to halt the declines in bee populations. For more coverage of the story, see the roundup at Knight Science Journalism Tracker.
- Meanwhile, the US government issued its own report on the causes of colony collapse disorder, which named mites as the chief culprit. The full report is here (pdf).
