Birds in the News 155

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter

Christmas Bird Count News

The Annual Christmas Bird Counts are rapidly approaching, so I am publishing links to all of the counts here; who to contact, and where and when they are being held, so if you have a link to a Christmas Bird Count for your state, please let me know so I can include it in the list:

Alabama (Thanks, Chazz Hesselein)

Arizona (Thanks, Sheri Williamson)

California (Thanks, Joseph Morlan)

Idaho (Thanks, Denise Hughes)

Illinois (Thanks, Urs Geiser)

Iowa (Thanks, Urs Geiser)

Kansas (Thanks, Chuck Otte)

Kentucky (Thanks, Rod)

Minnesota (also view map of Minnesota CBCs) (Thanks, Rick and Steve Weston)

New Jersey (Thanks, Patrick Belardo)

North and South Carolina (also view map for the Carolinas CBCs) Thanks, Kent Fiala and Dennis Burnette)

North Dakota (Thanks, Rick)

Oregon (also view map for WA and OR CBCs) (Thanks, Mike Patterson and Barbara Combs)

Utah and surrounding states (Thanks, Robin Tuck)

Washington State (also view map for WA and OR CBCs) (Thanks, Mike Patterson)

Birds in Science

If you aren't one of the millions who have already done so, you should view the popular video, Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo. There you will see a large white bird balanced on the back of an office chair, bobbing his head, stomping his feet and doing something that -- until now -- scientists believed impossible: dancing just like a human. This is good fun. It's also good science: Snowball's videos are changing the way researchers understand the neurology of music and dancing. "This is no coincidence," said Aniruddh Patel, senior fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in California. Patel says dancing is associated with our vocal abilities, not musical hard wiring.

A curious dermatologist and a dead parrot have helped unlock the secrets of a virus that has eluded animal researchers for decades. Flint Township (Michigan) dermatologist Dr. Scott Karlene is credited with helping to isolate and identify a new avian bornavirus, which causes a fatal neuromotor disorder in parrots and other exotic birds similar to Parkinson's Disease. The discovery might eventually provide clues to the cause of human neuromotor diseases. It could even turn out to be an early warning for a potential new threat to public health. A related bornavirus was identified in horses in the 1970s and can infect a wide range of animals including sheep, cattle, cats and primates. Some controversial studies have even suggested a possible link to human psychiatric disease, although no actual human cases have been detected.

Anyone who has ever watched birds closely or who has bred them in captivity knows that different species of birds have different clutch sizes, with some species laying only one egg while others produce as many as ten eggs per clutch or more. Why is there such a tremendous difference in clutch size? What evolutionary factors affect the average clutch size that each species produces? Do closely related species have similarly sized clutches? Is it possible to predict the clutch size for a particular species? An international research team wondered these same things and decided to taker a closer look at the phenomenon of clutch size in birds.

Wildlife satellite studies could lead to a radical re-thinking about how the snowy owl fits into the Northern ecosystem. "Six of the adult females that we followed in a satellite study spent most of last winter far out on the Arctic sea ice," said Université Laval doctoral student Jean-Francois Therrien, who is working with Professor Gilles Gauthier as part of an International Polar Year (IPY) research project to better understand key indicator species of Canadian northern ecosystems. "As for what the birds were doing there, they were possibly preying on seabirds," said Gauthier. "Bird researchers at coastal field sites have observed snowy owls attacking eiders in winter. This hypothesis will be strengthened if we can match up the locations of our birds with the position of open water leads in the ice as recorded by other satellite data."

The reorganization of neural activity during sleep helps young songbirds to develop the vocal skills they display while awake, University of Chicago researchers have found. Sleep is well known to have a role in a broad range of learning processes studied in humans, including acquiring complex skills such as video game playing and learning new speech dialects. However, the neural mechanisms involved in the nighttime consolidation of learning are not well understood. To study this, researchers turned to an animal model system, the developmental learning of song in songbirds, which long has been known to share features with learning speech and language.

Birding News

Probably the most important thing that we can do to protect wildlife and their habitats is to stop driving our cars everywhere, especially to see birds. I know, this is traumatic, but you will be surprised at the numbers and varieties of bird species that you can see locally. Don't believe me? Okay, then I challenge you to poke around The Big Green Year. This website is dedicated to GreenBirding, where all birders rely on alternative transportation such as bicycles, walking or even horseback riding or dog sledding (okay, no one has done either of these last two -- yet!). This is not an organization nor a competition, and there are no membership fees or any ambitions to evolve into anything other than a public place for like-minded birders to share their carbon-neutral birding experiences and observations, lists and their unusual transportation methods. Further, I challenge everyone to consider including GreenBirding, even if only for one month, into your 2009 New Year's resolutions.

People Helping Birds

Quaker parrots have lived in Edgewater, New Jersey, for more than 30 years. How they came to be an ornithological fixture here is a matter of speculation. The most accepted explanation is that they escaped from a shipping crate at Kennedy International Airport in the late 1960s and flew first to Brooklyn before settling in Edgewater; there are some parrots in Brooklyn, too. Now, legislation is pending in the New Jersey Senate to remove them from the state's list of potentially dangerous species. Advocates say the birds made the list because officials were afraid they would jeopardize indigenous species (the parrots are South American in origin) and perhaps damage crops. State Assemblywoman Joan Voss, a Democrat from Fort Lee, who has been working on legislation to protect the birds since 2005, estimated there are some 200 to 230 parrots in Edgewater, up from about 190 in the past three years.

People Hurting Birds

A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada's oil sands region threatens to kill as many as 166 million birds over the next five decades and is calling for a moratorium on new projects in the region. The coalition's groups, which include the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Boreal Songbirds Initiative and the Pembina Institute, say petroleum-extraction projects in the oil-rich region of northern Alberta are a threat to migratory birds and the boreal forest they rely on. Their study concluded that development of the oil sands, would be fatal for 6 million to 166 million birds because of habitat loss, shrinking wetlands, accumulation of toxins and other causes. "People need to take a hard look at whether this can be mitigated or if tar sands development is just incompatible with conservation of bird habitat," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross, Diomedea dabbenena, has suffered its worst breeding season ever, according to research by the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK). The number of chicks making it through to fledging has decreased rapidly and it is now five times lower than it should be because introduced predatory mice are eating the chicks alive on Gough island - the bird's only home and a South Atlantic territory of the United Kingdom. "Tristan Albatross is being hit by a double whammy. The chicks are predated by mice and the adults and juveniles are being killed by longline fishing vessels", said John Croxall, Chair of BirdLife's Global Seabird Programme. "Unsustainable numbers are being killed on land and at sea. Without major conservation efforts, the Tristan Albatross will become extinct". The mice are also affecting Gough Island's other Critically Endangered endemic species, Gough Bunting, Rowettia goughensis. A recent survey of the bunting's population revealed that the population has halved within the last two decades. Now there are only an estimated 400-500 pairs left.

The controversial Ilisu Dam project in Turkey threatens to flood a region that was once part of ancient Mesopotamia and that includes more than 83 archaeological sites. It is also home to many species of birds, such as Egyptian Vulture, Neophron percnopterus (Endangered) and Great Bustard, Otis tarda (Vulnerable), as well as many mammals and other wildlife. "The Ilisu Dam will only cause the destruction of our heritage and our legacy. For the sake of present and future generations, Turkey must stop this project. Germany, Austria and Switzerland must apply the same standards and controls to Turkey that they use in their own countries. No one should contribute to the disappearance of the unique wildlife and history of Hasankeyf", said Erkut Erturk, Campaign Coordinator for DoÄa DerneÄi (BirdLife in Turkey).

Large numbers of migrating Lesser Spotted Eagle, Aquila pomarina, and White Stork, Ciconia ciconia, have been found dead near a water treatment plant in Egypt. The exact causes of their death are not known. However, a new BirdLife project will address key threats to soaring migratory birds as they undertake their epic journeys. "We don't know the exact causes of these deaths", said Hala Barakat, President of Nature Conservation Egypt (BirdLife in Egypt). "These birds face a number of different threats such poisoning, hunting, habitat-loss and direct collisions with structures such as wind-farms and power-lines".

Endangered Species News

George Bush is proving once again that he is hostile towards both science and conservation: Just six weeks before President-elect Barack Obama takes office, the Bush administration issued revised endangered species regulations to reduce the input of federal scientists and to block the law from being used to fight global warming. The changes, which will go into effect in about 30 days, were completed in just four months. Unfortunately, they could take Obama much longer to reverse.

Captive Birds News

At 5 a.m. each day, the little café inside Can Tho City's Luu Huu Phuoc Park in Vietnam begins to fill with customers. Most are bird collectors and breeders and members of the Can Tho Ornamental Bird Club. Every morning, they bring their bird cages here to listen to the chirping orchestra and socialize with other collectors over a hot cup of coffee. Bird aficionados in Can Tho City and neighboring Mekong Delta areas such as Long Xuyen, Chau Doc and Kien Giang have dubbed the café the "kingdom" of birds. Customers discuss all aspects of bird-rearing and tell anecdotes about peculiar birds they've seen. Some locals are even famous now for their rare birds and breeding techniques.

Avian Influenza News

H5N1 Avian Influenza has once again been identified in captive poultry for the first time ever in Spain as well as in Hong Kong and in several states in India and in humans in Cambodia and (as always, it seems), in Indonesia.

Streaming Birds

On BirdNote, for the week of 14 December 2008. BirdNotes can be heard seven mornings per week at 8:58-9:00am throughout Western Washington state and Southern British Columbia, Canada, on KPLU radio in Seattle, KOHO radio in Wenatchee, WA, WNPR radio in Connecticut, KWMR radio in West Marin, California, KTOO radio in Juneau, Alaska, and KMBH radio in Harlingen, Texas. All episodes are available in the BirdNote archives, both in written transcript and mp3 formats, along with photographs, so you can listen to them anytime, anywhere. Listener ideas and comments are welcomed. [Podcast and rss]. If you would like to $upport BirdNote, I encourage you to purchase one of their wonderful "birdy" items from their online BirdNote Store (the calendar and t-shirt look especially fine, and no doubt, they will be adding more items in the future).

Bird Publications News

This week's issue of the Birdbooker Report lists ecology, evolution, natural history and bird books that are (or will soon be) available for purchase. Ian also recently published an article in the magazine, Winging It, about the 50 bird books that every birder should own in their library [free PDF]. Keep an eye on the comments for this blog entry to find more URLs where this PDF is being hosted.

Would you like an avian anatomy book -- free? If so, you can download one, two or all three books as PDFs by going to this entry, where you can read about the books that are available and choose your free copies. Note that each book must be uploaded to someone's computer at least once every 90 days, or the file will be automatically deleted by RapidShare, so please share this link with your friends. While you are there, you can also pick up a free book about the Endemic birds of Sri Lanka.

Bird Identification Quizzes

If you are interested to participate in a daily online discussion of bird identification, please go to the Mystery Birds archive. This is a collaborative project featuring with a number of talented bird photographers and written analyses by Rick Wright. It is updated daily, and you are given 48 hours to identify each bird before its identification and an analysis is published. You are also invited to check out the previous Mystery Birds to improve your birding skills.

Miscellaneous Bird News

A large raptor crashed through the window of a northern Idaho home, showering a youngster with glass and stunning itself before recovering and flying off. Karyn Holt of Coeur d'Alene says her 1-year-old son was eating breakfast in his high chair one morning when the bird, possibly a Cooper's Hawk, broke through the window facing their backyard. Holt picked up the stunned bird and moved it into the yard, where it rested for about 90 minutes before flying off.

The Fine Print: Thanks to Kathy, Richard, Jeff, Rob, Biosparite, Bob, TravelGirl, Ellen, Jeremy and Ron for sending story links. Thanks in advance to Ian Paulsen for catching my typos; as you probably know by now, I put a few typographical errors in these documents just so Ian can find them!