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Birds in the News 123

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Wilson's snipe, Gallinago delicata. It is a little unusual to see a shorebird off the the ground, but this fellow decided he needed a higher perch to take in some of the scenery. Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size]. Birds in Research The songs that each spring announce when birds are ready to compete for homes and sex have been traced to changes in the brain, according to a study that can shed new light on winter depression in people. While some birds, such as robins, sing throughout the winter, other species of bird…

Five Truths About Taxes (in the U.S.)

Before I get to an excellent NY Times article by David Leonhardt about taxes, I want to say why taxes shouldmust matter to scientists. Even so often, I get a link or a comment which decries my posts about politics*. But the lay of the political landscape is vital for scientists--and not just for the 'science' issues, such as global warming. Quite simply, taxes are what fund much of U.S. science, especially 'basic' research, which is not only the cornerstone of applied research, but also comprises a lot of the cool stuff we discuss at ScienceBlogs. In a low-tax environment (when combined…

China and choosing a new WHO Director General

With all the talk of transparency, we learn that China has yet to share its avian flu isolates with the world scientific community. This is different than the sequence issue. China has shared its sequences, but the sequences don't tell the whole story. In particular, we are still not able to make the jump to biology, for example host range, virulence and tissue tropisms. Correlating the sequences with the biology is a critical scientific goal. For that you need the viruses themselves. And since 2004 the Ministry of Agriculture, despite promises to the contrary, has not shared its isolates.…

Two debates last night - both won by Democrats

I watched the first couple of Dems debates, then skipped most of them - too busy with work and stuff - then tuned in last night for the ABC/Facebook double-feature. Brief thoughts: The GOP debate was surreal. A bunch of Grumpy Old White Men spewing nonsense and nobody called them on it (the same conversation could easily have occurred at a neighborhood bar or at a strip-club and would not seem out of place). McCain and Thompson looked like the two old geezers sitting on the balcony on the Muppet Show set, and were just as coherent. Romney was like a deer in the headlights, insulted that…

Report on chemical-asthma links a useful resource for workers at risk

by Kim Krisberg It really is a chemical world, which is bad news for people with asthma. According to a recent report released in August, at this very moment from where I write, I'm fairly surrounded by objects and materials that contain chemicals that are known or suspected asthmagens — substances that can act as asthma triggers if inhaled. There's formaldehyde (it's in office furniture, wood flooring, curtains and drapes); maleic anhydride (it's in interior paint and tile flooring); hexamethylene diisocyanate (it's in metal storage shelving and decorative metal); and diisodecyl phthalate (…

Reactions to the Democratic Convention

I'm curious to see how some of the folks whose views I respect are reacting to the Democratic National Convention, so I'm doing a little roundup of some that I've read from other bloggers. First, Brian Leiter: Let us put aside the chauvinistic masturbation that travels under the heading "patriotism"; the cheesey "feel-good" pop psychology about America's "can do" spirit; the implicit, and sometimes explicit, condescension to all other nations and all other peoples of the world; the romanticization of the last great immoral and criminal war by the United States--one also based on lies--in…

"Transgenic Drug" Controversy, Part 2

This is a follow-up to href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/07/transgenic_drug_controversy.php">the post from a couple of days ago.  It might not make a lot of sense unless you have read that post, or are otherwise familiar with the issues regarding genetically-modified crops. In general, there are valid concerns about genetically-modified crops.  However, it is important to think clearly about the issues involved.  Concerns about the technology that arise from a generalization,  may or may not apply to a specific implementation of the technology.  In order to understand…

PepsiCo blog, Food Frontiers, is an affront to those who built the reputation of ScienceBlogs

Yesterday, the ScienceBlogs arm of Seed Media Group announced that they would be hosting a blog written by members of PepsiCo's research and development leadership team. From the Food Frontiers blog: PepsiCo's R&D Leadership Team discusses the science behind the food industry's role in addressing global public health challenges. This is an extension of PepsiCo's own Food Frontiers blog. All editorial content on the blog is overseen by ScienceBlogs editors. The opening post was written by ScienceBlogs "editor" Evan Lerner: As part of this partnership, we'll hear from a wide range of…

The peril of positive thinking - why positive messages hurt people with low self-esteem

When the going gets tough, thousands of people try to boost their failing self-esteem by repeating positive statements to themselves. Encouraged by magazine columnists, self-help books and talk-show hosts, people prepare for challenges by chanting positive mantras like "I am a strong, powerful person," and, "Nothing can stop me from achieving my dreams." This approach has been championed at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale's infamous book The Power of Positive Thinking, published in 1952. But a new study suggests that despite its popularity, this particular brand of self-help may…

National, International, or City-wide Currencies?

Anyone who has traveled in Europe before and after the introduction of the euro can appreciate how easy tourism is made by the common currency (haggling with the guys in money change booths was never my idea of vacation). But a recent paper by Benn Steil in Foreign Affairs goes even further, arguing that the adoption of regional or multi-state currencies is better for economic development than the cornucopia of national currencies used in the world today. Time was, Steil recalls, it was said that three things were necessary in order to be a "real country": an airline, a stock exchange, and…

Physician's ethics: No more toys from drug companies

PhRMA -- the association of pharmaceutical companies -- has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on drug paraphernalia given to doctors: Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies -- Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs -- that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs. No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned…

The impact of failing vision on artists - and other altered perceptions.

Many famous artists and musicians have had the perception of their own art altered by abnormal physical or mental changes. Critics and historians have often credited these changes as major sources of creativity. Insanity and Drugs seem to usually be the most cited and obvious candidates but very often something a lot more vanilla, like hearing or vision loss, can have the greatest impact on an artists art. Probably the most famous case of an artist (in this case a musician) losing the one sense that was the most important to their work is Ludwig Van Beethoven. Over the course of the last…

The "Phantom" of Heilbronn and Negative Controls (Or the Lack Thereof)

It looks like there are quite a few police officers in Germany with egg on their face right now. They spent several years, thousands of man-hours, and over $14 million trying to track down a criminal mastermind, only to discover that they were chasing lab contamination. Sadly, I am serious about this. From a 2008 Telegraph article: Police in Germany have stepped up the hunt for a serial killer nicknamed "the woman without a face". The mystery woman has been linked by DNA to six murders and a string of thefts in a 15-year spree in three countries. Her latest victims may be three second-hand…

Bookshelf #1: July 2006 Cohen edition

I'm following Dave's lead here, who was following Nick Hornby's lead, who could probably be made aware of our lead following and then wax poetic on the flourishing of his format. Except I'm sure he's busy. Lunching with Cusack. Unless Cusack is lunching with Anjelica Huston, like in The Player. Damn, Robert Altman's good. Can we talk about McCabe and Mrs. Miller? Did I get sidetracked? These are the books on my nightstand, and beside my desk at my office. They shift frequently, but this is where things stand today. As of now, early July, the first ten are nightstand-based, the last…

The Wedgie Document and the creationist challenge

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?

The Astrophysicist, when he has time, will have something to say about his reading of the physics of the material Tom Whipple sums up. This situation however seems to be changing following a lengthy interview with a fellow out in Berkeley, California by the name of Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy. He has been working in this field for the last ten years and says that he not only has a reliable heat-producing device, but also understands the physics behind it - which he calls the Quantum Fusion Hypothesis. He says that this theory of just how low-energy nuclear reactions work has allowed…

Falsehood: Humans evolved from apes

Is it a Falsehood that Humans Evolve from Apes? How about this one: Is it a Falsehood that Humans did NOT evolve from Apes???? Yes and no. Humans descend from a population of primates from which other apes also descended (minimally the two species of living chimps) and which was part of the panoply of late Miocene forms, all related to each other, that we call apes. So yes, humans evolved from apes. There are people who don't believe that. They, creationists, think that apes are apes and humans came from somewhere else, like the Garden of Eden or Mud or whatever. (This may depend on…

Evolution of Squeaker Catfishes in Africa's Lake Tanganyika

tags: evolutionary biology, speciation, species flocks, molecular phylogeny, behavioral ecology, Synodontis species, squeaker catfish, cuckoo catfish, Lake Tanganyika, peer-reviewed paper The Cuckoo Catfish, Synodontis multipunctatus [Siluriformes: Mochokidae]. This is the only fish that is a known brood parasite. This is one of the species included in this newly-published study. Image: orphaned. One of the groups of fishes that I worked with as an aquarist for nearly my entire life are the synodontids, often known as "squeaker catfish" for their ability to make high-pitched sounds.…

TEDxRTP

Yesterday I spent the day at the RTP headquarters, attending TEDxRTP. The TEDx conferences are small, locally organized offshoots of the well-known TED conference. This was the first TEDx in the Triangle region (though Asheville beat us as being the first in the state) and, judging from the response of the audience, it seems everyone expects this will become a regular annual event. You can check out the Twitter account as well as the Twitter chatter if you search the #TEDxRTP hashtag. The event was livestreamed and the rough videos are already up on the Ustream channel. Better quality videos…

An Agenda for Improving Environmental Info & Participation

Good data isn't just important to researchers; it's also essential for people who want to participate in the governmental processes that affect our environment. The US government makes a lot of environmental data available to the public and provides many opportunities for public participation, but both the information and the engagement opportunities need to improve if we're going to effectively address the many threats to our health, from air pollution to climate change. The nonprofit OMB Watch has just released an action plan that contains many specific recommendations for doing exactly…

Ask Ethan #24: Cheating Time and Space

"For the wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited dimensions." -Lao Tzu You know the deal: it's the end of the week, so it's time for another Ask Ethan! You've continued to send in your questions-and-suggestions, much to my delight, and I'm pleased to tell you that this week's question comes from Peter Tibbles. Peter asks about obtaining information from beyond where Einstein's theory of relativity allows us to see: Because of the expansion of the universe there is an event horizon beyond which we can know nothing. There’s been one instance of intelligent life evolved (us);…

Sexually transmitted allergies and other oddities

While researching Wednesday's post, I ran into a number of strange case studies. They didn't quite fit into that post, but I thought they were too interesting to ignore. If you're interested, follow me down the pubmed rabbit hole. When I typed "semen allergy" into google scholar last week, the very first hit was this paper [pdf]: We report the case of a 20-year-old woman with documented Brazil nut allergy who developed widespread [hives] and mild [shortness of breath] after intercourse with her boyfriend who had earlier consumed Brazil nuts. Skin prick testing with the boyfriend's semen…

What "Thinking" about autism (or anything) is not

Yesterday’s post was just too depressing to contemplate and even more depressing to write. It was a total downer after seen the awesomeness that was John Oliver gloriously skewering America’s Quack Dr. Mehmet Oz. That’s why I think it would be good to finish this week on an amusing note. Well, it would be amusing if it weren’t for my knowledge that the woman who wrote the post I’m about to “analyze” has an autistic child and is subjecting that child to quackery. Actually, that’s true of pretty much every woman who blogs at the wretched hive of scum and autism biomed quackery where this post…

Another week of GW News, January 3, 2010

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose... January 3, 2010 Chuckles, Copenhagen, Knorr, French Carbon Tax, Retrospectives, CRU Melting Arctic, Methane Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols, Paleoclimate, Future Climate, ENSO Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Floods &…

How Geithner's Break from Reality Is Screwing Up TARP

Yves Smith lays out just how stupid Treasury Secretary Geithner's proposal is. I think these are the key points (italics mine): Let's start with the basics. The US banking system is insolvent. Got that? Insolvent. That does not mean every bank in the US is toast, in fact quite a few are probably just fine, and another large group is no doubt hurting and undercapitalized, but a couple of years of not shooting themselves in the foot again would enable therm (via earnings) to rebuild their equity bases sufficiently to proceed more or less as normal. The problem is that a significant portion of…

Reading Diary: Open Access: What You Need to Know Now by Walt Crawford

Sometimes we Open Access advocates tend to assume everybody is already on our side. You know, all our librarian and scientist colleagues out there. Surely by now they've seen the light. They understand the main issues and flavours of OA, can ably summarize the major arguments for OA and refute the major complaints against. Of course, reality is a lot more complicated than my dreamy, unrealistic wishes. Convincing librarians to support Open Access, either directly or indirectly, is usually fairly easy but even we have a number of misconceptions and misunderstandings about what OA really…

Trump's Take It Or Leave It Approach Makes Sense

In real estate. I'm not an expert on this but I've seen the sausage being made a few times. Individuals with investment money, commercial businesses that might use new space, other possible tenants, maybe or maybe not some designers or builders, municipal or other government stakeholders, community stakeholders such as neighborhood associations, etc. consider a real estate deal. Perhaps there is a bit of condemned land the county wants to sell cheap if only you clean up the brownfield and develop something nice. Maybe the investors include a person who owns an underexploited business…

An Excellent Robot Kit: Tenergy Odev Tomo 2-in-1

Tenergy is a company that you know well even if you don't know them. They make a lot of the replacement batteries for everything, external power supplies, other electronic items. But recently they've added a few items to their line of products that reach out in an entirely different direction. Tenergy Odev Tomo 2-in-1 Transformable DIY STEM Education Programmable Robot Kit is a robot kit that can be configured as a tricycle with two large wheels, or as a two-wheeled "bicycle" which operates like a Segway. Which is pretty amazing. So far Tomo is my favorite out of the box Robot Build, and I…

Worldnutdaily Hypocrisy on Gannon/Guckert

I've just been waiting for this, knowing that Joseph Farah couldn't help but put foot in mouth in this situation. But even for Farah, this is astonishing. In a delightfully silly column called No Substitute for Real Journalism, Farah gives us his take on the whole Gannon/Guckert ordeal. He eagerly calls Talon News and Guckert "pretenders" and contrasts them with the professional standards of the Worldnutdaily. And if you're not laughing yet, stick with me. After admirably noting that, "Maybe the reason the White House didn't mind looking the other way when it came to Gannon-Guckert was the…

A Billion Tons of Nickel

Via Toby, a detailed proposal for floating colonies on Venus. I heard Geoff Landis talk about this at Boskone a while back-- the basic idea is that the Venusian atmosphere is so dense that you could easily build structures that would float high enough up in the atmosphere to be above the hellish temperatures. You still have to deal with the sulfuric acid clouds, but what would life be without its little challenges. The post linked above adds an extra, counter-intuitive motivation to the picture: There are many other reasons to colonize Venus. First and foremost, human survival is dependent…

Scott Westerfeld, The Last Days

Scott Westerfeld's new YA novel The Last Days is a sequel to his earlier Peeps, so technically, it's a book about teenage vampires. Only really it's a book about a bunch of misfit kids forming a band and trying to make it big. While the Vampire Apocalypse happens around them. In Peeps, we learn of the existence of a parasite that infects humans, and gives them vampire-like abilities (strength, speed, heightened senses) and some of the drawbacks of classic vampirism (things they used to love become anathema to them). The story there alternates with sections describing the actions of freaky…

Plan B - Take 2

After re-reading my post on the latest Plan B foolishness, I think I might have been too angry to make my point clearly. I'm still pretty damn pissed off, but I'm going to give it another shot. There's little about this thing that doesn't make me mad, but right now I'm angriest about the FDA's latest arbitrary decision in this case: to refuse to allow over-the-counter (OTC) sales of the "Plan B" morning after pill to those under 18 years of age. Here's why: The primary mission of the branch of the FDA that oversees pharmaceuticals is to ensure that drugs, whether prescription or over the…

Last Minute Holiday Shopping!!!

As I'm sitting here ordering things on line and last minute for people's Christmas presents (there, I said Christmas. Take THAT Bill O'Really!) I thought I'd make a few suggestions for my readers. For the K-6 age scientist: The 7-Function Binoculars For Kids An inexpensive science trans-formative toy, the "Binoculars for Kids" which also transform into a microscope, magnifying glass (good for observing bugs, starting little fires, or both at the same time), includes a compass, and a signal mirror to warn off the helicopters. This cool Head Light, again for kids but actually quiet…

Amazon Dot Com IS a different kind of thing.

I told you so, but most of you would not listen. Amazon has tossed an entire publishing company off its site (hat tip: H.G.) because that company would not comply with Amazon's universally imposed Kindle edition pricing strategy. That places Amazon at the decision making table where the publishers and the market (the buyers of books) usually sits, and not just as a stakeholder but as the holder of everyone else's nuts. (And when I say nuts, I'm talking chestnuts, so don't get any ideas.) Amazon is not a book store. It is a public utility that delivers a wide range of products (including…

Open Data & The Panton Principles: Thoughts on a presentation to librarians

As I mentioned last week, on Tuesday, April 17 I was part of a workshop on Creative Commons our Scholarly Communications Committee put on for York library staff. My section was on open data and the Panton Principles. While not directly related to Creative Commons, we thought talking a bit about an application area for licensing in general and a specific case where CC is applied would be interesting for staff. We figured it would be the least engaging part of the workshop so I agreed to go last and use any time that was left. Rather unexpectedly, the idea of data licensing and in particular…

Does BPA interfere with breast cancer treatment?

The health concerns about bisphenol-A (BPA), a component of hard polycarbonate plastic, has been extended once again (see here, here, here for previous posts on BPA). BPA, a ubiquitous contaminant of human bodies, leaches from water and baby bottles, the lining of tin cans, dental sealants and many other sources. BPA also looks a lot like potent hormones, like estradiol and the synthetic estrogenic agent, diethylstilbesterol (DES), the cause of transplacental carcinogenesis in humans. So there have been plausible concerns that BPA might increase the risk of cancer in humans, especially in…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Venomous Brown Widow Spiders Making Themselves Known In Louisiana: A dangerous spider is making itself known to Louisiana residents. The brown widow spider is becoming more common, according to entomologists with the LSU AgCenter. Bat Flight Generates Complex Aerodynamic Tracks: Bats generate a measurably distinct aerodynamic footprint to achieve lift and maneuverability, quite unlike birds and contrary to many of the assumptions that aerodynamicists have used to model animal flight, according to University of Southern California aerospace engineer Geoffrey Spedding. Could Carrots Be The…

February Pieces Of My Mind #1

Boomer neighbour calls me and tells me his water meter reads "420". "You're such a stoner" is what I avoid replying. Every year my employers each send me a piece of paper telling me how much they've told the tax man that I've earned. A few months later, the tax man sends me a piece of paper telling me how much my employers have told me that I've earned. In a quarter century of managing my own money, I've never had any use whatsoever for the first piece of paper. In recent years I've begun sticking it straight into the recycling bin. When the kids in the Minecraft videos that Jrette watches…

Surviving the end-of-semester push through drastic means: camping

I've noticed that a certain grimness has entered my colleagues' and my attitude over the last week or so. It's a "there is only (X) days/weeks left, we just have to finish" attitude, similar to what I anticipate marathon runners experience around about 24 miles or so. A just keep going, don't break down now, you are mortgaging your body with lack of sleep and too much effort, but keep going, you only have a little bit left, and then you can sleep kind of thing. Does that sound familiar? Well, to try to combat this attitude in myself, my husband and I took ourselves camping this weekend.…

Delay not deviance: brains of children with ADHD mature later than other

This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is the most common developmental disorder in children, affecting anywhere between 3-5% of the world's school-going population. As the name suggests, kids with ADHD are hyperactive and easily distracted; they are also forgetful and find it difficult to control their own impulses. While some evidence has suggested that ADHD brains develop in fundamentally different ways to typical ones, other results have argued that they are just the result of a delay in the…

The universal grammar of birdsong is genetically encoded

Human cultural traits such as language, dress, religion and values are generally said to be passed from one generation to the next by social learning. And in animal species which have language, the same is true; male song birds, for example, learn the songs with which they serenade potential mates from older male relatives. A new study, published online in the journal Nature, shows that the songs of isolated zebra finches evolve over multiple generations to resemble those of birds in natural colonies. These findings show that song learning in birds is not purely the product of nurture, but…

Cabinets of Curiosity

There is a triple theme here, circling around cabinets of curiosity, which I'll get around to eventually. How about a picture first. Frontispiece from Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities But first. A few days ago we linked to a site on the "Longest Running Scientific Experiment," at the Athananius Kircher Society. I'm still not sure what the site is, or the Society I should say, but it's, let's say, curious. Someone--Wamba--commented that it reminded them of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which was just right. What a perfect connection. The MJT was the…

DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge: raising our own classroom stimulus funds.

Around this corner of the blogosphere, folks frequently bemoan the sorry state of the public's scientific literacy and engagement. People fret about whether our children is are learning what they should about science, math, and critical reasoning. Netizens speculate on the destination of the handbasket in which we seem to be riding. In light of the big problems that seem insurmountable, we should welcome the opportunity to do something small that can have an immediate impact. During the month of October, a bunch of us ScienceBlogs bloggers will be participating in the annual…

Trolled

On Wednesday, in response to really bad analogy attacking the NAACP and the Black and Hispanic Congressional Caucuses, I wrote a rather lengthy post that attempted to educate the rather clueless blogger by the name of LaShawn Barber who had produced the rant about how the white nationalist teen singing duo Prussian Blue (who, according to LaShawn, are only expressing "white pride") got their name from a technique of Holocaust denial. Well, it turns out I've been trolled. LaShawn has posted an update that's basically one big gloat: A belated "Happy Independence Day" to all the left-leaning (…

Rainy Day Distractions

I've been saving these for a rainy day--a game or other timesinking tidbit for each ScienceBlogs category. I originally was going to wait until a rainy weekend, but the climate hasn't favored that idea. As it is,I'm behind on other projects, so today works. Besides--it is pouring outside, leaving me in dire need of something to chase the rainy blues away. Rather than making ten separate posts, I've crammed the distractions all into one list, counting down to my favorite. I'll admit, some of the categorizations are a stretch (you try coming up with something about politics that is a fun…

"Very candid"

Pepsi's Chief Scientific Officer addresses #Sbfail: Earlier this week, PepsiCoâs blog, Food Frontiers, was added to ScienceBlogs.com so we could begin open discussions about the role science can play in finding solutions to global nutrition challenges. Mmmm, sorta. The blog was indeed added (then deleted), but a more accurate phrasing would be, "PepsiCo's bought ad space masquerading as a blog on ScienceBlogs.com." This is different from the path most blogs take in order to be added to Sb, and the failure to make this distinction is unfortunate, and would have been more unfortunate if this…

Google delists Mike Adams' NaturalNews.com. His hilarious tantrum about the "conspiracy" behind it is epic, as is my schadenfreude.

Regular readers here are probably familiar with Mike Adams and his website NaturalNews.com. Forget the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, when it comes to wretched hives of scum and quackery on the Internet, NaturalNews is the wretchedest, scummiest, and quackiest. Not surprisingly, Adams got his start in wingnuttery selling Y2K scams nearly 18 years ago. Now, besides presiding over a scammy online publishing empire that racks in considerable green by publishing articles laced with quackery, antivaccine pseudoscience, character assassination, and thuggery, both legal and getting a bit too…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Created by a schoolteacher, so it must work! (from the vaults)

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts, most of which are more than a year old.) These posts will be interspersed with occasional fresh material. This post originally appeared on January 9, 2006 and seems to fit in with the whole "Friday Dose of Woo" thing; so I'll repost it as such. Enjoy!. I was…

Birds in the News 57 (v2n8)

Long-billed Curlew, Numenius americanus. Image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Arthur Morris, Birds as Art. Click image for larger view in its own window. Birds and Science Some pied flycatchers, Ficedula hypoleuca (pictured), a common migratory bird slightly smaller than a sparrow, are missing their spring meals and dying as a result of climate change, a team of scientists reported this week. The discovery is one of the most sophisticated showing the domino effect of shifting seasons and their impact on predators and prey. The migratory birds fly thousands of…

Birds in the News 154

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Female Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, sitting on her nest. Notice her long tongue sticking out of her mouth and the uncommonly bright colors on her gorget. This bird nested on Bainbridge Island in Washington state earlier this year. Image: Eva Gerdts, May 2008. [larger view]. 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…