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More than 150 bird species are known to have become extinct over the past 500 years, and many more are estimated to have been driven to extinction before they became known to science. The Gray Crowned-Crane is a new addition to the list of the world’s Endangered species, creeping up a category from Vulnerable.
The potpourri covers some interesting bird related science of the last few weeks, and the promise is this: I’ll get to that other stuff soon, I promise! If this was America, we might not be concerned because starlings are an invasive species, at least in North America. ” Crows are smart.
I like this opinion piece from the Christian Science Monitor which calls for an "Endangered Species Hour." The Christian Science Monitor rightly points out that citizens and consumers need to get involved in endangered species protection, because at the CITES level, it's all about money and international politics.
The single greatest challenge facing any book of science writing is balance. Otherwise, there would be no science writing, everyone would just go straight to the journals. Nothing keeps a human reader more engaged than a genuine character, and the birds here are exactly that. Pinyon Jay by Dave Menke of the US FWS.
The species was in the news because some scientists had finally managed (or bothered – it’s much the same thing) to locate the population high in the mountains of the Solomon Islands, and catch and photograph one. If you want to know why most scientists support collecting this piece in Science explains it better than I can.
One the one hand, science is awesome. It seemed like a Rubicon for birding in general, and citizen science in particular, if you now need specialized recording equipment to even know what you’re seeing. But that’s not the fault of the science. Citizen science is not dead yet. What’s a birder to think?
Someone posted a question about why humans have human rights and whether they should considering that others do not. In the matter of science, and there are varying levels of this viewpoint, the human is the most advanced of creatures. I responded. It's not profound, but an opinion. We are made in God's image.
It also has one of the highest human population densities in the state. Not surprisingly, this brings Burrowing Owls into close contact with humans across the county. The Florida sub-species of Burrowing Owl is now classified as a threatened species in Florida and it is one of the rarest sub-species of Burrowing Owls.
On a positive note, in one study , when small swaths of dense bamboo were cut and cleared for an unrelated study, these were utilized by small insectivorous species including the Golden Bush Robin for foraging. Humans are not always bad for birds, only about 95% of the time. One is the White-throated Redstart.
Somewhat strangely, the HBW calls it a “small grey to yellow babbler” – while the species indeed has some grey parts, that is not the color that sticks to mind when seeing or remembering the bird. I usually restrict my unfair jokes to humans. ” That seems a bit unfair to me.
There is a fantastic paper just out in Science : “Sustained miniaturization and anatomoical innovation in the dinosaurian anceestors of birds” by Michael Lee, Andrea Cau, Darren Naishe and Gareth Dyke. So, for example, humans are apes. The paper that just came out in science has the following spectacular conclusion.
Given how far Hokkaido is from Europe, it seems a bit surprising how many bird species wintering on this Japanese island have a name starting with “Eurasian” Or how many of these species I have also seen in my parents’ garden in Germany. In science speak, this is named the optimal body mass hypothesis.
Bluebird Man is about Alfred Larson, but you can be one of the film’s heroes by contributing to its production… There is something special about bluebirds, and it isn’t just because the world’s three species are only found in North America. There is something more. Preparing to band 3 Mountain Bluebird chicks.
Long ago I preached the idea that rapid climate change was more important (in a negaive way) than large climate change, and suggested that the Holocene was different from earlier time periods (and thus, for instance, humans invented agriculture and large areas of forest developed, etc.) because the Holocene had little rapid climate change.
More than 50 years ago, the Hawaiian Goose (Nene) was one of the first birds listed under the Endangered Species Act, part of the inaugural “ Class of 1967 ”. Under the Endangered Species Act, any listing, uplisting, downlisting, or removal from a list requires a formal “rulemaking” process.
Not too many highlights, not too many species … hard to say whether this is just the usual nostalgia for a better but probably nonexistent past or a real phenomenon. This species is listed as vulnerable – similar to the Yellow-breasted Buntings, it is trapped on a large scale. Humans, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Quite likely, these birds are also the inspiration for Australian science communicator Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki. Honeyeaters are a large bird family (190 species) with a strong presence in Australia. The Common Myna is an aggressive invasive species. Thanks to Clare for introducing me to him. ” (HBW). ” ( source ).
Artists rendition of Inkayacu paracasensis There are 17 living species of penguins, which make up their own Linnean family (Spheniscidae), which is the only family in the order Sphenisciformes. Penguins are flightless, but some species locomote over long distances on antarctic ice to travel between breeding grounds and the sea.
There’s a little hint of white in the malar and throat too, which would seem to be a problem for the species Black- chinned Sparrow. Identification of abnormal birds such as this one is not an exact science, but this one seems to break down as one half White-throated Sparrow and one half Dark-eyed Junco.
The previous set up made sure that you discounted 20 years of working in difficult jungle in remote countries to better understand and conserve rare and interesting species, and gets you ready to treat him like the truly arrogant monster he undoubtedly is. How it is being affected by human intrusions? Science Schmience.
What if, in turn, the discovery that the species was not truly extinct held the key to saving humanity from another, even more devestating flu outbreak? This is a book that people come to for the plot and the science. I’m ok with fantasy, but not with pseudo-science. But what of that?
The Ochraceous Bulbul looks similar to the Puff-throated Bulbul, with which it shares a genus – the similarity made one of my travel companions doubt the whole framework of species distinctions. Paul Conrad (1836-1885), a German naturalist in the East Indies, after which the species is named ( Pycnonotus conradi ).
The birds were too far away to identify, and I know more than one species does this, but if I had to guess they were starlings. There is a bit of science news. If half the Warblers go extinct, that would be a lot of species but you’d still pretty much have Warbler DNA. But there were a gazillion of them. This makes sense.
When scientists created a sense of threat by playing another species alarm call, the parents increased their efforts in feeding the grounded birds, but not the birds in the nest. In other bird science news, we should be concerned about waterfowl in China.
Apparently, the species name rutila means “red, golden red, reddish yellow”, which sounds a bit like a contradiction in itself. It is well known that chicks of this morph immediately start having an identity crisis when combining the knowledge of their species name with the information gathered from a look in the mirror.
Kooyman (co-author with Jim Mastro) spent decades studying Emperor Penguins and can be considered the world’s foremost expert on the species. Empire Penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) are the largest living penguin species, almost four feet tall (taller when they stretch), and the least likely to be seen on birding or nature trips.
Even the Latin species name soror (“sister”) indicates the similarity to another pitta species (blue-naped). The eBird description of the Small Niltava starts with the surprisingly dull statement that “size distinguishes this species from other niltavas” Who would have thought.
Starlings, they’ll dutifully explain, are ruthless invasives that have been responsible for the serious declines of several beloved native species, like the Red-headed Woodpecker ( Melanerpes erythrocephalus ) and the Eastern Bluebird ( Sialia sialis ). Good birding and happy drinking! Arrowood Farm Brewery: Starling Brett Farmhouse Ale.
It feels good to start a post with some truly attractive birds – such as two species of broadbills. Strangely, there do not seem to be many papers on this species. In one paper , you can find fascinating sentences such as “The new species is most similar to D. My cats refuse to even try Fiery Minivets.
It can take over a year to raise a chick for the larger species, and even species that can fit their entire breeding cycle into one year tend not to breed in consecutive years. It is a surprisingly difficult question for science to address, but it can say this.
Even if you don’t live in the summer range of a particular species, you may have opportunities to observe it while it passes through, especailly if you live in an active flyway, like I happen to. Way back when I started what turned out to be my thesis research (on humans), it became important for me to learn about bird migration.
They may be about bird eggs ( The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg , 2016), or a 17th-century ornithologist ( Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, 2016), or How Bullfinches learn songs from humans ( The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology.
It’s a matter of personal preference: neither does every reader like, say, science fiction, or the writing of Henry James, or romance novels. Each title in the series is the collective noun for a bird species, which becomes a central theme of the story. In A Dance of Cranes, dancing, both avian and human, is a leitmotif. (For
Sure, the AOU has the final say in whats a species, whats not, yadda yadda yadda… but who tells them what to say? I’ve been sciencing really hard lately. After all, there are some epic splits coming your way… what do you think about new species of storm-petrel and murrelet that can be found in the United States?
There was a time when I thought each bird species had its own individual song. Then I found out that there was this vocalization called a ‘call,’ so I thought each bird species had its own individual song (but just the males) and individual call. Bird communication is a complex and evolving science.
The Majestic Wetlands: Within Shanghai’s boundaries lie several pristine wetland habitats that serve as vital sanctuaries for a plethora of bird species. This expansive marshland is home to rare and endangered species such as the charismatic Black-faced Spoonbill, Saunders’s Gull, and the elegant Oriental Stork.
You’d think, then, that applying science to philosophy by studying the evolutionary underpinnings of thought and behavior across species would be right up my alley. In the end, we are essentially stuck in a human viewpoint.
These two islands are about halfway between the tip of South Africa and Antarctica in the Subantarctic Indian Ocean, have had relatively few human visitors, and are primarily inhabited with some of the rarest seabirds in the world and a smaller number of mammals. Marion has a fascinating history with invasive species. and seabirders.
Shorebird identification takes time and is often stressful, there’s heat glare and bugs and drones and dogs and humans. Taking inspiration from Matthiessen’s 1967 book (long out of print), which combined his natural history essays with species accounts by Ralph S. But this does not mean I don’t love shorebirds.
At first I was surprised by some of the species that weren’t there, quite common and noticeable birds like the Great Blue Heron and Mute Swan. The main body of the guide covers 150 species of North American birds that are found in close proximity to humans and likely to be seen well.
But it wasn’t founded to serve as a refuge for human refugees, but animal ones, specifically elephants. The park was created as much to protect the local communities from marauding elephants with a hatred of dangerous humans and a lack of interest in the differences between nations as it was to protect the elephants.
Even in the tropics there are few birds that excel some of our own in elegance and beauty of plumage and we have an unusually large number of species considering the smallness of the area they inhabit. ” (Woodward brothers, “Natal Birds”, 1899) The mighty Drakensberg Mountains run along the western boundary of KwaZulu-Natal province.
Any place that used to be good for an interesting species last year is likely to have been turned into another construction site this year. I don’t think many other bird species are named after Japanese citizens. Also, there are quite some variations within each species – for details, see here. One, a Ryukyu Minivet.
It is the 100th Anniversary of the extinction of the species known as the Passenger Pigeon and writers are paying attention. Errol Fuller’s The Passenger Pigeon is a beautifully illustrated, elegantly written “celebration” of the passenger pigeon and the artists who illustrated and photographed the species.
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