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Bird watcher Lloyd Moon, 76, recently spotted the rare snail kite for the first time in South Carolina, sparking a debate among birders and scientists about what the bird was doing so far north.
The snail kite is an endangered species seldom seen north of central Florida, experts say, and is included on the endangered species list in part because of the shrinking habitat of its main food source, the apple snail.
Moon first spotted the bird last week at a crawfish farm near Rimini, about 35 miles southeast of Columbia.
The bird's taste for crawfish surprised scientists, and it could lead to experiments with crawfish ponds in Florida.
The Associated Press picked up the story Tuesday.
But birders on the ALBIRDS listserv and other online communities have been talking about the rare sighting since last Friday.
The first fuzzy photographs were published on the Carolina Bird Club site here.
That was followed up by better photos from the Cape Romain Bird Observatory.
 | | BirdLife International | | The gorgeted puffleg [eriocnemis isabellaea]. |
A rare hummingbird that boasts a plumage of violet blue and iridescent green on its throat has been discovered living in the cloud forests of southwestern Colombia, researchers announced Sunday.
But they warned that the newly-discovered bird, the gorgeted puffleg, is in danger from the slash and burn system of the region's coca crops, the raw material used in the production of cocaine, according to the AP.
The species belongs to the puffleg genus, which appear to have "little cotton balls above their legs," said Luis Mazariegos-Hurtado, who has spent 30 years documenting hummingbirds and founded the Colombian Hummingbird Conservancy
Investigators caught their first glimpse of the bird while surveying a mountain ridge in the Cauca province in 2005.
Braving the zone's leftist rebels and drug traffickers, they returned to confirm the sighting.
There are concerns over the bird's future because the Serrania del Pinche mountains where it was discovered are unprotected, according to ornithologists Alexander Cortés-Diago and Luis Alfonso Ortega, who made three sightings of the new hummingbird during surveys in 2005 of montane cloud forest in the Serrania del Pinche, south-west Colombia.
“We were essentially following a hunch,” said Alexander Cortés-Diago of The Hummingbird Conservancy (Colombia) and co-discoverer of Gorgeted Puffleg. “We had heard that a new species of plant had been discovered in the region in 1994. This discovery and the isolation of the Serrania led us to believe there could also be new species of vertebrates.”
For more information, check out the story in Birdlife International.
In a new report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a project established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations, found that 20 to 30 percent of all the world’s bird species are vulnerable to extinction due to global warming. The panel warns that if average earth temperatures rise by more than 2.5 degrees Centigrade, a rise in sea levels could threaten many low-lying areas which currently are vital breeding grounds for many bird species.
The panel recommends a concerted effort to preserve the world’s forests. Not only are these forests important bird habitats but they also remove a great deal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The panel also warns that the rush to produce fuels from corn and energy from wind turbines could adversely impact bird populations. The report urges careful planning for such projects to alleviate any dangers to birds.
From Birder'sUnited.Com.
Nuthatches appear to have learned to understand a foreign language - chickadee, according to a study published in the National Academy of Sciences Proceedings today.
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | A Carolina chickadee in a dogwood tree - chasing away the nuthatches? |
Study Abstract
It's not unusual for one animal to react to the alarm call of another, according to the study, but nuthatches seem to go beyond that - interpreting the type of alarm and what sort of predator poses a threat.
When a chickadee sees a predator, it issues warning call - a soft "seet" for a flying hawk, owl or falcon, or a loud "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" for a perched predator.
The "chick-a-dee" call can have 10 to 15 "dees" at the end and varies in sound to encode information on the type of predator. It also calls in other small birds to mob the predator, Christopher Templeton of the University of Washington said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.
"In this case the nuthatch is able to discriminate the information in this call," said Templeton, a doctoral candidate.
The findings by Templeton and Erick Green, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Montana, are reported in this week's online edition of National Academy of Sciences Proceedings.
Continue reading "Study Indicates Nuthatches Seem to Understand Chickadee" »
An international team of scientists is assembling a barcoded genetic portrait of bird life in the United States and Canada - the prelude to a genetic portrait of all animal life on Earth.
Scientists have developed a new technique for species identification in the form of a DNA barcode, similar to ones used to identify consumer products in the supermarket, only a species barcode can identify unique animals or plants.
Based on DNA barcode identifiers, the scientists have discovered 15 new genetically distinct species, nearly indistinguishable to human eyes and ears and thus overlooked in centuries of bird studies.
The barcoders also logged the DNA attributes of 87 bat species in the South American country of Guyana and reveal six new species, each characterized by its unique genetic make-up.
"People have watched birds for so long we might think every different tweet has been heard, every different color form observed," says Dr. Paul Hebert of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at Guelph University, who co-authored both the bird and bat papers. "However, there are a number of cases of deep genetic divergences within what are currently called single species."
"Now, with the vast majority, 93-94 percent, of birds on the continent barcoded it's hard to argue that barcoding might work for the easy stuff but miss the difficult cases of closely-related taxa," Dr. Hebert said.
Continue reading "DNA Helps Scientists ID Bird Species" »
All 18 endangered young whooping cranes that were led south from Wisconsin last fall as part of a project to create a second migratory flock of the birds were killed in storms in Florida, according to the Associated Press.
The cranes were being kept in an enclosure at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Crystal River, Fla., when violent storms moved in Thursday night, said Joe Duff, co-founder of Operation Migration, the organization coordinating the project.
The various groups and agencies working on the project had seen the size of the flock grow to 81 birds with the latest arrivals, but the loss of the young cranes drops the total back to 63.
The whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, was near extinction in 1941, with only about 20 left.
The other wild whooping crane flock in North America has about 200 birds and migrates from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. A non-migratory flock in Florida has about 60 birds.
For more information, consult these groups on the Web:
Operation Migration
Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership
Bush’s Judicial Nominees Who Wanted No Federal Protections for Birds Withdraw Nominations
This is a prime example of why and how politics matters.
The Democratic Party's victory in taking back control of the United States Senate has already produced benefits for the nation’s birds, according to the wildlife activist group Birder's United.
President Bush nominated William G. Myers III, an arch anti-environmentalist, to a lifetime judicial appointment on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals May 15, 2003. Myers, an Eagle Scout who has spent 180 days over the past 15 years as a National Park Service volunteer, nevertheless contended that the federal Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act were unconstitutional.
In a straight party line vote, in 2004, Myers’ nomination was sent to the Senate floor. But Senate Democratic leaders were able to block the nomination using the cloture rule which requires 60 votes. Myers received 53 votes in favor of his nomination.
Now with the Senate in Democratic hands, the Myers nomination has no chance. On January 9, Myers asked the president to withdraw his name from consideration.
Then, in September 2003, President Bush nominated William J. Haynes II to a key judicial seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
As a Harvard-trained lawyer for the Department of Defense, Haynes argued that the bombing of an island in the Marianas, an important haven for many rare species of birds, would actually be beneficial for bird watchers. Haynes and his team of Defense Department attorneys contended that the bombing would disperse the birds to other islands so many more people would be able to see the rare species.
Since his nomination was doomed as well, Haynes has asked the president to withdraw his name from consideration.
So you see, politics and policy do matter, for the welfare of birds as well as people.
Millions of migratory birds are killed every year when they collide with one of the thousands of communication towers scattered across the United States.
As more and more cell phone, radio and digital television towers are built, the escalating kills could soon spell disaster for many already at-risk songbirds like the Bell’s Vireo, Golden-winged Warbler and Bachman’s Sparrow.
Simple improvements to the structures, location, lighting and other details of new communication towers can significantly reduce the numbers of birds killed each year.
The Federal Communications Commission, which could require these improvements, has been reluctant to implement new regulations due to pressure from communications industries. But the FCC is taking public comments on the subject. The deadline for submitting comments is January 22.
The environmental group Earth Justice is urging the public to get involved and help pressure the FCC is take action. To learn more, go to the group's online action alert.
Last Remaining Habitat of Rare Hummingbird to Be Preserved
The American Bird Conservancy announced that its Peruvian affiliate purchased a conservation easement that will protect the sole remaining habitat of the rare marvelous spatuletail hummingbird, one of the more unusual in the world.
Other stories about birds and their habitat making the news:
Burrowing Owls Are the Scourge of Land Developers in Florida
Federal Judge Gives Benefit of the Doubt to the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
Efforts Under Way to Prevent the Extinction of the Northern Bald Ibis
Dangerous Levels of Mercury Toxins Found in Songbirds
Read more at the regular roundup of important news on birds and their habitats.
The simplest grammar, long thought to be one of the skills that separate man from beast, can be taught to a common songbird, new research suggests.
Starlings learned to differentiate between a regular birdsong "sentence" and one containing a clause or another sentence of warbling, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature. It took University of California at San Diego psychology researcher Tim Gentner a month and about 15,000 training attempts, with food as a reward, to get the birds to recognize the most basic of grammar in their own bird language.
Yet what they learned may shake up the field of linguistics, according to the Associated Press.
Hey, we talk to the birds all the time. Sometimes they talk back...
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