Loose Feathers #560

Piping Plovers / Photo by Craig Watson/USFWS

Birds and birding news

• Migrating birds travel faster in the spring to beat competitors to the best breeding grounds. This study was built on data provided by improved weather and military radar technology.
• Along similar lines, another study used radar and eBird data to tie the timing of migration to specific environmental cues such as temperature changes.
• One study found that handling by researchers caused no lasting harm for storm-petrel chicks, while another found lingering stress for nesting shags. The differences may be due to their different nesting strategies.
• Birding can be a gateway to learning more about other organisms, especially on days when birds are hard to find.
• The non-native Kalij Pheasants in Hawaii live in social groups and breed cooperatively, unlike birds of the same species in their native range in the Himalayas. 
• Climate change increases the risk of extinction for six of the eighteen remaining species of Hawaiian honeycreepers, since it encourages the spread of avian diseases including malaria.
• Chaffinches around Berlin's Tegel airport start singing earlier in the morning than birds at other locations and stop singing when the airport noise gets too loud.
• Here is a profile of the scientist studying the Blakiston's Fish Owl.
• African Penguins are becoming a rarer sight along South Africa's coast as their population declines. 
• A young Bald Eagle being seen in Staten Island might have been the first to hatch and fledge successfully in New York City in over 100 years.

Science and nature blogging

• World Shorebirds Day: Shorebird of the Year 2016: Piping Plover
• birdworthy: What #WorldShorebirdsDay Means to Me
• Cool Green Science: Why You Are Smelling Skunks This Week 
• Wanstead Birder: Tales of the unexpected....
• Corvid Research: Why crows sunbathe
• The Meadowlands Nature Blog: It Came From Outer Space  
• South Jersey Butterfly B/Log: August 2016 Compilation 
• On The Wing Photography: International Vulture Awareness Day 2016
• In the Field: Juvenile western grebe walking on dry land to reach the water
• The Freiday Bird Blog: Fri-D: Warblers in Flight
• The Artful Amoeba: In the Year Following Fire, a Mushroom Bonanza
• Birdchick: Florida Is For Vulture Lovers
• Lep Log: Mid-Atlantic Butterfly Field Forecast for the Week Beginning 2016 Sept 3

Environment and biodiversity

• The IUCN has improved the Giant Panda's ranking from endangered to vulnerable as its wild population has bounced back after protection of its wild habitats (which also support many other unique species).
• The oceans has absorbed a tremendous amount of heat in recent years, and that is already altering fisheries and possibly spreading disease and increasing the scale of natural disasters. 
• A tenth of the world's remaining wilderness has been destroyed in the past 25 years, with nearly a third of that destruction happening in the Amazon rainforest.
• Tapirs play a key role in how much carbon a tropical forest can store.
• The intense rain and flooding in Louisiana was probably caused by climate change. 
• The US Army Corps of Engineers ignored criticism from the EPA and other federal agencies when it approved the Dakota Access Pipeline.
• The Syrian civil war is limiting access to scarce water supplies, with repercussions for neighboring countries such as Lebanon.
• A conservationist is trying to map what Manhattan looked like before Europeans arrived with the Welikia Project. 
• This site has a map with a slider to predict when fall foliage will be at its peak in the US.
• New Jersey just had its second-hottest August on record and fourth-hottest summer on record. 
• A beetle that preys on hemlock woolly adelgids may help save hemlock forests from disappearing. 
• Conservationists are fighting to keep off-road vehicles from destroying parts of New Jersey's Pinelands.