This week in birds - #687

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

This is the the Peruvian Thick-knee, a bird of the hot, dry coastal plain of northwestern South America. It is an unusual desert-dwelling "shorebird" that is mostly nocturnal. It has not been studied extensively and so is not as well-known as many birds. Much is unknown about its basic biology and about the overall health of the species, although the known evidence suggests that it is declining. As with so many species, the main threat to its continued existence is habitat loss. The Peruvian Thick-knee is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. 

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Scientists studying the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs sixty-six million years ago suggest that it turned the planet into an inferno where any creature who couldn't find cover would have been charbroiled.

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Ancient fossil footsteps that have been uncovered in Kenya suggest that one of our early ancestors may have been larger than previously believed.

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A new study suggests that linguistic diversity may have reached its peak three millennia ago and that humans of that era may have spoken thousands more languages that we have today.

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The dunes sagebrush lizard of the Permian Basin of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas was declared endangered by the Biden administration in 2024. The current administration has now stripped it of that protection.

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Wildfires in France have been so intense that they created a monster cloud which unleashed lightning that created more wildfires.

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Although the current administration canceled a project called the National Nature Assessment, the scientists who worked on it found a way to continue.

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Five rescued Kemp's ridley sea turtles were returned to the sea around Cape Cod this week.

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How did some reptiles lose their limbs and become snakes? An 80-million-year-old fossil is providing some answers to that question.

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The Okefenokee Swamp that spans parts of  Georgia and Florida has been added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. 

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Here's a list of the best national parks in the United States where you can witness wildlife migrations. 

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If you are interested in attracting hummingbirds to your garden, here are some tips that could help you do it. One way is to put up feeders but ants can be a pest in those; here's how to keep them off. Hummers are tiny birds, of course, and they build tiny nests.

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The adult content site OnlyFans now has a G-rated account called "Only Marms." It features marmots and is an effort by scientists to get funds for their research on the squirrel-like rodents.

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Chimps and bonobos use hugs, kisses, and friendly pats to show affection and diffuse tension in much the same way as humans.

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If you visit a national park where there are elk, watch out; they are more likely than a bear to attack you.

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Researchers are tagging and tracking spinner sharks along the East Coast to try to get a clearer idea of their migration routes.

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Remember acid rain? Well, it's back.

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There is an effort to reintroduce storks to Derbyshire in England.

Poetry Sunday: Family Reunion by Dorianne Laux

Summer was the time for family reunions in the place where I grew up. My own family's (which coincided with that of our church) was the third Sunday in June. It was always hot - it was mid-June in the South after all. 

People came from far and near to spend a day with family and friends that they might not see for another year - if ever again. There was all-day singing at the church with "dinner on the ground," except it wasn't really on the ground. It was on a long series of wooden tables built behind the church. People brought their food from home and spread it on the tables and everybody shared. Potato salad and fried chicken always featured prominently in the food that was brought.

When I was growing up, my mother always got me a new dress and shoes for the day and I generally ended the day with blisters on my heels from the new shoes. But that was a minor inconvenience.

When I came across this poem in my search for one to feature this week, it reminded me of those days and of so many people that I loved who are no longer there. No more family reunions when so many of the family members are gone. But anyway who needs a picture of it all when the camera of the mind remembers...

Family Reunion

by Dorianne Laux

Camera in hand, I call out to them,
one by one, in twos and threes,

working up to the group shots,

the family portrait.

My nephews, scrubbed clean, dressed

in red, hug each other's mirror image

and smile the same smile.

Head to head, their dark hair mingles

as the shutter clicks.

Now I sit the baby between them,

my niece who has my eyes, my nose,

a stranger's wide mouth.

The flash going off in her face

makes her love the small black box

I hold, so much, she is willing to pose

forever, as if I held the force

of the sun, a gorgeous toy, and all

her days balanced in my hands.

Grandmother squeezes in, holds

her baby's babies in her diminishing lap,

circles the shoulders of her son,

her daughters, my own shy daughter,

and pulls them into the frame,

the fine lines of noses and chins

a painter's signature stroke.

I take picture after picture,

the windows going darker

with each bright flash, each face

held up to the repetition of light.

But when I look to see how many frames

are left, I find the tiny window

in the camera is empty, remember

the film left on my dresser

500 miles away. I smile at my family,

ask them to stay where they are

just a few minutes longer as I press

the blank shutter again

and again, burning their images into my own

incorruptible lens, picture

after perfect picture, saving them all

with my naked eye, my bare hands,

the purest light of my love.

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This week in birds - #686

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

                      Ruby-throated Hummingbird                                       Rufous Hummingbird

How well do you know hummingbirds? Well, here are seventeen facts about them that will help you know them just a little better. 

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The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Peruvian Thick-knee, a "shore bird" that lives far from any shore. It is, in fact, a desert-dwelling bird found in the dry coastal plains of northwestern South America. Its population is decreasing.

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The Environmental Protection Agency no longer seems intent on protecting the environment. One of its latest actions is to kill proposed rules for Pfas-contaminated sewage fertilizer.

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Beehives may operate as democracies but first the rival queens fight to the death.

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Poop from southern right whales is revealing that they have a more varied diet than previously thought and that just might make them more resilient to the effects of climate change. 

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Video of orcas off the California coast shows them ramming a sunfish so hard that it explodes.  

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Finally some good news about the endangered red wolves: There have been four litters born this year to the critically endangered species in North Carolina.

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Avocado seeds have been spread from South to Central America over a period of thousands of years. (And in fact I now have one growing in a pot in my backyard.)

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Hunter-gatherers introduced trout to a Norwegian mountain lake 7,000 years ago.

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Naked Mole-Rats are one of the more interesting (and surely one of the ugliest) species on Earth and it seems that the queens are able to emit a special scent that prevents their rivals from reproducing. 

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We don't usually think of deserts and penguins together but there is one species of penguin that thrives in deserts. It is the Humboldt Penguin of Peru but its population is in trouble.

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In still more bad news for the environment, the Trump administration plans to auction off sections of water around American Samoa for deep-sea mining. 

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Twin echidnas (called puggles) have been born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

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Do our tiny acts meant to help the environment actually matter? They do indeed add up.

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A raccoon with a (possibly) rare congenital spine condition has become a celebrity in a Seattle neighborhood. He's even been given a name: Jimothy.

Nick Anderson is optimistic

Those branches that were cut off are significant, I think. It may be necessary to cut off a few more, but let's hope that the tree itself will remain sound and continue to grow. 
 

Poetry Sunday: Summer Magic by Leslie Pinckney Hill

Here's a poem about summer by a poet that I was not familiar with. He was an African-American born in Virginia in 1880. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in 1903 and a master's degree a year later and in 1922 he wrote this poem about summer. It seems to describe the season well, don't you think?

     She hung aloft the rounding moon,

  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.

Here's the poem in its entirety:

Summer Magic

by Leslie Pinckney Hill

So many cares to vex the day,  

So many fears to haunt the night,

My heart was all but weaned away

  From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
  With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.
She stirred again my sullen blood,
  And waked in me a new desire.
Before my cottage door she spread
  The softest carpet nature weaves,
And deftly arched above my head
  A canopy of shady leaves.
Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies,
  Her days were bowers rife with song,
And many a scheme did she devise
  To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong.
For on the hill or in the dell,
  Or where the brook went leaping by
Or where the fields would surge and swell
  With golden wheat or bearded rye,
I felt her heart against my own,
  I breathed the sweetness of her breath,
Till all the care of time had flown,
  And I was lord of life and death.

This week in birds - #685

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Andean Cock-of-the-rock, a non- migratory bird of South American forests. The main threat to the species is habitat loss. The population is thought to be decreasing but is of least concern to this point. 

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A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home in 2024 contains some of the building blocks of life according to scientists who have studied it.

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I've always been fascinated by the Mayan civilization and here is a particularly interesting character from that civilization - a math whiz who lived more than 1,000 years ago. 

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The Trump Administration has stripped the Endangered Species Act's ability to protect habitats.

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The Rusty Lark, a bird that had been lost for nearly a century, has been rediscovered by birders in Chad.

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New York state has banned the building of large data centers for a year while it studies energy and climate risks which they present.

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A worm-like creature that lived about 550 million years ago is the earliest known "right-handed" being. 

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Harvestmen, aka Daddy Longlegs (or Granddaddy Longlegs, as I knew them when I was growing up) are a particularly interesting and often misunderstood group of arachnids.

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Trump has reduced Bear Ears and Grand Staircase Monuments by three million acres with a single stroke of his pen. 

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"Space balls" have been washing up on Australian beaches presenting a mystery for authorities.

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Shrimp may be thought of as "bugs of the sea" but then bugs could be considered the "shrimp of the land."

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Sperm whales living in the eastern Mediterranean Sea seem to have developed a dialect of their own that is different from those in the west.

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We know that giraffes are clever animals but they may be even smarter than previously thought.

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Small-town communities are becoming alarmed about carbon storage projects planned for their area.

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Here are nine interesting facts about Bald Eagles.

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And here are some images from this year's Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest.

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Climate change is affecting how and where people take vacations.

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The Andean leaf-eared mouse has adapted to live at extremely high elevations where no other mammal is known to reside.

Poetry Sunday: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis to a father who was a Palestinian refugee and a mother who was an American of German and Swiss descent. Through the years, she has been the recipient of many honors and awards for her work. This poem was written in 1952 and I think you will agree that it has aged well.

 

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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