This week in birds

This week in birds - #412

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

A Carolina Chickadee plucks a seed from one of my feeders.

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As poorer, hotter parts of the world struggle to adapt to unbearably hot temperatures, scientists warn of the possibility of more deaths from the heat than from all infectious diseases.

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The hyped media coverage of Asian giant hornets, so-called "murder hornets," has freaked out the public and threatens to cause persecution of perfectly harmless and even beneficial insects.

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Following the example of our own government, Brazil's authoritarian regime is laying waste to the environmental protection laws of the country. The actions are being taken by executive decree.

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Using satellite images, scientists have discovered eleven previously unknown Emperor Penguin colonies in Antarctica, which boosts the number of known colonies of the endangered birds by 20%.

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Surfers on Sydney's Manly Beach got more thrill than they had bargained for last Sunday afternoon when a mother humpback whale and her baby swam within ten meters of them.

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Beach closures on North Carolina's Cape Hatteras National Seashore have been shown to improve the breeding success of shorebirds that nest there. This is particularly good news for endangered species such as the Piping Plover.

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A new study suggests that New Guinea with more than 13,500 species of plants, two-thirds of which are endemic, has the greatest plant diversity of any island in the world. It beats out the previous record-holder, Madagascar, by 19%.

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If you think about porcupines at all, you probably assume they are pretty safe. After all, they have all those sharp quills. But it turns out they also have bezoars, a ball of inedible material that gathers in their digestive tracts, and some people value these for their purported healing properties, and that is enough incentive to cause poachers to go after the animals.

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The isolation that has been brought about by the pandemic restrictions has produced an explosion of interest in the hobby of birding. It is hoped that this interest will spread to a wider diversity of people, bringing more to what has been known as mostly an activity of White people.

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An ocean heat wave off the east coast of North America is fueling what is shaping up as one of the most active hurricane seasons on record in the Atlantic.

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The endangered Mindo glassfrog, pictured here, had not been seen for decades and was feared to be extinct, but now it has been found once again in the remote Rio Manduriacu Reserve in Ecuador. That's the good news. The bad news is that the reserve itself is not as secure as one would hope, leaving all the many rare animals that live there in precarious circumstances.

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Blakiston's Fish Owl is the largest and certainly one of the most impressive looking owls in the world. It lives in eastern Russia and naturalist Jonathan Slaght, who took this picture of it, went looking for the bird in its natural habitat. He tells about the adventure in his new book Owls of the Eastern Ice.

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A new 11th Street Bridge is to be built over the Anacostia River in the District of Columbia and it is to include a park which it is hoped will serve the needs of the residents of the Anacostia area to be outdoors in Nature.

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More dam removal: Two more dams have been removed from the Pilchuck River in Washington. The removal opens up 37 miles of habitat for salmon for the first time in a century.

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A genetic and morphological study of Rivoli's Hummingbird has identified three main lineages of the bird. The three are isolated by important geographic barriers that have allowed them to diverge.

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The aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuate has a unique survival strategy. When swallowed by a frog, it passes relatively quickly through the frog's digestive system and causes its predator to poop it out. The beetle is still alive and well when it emerges.

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Mouse lemurs are the tiniest known primates alive in the world today and now there is a new one known to science. It is Microcebus jonahi (Jonah's mouse lemur) and it was found, like all the other 107 species of lemurs, in Madagascar. All of the species are threatened.

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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