This week in birds

This week in birds - #430

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

A Sora searches for his dinner among the reeds.

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The current administration has refused to tighten rules regarding soot, even though scientific research shows that particulate pollution contributes to thousands of premature deaths annually and has been linked as a contributing factor in covid deaths.

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Here are some ideas about how a Biden administration could do more than simply restoring the environmental rollbacks of the current administration.

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The Environmental Protection Agency has been utterly decimated over the last four years. Restoring it to its former strength will require steadfast effort and staffing up an agency that has been allowed to languish.

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A Red-cockaded Woodpecker sits on a biologist's hand as it is being released back to the wild.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to upgrade the status of the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker from "endangered" to "threatened," but even though the little woodpecker has made notable strides toward recovery, many conservationists are of the opinion that it still requires the full protection of the Endangered Species Act.

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The Pantanal region of Brazil continues to be devastated by wildfires and there seems to be little effort by the government to contain them.

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The Audubon Society has a list of five threatened wild spaces that could be saved by the Biden Administration to the benefit of the overall environment.

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The deadly California wildfires this year have devastated some of the state's most beloved trees. Countless ancient redwoods, hundreds of giant sequoias, and more than one million Joshua trees perished in them.

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Federal and state authorities are pushing plans to increase government-subsidized logging in national forests, claiming such logging would protect spotted owls from wildfire. Many ecologists disagree.

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2020 will be remembered as the pandemic year, of course, but it was also a year in which Nature struck with record-breaking and deadly weather- and climate-related disasters. To name just one instance, there were thirty named storms during the Atlantic hurricane season.

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Hawaii is known by birders for its endemic species of birds, many of which are endangered, but it is also the land of endemic species of land snails, also endangered.

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If you were guessing what is the largest migration of mammals in the world, what would it be? I bet it would not be Africa's second-largest fruit bat, but there you are!

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Sadly, another casualty of this year's California wildfires were the eleven precious endangered California Condor chicks that were killed and others that were injured.

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Scientists have discovered that many birds have a sensory power in their beaks that can be traced all the way back to dinosaurs.

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I'm guessing it won't be a surprise to you to learn that another month, November, was the hottest ever, breaking records set in 2016 and 2019.

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A federal court has blocked an offshore drilling plan for Alaska, saying that the review of the plan had been inadequate, among other reasons because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not assessed the non-lethal impact that drilling would have on polar bears.

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Conservationists in Brazil have noticed a worrying increase in the trafficking of two endemic species that are emblematic of the country's biodiversity: the Hyacinth Macaw and the golden lion tamarin.

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A new index of the world's forests has found that only about 40% of them are intact with high ecological integrity. They are found mostly in Canada, Russia, the Amazon, Central Africa, and New Guinea.

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You may remember reports of a mass mortality event of birds in New Mexico back in September. Lab reports of the condition of the birds have now been released. There was no single definitive cause of the deaths identified but nearly all of the birds were severely emaciated which may have left them unable to cope with an unexpectedly harsh weather event.

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Although honeybees and their problems get most of the attention, the decline among native bees has been devastating and scientists are adapting the methods used to monitor and conserve bird species to the effort to save the bees.

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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