This week in birds - #553

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

A perky little Carolina Wren just checking things out.

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Climate scientists warned us it was coming and now extremes in the climate contributing to heat waves and severe wildfires seem to be the norm.

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And of course, one factor contributing to those extremes is the phenomenon known as el nino.  He's back...

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One thing which thankfully has not gone away is the critically endangered porpoise called the vaquita. There's video to prove it.

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Hundreds of wildfires continue to burn across Canada but the air quality in the eastern United States has started to improve.

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By accepting the Montreal Protocol agreement, the government has actually taken some actions to curb climate change.

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Southwestern states have proposed a landmark deal that could help to conserve the Colorado River.

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Birds of prey, in general, seem to be holding their own, but that is not true for one of the smallest of their kind, the Kestrel. 

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Scientists in the United States have documented a new atmospheric carbon dioxide high that is more than 50% higher than the average before the beginning of the industrial era.

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Icebergs as a tourist attraction? Who would have thought it, but it is a strange world we live in. 

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Now, the Grand Canyon is my idea of a tourist attraction. But it seems that the canyon's river may be drying up.

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Avian flu is a threat to the critically endangered California Condors.

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Wolverines had been essentially extinct in California since the 1920s but now some have returned.

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This is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It is the sweet singing Wood Thrush.

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Earth's last great wilderness is its oceans. It is important that we protect them.

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Eastern Phoebes like to build their nests around human habitations and that means that sometimes we are witness to their tragedies.

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We tend to take the presence of birds in our lives for granted, but how did birds become birds? When did they first take off?

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I've long been fascinated by the civilization created by the ancient Mayas. It doesn't surprise me that scientists are continuing to discover more evidence of their ingenuity and sophistication. 

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Is it possible that the presumed extinct iconic bird the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still lives in the wilds of Louisiana? The debate continues. 

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On Hawaii's "Big Island," the Kilauea volcano has erupted once again.

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Some refer to them as "trash birds." They are the birds that live in close proximity to humans, feeding off our crumbs. Personally, I would never refer to any bird as trash, not even the ever-present House Sparrow. 

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Information derived from the exploration of a South African cave indicates that an ancient hominid species buried their dead more than 100,000 years before it had previously been known. 

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Scientists have managed to drill nearly a mile beneath the ocean's floor all the way to the planet's rocky mantle.

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The Arctic is rapidly losing sea ice and could be entirely free of it by the 2030s.

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Our world still contains many mysteries and one of them is who built the lost cities of the Nigerian Sahara.

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A road being built through the heart of the Amazon rainforest is a serious threat to the region's ecology.

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Have you ever used Merlin? He is an extremely useful tool for identifying birds in the field.

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This seems like the stuff of nightmares: The clumps of seaweed washing up on the shores of Florida contain a flesh-eating bacteria. 

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Here are some views of the nest of a pair of Red-tailed Hawks and of some of the birds that share their habitat area.

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The Washington Post has discovered that birds and their songs are good for our mental health. But you already knew that, didn't you?