This week in birds - #554

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

A Little Blue Heron searches for its dinner among the reeds along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

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There was an incredible sight along the Gulf Coast of Texas this week as thousands of dead fish washed ashore.

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The Antarctic is in trouble from the effects of climate change and we are making it worse.

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There are three living equid species of which the strikingly beautiful Grevy's zebra is the most threatened.

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Surprisingly, there is some good news regarding the endangered Red Knot.

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Will humans' time on Earth be known as the fire age, or pyrocene?

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"It's an ill wind that blows no good," says the old aphorism, and proof of that may be found in the fact that the drought has actually helped to restore an ecosystem.

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Could there actually be life on a moon of Saturn? There are tantalizing hints.

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Do wolverines occasionally like to snack on fish?

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And could this be the hottest year on record? It seems to be headed that way.

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This is the beautiful Yellow Oriole, or Gonzalito, a bird of South America and the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. 

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Last month was the warmest May for the world's oceans since records began to be kept in 1850.

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Here are some wonderful wildlife photos from this past week. And here are even more.

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Could the answer to a shortage of potable water be to desalinate ocean water?

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Wildcats are being reintroduced in secret locations in the Scottish Highlands.

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Moths don't get the acclaim they are due but they are VIPs (very important pollinators) maybe even more so than bees.

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Illegal reintroductions of rare butterflies to the United Kingdom pose a potential threat to other species.

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Animals have rights, too, and it is important that we recognize and respect that. 

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Dinosaur bones in Australia? "They're bloody everywhere."

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Warblers are on the move, passing through to their breeding grounds. 

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A Kemp's ridley sea turtle has laid her eggs on the shore of Galveston for the second year in a row.

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Feral hogs are no joke and there are now millions of them in the United States.

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Lions are returning to parts of Africa from which they had long been absent. 





Comments

  1. David M. Gascoigne,June 17, 2023 at 5:51 AM

    Good morning, Dorothy, and thank you for the weekly roundup. While there is the occasional good news event on the environmental front, overall the trend is clearly a march towards unmitigated disaster. There have been so many forest fires in Canada this year, and many are still burning, that the destruction of wildlife is bound to be immense. I shudder to even contemplate the fate of neotropical migrants that came north as they do every year to breed in the boreal forest. Their habitat has been incinerated and doubtless many of them too. It is such a tragedy. And humans continue to take actions that make it worse. Aaagh! All the best - David

    ReplyDelete
  2. Deb Nance at ReaderbuzzJune 17, 2023 at 7:09 AM

    We talked (a lot!) about the fish kill along the beaches of Brazoria County at our naturalist group meeting this week. Patty Brinkmeyer and Bryan Frazier both presented info about the kill to the group, and told us about the barrage of media, including the New York Times and the morning national news programs that had hit their offices. Not really the most desirable way to appear in the news, I think.

    Some of our group participates in sea turtle patrols in Brazoria and Galveston Counties, so we heard a little about the eggs in Galveston, too.

    And, oh, the heat.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HarveeJune 17, 2023 at 9:49 AM

    I have heard that Texas is a great place for bird watchers and nature lovers. Too bad about the wildfires everywhere affecting us from the north. My relatives live in Toronto and it seems their air quality is better than ours in Ohio some days. Have a good week.
    Thanks for the round up.

    ReplyDelete

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