This week in birds - #556

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

Backyard favorites, a pair of White-winged Doves perch on the bars holding feeders full of seeds, preparatory to having their morning snack. Don't they have the most beautiful eyes?

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The big environmental news this week has, of course, been the heat and the misery it has caused. The week before had seen the hottest day on record since those records have been kept, starting in 1979.

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In Texas, in the city of Laredo alone, the extreme heat killed ten people. And here in the Houston area, I can verify that our air conditioning system has been severely taxed, basically running from sunrise to sunset.

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We can only expect more of the same over the next several days as a coast-to-coast heat dome settles over much of the continent. 

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An El Niño climate system is brewing in the Pacific and threatens to turbocharge the already sweltering conditions around the globe. Scientists fear that even more extreme weather may be in the offing as dangerous heat is expected to engulf most of the southern United States for the next several days.

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We have two American Bird Conservancy Birds of the Week to recognize.

This is actually the one from last week, the Eastern Meadowlark, a singer of the grasslands.

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And here is the selection for this week, the wonderful little quail, the Northern Bobwhite.

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It turns out that even rattlesnakes like to have some company.

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The efforts to save and protect the Amazonian rainforest appear to be having an effect as deforestation has fallen there by 26%. 

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The color of the ocean has changed from blue to green over the last twenty years, apparently all due to climate change. 

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Vermont has been devastated by floods this week, again an event that may have been made worse by climate change.

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And there have been some strange things happening on the world's oceans recently as orcas have been attacking and sometimes sinking boats.

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A gray wolf was shot in the wild near Cooperstown, New York in late 2021, leading to speculation that the wolves are slowly making their way back to the Northeast.

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Scientists have located some octopus nurseries, where the animals brood their eggs and young, off the coast of Costa Rica.

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Herds of bison are being returned to Native American lands where they help to restore the Great Plains ecosystems.

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More ominous weather news: A new heat record has been recorded north of the Arctic Circle.

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In still more news from the Arctic Circle, invasive earthworms have been reported there, in an area that has been without worms since the last ice age.

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It seems that dinosaurs once strode the grounds around Washington, D.C. during the Early Cretaceous period. Some might say they still do.

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A sea otter has been snatching surfers' boards off the coast of California. Wildlife authorities are concerned about the otter's aggressive behavior.

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Scientists at Purdue have developed a white paint that, when applied to a roof, can reduce its surface temperature and help to cool the building it covers.  

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Predictably, when television meteorologists in the U. S. report on the climate crisis, they receive threats from some of their viewers. 

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Dust blown from the Sahara Desert is moving across the Atlantic and could affect the weather in South Florida.

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Magpies are famous for stealing all kinds of objects with which to construct their nests but this may be a new high (or low, depending on your perspective): In the Netherlands, they have been stealing sharp metal pins that were meant to keep them away from buildings and they are using the pins to make their nests! 

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As 90 million Americans are facing heat alerts this week, Republicans in Congress are opposing climate funding.

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In some good news for the climate, China is rolling out renewable energy sources at breakneck speed. 

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The Atlantic ecosystem is being adversely affected by the depletion of a tiny fish, the menhaden.

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Here in Houston, there is a thriving bat colony that has become something of a tourist attraction. The Waugh Drive Bridge colony of some 300,000 Mexican free-tail bats take to the sky each night in an amazing spectacle.

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In Florida, the summer months bring a toxic algal bloom to Lake Okeechobee, a bloom that is hazardous to the health of anything coming in contact with or breathing it in.

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What is the world's deadliest animal? It is the tiny mosquito and it is on the move.

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In the midst of all the headlines about hot weather, it should come as no surprise that the Gulf of Mexico is heating up, sometimes to temperatures as high as degrees in the 90s Fahrenheit. 

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Are we now well and truly into a new geologic age, the Anthropocene?

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Finally, Margaret Renkl writes about Frank, the box turtle who came back from the dead.