This week in birds - #560

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

Okay, it's not a bird but it is a representative of the most numerous of the "fliers" in my backyard at the moment. It is a Cloudless Sulphur butterfly sipping from the blossoms of Hamelia patens, aka Firebush. 

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Of course, the main news of Nature for us on this continent this week was all related to wildfires.

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Wildfires in British Columbia were forcing evacuations. 

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The island of Maui in Hawaii was one of the latest places to suffer the destructive forces of wildfires.

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It became clear that nonnative plants had fueled the Hawaiian wildfires.

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In the historic town of Lahaina, a 150-year-old banyan tree was charred but still standing after the fires and has apparently survived them.

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The staff of the Maui Bird Conservation Center fought the flames to save the endangered birds housed there. 

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Back in the Canadian city of Yellowknife, residents were given until noon on Friday to leave town ahead of the advancing flames.

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And if it wasn't the heat from wildfires, it was the heat from that orange orb in the sky that was causing misery in many places, not least of which was Texas.

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A United Nations climate expert warned this week that the world's food supply is threatened by global heating.

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This magnificent, prehistoric-looking bird is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It's the Brown Pelican, one of my favorite birds of the Gulf Coast.

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Off the Alaska coast, explorers are studying some of the world's deepest and most remote waters. 

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In California, a new pack of gray wolves has been discovered in Tulare County.

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And in northern California, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe is working to return Chinook salmon to their ancestral waters.

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Is it possible for the world to kick its coal habit? There is hope.

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Paradoxically, it seems that the way to save the redwood forest may involve the judicious use of chain saws.

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The farming of kelp is yet another enterprise that is threatened by the heating up of the world's oceans. 

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Trout introduced into Wyoming lakes have shown an ability to evolve rapidly in order to take advantage of their new habitat.

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Proof that perhaps the human race is not entirely hopeless: This man uses an ultralight aircraft to teach endangered Ibises their migration route.

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Great white sharks are normally solitary creatures, but two that were fitted with tracking devices off the coast of Georgia last December have confounded their trackers by continuing to travel together.

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And more hope for the future: Some young Montanans have just held their government accountable for exacerbating the climate crisis and violating their fundamental constitutional rights. More of this, please!