This week in birds - #624

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

This dapper looking guy is the Black-headed Grosbeak, also called the Western Grosbeak and it is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It can be found throughout western North America in its preferred habitat of forests and forest edges. It sometimes hybridizes with the Rose-breasted Grosbeak where the two species' ranges overlap. 

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The Environmental Protection Agency in its current iteration appears not to be mainly interested in protecting the environment.

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It isn't often that a previously unknown plant is discovered in one of our national parks, but that is what has just happened in Big Bend National Park. 

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The Musk/Trump administration's mass firing of federal employees has hit hard at the agencies that manage and protect our national parks and lands. The Forest Service firings in particular have wreaked havoc on rural areas.

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The American chestnut tree has been virtually extirpated by blight but is there a chance that we could bring it back?

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The Guardian is inviting us to nominate our candidates for "Invertebrate of the Year."

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A "superpod" of some 2,000 dolphins has been creating a spectacle for viewing in Monterey Bay off California's coast.

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When I was a child, I had measles and was probably as sick as I have ever been in my life. Unfortunately, the disease, which is now perfectly preventable with vaccination, is once again raging in west Texas where at least one child has already died.

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A growing commercial trade in corals is exploiting an already threatened ecosystem.

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Replanting seagrass meadows is helping fish, protecting coastlines, and absorbing climate-heating carbon dioxide.

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In Lake Superior, lake trout have rebounded following overfishing in the last century, largely thanks to a lamprey removal program.

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Under this malign administration, the USDA has deleted vital climate information from its website. After all, why would farmers need to know about climate/weather? The farmers are suing.

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In Denmark, a woodhenge, similar to the United Kingdom's Stonehenge, has been uncovered. It would seem to support the theory that the belief system behind the henges was widespread. 

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This is a Plains-wanderer, a bird of the grasslands of Australia. Their coloration helps hide them from predators but also makes it difficult for researchers to find them.

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A twenty-year study has found that the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s has helped the entire ecosystem to thrive.

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Quilting was not only a tradition among Black women of the South; my mother and all my aunts on both sides of the family were quilters. I grew up sleeping under those quilts and I still have several of them which I treasure.  

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No-till farming is apparently having a rebirth in the present century. And that is probably a good thing for the soil.

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Are there plenty of fish in the sea? The elephant seals know.

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Urban farmers in the Los Angeles area are planning to rebuild after the devastating wildfires there.

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It seems that early humans thrived in the rainforests as well as the savannas of Africa.

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Otay Mountain in San Diego County, California, faces many threats. Its protection is important to the maintaining of biodiversity on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

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Critically endangered red colobus monkeys are making a comeback in the woodlands of the Niger Delta. 

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An opossum in Omaha seems to be a particular fan of chocolate cakes!