This week in birds - #634

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

This is the wonderful little Pine Warbler, the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. We here in Southeast Texas are at the outer limits of the Pine Warbler's range but they do exist here and my sense is that their numbers in the area may be increasing, perhaps as a result of the changing climate. My neighbors have huge pine trees in their yards of just the sort that these birds favor and as a result we get to enjoy their melodic trill when we are outside.

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Climate change is a reality and is likely to continue to worsen. How do we prepare?

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So our current government, in its wisdom, has removed the protections from marine protected areas. What could possibly go wrong?

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A new study confirms that North American bird populations are collapsing in places where they once thrived.

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Utah's Great Salt Lake is no longer "great." It's drying up.

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In Oregon, beavers are being restored to their former ecosystems and are helping to restore those ecosystems.

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Two major scientific societies have pledged to try to fill the void left by the government's dismissal of the 400 scientists who were working on a report on how climate change is affecting the country.

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A volcanic eruption in the eastern Pacific was witnessed by scientists who were diving in a submersible.

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Red wine bettas are a critically endangered fish from the small island of Bangka, Indonesia. They are disappearing as their habitat shrinks.

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She's got rhythm! She's a California sea lion who knows how to keep a beat.

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"Orphan wells" are gas and oil wells that have no active owner and are no longer producing but have not been plugged. There are a lot of them and they are a threat to our aquifers.

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The Yangtze finless porpoise is in a 1,400 year decline and poets have been writing about it for a millennium.

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Africa's Superb Starlings are distinctive in many ways and one of those ways is their propensity for forming friendships.

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Axolotls are another critically endangered species but there is hope for them as those that are captive-bred and then released into the wetlands in Mexico City appear to be thriving.

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Margaret Renkl writes of spring in Tennessee.