This week in birds - #637

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

The (to me) most beautiful member of the egret family is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It's the well-named Snowy Egret. The Snowy is found throughout much of the United States in migration and during breeding and it is a permanent resident throughout most of South America. It is smaller than the Great Egret and its most prominent and recognizable feature are its "golden slippers," the yellow feet at the end of black legs. We almost lost the Snowy along with the Passenger Pigeon and the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, but, just in time, it gained protection and is now increasing in numbers.  

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The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is the cornerstone of birds' protection in the United States and has been so for more than a century, so, of course, the current administration in Washington wants to gut it. The American Bird Conservancy is calling on people to contact elected representatives and urge them to do everything in their power to protect the Act and the birds.

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Monarch butterflies continue their flight north. Many have now reached parts of Canada.

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The Santa Cruz River offers something like an oasis in the middle of the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona. Likewise, the San Antonio River, composed mostly of effluent, is an oasis in the middle of an urban area.

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Like so much else that the administration wants to yank funds from, archaeology is facing an uncertain future. 

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An excavation of King Arthur's Hall in Cornwall's Bodmin Moor has revealed the site to be 4,000 years older than archaeologists has originally believed.

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We are likely in for years of killer heat as a result of global warming.

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The 19th and early 20th centuries were a perilous time for many bird species because of the popularity of feathers in women's fashions. Some species were actually hunted to extinction because of it.

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The world's second largest rat species, a 33-inch-long woolly mountain rat, has been caught on camera for the first time in the mountains of New Guinea.

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Like the Monarchs, the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, too, have reached the northernmost extent of their range.

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A previously unknown "flapjack" octopus has been discovered off the coast of Australia. 

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A wildlife rescuer has a devoted fan in a Greater Roadrunner that she rescued. He returns to visit and brings her gifts every day.

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New fossil discoveries of small animals that lived during the Triassic Period are changing our knowledge about the biodiversity of that period.

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The two men who cut down England's centuries-old Sycamore Gap tree have now been convicted of the crime. And why did they do it? For "a bit of a laugh."

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It appears that Clownfish are able to shrink their body size in response to ocean heat waves.

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This Cooper's Hawk is one smart bird!