This week in birds - #642
A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:
The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the beautiful James's Flamingo, one of the three flamingo species that make their home high in the Andes Mountains of South America. The others are the Andean and the Chilean. The James's is the smallest and rarest of the three. It frequents shallow saline lakes and wetlands in all seasons and its population - thankfully - is stable for the time being.
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Earth reached its aphelion for the year - its greatest distance from the sun - this week on Thursday. Now we'll be moving ever closer.
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In honor of Independence Day, how about some fun facts about our "National Bird," the Bald Eagle? Here are eighteen such facts.
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The shuttering of the U. S. Agency for International Development by the current administration in Washington is probably illegal and could result in fourteen million human deaths over the next five years. Moreover, it will harm environmental efforts around the world. In one fell swoop, this administration has done inestimable damage.
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Crows possess impressive cognitive abilities and Carrion Crows may be the smartest of them all.
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Coyotes are another brainy critter and a pair of them have now made a home for themselves in New York's Central Park.
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Sea spiders have no abdomen so how do they perform the functions that normally occur in the abdomen?
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Gas workers digging beneath the streets of Lima discovered the thousand-year-old mummy of a child with brown hair.
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California has rolled back part of its environmental laws that were seen as a barrier to building new housing.
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A new study has determined that water contaminants from a wildfire can remain at a high level for up to eight years after the fire occurs.
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Green roofs, i.e., roofs that are sowed with green plants, are highly effective at capturing microplastic particles that contaminate rainwater.
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In the Brazilian Amazon, fishermen have discovered giant funerary urns from the pre-Columbian era buried beneath a toppled tree.
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The small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is being slowly swallowed by the sea and its leaders are working with Australia to create a "climate visa" escape route for its (around) 10,000 residents.
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Maybe our understanding of Neanderthals has been all wrong.
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It never snows on the arid and rocky landscape that is Chile's Atacama Desert until - just recently - it did!
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Snakes, like this Mangrove Tree Snake native to Southeast Asia, have no arms or legs so how, exactly, do they manage to move about?
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The Pocotaligo River in South Carolina holds the distinction of being the river most polluted with toxic PFAS in the country.
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Now perhaps I shall rememb er why bald eagles are so named! I loved the article on the Central Park coyotes - what a thrill to see them, though I suppose most New Yorkers never will.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the size of the city, I would suspect that most New Yorkers never step foot inside Central Park.
DeleteGood morning, Dorothy. Thank you for the weekly roundup. I am disappointed that California is relaxing its environmental standards. Always known for their leadership and aggressive embrace of progressive measures, it’s doubly sad to see them capitulate. I was happy, on the other hand, to learn of the coyotes residing in Central Park. Watch out if you are walking with a small dog! The assault on the environment, the fouling of the Everglades with this obscene detention centre, the push for fossil fuel development, the promise to start denuding forests, drilling in NWRs is heartbreaking. Three and a half more years of this is hard to contemplate. And that’s only if he leaves office! All the best - David
ReplyDeleteIt would certainly not be wise to allow small dogs to run free, off the leash, in the area where the coyotes reside. As for the administration's assault on the environment, one can only hope that it will cause anger and revulsion in the public and that they will act - and especially vote - accordingly.
DeleteI feel disconnected from the sort of people who cut aid that could result in fourteen million deaths over five years. I'm not sure why we would want to relax our environmental standards either. I've had no luck in contacting those who represent me in government and trying to persuade them that this is not how I would like our country to behave in the world. I shall press on, nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteGood on you for pressing on in attempting to persuade our representatives. Unfortunately, in Texas especially, it seems that "our" representatives only represent monied interests whose concerns do not seem to include protecting the environment. Nevertheless, we must persist in raising our voices against those interests.
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