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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The Kelp Gull, like the one pictured here, is native to the southern hemisphere, but a vagrant of the species turned up in Wisconsin where it mated with a local Herring Gull. Their match produced a chick which, unfortunately, did not survive.

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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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This is an ancient dugout canoe that was discovered floating in North Carolina's South River. Over the years, seventy-nine such canoes have been found throughout the state.