This week in birds - #650

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


The Nēnē, or Hawaiian Goose, is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week for this week. The bird, seen here in flight, is one of five species of geese that evolved on Hawaii. It is the only survivor today of those five species and is one of the rarest goose species in the world. It is closely related to the Canada Goose and apparently emigrated to the island more than 500,000 years ago.

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Do you enjoy walking upright? Thank the genes that crafted your ilium.

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This fearsome ancient crocodile relative was a predator of dinosaurs.

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A tree can be home to an entire ecosystem that includes a trillion tiny lives.

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Early humans moved stones long distances in order to use them to make tools as long as 2.6 million years ago.  

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The massive Moai statues of Easter Island could be endangered by seasonal waves as early as 2080.

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Honeybees have faced a drastic decline in their population in recent years, but researchers have developed a "superfood" for them that it is hoped might help them.

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Migratory flamingos age differently from those that do not migrate. Aging comes later for those that migrate. 

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A cow's tooth from a jawbone found buried at Stonehenge offers clues to the origins of its stones.

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It seems strange things are happening to the rabbits of Colorado. Some of them have 'horns.'

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A 102-year-old man just became the oldest person to climb to the summit of Japan's Mt. Fuji. Gives us all something to aspire to, doesn't it?

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The waterways connected to the Great Lakes are yielding up ancient canoes that are as old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

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The armored ankylosaur was certainly one of the stranger of the dinosaurs that once walked our planet, but it seems that it may have been even weirder than previously thought. 

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And speaking of strange things, meet Neptune, a bright blue oyster caught by a fisherman off the coast of Massachusetts earlier this summer. Neptune did not become anyone's dinner and now lives at Northeastern University's Marine Science Center at Nahant, Massachusetts. 

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