This week in birds - #652

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

Is there any bird that is more adorable than the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher?  I always look forward to my first sighting of these little sprites in the spring. They spend their winters south of us, all the way down to Central America. Some supposedly even spend their winters around here (in Southeast Texas) although I've never actually seen one until early spring. Their population is increasing and, goodness knows, the world could always use more Blue-gray Gnatcatchers! This little bird is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week.

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From a list of monumentally bad ideas, the EPA has chosen to approve four new pesticides that qualify as PFAS ("forever chemicals").

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The U. S. has banned some foreign fish imports and that could help conserve marine mammals worldwide.

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Maybe we need to think differently about animal intelligence and acknowledge that there is much we don't know.

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It turns out spiders don't like noisy neighbors either.

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Mother Nature seems to really like crabs. Why else would she keep evolving more of them?

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Are hawks a problem at your bird feeders? Here are some suggestions of ways to discourage them.

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Scientists now think the dwarf planet, Ceres, may have once had life on it.

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A fish with teeth on its forehead? Nature truly is mysterious in her ways.

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The pretty little Golden-winged Warbler has an interesting migration strategy. 

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Chlamydia has been a problem among the koala population of Australia, but a new vaccine offers hope.

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Could Americans' love of RVs be causing problems for orangutans of Borneo? The connection is in the plywood used in the RVs' construction.

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We're very familiar with the alligators that live across the southern coast of the United States, but we are less familiar with their cousin, the American crocodile, that lives along the coast of Florida.

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Sea turtle hatchlings face many hazards as they try to make their way to the sea. Seaweed is just one of them.

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Want to make your garden a bird-friendly place? Here are some tips for that. 

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Here are some wonderful pictures of lions in Kenya.

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There are currently seventeen kinds of hawks to be found in the United States. Here is information about each of them, including where they can be found. 

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Far out in space, scientists have discovered seven planets that may be habitable for life as we know it.

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Is the Endangered Species List like the "Hotel California" - once a species enters it never leaves? No, that's not the way it works but the new Interior Secretary would have you believe it is.

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Things do not look good for the protection of the environment over the next four years.

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And finally, here is the bumpy snailfish, which is without a doubt the cutest thing to be found 10,000 feet down off the coast of California.