This week in birds - #662

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

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is this lovely creature that seems to be looking at us very judgmentally. It is the Antioquia Brushfinch, a bird of the lower layers of shrubby habitats at the northern end of the Central Andes in Colombia. It is generally found in couples or small family groups. The bird is severely threatened by habitat loss. Its known population at present consists of 109 individuals and the population is decreasing. Perhaps it has the right to be judgmental.

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Here are the species that are on The Revelator's watchlist of species at risk in 2026. 

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There were conservation successes in 2025 and here are some that made that list.

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On the Severn River, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, it was a grim year indeed for Ospreys. Only fifteen chicks from the 63 nests survived.  

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This is Craig, the super-tusker elephant from Amboseli in Kenya. He was well-known in conservationist circles and news has come that he has died of natural causes at the age of 54. 

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So our president boasts of plans to boost oil production in Venezuela but investors do not seem eager to climb onboard, and that may be just as well for the planet as it endures climate change.

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Flat-headed Cats have been seen in Thailand for the first time in almost thirty years. They had been classified as "likely extinct" but that was, thankfully, not the case.

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In a first for insects, stingless bees from the Amazon, the planet's oldest bee species, have been granted legal rights.

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Thousands of dinosaur footprints dating from the Triassic Age have been found in the remote Italian Alps.

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Rare Red-Necked Ostriches have been reintroduced in Saudi Arabia in an area where they went extinct in 1941.

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Recent research has found that hunters used poisoned arrows to slow down their prey as much as 60,000 years ago.

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