This week in birds - #672

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

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is this little cutie: the Least Flycatcher. It is a small but fierce bird of North American forests that is known for its fearlessness in confronting birds that are much larger than it is. It is still fairly common in the appropriate habitat and its main threat is most likely the loss of such habitat, but its numbers have been declining since the 1970s and there are thought to be only about half as many as there once were.

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Monarch butterflies continue their flight northward. They have now reached as far as Kansas, Missouri, and the Carolinas. Happily, I also saw a few more in my own yard this week.

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A federal district court in California this week quashed the current administration's proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act. 

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Unfortunately, the so-called "God Squad," led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has now wiped out environmental safeguards for the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps condemning the endangered Rice's whale to extinction. There are currently only about fifty of the creatures left in the wild.

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Is Donald Trump an environmental hero? One man thinks so. I think his is likely a lonely position.

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Researchers filmed the birth of a sperm whale baby in the wild and discovered that the birth was attended by many helpers.

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The man who helped to write the Clean Air Act in the 1970s now fears for its survival under the current administration.

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Just two months after a set of mountain gorilla twins were born in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a second set has been born there.

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A fossil of a pincer-wielding crawler found in Utah decades ago is providing clues to the ancestors of chelicerates, a group that includes spiders, scorpions, and crabs.

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The dhole, a canine species that had been thought to be extinct in Vietnam, has been sighted there for the first time in two decades. 

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What can we do to help save the endangered Hawksbill Sea Turtle? Perhaps each of us can play a part.

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This is the Regent Honeyeater, a critically endangered Australian bird. Scientists are attempting to save its song by recruiting some wild vocal tutors.

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Another endangered species, the hermit crab, also has its dedicated helpers that are trying to save it.