This week in birds - #621

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

This striking bird is the Phainopepla and it is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It is a bird of the desert riparian scrub and high elevation oak woodlands and canyons. I have seen it on trips to West Texas and New Mexico and I can attest that it is just as handsome in the feather as it is in this picture.

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The arrival of La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean could have been expected to lower the planet's average temperature but, in fact, last month was the hottest January on record.

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The heat is even affecting the Greenland ice sheet, causing it to crack more rapidly than ever.

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The new administration's freeze on foreign aid threatens to hamper Brazil's efforts to fight deforestation.

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The recent flurry of executive orders has disrupted the work of scientists studying environmental health. The environmental justice movement is gathering its resources and making plans to fight back against the attacks by the administration. 

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The West Coast fires are in some instances fed by the actions of humans. Here are some steps that could be taken to reduce the risk.

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Meanwhile, the water the administration ordered released from two dams in California's Central Valley was an entirely political action which had no effect on the fires. And that water will now not be available to help fight any fires that come later in the year.

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RSPB Geltsdale in the north Pennines of England is now the country's largest bird sanctuary. 

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Spotted hyenas are returning to Egypt after vanishing from the area 5,000 years ago.

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Neonicotinoid pesticides continue to be a threat to birds.

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The annual Great Backyard Bird Count will take place next weekend, February 14-17. Will you be a part of it? 

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As the climate warms, urban conditions become more friendly for rats and their numbers are soaring. 

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The Great Lakes Marsh Monitoring Program is providing important information necessary for the conservation of those wetlands.

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A California man who had had to evacuate because of the wildfires returned home to find a 500 pound black bear had taken refuge under his house. The bear was safely lured out, captured, and relocated to the Angeles National Forest. 

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In New Zealand, a mountain called Taranaki has been given legal personhood status as a way of protecting it.

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USAID is an agency that supports efforts to reduce wildlife trafficking, deforestation, and other threats to the world's environment so, of course, the new administration wants to shut it down. 

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The Archipelago of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) off the coast of Canada has participated in Christmas Bird Counts since 1982.

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What is killing the great white sharks? Canadian and American scientists are trying to solve the mystery.

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North Atlantic right whale numbers are declining and the situation is being made worse by their entanglement in fishing gear. A federal court has just restored protections for the species.

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What is the source of the mysterious lights that appear around Summerville, South Carolina, a town northwest of Charleston? A seismologist thinks they may be related to low-level seismic activity.

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Remember Moo Deng, the pygmy hippo? Has her popularity helped to improve the situation for wild pygmy hippos?

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Margaret Renkl urges us to rethink our relationship to the natural world and learn to coexist peacefully with it.

Poetry Sunday: The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

Blessings on all the winter birds who cheer us with their "full-hearted evensongs" flung "upon the growing gloom." Hope is scarce on the ground at the moment and we need that cheer. 

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.

This week in birds - #620

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

This imposing pair is Jackie and Shadow, Bald Eagles who are nesting in the Big Bear Valley of California and who have a devoted following (including me) on Facebook. They are presently incubating three eggs. They've not had the greatest of success in past years. Fingers crossed that this year turns out more happily for them.

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The senate has confirmed as the new director of the Environmental Protection Agency former congressman Lee Zeldin, a man with no creditable environmental experience.

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And on that note, welcome to the Year of the Snake. We can at least hope that it is a propitious one.

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How do birds cope with the cold weather of winter?

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The new administration in Washington has thrown spending on addressing climate change into chaos. It is likely that chaos will continue for the next four years.

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A study has found that genetic diversity of plant and animal species is declining globally.

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The new president's attempt to get federal workers to resign seems to be having the opposite effect.

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Meanwhile, the Doomsday Clock ticks ever closer to midnight.

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The latest report on the status of Monarch butterflies does not hold much good news.

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It should not surprise us to learn that our cousins, the chimpanzees, develop hand gestures as a way to communicate with each other.

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Sadly, tiger poaching continues to be a problem in Malaysia.

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An ocean heatwave likely is responsible for killing thousands of fish off the western Australia coast.

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The opposite problem, cold water, is causing suffering among green sea turtles off Florida's Atlantic coast. Over 1,000 have been rescued.

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In Madagascar, floods ravaged a sanctuary for critically endangered tortoises.

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It'll always be the Gulf of Mexico for me.

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Have you heard about the tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas? It's the largest on record in U.S. history.

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Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is spewing lava again.

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The northeastern coast of the country has been overrun by invasive crabs from Europe and Asia. Residents are trying to eat their way out of the problem.

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Seventy-six million years ago, a young pterosaur apparently fell prey to a crocodile.

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This beautiful creature is the Florida Scrub-jay and it is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It lives in the scrubby sandy oak woodlands and ancient dunes in coastal and central areas of the state.

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And this is another Florida resident, the rainbow snake, which has just been seen in the wild for the first time in fifty years.

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A baby shark has been born in a Louisiana aquarium tank that contains only female sharks and marine experts are flummoxed for an explanation. 

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Saguaros are beset by a number of problems including climate change, drought, and fires, and all are made worse by human activities.

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Danish scientists are excited about the discovery of some 66-million-year-old fossilized vomit!

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Will this planned dam on the Congo River ever be built?

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This is the Mount Lyell shrew, an elusive resident of the eastern Sierra Mountains that has only recently been photographed for the first time.

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Sandeels are a treasured delicacy of Puffins and now a courtroom battle looms between the U.K. and the E.U. over the tiny fish.

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Toxic PFAS from a chemical plant are polluting the Ohio River in West Virginia where the plant is located.

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Astronomers are keeping an eye on an asteroid that has a slight possibility of hitting Earth in 2032.

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A pangolin species that is potentially separate from species previously known has been identified in the Indo-Burma region. 

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The last of the rhesus monkeys that escaped from a South Carolina research facility has been recaptured after having been lured by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

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I think we know that the current resident of the White House will use whatever tools he can find to circumvent the Endangered Species Act. 

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The National Zoo's panda cam is back on line and airing footage of the zoo's newest panda pair.

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Resistance is necessary, writes Anne Lamott, and we must practice it in whatever ways are available to us.

Poetry Sunday: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Here's a reminder that the Ozymandiases of this world never last. In the end, time razes their vaunted power and the lone and level sands stretch around all that is left of the wreck.

 

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

This week in birds - #619

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

I haven't seen American Goldfinches at my bird feeders this winter until this week, but suddenly there they are, in the feeders and on the ground under the feeders, scarfing down the seeds on offer.

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And on the subject of feeders, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has issued a bird flu warning that encourages residents to take down bird feeders and birdbaths. The idea is to decrease the number of places where birds gather, facilitating the spread of viruses.

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The new administration in Washington is no friend to endangered ocean and coastal animals. And one of the first acts of the administration was to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

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How does implementation of the Endangered Species Act affect property values? Generally in a more positive way than you might imagine. 

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This picture of a baby chameleon clinging to a flower bud was one of the winners in the "Wiki Loves Earth 2024" photo contest.

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Critical CO2 stores that have been sequestered in the Arctic's vast carbon sink are now being emitted into the atmosphere, contributing further to global warming.

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Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been hit by catastrophic coral bleaching.

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Elephants are intelligent and majestic creatures but they cannot pursue their release from captivity through court action nor can humans on their behalf, according to a decision by Colorado's highest court.

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Thirty-five new species from the Caribbean Islands have recently been described. Among them is the "James Bond" lizard.

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Wearing a typically disgruntled expression is this Buff-bellied Hummingbird, a resident of the Gulf Coast of the United States and Mexico and further south into Belize and Guatemala. Perhaps he doesn't appreciate the honor of being the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week!

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What purpose do the tails of giant stingrays serve? It turns out to be something different than expected.

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A recently released study found that high fertilizer use affects pollinators, cutting their numbers by as much as half. 

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Prairie rattlesnakes have evolved a method of collecting rainwater in their dry environment. Nature truly is amazing!

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It appears that spotted hyenas are returning to Egypt after an absence of 5,000 years. 

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Surprisingly, some corals are able to walk.

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Giving hellbenders endangered species status could help to protect and restore their environment.

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With a new administration in Washington that will not do much, if anything, to address climate change and help and protect vulnerable species, Margaret Renkl argues that it will be up to the rest of us to do what we can.

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Finally, here are some pictures of the week in wildlife.

Poetry Sunday: Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams

Winter has finally arrived in southeast Texas. We're actually expected to have some below freezing temperatures over the next few days. And the wise trees that have dropped their leaves will stand sleeping through it all.

Winter Trees

by William Carlos Williams 

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.