This week in birds - #632

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

The aptly named Western Kingbird is found throughout much of the western United States and southern Canada. It is a large member of the flycatcher family, somewhat bigger than its counterpart, the Eastern Kingbird. It winters in southern Mexico and Central America and has recently expanded its winter range into southern Florida. A resident of grasslands and scrublands, it can also be found in open urban and suburban areas and its population is increasing. It is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week.

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Donald Trump celebrated Earth Day as only he would by firing hundreds of workers at the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Does life on Earth owe its origins to an asteroid?

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The stupidity is truly astounding. The new administration in Washington is bent on expanding coal mining while at the same time imposing cuts to the agencies that are charged with ensuring miner health and safety.

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The Sonic Heritage project will preserve a collection of 270 sounds from 68 countries.

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We think of the seasons as numbering four but Japan recognizes 72 microseasons.

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Right leaning influencers now dominate digital media and an analysis found that eight of the ten most popular shows have spread false or misleading information about climate change.

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Spring migration is just hitting its peak in the South and is beginning to pick up farther north.

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Rising temperatures are causing Earth's glaciers to melt and that could trigger even greater climate mayhem for the planet.

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The U.S. is backsliding on air quality measures and nearly half of its residents now live in places that get failing grades on air pollution.

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Artificial intelligence may drive a surge in demand for fossil fuels, thus prolonging the fossil fuel era.

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Many of the world's coral reefs have been hit by the worst bleaching event on record.

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Our closest cousins in Nature, the bonobos, live in a matriarchal society.

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Purple honey? In the Sandhills region of North Carolina, that is a thing.

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In a coastal New England town, this innocent looking Pileated Woodpecker is creating quite a bit of havoc.

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The world is full of weird and wonderful creatures, but this "bone collector" caterpillar may be one of the weirdest.

Poetry Sunday: In Perpetual Spring by Amy Gerstler

I find it true, as the poet says, that gardens are places where the "human desire for peace with every other species wells up in you." If only it were true that "for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it." 

In Perpetual Spring

by Amy Gerstler

Gardens are also good places

to sulk. You pass beds of

spiky voodoo lilies   

and trip over the roots   

of a sweet gum tree,   

in search of medieval   

plants whose leaves,   

when they drop off   

turn into birds

if they fall on land,

and colored carp if they   

plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal   

human desire for peace   

with every other species   

wells up in you. The lion   

and the lamb cuddling up. 

The snake and the snail, kissing.

Even the prick of the thistle,   

queen of the weeds, revives   

your secret belief

in perpetual spring,

your faith that for every hurt   

there is a leaf to cure it.

This week in birds - #631

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

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is a lovely member of the jay family, the Island Scrub-Jay. It is only found on Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California's Channel Islands. It inhabits the oak and pine forests and scrublands throughout the island and its numbers are decreasing. 

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When a 5.2 magnitude earthquake shook the area on Monday, the elephants at the San Diego Zoo quickly formed a protective circle around their young. Those protective instincts remain strong in the animals.

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Unfortunately, such protective instincts do not seem to be present in the current administration in Washington which proposes to get rid of hundreds of environmental regulations meant to ensure our health and safety.

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In other news of this administration, they are planning cuts to the federal climate disaster agency which could have a devastating effect on our endangered rivers, even the mighty Mississippi.

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And, of course, the cuts and changes they propose will allow more mining, construction, and other such environment-destroying activities, including the destruction of endangered species' habitats.

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Touting the administration's commitment to "clean, beautiful coal," the Secretary of the Interior visited mines in central Alabama last week.

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Vultures may not get a lot of love from the public (although, personally, I quite admire them for their graceful flight and the essential work they do) but conservationists in Africa are hoping to change that.

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Conservationists in this country are fighting a holding action against the administration to try to protect the environment and, as a part of that struggle, they have filed suit over the rollback of green policies. The administration has even pulled federal webpages that tracked climate and environmental justice data, because who needs that, right?

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Ant smugglers? Apparently they do exist and four have been arrested and charged in Kenya.

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And honeybees, it seems, just can't catch a break. They are under threat again from a plethora of natural and human-made sources.

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They've long been known to exist but finally there is photographic and video proof of the cephalopod known as the colossal squid. A juvenile member of the species was filmed in March in the South Atlantic Ocean.

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Back on land, Sweden has been livestreaming its great moose migration and lots of moose fans are captivated by the action. 

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The amount of plastic being recycled globally has stalled out at 9%.

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In England, people are planting hedges once again and that is a very good thing for wildlife.

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Republican lawmakers were hoping that a new report would give them ammunition to fight against offshore wind development but they were disappointed. 

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In Argentina, a capybara population explosion is causing problems for some exclusive communities.

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E.T., phone home? Astronomers have detected a possible signature of life on a distant planet.

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And back on this planet, woodrats are disappearing from the eastern United States and scientists are working to save the critters which are an important part of the ecology of the region.

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Coastal wildflowers may look delicate but in fact they are quite tough and hardy.

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This is Astoria, the Wild Turkey who is quite at home in Midtown Manhattan.

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Finally, here is the story of Buford, who is a very good boy indeed.

Poetry Sunday: First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemöller

It isn't really a poem although it often gets characterized as one. It was written by a German Lutheran pastor in 1946 after the Holocaust and World War II. It is his confession of failure. Let us not fail to speak out against evil in our time.

First They Came

by Pastor Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Communist 

Then they came for the Socialists 

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Socialist 

Then they came for the trade unionists 

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a trade unionist 

Then they came for the Jews 

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Jew 

Then they came for me 

And there was no one left 

To speak out for me.

This week in birds - #630

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

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Red-faced Parrot, a bird of the eastern slopes of the Andes and southern Ecuador and northwestern Peru. Its numbers are decreasing as its habitat is threatened by logging and clearing for agriculture, infrastructure development, and mining.

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The new administration in Washington has cut $4 million from climate research funding that had been allocated to Princeton University because it supposedly exposed students to "climate anxiety" and "exaggerated climate threats." It has also ended funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program which was charged with producing quadrennial reports on the impact on this country of rising global temperatures.

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We should not be surprised that this administration also apparently has plans to weaken enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. Its actions have brought out hundreds of thousands of protestors across the country. Let's hope they also show up at the polls for the next election.

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The new Health and Human Services secretary has told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoridation of public water systems. Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear.

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Bonobos are our close cousins in the primate family and it seems that they, like us, use vocal sounds to communicate specific meanings.

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A hunting kit estimated at 6,500 years old has been found in a cave in West Texas near the town of Marfa which is about forty miles northwest of the border with Mexico.

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Have dire wolves actually been brought back to existence outside of "Game of Thrones?" They've been gone for about 13,000 years but scientists have now produced something close by using the DNA from their fossils. 

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The plastic waste that turns up in birds' nests can tell a story and not necessarily a happy one.

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The world's largest wildlife crossing is taking shape across Highway 101 in Los Angeles.

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The migration of Sandhill Cranes, like these that I photographed in New Mexico a few years ago, is underway in Nebraska and is a tourist attraction for the area. Some of those tourists are quite famous.

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Also in migration are Painted Lady butterflies. I can confirm that they have made it to Houston; I encountered one in my backyard just this week. Monarch butterflies, too, are moving north and I've been on the lookout for them but haven't seen one in my neighborhood yet.

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In Mongolia's Gobi Desert, paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a previously unknown species of dinosaur that had distinctive two-fingered claws.

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Invasive northern snakehead fish, an animal that looks a bit like a hybrid of a fish and a snake, are spreading through the waters of the United States. If you encounter one, you are being encouraged to just kill it to help control the spread.

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The Denisovans are one of the more enigmatic of human species that lived at least 10,000 years ago. Now an ancient jawbone of the species that was dredged up from the Taiwanese seabed is offering new insights into its appearance and range.

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Many animals are quite territorial and vigorously defend their domains and that even includes tiny caterpillars.

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If the U.S. military gets its way, it will be turning a remote Pacific wildlife refuge into a landing site for SpaceX rockets. 

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Freshwater mussels are dying in large numbers and it is not entirely clear why. 

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Louisiana's coastal wetlands have been destroyed over a period of decades by oil companies drilling and dredging. Now a civil court jury has found that Chevron must pay more than $744 million to a parish government to help restore those wetlands.

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We don't necessarily think of flies as being migratory animals but in fact American hoverflies do migrate.

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The Red-cockaded Woodpecker's status has been upgraded from endangered to threatened but that's not an unalloyed good thing as it decreases the amount of protection it gets. (On a personal note, one of my favorite memories as a birder is actually seeing those woodpeckers in the wild several years ago.)

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At Wrigley Field in Chicago, fans have a new reason to cheer: A Canada Goose has chosen a planter in the center field bleachers as the perfect place to make her nest.  

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The Milnesium tardigradum, or waterbear, a multi-segmented microscopic animal has been chosen as "Invertebrate of the Year." Thousands of readers of The Guardian newspaper from around the world voted in the contest that featured ten candidates.

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Part of the mission of a space probe called Biomass that will be launched soon will be to map the carbon content of the world's remotest tropical forests.

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An Italian village loves its local bears and has organized life in the village to accommodate them.

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Sargassum seaweed can be a problem for seaside communities but scientists in the Caribbean are working on ways to turn that problem into an asset.

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At the Philadelphia Zoo, they are celebrating the hatching of four endangered Western Santa Cruz tortoises. Their parents are both around 100 years old and the mother has lived at the zoo since 1932. She is now a first-time mother.  

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One of the pictures featured in The Guardian's "Week in Wildlife" is of a couple of quite adorable Great Egret chicks from a nest in Delray Beach, Florida. 

Poetry Sunday: Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay

This poem caught my eye last week for its line "Not only under ground are the brains of men eaten by maggots." Somehow it seemed particularly apropos for the events of the week. Edna St. Vincent Millay certainly had April's number - a month that "Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers." After all, what does April care about the silly affairs of humans?

Spring

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

This week in birds - #629

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

This is a rather plain bird with a beautiful song. It is the Veery, a member of the thrush family. It passes through Texas on migration and moves on to breed primarily along the border between Canada and the United States, although it can be found breeding all the way south to Georgia. Like many species, it is threatened by forest loss and fragmentation.

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Something bad is happening along the southern California coast as hundreds of sick or dead sea mammals wash up on its shores. There has also been erratic behavior, including attacks on humans. Sea mammal specialists suspect toxic algae poisoning of being the cause.

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And in the human world, toxicity of another kind has led the nation's top vaccine scientist to resign his position just as we are facing a potential measles epidemic that would have been totally preventable by vaccine.

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And, confirming the adage that it never rains but it pours, we may also be looking at a return of acid rain because of government rollbacks of pollution protections. 

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But heaven forbid we should be so "woke" as to care about the environment!

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We know a bit about the human toll of the war in Ukraine but the toll on the environment has been equally or more devastating.

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In 2021, the United Kingdom passed a law meant to protect against deforestation, but then it delayed implementation of the law with predictable results.

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And deforestation does not affect only forests. It threatens the life forms that live among and depend on those trees, even including the fungi that live there.

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Palm trees are an iconic part of the southern California scene even though they are not native there, but they are also an incredible source of fuel for the wildfires that plague the area. And the world's oldest tree, the 5,000-year-old bristlecone pine called "Methusaleh" is threatened by those fires.

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If you have a garden, you can help support the butterfly populations where you live by cultivating the plants they need - e.g., milkweed for Monarchs.  

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This is the time of year when vast fields of poppies can be expected to bloom in southern California, but not this year. An unusually dry winter has left those fields brown.

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Nature has much to tell us if we only listen. Even the fish have their story.

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Rumors of its demise turned out to be exaggerated. Here's how this mollusk came back from the brink with a little help from its friends.

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Congress approved billions of dollars to clean up abandoned oil and gas wells, but now the program has been halted by the current administration in Washington.

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Hope, that "thing with feathers" in Emily Dickinson's words, springs eternal, it is said, and on a beautiful vernal day it is almost possible to believe that, writes Anne Lamott. 

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Bee-hunting dogs? They do, in fact exist.

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And speaking of dogs, on Kangaroo Island, Australia, a miniature dachshund named Valerie has been living on her own for over a year after escaping from her pen.

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Dana Milbank muses about how all those "aliens" at the National Zoo might be deported as the administration seeks to stamp out DEI.

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I love this story: A family visiting Washington was just trying to take a picture of its two children among the cherry blossoms with the Washington Monument in the background when the scene got photobombed by someone famous.