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Birding with David Attenborough
2008-04-20 11:27:00 Greg Laden likes YouTube clips, and some originating with David Attenborough really stand out. Take this first one listening to the Magnificent Lyre Bird, a second with raising Whooping Crane chicks, and a third displaying the Superb Bird Of Paradise. Attenborough has produced over 150 hours of video of the highest caliber, covering ...
By: Migrations
Monarchs Under Threat
2008-04-05 08:43:00 Habitat Destruction May Wipe Out Monarch Butterfly Migration: Intense deforestation in Mexico could ruin one of North America?s most celebrated natural wonders ? the mysterious 3,000-mile migration of the monarch butterfly. According to a University of Kansas researcher, the astonishing migration may collapse rapidly without urgent action to end devastation of the butterfly?s vital sources of ...
By: Migrations
Slap on the Wrists for Falcon Slaughterers in Cyprus
2008-04-04 10:21:00 I’m a bit late in posting this, but do you remember a few months ago, when two men here in Cyprus were tracked down after slaughtering 52 Red-footed Falcons (Falco vespertinus), for target practice? The incident occurred on British Sovereign Base Area (SBA) land, and the case went to the SBA courts. Last month, the ...
By: Migrations
Migrating into the Sunset
2008-03-30 21:48:00 Migrating Sandhill Cranes over the Platte River, Nebraska. (Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU.) I would be seriously remiss not to pass this one along. Hat tip: Hedwig the Owl
By: Migrations
Restoring Our Ecology
2008-03-29 15:10:00 ?For each of us, as for the robin in Michigan or the Salmon in the Miramichi, this is a problem of ecology, of interrelationships, of interdependence. We poison the caddis flies in a stream and the salmon runs dwindle and die. We poison the gnats in a lake and the poison travels from link to ...
By: Migrations
Encyclopedia of Life
2008-02-27 10:39:00 As a biophile, I can’t help but link to the Encyclopedia of Life (via PZ). While the concept has been tried before, E.O. Wilson is behind this incarnation of an online resource devoted to a description of all biodiversity and the classification/description thereof. It’s ambitious, I would say (1.8 million species!). More ...
By: Migrations
Declining Migrations
2008-01-03 10:03:00 Just heard about it - a book devoted to migrations themselves - No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations. Carl Zimmer has a review that is inspiring me to buy the book, on the NY Times.
By: Migrations
More on massacring birds in Cyprus
2007-12-25 21:22:00 By way of GrrlScientist, I heard this latest statistic in the news: Illegal trappers on Cyprus killed more than half a million protected birds this fall for sale at local restaurants, conservationists said. It was the worst massacre in four years and came despite a European Union ban on the decades-old tradition, said BirdLife Cyprus ...
By: Migrations
Horrible treatment of birds in Cyprus
2007-12-23 19:47:00 Two men charged with Cyprus falcon massacre: Two men have been charged in connection with the October 5 massacre of 52 Red-footed Falcons Falco vespertinus in the Phasouri area of Cypus, within the Akrotiri British Sovereign Base Area (SBA). The accused, from the Limassol area, pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry a penalty of ...
By: Migrations
Circuitry models for planning wildlife corridors
2007-12-20 20:36:00 Innovative model connects circuit theory to wildlife corridors: Scientists at Northern Arizona University and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis have developed a model that uses circuit theory to predict gene flow across landscapes. Their approach could give managers a better way to identify the best spots for wildlife corridors, which are crucial to ...
By: Migrations
Ecosystem Restoration
2007-12-11 21:25:00 Audubon has an action item out, asking legislators to fully fund ecosystem restoration, including: Everglades: $243 Million Great Lakes: $156 Million Long Island Sound: $10 Million Mississippi River: $35 Million Louisiana Coastal Wetlands: $500 Million That’s a drop in the bucket, not even amounting to a billion dollars.
By: Migrations
Climatic Impacts on Ocean Ecosystems
2007-11-20 16:46:00 Climatic impacts on ocean ecosystems: A study of climate variability and conservation oceanography That’s the title of my wife’s dissertation. Her public defense will be on Monday, December 3rd, at 1:30pm, in 2146 Snee Hall at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). She’ll be talking about her two projects. The first one has been on ...
By: Migrations
Navigating by Sight During Bird Migration
2007-10-01 21:13:00 Neuronal tracing reveals that Cluster N receives input through the thalamofugal visual pathway. Schematic side view of the bird’s brain indicating the locations of tracer application. Retrograde tracer (BDA, shown in green) was iontophoretically applied into Cluster N (shown in magenta). Anterograde tracer (CtB, shown in red) was injected into the vitreous of the contralateral ...
By: Migrations
Saving Rare Petrels from Rising Seas
2007-09-25 02:41:00 From Audubon Magazine comes a striking article about Seeking Higher Ground: Ornithologists were shocked by the rediscovery of the [Bermuda petrels, called cahow by the locals because of their eerie cries] in the early 1950s?three centuries after it was presumed extinct?when a handful of the birds were found holding out in the wave-sculpted substrate of several ...
By: Migrations
Keeping Tabs on Mass Extinction
2007-09-13 21:49:00 The 2007 Red List is out with the hard number crunching on our mass extinction in-progress. 16,306 of 41,415 species on the IUCN Red List are threatened with extinction, reports the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The total number of known extinct species now stands at 785, while a further 65 are only found in captivity or ...
By: Migrations
Online Bird Migration Educational Tool from Audubon
2007-09-03 15:16:00 Audubon has a neat (and fun!) game to help people learn about bird migration and conservation: In the spring and the fall, many birds fly long distances in search of food, water, shelter and space: the same basic things that you need to survive. Along these routes, they encounter many different types of habitats, from country ...
By: Migrations
Navy Sonar Hurts Whales, but ?We?re at War?
2007-09-01 02:12:00 Via CNN, the Post and the NY Times: National security interests outweigh the possible harm to marine life, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined in overturning a judge’s order banning the practice.” “The public does indeed have a very considerable interest in preserving our natural environment and especially relatively scarce ...
By: Migrations
Last Wild Whooping Cranes Threatened by Development
2007-08-30 19:28:00 Via Audubon: The only wild flock of endangered Whooping Cranes in the world is at risk. A development plan near Aransas National Wildlife Refuge could destroy the habitat they need to survive. These endangered birds depend on finding safe wintering and feeding grounds at Aransas Refuge. But a development project might change all that. Seadrift Ranch ...
By: Migrations
Pacific Shorebird Migration Project
2007-08-24 18:39:00 Wow - Alaska shorebird migration is indeed cool. From the Pacific Shorebird Migration Project, which is: …an international, collaborative study using the latest remote sensing technology to fill key information gaps on how the tribe Numeniini, to which godwits and curlews belong, migrate within and across continents. During 2007-2008, four species (Bar-tailed Godwit, Hudsonian Godwit, Bristle-thighed Curlew, ...
By: Migrations
Fishy Migration
2007-08-14 04:16:00 In one report, appearing in the journal Hydrobiologia, a team of international scientists documented two giant bluefins tagged within minutes of each other off the coast of Ireland. The two fish swam to opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean?ending up more than 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) apart. One of the fish traveled 3,730 miles (6,000 kilometers) southwest ...
By: Migrations
Migration and Divergence of H. sapiens from its African Roots
2007-07-12 21:31:00 Via the Cornell Chronicle Online, Evidence that up to 10 percent of human genome may have changed very recently revealed by CU researchers: A Cornell study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the ...
By: Migrations
Aquatic Invasive Species Training
2007-07-10 22:10:00 Via Audubon, there’s a workshop notice that I received and would like to pass along: Invasive species are a harmful subset of so-called exotic, alien, non-native, or introduced species, and are one of the most serious global environmental challenges we face. In the United States alone, scientists estimate that about 7,000 invasive species of plants, mammals, ...
By: Migrations
Mass Extinction: What if it suddenly ended?
2007-07-05 18:47:00 It’s no secret that humans are causing the Sixth Extinction, with Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimating that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year. Accounts of this extinction’s progression and proposed responses abound - two of my favorites that look forward to the future of biodiversity and global ...
By: Migrations
Deafening Silence of Songbird Decline
2007-07-03 17:26:00 Another book review has caught my attention, on an issue that I’m extraordinarily concerned with: the Deafening Silence relating to common birds in sharp decline noted recently. The review, of Bridget Stutchbury’s Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them, is rather to ...
By: Migrations
Icons of Migration: Bar-tailed Godwit
2007-06-29 17:34:00 Some Alaskan Bar-tailed Godwits (Limosa lapponica) have the longest non-stop flight of any migrating bird. According to some biologists, the birds stay airborne for almost one week, making a 6,800-mile beeline from wintering grounds in southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand to their breeding range in Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia. Some routes of satellite tagged ...
By: Migrations
RP: Biodiversity Loss and Humanity
2007-06-26 16:18:00 Original posting from almost two years ago, on my original blog. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) - Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Biodiversity Synthesis report (the linked file is a large, 13.7Mb PDF, sorry). For those who don’t know, MA is an international work program designed to meet the needs of decision makers and the public for ...
By: Migrations
Icons of Migration: Humpback Whale
2007-06-20 00:23:00 The superlative for the longest mammal migration goes to the Humpback Whale. Members of this species of baleen whale migrate as far as 5,100 miles each way, as they transit back and forth between warm breeding waters near the equator and food-rich waters in arctic and antarctic regions. Because seasons are reversed either ...
By: Migrations
Shocking Declines in US Bird Populations
2007-06-15 12:49:00 A new Audubon story is no surprise to anyone who has been following the hobby known as birdwatching over the past few decades - I’m reminded occaisionally by my dad, who’s been birdwatching for nearly 40 years, on how many bird species, especially neotropical migrants, were very abundant. Now, one must cover significant ground ...
By: Migrations
A Massive (Hidden) Migration in Africa
2007-06-14 07:12:00 Carl Zimmer has the goods on In Sudan, an Animal Migration to Rival Serengeti. The first aerial survey of southern Sudan in 25 years has revealed vast migrating herds, rivaling those of the Serengeti plains, that have managed to survive 25 years of civil war, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Southern Sudan will announce ...
By: Migrations
Icons of Migration: The V-formation
2007-05-30 23:09:00 The sight of migrating swans, geese, cranes, cormor-ants, pelicans, flamingos, or other large birds is a spectacular sight that gives rise to interesting questions. Why such regular formations? A vortex is formed in the wake of each wingtip, creating downflow behind the wing and uplift outside the wake, as indicated at the tip of ...
By: Migrations
Ithaca BioBlitz Results are In
2007-05-09 16:17:00 The results have been tallied, and posted on the Cornell Mushroom blog for the First Ithaca BioBlitz. You can check the Mushroom blog for the spreadsheet of results, but the vital statistics: 46 participants, who found 266 species! Of those, 26 were birds - a modest number, and considering that we were focusing on just one ...
By: Migrations
Taxonomy: What?s in a Name
2007-05-08 17:02:00 From Birdscope’s Elizabeth Quill and Miyoko Chu: What’s in a Name?, or, Science drives the often-bewildering changes to species check-lists. The check-list’s scientific frontier is not in the actual discovery of new species (the last such addition was Gunnison Sage-Grouse in 2000) but in new evidence about already known birds. For example, the Black-bellied ...
By: Migrations
The War on Endangered Species
2007-05-03 16:31:00 Via The Blue Marble at Mother Jones: More than three dozen scientists have signed a letter to protest a new Bush administration interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. The Associated Press reports their concerns that the twisted read jeopardizes animals such as wolves and grizzly bears. If Interior Department Solicitor David Bernhardt has his way, the ...
By: Migrations
The First Ithaca BioBlitz
2007-04-29 22:51:00 … with possibly more in coming years. Yesterday was awesome, as I’m sure Lisa would attest, while finding some Red Efts: The species inventory is STILL being compiled (my bet was that it would near 300sp.), and pictures are being compiled, via contributions of the few dozen individuals who participated. My pics can be ...
By: Migrations
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