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Thanks to Flinders University researchers collaborating with the Department of Environment & Water and Green Adelaide, the creation of the new signs that identifies intrusive human interactions provides timely support for a colony that had shrunk to only 16 animals in early 2020.
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South Florida is in for a "phenomenal" wading bird year after a record-breaking rainy season increased the amount of fish in historical nesting grounds while a dry winter has created the perfect conditions for nesting.
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Those who see Earth from the International Space Station often say it provides a new appreciation of our planet. The Avian Migration Aerial Surface Space project, or AMASS, takes advantage of thousands of images captured by astronauts to give people an appreciation of the migrations many birds undertake across the planet.
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The lights of Philadelphia might not shine as bright in the coming weeks as a coalition in the City of Brotherly Love tries to prevent millions of migrating birds that pass through twice a year from slamming into skyscrapers and crashing to the sidewalk.
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Conservationists who apply wing tags for identifying Cape Vultures—a species of African vulture that is vulnerable to extinction—are putting the birds' lives further at risk, a new movement ecology study has shown. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany and VulPro NPC in South Africa have demonstrated that Cape Vultures fitted with tags on their wings traveled shorter distances and flew slower than those fitted with bands around their legs. The research emphasizes the importance of investigating the effects that tagging methods can have on the behavior and conservation of species, prompting a shift towards the less invasive method of leg bands in the future study of Cape Vultures.
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In snowy plovers, females have overcome traditional family stereotypes. They often abandon the family to begin a clutch with a new partner whereas the males continue to care for their young until they are independent. An international team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, has now investigated the decision-making process that determines the duration of parental care by females. They found that offspring desertion often occurs either under poor environmental conditions, when chicks die despite being cared for by both parents, or when chicks have a good chance of survival even without the female.
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"Great app with a certain addictiveness," writes a user in the Google Play Store about BirdNET. The app was developed by Chemnitz University of Technology and Cornell University (USA) and can identify 3,000 bird species based on their song using an AI algorithm. The app has now been downloaded over one million times from the Google Play Store. With over 5,200 reviews, it has a current score of 4.6 out of 5. "An incredible success," says Dr. Stefan Kahl delightedly. He is a researcher at the Chair of Media Informatics (headed by Prof. Dr. Maximilian Eibl) and at the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University (USA). He developed the app together with his American colleagues.
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For birds, simple does not always equal simple—and that difference can create interesting variations in plumage, according to new findings from University of Colorado Boulder researchers and their colleagues.
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When Australian's think of threatened species, we tend to think of cute, cuddly animals like koalas, kangaroos or wombats. Even our vibrant native birds get their own popularity contest thanks to Guardian Australia's Bird of the year poll, but where do plants feature in all of this?
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The mountain forests of Tanzania are more than 9,300 miles away from Salt Lake City, Utah. But, as in eastern Africa, the wild places of Utah depend on a diversity of birds to spread seeds, eat pests and clean up carrion. Birds keep ecosystems healthy. So if birds in Tanzania are in trouble in a warming climate, as found in a recent study by University of Utah researchers, people in Utah as well as in the African tropics should pay attention.
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The fossil in question is that of an oviraptorosaur, a group of bird-like theropod dinosaurs that thrived during the Cretaceous Period, the third and final time period of the Mesozoic Era (commonly known as the 'Age of Dinosaurs') that extended from 145 to 66 million years ago. The new specimen was recovered from uppermost Cretaceous-aged rocks, some 70 million years old, in Ganzhou City in southern China's Jiangxi Province.
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Long life is common among bird parents that get help with childcare. This finding comes from researchers at the universities of Lund and Oxford who reviewed data from more than 9,000 studies.
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Growing food in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way—while also producing enough of it—is among the most important challenges facing the U.S. and the world today.
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Malaria is the deadliest pathogen in human history. Nearly half the people on Earth are at risk of contracting the disease from the parasites that cause it. But humans aren't the only ones who can get these parasites—different forms are found in other animals, including birds. By studying the DNA of those strains, scientists can get a better picture of how malarial parasites live, which may give clues on how to stop the disease. In a new paper in PNAS, researchers analyzed blood samples of more than 1,000 species of birds from the Andes looking for malaria; they found that the strains of malaria present in a local area don't always neatly align with the types of birds living there.
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Along the western edge of Alaska's Aleutian archipelago, a group of islands that were inadvertently populated with rodents came to earn the ignominious label of the "Rat Islands." The non-native invaders were accidentally introduced to these islands, and others throughout the Aleutian chain, through shipwrecks dating back to the 1700s and World War II occupation. The resilient rodents, which are known to be among the most damaging invasive animals, adapted and thrived in the new setting and eventually overwhelmed the island ecosystems, disrupting the natural ecological order and driving out native species.
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The economic benefits of conserving or restoring natural sites "outweigh" the profit potential of converting them for intensive human use, according to the largest-ever study comparing the value of protecting nature at particular locations with that of exploiting it.
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There is real and justified concern about the state of our world's ecosystems. Satellite imagery reveals few places left untouched by humanity. As the global human population and our overall consumption continue to grow in concert with the upheaval of our climate systems, the outlook for non-human species seems grim.
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On a country road that the locals have dubbed 'Flamingo Street' Stavros Kalpakis walks alongside the tall reeds of Agios Mamas, a small northern Greek lagoon, peering through binoculars.
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When birds see a predator in their midst, one defensive strategy is to call out loudly, attracting other birds of the same or different species to do the same. Sometimes individuals within this 'mobbing flock' will fly over or at the predator or attack it directly.
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They are among the top goals of California environmentalists: preserving endangered species and replacing fossil fuels with clean energy.
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A global effort by seabird researchers, including those from NIWA, has resulted in the first assessment of where the world's most threatened seabirds spend their time.
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The lists of Earth's endangered animals and plants are getting increasingly longer. But in order to stop this trend, we require more information. It is often difficult to find out exactly where the individual species can be found and how their populations are developing. According to a new overview study published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution by Dr. Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and her colleagues, specially trained detection dogs can be indispensable in such cases. With the help of these dogs, the species sought can usually be found faster and more effectively than with other methods.
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Herd immunity, when a threshold proportion of a population becomes immune to a disease-causing organism, reducing or stopping further transmission, is very much in the news. Avian cholera much less so. But there is an intersection between these two subjects that appears to have played out over eight summers between 2005 and 2012 at the largest colony of Arctic-nesting sea ducks, specifically Northern common eiders, in the Canadian Arctic.
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Due to modern agriculture, biodiversity across many species groups is in decline. Over the last three decades, attempts have been made to counteract this with agri-environmental schemes at various levels—from the national federal state to EU-wide programs. This is not only out of appreciation of nature, but also because many species fulfill important functions for agriculture itself: some pollinate crops, others regulate pest populations.
What motivates the green volunteer?
in Bird Research in the Media
Posted
Countless numbers of volunteers throughout the world are dedicated to nature: via citizen science or through activities like planting trees or organizing nature excursions. But who are these people and why do they take action? On 16 March Wessel Ganzevoort will defend his Ph.D. this on his research on the green volunteer in the Netherlands.
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