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Picture this: you're in your backyard gardening when you get that strange, ominous feeling of being watched. You find a gray oval-shaped ball about the size of a thumb, filled with bones and fur—a pellet, or "owl vomit." View the full article -
A new study shows that a widespread decline in abundance of emergent insects—whose immature stages develop in lakes and streams while the adults live on land—can help to explain the alarming decline in abundance and diversity of aerial insectivorous birds (i.e. preying on flying insects) across the USA. In turn, the decline in emergent insects appears to be driven by human disturbance and pollution of water bodies, especially in streams. This study, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, is one of the first to find evidence for a causal link between the decline of insectivorous birds, the decline of emergent aquatic insects, and poor water quality. View the full article
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Paleo-ecologists from The University of New Mexico and at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have demonstrated that the offspring of enormous carnivorous dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex may have fundamentally re-shaped their communities by out-competing smaller rival species. View the full article
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On a low-lying island in the Caribbean, the future of the critically endangered Bahama Oriole just got a shade brighter. A new study led by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) estimates the population of these striking black and yellow birds at somewhere between 1300 and 2800 individuals in the region they surveyed, suggesting the overall population is likely several thousand. Older studies estimated the entire population at fewer than 300, so the new results indicate there are at least 10 times as many Bahama Orioles as previously understood. The research appeared this week in Avian Conservation and Ecology. View the full article
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When building a nest, previous experience raising chicks will influence the choices birds make, according to a new study by University of Alberta scientists. View the full article
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As many people in the southern U.S. hosted neighbors who had no heat or water during the vicious February storm and deep freeze, Kate Rugroden provided a refuge for shell-shocked bats. View the full article
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Dozens of flamingos in a northern Greek lagoon have died in recent days after ingesting lead shot illegally used by hunters, a wildlife group said Wednesday. View the full article
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As a University of Queensland researcher examined a 4600-year-old Egyptian painting last year, a speckled goose caught his eye. View the full article
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A research team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that the biodiversity evolution of birds had been influenced mainly by long-term climatic changes and also by the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. View the full article
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University of Queensland scientists have developed an ultraviolet 'television' display designed to help researchers better understand how animals see the world. View the full article
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Some songbirds are not dissuaded by constant, loud noise emitted by natural gas pipeline compressors and will establish nests nearby. The number of eggs they lay is unaffected by the din, but their reproductive success ultimately is diminished. View the full article
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As climate change takes hold across the Americas, some areas will get wetter, and others will get hotter and drier. A new study of the yellow warbler, a widespread migratory songbird, shows that individuals have the same climatic preferences across their migratory range. The work is published Feb. 17 in Ecology Letters. View the full article
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The distribution of vegetation is routinely used to classify climate regions worldwide, yet whether these regions are relevant to other organisms is unknown. Umeå researchers have established climate regions based on vertebrate species' distributions in a new study published in eLife. They found that while high-energy climate regions are similar across vertebrate and plant groups, there are large differences in temperate and cold climates. View the full article
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Australians have a love-hate relationship with sulfur-crested cockatoos, Cacatua galerita. For some, the noisy parrots are pests that destroy crops or the garden, damage homes and pull up turf at sports ovals. View the full article
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Rosendo Quira silently shakes a medicinal plant to attract a condor to the bait. The bird of prey glides through the clouds over Colombia towards a mountain pass some 3,200 meters above the sea. View the full article
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Every year, billions of songbirds migrate thousands of miles between Europe and Africa—and then repeat that same journey again, year after year, to nest in exactly the same place that they chose on their first great journey. View the full article
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A team of researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the University of California–San Francisco and the University of Texas has used genetic sequencing to compare the brains of birds and mammals. They've published their results in the journal Science. Maria Antonietta Tosches with Columbia University, has published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining the work by the team and where she believes future research in the field is going. View the full article
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The European House Sparrow has a story to tell about survival in the modern world. In parts of its native range in Europe, House Sparrow numbers are down by nearly 60%. Their fate in the U.S. and Canada is less well known. A new study by Cornell Lab of Ornithology scientists aims to clarify the status of this non-native species, using 21 years of citizen science data from the Cornell Lab's Project FeederWatch. The results are published in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. View the full article
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Domestic cats hunt wildlife less if owners play with them daily and feed them a meat-rich food, new research shows. View the full article
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In December, Antarctica lost its status as the last continent free of COVID-19 when 36 people at the Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins research station tested positive. The station's isolation from other bases and fewer researchers in the continent means the outbreak is now likely contained. View the full article
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Gulls: Sentinels of bacteria in the environment
PhysOrg posted a topic in Bird Research in the Media
Gulls are one of the main wild birds that act as reservoirs of Campylobacter and Salmonella, two most relevant intestinal antibiotic-resistant bacteria causing gastroenteritis in humans. Therefore, according to an article published in the journal Science of the Total Environment seagulls could act as sentinels of the antibiotic pressure in the environment. View the full article -
Claims that forests "fall silent" because birds are killed in such large numbers during 1080 poison drops are unsupported by newly released research by Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington scientists. View the full article
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Name: Solar Orbiter, or "Solo' as the mission control team fondly call it, is one of the European Space Agency's pluckiest missions and is now cruising toward the sun. View the full article
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Love them or hate them, there's no doubt the European Starling is a wildly successful bird. A new study from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology examines this non-native species from the inside out. What exactly happened at the genetic level as the starling population exploded from just 80 birds released in New York City's Central Park in 1890, peaking at an estimated 200 million breeding adults spread all across North America? The study appears in the journal Molecular Ecology. View the full article
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Three veterinarians from Massey University's Wildbase Hospital have been involved with a recent study that has found single-use plastics are an underestimated but notable cause of albatross and fishery-related deaths in the Southern Hemisphere. View the full article
