Fewer than 20 Antioquia brushfinches are known, and habitat is under immediate threat By the American Bird Conservancy (Washington, D.C., April 12, 2019) The Antioquia brushfinch, a rusty-crowned Colombian songbird described as a new species 12 years ago, based solely on old museum specimens, eluded scientists until it was documented for the first time in… Read more »
Marbled Murrelets, by British bird artist Darren Rees, graced the cover of the July/August 2017 issue of Bird Watcher’s Digest, and was accompanied by a fascinating story and profile of this species on the pages inside the issue. (Read the story here!) Now, to help with the cancer-related expenses of BWD’s editor and co-publisher, Bill… Read more »
Alvaro warns against getting creative when packing for a birding trip. Also, blue jays, green jays, brown jays, and gray jays are all part of the intriguing family of corvids. What makes these birds so inquisitive and social? Listen here and find out! https://www.birdwatchersdigest.net/podcasts/otwtb/episode51.mp3
Three bald eagles—two males and a female—are nesting amicably at the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge near Fulton, Illinois—again. The three parents share incubation responsibilities for the eggs—three this year—as they have in previous years. Like their relationship, their history is complicated. Male Valor 1 was young when he was spotted at the nest… Read more »
Favorite holiday gifts given and received is a major topic of this episode and among those gifts mentioned are a hockey stick, a mink coat, ten-speed bikes, and a vintage saucepan. Ben’s nightmare Christmas Bird Count experience and Bill’s Disney World surprise stories take center stage. Also mentioned are a conspiracy theory about wild birds,… Read more »
Reprinted from the Birding Community E-Bulletin The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species maintains a record of how close species may be to extinction. BirdLife International is responsible for annually measuring the health of the world of birds for this tally. Every year, BirdLife updates which birds are stable, which are in recovery, and which… Read more »
Trail-based outdoor recreation, including dog-walking, jogging, and bicycling, is on an upward trend, especially near cities. Noting that the mere presence of humans can disturb wildlife, researchers in Sweden wondered whether the change of vegetation and fragmentation of habitat caused by creation of trails, or the presence of humans on the trails was more disruptive… Read more »
Don’t look for birds on Bird Island, in Port Orange, Florida. Just south of the Dunlawton Avenue Bridge, the 1.86-acre island was reliably packed with brown pelicans, herons, and egrets until sometime in October, when the birds vanished. Numerous birdwatchers frequented the island, and even held a Big Sit there each October for the past… Read more »
Acknowledging that numerous bird species have expanded their ranges to higher latitudes and altitudes in response to the warming climate, researchers in Finland studied changes in bird populations and distributions over five decades. Habitat loss and fragmentation can hinder such range adjustments. The research shows that protected areas with high-quality habitats slowed the northern retreat… Read more »
Release by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY—Scientists have shown that a bird found in Pennsylvania is the offspring of a hybrid warbler mother and a warbler father from an entirely different genus—a combination never recorded before now and which resulted in a three-species hybrid bird. This finding has just been published in the journal Biology… Read more »
