This week in birds - #30

This week's news of birds and the environment:

All of a sudden this week I have grackles in my yard - Common Grackles. All last winter I looked for them to show up here and I never saw a one. Now, in the middle of summer, here they are! There's a flock of 50 to 100 birds that has been visiting my feeders and birdbaths this week. Many of them are obviously young birds and many of the adult birds have the scraggly look of birds that are going through a molt. It is that time of year - molting time.

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It's Olympics time once again. Did you know that the pigeon shoot used to be an event in the Olympics? Not clay pigeons - they used real, live pigeons. Fortunately for pigeons, the "sport" did not gain great popularity and was dropped.

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Did you ever wonder how tiny hummingbirds are able to fly in heavy rain, in drops that may weigh a substantial portion of their body weight? An article in The Times this week detailed how they are able to change gears and adjust their angle of flight to compensate.

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The Anacostia River near Washington, D.C. is extremely polluted and toxic and warnings are posted everywhere about fishing the river and consuming fish from it, and yet people do still fish there and they do still eat the fish. 

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A Common Murre colony in Oregon is under attack by some juvenile delinquent Brown Pelicans which catch the chicks and shake them forcing them to regurgitate their food. The pelicans have also been seen to eat the chicks. Moreover, while the parent murres are distracted by trying to protect their chicks from the pelicans, other marauders swoop in and take more chicks.

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A study of Wood Thrushes shows that they are very precise and predictable in their migratory routes, arriving at the same stops at the same times year after year. It is uncertain how the warming climate may affect their closely timed migration.

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The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, has shrunk drastically over the last forty years. A series of Landsat photos shows the sad progression. It is now down to 10% of its original size. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called its shrinkage one of the planet's most shocking environmental disasters.

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Studies indicate that active forest management to prevent fires in areas of Northern Spotted Owl habitat could benefit the endangered owls.

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The Piping Plover, another threatened species, is benefiting from extra protection along beaches in the Northeast. Its numbers are increasing along the Cape Cod National Seashore. 

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Greenland is melting! At least, its ice sheet surface is melting and at an alarming rate, too. 

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Part of the process of protecting birds on the Endangered Species List is the declaring of an area as critical habitat for the birds, but some studies show that the areas designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are often too small to meet the species' needs.

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Monarch butterflies that have darker wings have been shown in scientific tests to have better flight performance.

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Around the backyard: My backyard is still a nursery for young birds.

There seems to have been a population explosion of Northern Cardinals. Young ones are everywhere I look.

Here's a young House Finch who has learned to feed himself at the feeder.

And here's a young Blue Jay sitting in the platform feeder that has a fruit and nut mix in it, but he's oblivious to that. He's begging food from his parent who is sitting nearby!

I hope your week and your yard have been filled with interesting birds.