This week in birds - #32

This week's news of birds and the environment:

America's favorite backyard bird drops in for a snack.

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An interesting study by researchers at the University of Georgia involved strapping mini-cams onto 60 cats in Athens, Georgia and then following their activities for a week to ten days. These were all cats that were allowed to go outside and researchers were interested in their impact on wildlife. They found that 30% of the cats (or 18 of the animals) killed prey. Of those animals killed, 41% were lizards, snakes, or frogs; 25% were small mammals; but only 12% were birds. However, when you multiply that times the millions of cats that are free roaming in the country, it amounts to a significant carnage.

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Bald Eagles have made a dramatic comeback from the brink of extinction over the last forty years and they continue to expand their range into new territory. One of the latest places to be colonized is the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Also in the San Francisco area, a massive fire at a Chevron facility caused such dangerous air pollution that residents were warned to stay inside until the fire was contained and the pollution dissipated. In addition, this week Chevron faced a midnight August 6 deadline for paying a $19 billion court judgment in Ecuador for polluting Amazon waterways. The oil giant faces similar court actions in Canada and Brazil.

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Los Quetzales National Park in Costa Rica is a wonderful place for birding and especially, as you might expect, for seeing Quetzals. Here is a report on an birding adventure there.  

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Do gulls have good color vision? Are they repelled by the color red? A businessman in England thinks so. He's painting his roof red to keep the birds off it.

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Hawaii's native birds are in deep, deep trouble and are in danger of being wiped out, and the issue just doesn't seem to be getting as much attention as it should from American birders. Audubon Magazine this month has an article on the problem called "Hawaii's Silent Extinction."

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It's cicada season and that means it is also cicada killer wasp season. These are amazing critters. I watched one capture and kill the much larger cicada last summer and I was mesmerized by the action.

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Recent finds at Mayan sites in Guatemala indicate that the Wild Turkey may have been domesticated as much as a 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.

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It turns out that Pectoral Sandpipers don't require much sleep and those that are most sleep-deprived are the most successful in producing offspring. Apparently, less sleep means more time for mating! 

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Although July was actually less sweltering than it was last year in my neck of the woods, nation-wide it was the hottest July on record in the forty-eight contiguous states since those records started being kept in 1895.

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Around the backyard:

One interesting thing that I've noted at the feeders this week is that Downy Woodpeckers and Brown-headed Nuthatches are now visiting them in good numbers. Downies have been numerous in the yard this summer, but, in the past, they have almost never visited my feeders. Now it seems that every time I look at one of the suet feeders, there is a Downy Woodpecker on it.

As for the Brown-headed Nuthatches, they almost disappeared from the neighborhood for a few years but now they seem to be making a comeback here. Perhaps the trees that have been planted in yards have matured to meet their specifications. But, again, even when I saw lots of them here in the past, they never came to my feeders. Now they do and I am one happy backyard birder!