This week in birds - #37

News of birds and the environment from this week:

Great Blue Heron with wings spread, enjoying the late summer sun.

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The International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Zoological Society of London have published a list of the 100 most endangered species on earth. The list ranges from fungi to frogs to flowers.

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And speaking of endangered species, while the banking system of the Cayman Islands may be doing well, the parrots and iguanas are not. Many of them are endangered and they need more space in protected habitats in order to survive and thrive.

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Although summer in my area has actually been rather mild compared to last year, for the country as a whole it has been the third hottest summer on record.

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Audubon Guides has an online series of tips on identifying hawks. There have been entries on accipiters (such as Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawks) and falcons (Peregrines, Kestrels, etc.) and the latest post deals with the big hawks - buteos (Red-tailed, Red-shouldered, Swainson's, etc.).

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An ancient plant, Borderea chouardii, one of the world's rarest, lives only on two cliffs of the Spanish Pyrenees and it has a symbiotic relationship with ants which helps it to survive.

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You may have heard of the outbreak of hantavirus among visitors who have stayed in cabins at Yosemite National Park. This week a ninth victim was identified. The virus is carried by rodents and is usually transmitted to people when they breathe dust that contains feces or urine matter from those animals. The virus causes a pulmonary disease which can be fatal.  

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Crows are able to remember and recognize human faces and distinguish those who have been mean to them from those who have treated them well. Scientists have determined that they use the same parts of the brain as humans do to accomplish this feat.

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The big new species discovery of the week is a monkey called the lesula which was discovered in the central part of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa.

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A rare Alaskan seabird called the Kittlitz Murrelet is being evaluated to determine if it should be added to the Endangered Species List. This is the fifth year of the study that is expected to make that determination.

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The destruction of one species often leads to the expansion of another. In Guam, the highly invasive brown treesnake has laid waste to much of the island's native bird population. The reduction in the number of birds has resulted in an increase in the number of spiders.

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Last year the USDA redid its plant hardiness zone map and, in January, released a new map to reflect warming temperatures. That map took my garden from zone 8B to zone 9A. But now it looks like the climate is warming so fast that that map may already be out of date.

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Around the backyard:

The Chimney Swifts are still with us. I was out in the yard today and heard their twittering overhead. I looked up to see about a dozen of the swift-flying little cigar-shaped birds circling over my yard. At least some of them are still spending nights in our chimney. When I am up late, I hear them chittering away up there. They are actually one of the last of the summer birds to leave us and move on to their wintering grounds. It is not unusual to see them here well into October or even November.