This week in birds - #38

News of this week from the world of birds and the environment:

Photo courtesy of American Bird Conservancy

Another member of the large wren family, the Antioquia Wren is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. This wren lives in the tropical dry forest of the central Andes in Colombia. It was first seen in 2010 and was listed as a new species in the 2012 issue of The Auk. Its status has not yet been fully assessed but it is likely that its numbers are declining.

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What does America have more of than almost anybody else? Trash! So why don't we utilize that resource by burning it to create energy? Well, it turns out that we are doing that in at least 20 states mostly along the east and west coast of the county. In 2011, some 14 million megawatt hours of electricity were created by burning trash at 75 sites in those states.

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Horseshoe crabs, whose eggs are an important part of the diet of some migrating shorebirds, are sometimes referred to as "living fossils" because of their primitive appearance. In fact, they are truly living examples of evolution and why it works.

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The Brazilian state of Acre, deep in the Amazonian rainforest, is home to numerous rare species of birds, but it gets little attention from birders or ornithologists. An effort is under way to remedy that. It is hoped that a survey of the area will help to bring it to the attention of those interested in ecotourism. This could benefit the human inhabitants as well as the birds and other animals of the region.

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It turns out that there is a surprising amount of diversity in corals in the western Indian Ocean, especially around the island nation of Madagascar. It rivals the diversity found in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.

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The John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia is the most urbanized wildlife refuge in the country and it contains the largest wetland of its kind in Pennsylvania.

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DNA extracted from the bodies of specimens of the extinct Carolina Parakeet is helping to establish the relationships of new world parrots and to map their evolution.

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White-nose syndrome has killed as many as 6.7 millions bats in the U.S. since it was first identified in 2006. Now scientists in Tennessee are hoping to help the little critters by constructing a man-made bat cave which they hope will be less conducive to incubating and spreading the deadly fungal disease.

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Avian malaria is being driven farther and farther north by the phenomenon of global warming. It has now been found in birds in Alaska. Scientists fear it could be devastating to birds in the Arctic because they have developed no natural immunity to the disease.

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The mountain yellow-legged frog is a seriously endangered species in the mountains of California. Efforts are under way to help the little hoppers. One of the most effective means of assisting them seems to be the creation of trout-free zones in some remote mountain streams. There is also a captive breeding program which has had some limited success.

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A tiny, critically endangered Nevada fish, the Moapa dace, has recently experienced a population explosion. However, loss of habitat still threatens to drive it to extinction.

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In Ireland this summer, scientists tagged 25 Atlantic Puffins, those clownish-looking black-and-white birds with the big colorful beaks,  in order to monitor their migration and find out where they spend their winters.

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Around the backyard:

It's been an extremely pleasant week in the backyard and I've spent as much time as I could out there watching the birds and enjoying the weather. I've been trying to document with my camera the birds that visit the feeders. A great many of them are Northern Cardinals.

Most of the birds still exhibit some signs of molt, although this female seems to be further along than many.

A majority of the birds that I see are juveniles, as can be seen by their dark bills.

This one is a juvenile, too, but his bill has already started to turn, although it hasn't reached the bright color of the adults yet.

 And yet another youngster at a different stage in his molt.

Give him just a few more weeks and he will be drop dead gorgeous!

He's almost there - just a few feathers still to grow.

Around 6:00 P.M. yesterday, I watched the cardinals coming into the feeders for their late day snacks. This is the time of day when these birds like to feed. I counted fifteen of them at the backyard feeders and I'm confident there was a similar number at the front yard feeders at that time, along with the Mourning Doves who like to feed there late in the day.  It's certainly evident that this is one bird that is doing very well and is in no wise endangered!