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It seems that research shows that the ground-nesting Japanese Quail (and most likely other quail species as well) have a knack for choosing nesting sites where their eggs will blend in with the background, thus providing camouflage from predators.
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The Audubon Nature Institute and San Diego Zoo Global are set to announce a breeding program for rare and endangered species on a 1,000 acre tract of land in Louisiana, south of New Orleans. It will be different from many such programs in that the animals will be able to roam free as they would in their native habitats.
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Nature conservancy groups have purchased and will protect a 672 acre tract in Colombia that will provide safe winter habitat for the very endangered Cerulean Warbler and other neotropical migrants.
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The population of the critically endangered Malherbe's Parakeet is beginning to grow as a result of its placement on a remote predator-free island in New Zealand.
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An oil and gas field in North Dakota, where the products are extracted by the fracking process, can be seen from space at night. The lights of the rigs and the burnoff of methane from the extraction process look like a big city in the middle of nowhere.
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Plants evolve to fit their habitat and to accommodate the needs of their pollinators. Thus it should not surprise us that orchids which are pollinated by sunbirds (similar to hummingbirds) have developed a special perch where the birds can sit while sipping nectar.
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Nonnative plants can be ecological traps for native birds. Even though the birds may be attracted to them, they often do not provide sustenance for insects and other links in the food chain, thus reducing the health of the overall habitat and the birds' long-term survival chances.
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Debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami is still being cast ashore on Pacific islands. Recently, some of this debris has washed up on Hawaiian beaches.
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We think of Bohemian Waxwings as North American birds, larger and more northerly cousins of the Cedar Waxwings that visit us in winter. But these birds are also native to northern forests across Scandinavia and Russia. Recently birders in Norwich in the UK have been banding (or "ringing," as they would say) the wintering waxwings that have turned up there.
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A female Northern Shrike has returned to her wintering grounds in Wisconsin for at least the eighth consecutive winter. She is the oldest known individual of her species at 8.5 years.
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A new "garbage patch," an accumulation of floating plastic garbage, has been discovered in the South Pacific.
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The American Bird Conservancy reports that a nest of one of the most critically endangered birds in the world has been found in Brazil. The bird is the Stresemann's Bristlefront, the world population of which is thought to number less than 15 individuals.
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Around the backyard:
The nesting behavior of the Eastern Bluebirds continued to intensify this week. Just about any time I was in the backyard, I could observe the pair checking out one of the two bluebird nesting boxes on the south side of the yard.
The birds usually don't start nesting for several weeks yet. In fact, often, while they are trying to decide which box to use, the early-nesting Carolina Chickadees will get in ahead of them and raise their family before the bluebirds have a chance to build their nest. It all seems to work out in the end though and I have no shortage of bluebirds or chickadees in my yard.
Thanks for all the updates!
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to provide them, Katina.
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