This week in birds - #87

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

Photo by Bill Hubick, courtesy of ABC

The pretty little White-throated Sparrow is the Bird of the Week as designated by American Bird Conservancy. This is a bird which I always look forward to having as a visitor in my backyard during the winter. It doesn't always happen, but when they do come, they are a delight to observe and hear.

The White-throated Sparrow breeds in the far north of the continent, in most of Canada east of the Rockies and south of the tundra and in the northern United States from Minnesota east to New England. It winters mostly in the southern and eastern United States. Its population is stable and, in fact, it is one of our most common sparrow species. Also one of the most beloved.

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Now that the government shutdown has ended, the national parks and national wildlife reserves are open once again, much to the relief of the many of us who enjoy visiting them. This is also a relief to the communities around the parks and reserves which depend on them as revenue producers. It is estimated that the parks lost $450,000 per day in collection fees during the shutdown and communities lost approximately $76 million per day in lost tourist dollars. Overall, the completely unnecessary shutdown cost the country some $24 billion.

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Moose are dying off across North America and it is unclear why. The populations of the big animal everywhere seem to be in decline. Scientists investigating the die-off suspect that a combination of causes mostly related to climate change is the major culprit. Moose are cold-weather animals and a warming climate stresses them.

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The migration of the Whooping Cranes has begun. Eight hand-raised juvenile cranes from the Wisconsin/Florida flock are following their ultralight "foster parent" as it leads them on their first flight south. Meanwhile, the one last truly wild flock of the big birds, the Canada/Texas flock, has started its flight south to the Texas Gulf Coast near Rockport. Citizens across Texas are invited to watch for the birds and to report to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department if they sight any of them.

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Volunteers are collecting dead birds from around buildings in Washington, D.C. in an effort to determine which buildings produce the most collisions and deaths.

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It appears that birds having two wings was an evolutionary improvement. It seems that their ancestors originally had four wings.

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It's not entirely unusual for birds on migration to get misdirected and wind up in some strange places. They are referred to as vagrants. Recently, a vagrant Calliope Hummingbird, a western species, turned up in Cape May Point, New Jersey. The bird was last seen headed east again which was definitely the wrong way. It can only be hoped that it will redirect itself south.

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Coyotes seem to be becoming more common around Princeton, New Jersey, and there had been talk of doing a cull, but officials have now decided that the issue needs further study. They will collect data on the animals and institute public education to inform the citizenry on how to deal with them before making a decision on how to proceed further.

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In Switzerland, customs officials announced the arrest of a man caught smuggling the eggs of protected parrots in his underwear. The man allegedly traveled the globe trading in rare and protected species.

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In other egg news, the century-old egg of a critically endangered bird, the Jerdon's Courser, has been located in a dusty museum drawer in Scotland. It is hoped that DNA can be extracted from the egg to shed more light on the rare nocturnal bird that is only known to live in a tiny scrub forest in southeastern India.

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The recorded playback of birdsongs, a technique used by some birders to attract birds, has been found to be stressful and harmful for the birds because it causes them to expend unnecessary energy  in responding to the songs and searching for the interloper.

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It's official. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law a bill that will ban lead shot from the guns of hunters in California. Lead shot has been implicated in the deaths of many birds that feed on carrion, including the very endangered California Condor. California thus becomes the first state to institute such a ban.

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Collisions between birds and airplanes can be deadly for both the birds and the human passengers and they happen too frequently. In an effort to prevent such collisions, authorities cull thousands of birds each year, but there may be a better way. Integrated avian radar systems are used in some parts of the world to warn pilots of birds in the air, and they seem to work extremely well. If implemented here, they could save lives of the birds and the human fliers.