White Ibis photographed at Brazos Bend State Park, February 2013.
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South Africa has made a valiant effort to control poaching and protect its rhinoceros population, but in 2013 a record 1004 of the animals were killed there. At this rate, the country is losing the fight to save these magnificent critters.
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The winter's most famous irruptives, the Snowy Owls, are still turning up in the darnedest places. Like McPherson Square in downtown Washington, D.C. in the middle of rush hour traffic. And in Delaware, feeding on a dolphin carcass. Finally, at least 20 of the big white birds have been seen in New Jersey this season.
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The data are in and 2013 is confirmed as the fourth warmest year on record since those records have been kept. Meantime, in winter 2014, global climate change deniers in the Northeast are chortling over the cold weather there and claiming that it proves that global warming is a hoax, while, in the southern hemisphere, several countries, like Australia, are suffering through some of the hottest summers ever.
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As the sea ice melts, the diet of polar bears is changing. Instead of feasting on seal pups, they are eating more Snow Geese and dining on plants.
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And in California this winter it has been so warm that the bears in the Sierra Nevadas that would normally be hibernating are awake and active.
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North America's most endangered songbird, the Kirtland's Warbler, may be making a comeback, however slowly. In a very hopeful sign, Bahamian researchers have reported finding some of the birds wintering on San Salvador Island for the first time in 46 years.
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It was reported this week that scientists in Brazil have discovered a new species of river dolphin, the first new such species found since 1918.
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The Hoatzin is an exceedingly strange bird only found in South America today, but new fossil evidence seems to indicate that it may have originated in the Old World and, at some point, made the transit to the New.
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It seems that almost every week brings word of a new major oil spill somewhere. 2013 was a historically bad year for such spills. Many of those were from trains, but almost as much oil spilled from burst pipelines.
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"Bug Eric" reports on a very handsome and interesting mason wasp with the tongue-twisting scientific moniker of Pseudodynerus quadrisectus.
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Why do tree-dwelling sloths take to the ground to do their pooping? And does it have something to do with moths? Stranger things occur in Nature!
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Birders seem to be vying to come up with the most unusual type of "Big Year" in 2014. Here's a birder who is doing a Phone Skope Big Year, seeing how many birds he can photograph employing a digiscope and his iPhone.
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Around the backyard:
I'm having to refill my bird feeders almost every day now. A few more Chipping Sparrows and Red-winged Blackbirds are showing up to partake of the feast and the American Goldfinch flocks have more than doubled in size. It is not unusual to see a hundred or more fly up when I head out to the feeders. But they don't go far and they settle back down as soon as I leave.
I'm continuing to see lots of the big hawks over my yard - chiefly Red-shouldered and Red-tailed.
Warblers, too, have been very plentiful around the yard this week. All in all, it has been a very good week for bird watching.
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