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Gulls love landfills. The residents of Monmouth County, New Jersey have learned that to their sorrow. Large numbers of the big birds have descended on the area recently, having been attracted by a nearby landfill. Big birds create big poop and lots of big birds can create an awful lot of big poop. That is the problem. Officials are trying to find a way to disperse the birds and move them along.
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In a truly bizarre and tragic accident this week in Utah, about 1500 Eared Grebes were killed when they crashed headlong into a parking lot during a storm. Apparently the waterbirds mistook the glistening asphalt of the parking lot for a body of water.
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Birds with penises? Yes, indeed, many of the larger birds do have penises. Ostriches, Emus and other members of the ratite family, as well as many large water birds like geese, swans, and ducks, have such an organ. Researchers have established, however, that avian penises differ from mammalian ones in that they become erect when filled with lymphatic fluid rather than blood.
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The Black-throated Robin is a rare bird of China. Although it is a close relative of the European Robin, it looks a lot like North America's Black-throated Blue Warbler. There's good news about the endangered robin this week. New breeding sites have been found for the bird in northern China.
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It's always exciting when science discovers new, previously unknown species. There have been a whole raft of such discoveries recently:
- The world's two tiniest frogs, both smaller than a penny, have been discovered in Papua New Guinea.
- Another new frog, a tree frog, has been found that has complex vocalizations like a bird.
- Over 1,000 new species of various kinds have been found in the Australian Outback recently and scientists believe there may be thousands more waiting to be discovered.
- In 2010 in the Mekong Delta of Southeast Asia, 208 new species were found.
- A new species of large horned pit viper has been identified in Tanzania but scientists are keeping its location a secret in order to protect it.
It's enough to make one wonder what may be lurking, undiscovered, in one's own backyard.
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Ecotourism has become a money-making enterprise in many parts of the world and now Sierra Leone in Africa is hoping to add its name to the popular destinations for Nature-lovers. The bird-rich country wants to attract birders. The country which has been a war-torn area for many years has a new national park which has over 500 species of butterflies, 300 species of birds, and 45 species of mammals. This should be enough to pull the tourists in.
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In parts of the world, egg collecting is still a popular hobby, even though for the most part it is illegal. In Britain recently, police arrested a notorious thief of rare bird eggs. He had taken eggs from birds' nests in the wild and at the time of his arrest, he had more than 700 eggs in his home.
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The American Bird Conservancy has petitioned the Department of the Interior to develop stringent regulations to protect birds and other animals in the vicinity of wind farms.
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Researchers have established that sparrows that are stressed by the presence of predators produce smaller numbers of offspring than those that feel more secure.
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Fossil feathers of a 1,000 year old Ibis on the Hawaiian island of Lanai have given clues to how the bird looked and behaved. It was a smallish flightless bird and had brown and white feathers indicating that it might have looked somewhat like a young White Ibis.
The ancient Ibis might have looked somewhat like these two juvenile White Ibises feeding at Brazos Bend State Park.
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