A group of scientists claim that they have found a way to determine the colors of fossilized feathers. The feathers used in the study are from a 100 million year-old specimen found in Brazil. The fossil itself (see right) shows dark and light contrasting bands.

Microscopic analysis of the dark bands showed they displayed a distinctive granular texture, made from thousands of tiny, densely-packed flattened spheres.

Researchers had previously interpreted these as fossilised bacteria, preserved as the feathers decomposed.

But analysis of modern birds' feathers showed a similar structure.

"There are particular cells that cluster into the dark areas of modern birds called melanosomes," explained Dr Benton.

"Somehow [the melanosomes] are retained and replaced during the preservation process and hence you preserve a very life like representation of the colour banding [in the fossils]."

Lighter areas in the fossils did not show the same textures, leading the team to conclude that the feathers once displayed distinct black and white stripes.

Apparently other colors in modern birds also have distinctive patterns when viewed under a microscope. If so, potentially palaeontologists could reconstruct more intricate feather patterns than just black and white (or dark and light). The methods should also work with materials other than feathers, such as fur.

Mike Bergin asks: "Why are you still bird blogging?"

Now some readers might wonder whether I am still bird blogging. In recent weeks, posting topics have included public transportation, Daily Show videos, Supreme Court decisions, Bush administration follies, the border wall, a pink millipede, climate change, federal legislation, and Hummers. If you look back further into the archives, you can find many more non-bird topics, or at least posts that do not explicitly feature birds or birding.

Contrary to rumor, I am still blogging about birds, even if the focus of my bird blogging has changed. While I originally intended this blog was to focus on birding trip reports, lately my focus has shifted more to bird and environmental news. So why do I still blog about birds after three years?

Here are a few reasons:

1. Birds are endlessly fascinating creatures.
   
2. I still watch birds and go birding whenever I can.
3. I still see life birds from time to time.
   
4. Birds are relevant to human health.
5. Birds are affected by ongoing environmental problems.
6. I am still involved in bird surveys.
7. There is a steady stream of research about birds.
8. Rare birds still need help and protection.
   

I could probably think of more, but those ought to suffice to answer the question. All of those things give me plenty of writing material and plenty of reason to keep writing about it. Plus, the knowledge that there are regular readers who are interested in what I have to write keeps me posting even through the most prolonged bouts of writer's block.

Early education is crucial for forming one's attitudes towards the environment and conservation. When I was young, I was exposed to information about the environment through a variety of source. As a result, I grew up with a sense of the importance of conserving resources and maintaining habitats and the wildlife that uses it – a trait that my siblings share.

Conservationists in the U.K. wanted to know how well grade-school age children understand rainforest ecosystems and which taxa they think are most important. So they used a drawing competition to find out. The result?

Our results clearly demonstrate that primary-age children have very sophisticated perceptions of rainforests and include a wide variety of different climatic and vegetative components in their drawings. They are also aware that rainforests are populated with a diverse animal fauna. Such perceptiveness by children, the majority of whom have presumably never visited a real rainforest, demonstrates a significant public awareness of what a rainforest environment consists of and what makes it important. Such understanding is a crucial first step in conservation. Although awareness will not guarantee protection, lack of awareness will make achieving conservation of endangered environments and species difficult. Knowledge of the diversity of species and of the natural world is also important in recruiting the next generation of naturalists and conservationists.

Despite children's awareness of rainforest biodiversity, several taxa, particularly social insects, insects and annelids, are still under-represented compared to their contribution to rainforest biomass and global biodiversity. Such a finding supports previous studies, and may be driven by a variety of factors. Two likely explanations for this are that children are more aware of larger taxa or that children prefer larger taxa. An additional factor in the latter point could be that children drew larger taxa because they felt that this would give them a better chance of winning the competition (perhaps because they deem them to be prettier). Either of these explanations reveals that children's perceptions focus on mammals and birds and undervalues the true importance of invertebrates.

The authors link these early perceptions to the current underrepresentation of invertebrates in conservation plans for vulnerable ecosystems. I am not entirely convinced by that, but I agree with their suggestion that the public profile of invertebrates and other less charismatic fauna could be a lot higher than it is now, especially among the adults who decide on priorities. Perhaps that would lead to stronger support for conserving them.

A column in today's Baltimore Sun begins with this paragraph:

When gas prices were clunking along in the low 3-buck-something range, mass transit didn't seem nearly as interesting as it does now. For the vast majority of us, the idea of sharing the commuting experience with strangers was as remote as planting our own tofu trees.

Yes, that does seem remote, because tofu does not grow on trees.

This past week, I spent several days visiting family in Cape May County. (Thus my absence from the internet.) This was my first time in Cape May since I started birding. However, several previous visits there in the late 1990s helped spark my interest in birds. Seeing glossy ibises, American oystercatchers, and laughing gulls for the first time made me realize that it was possible to see a lot more bird species than what I was used to in Central Jersey. (It still took a few more years before I started actively seeking out birds.) Though last week's trip was not primarily a birding expedition, there were still opportunities to observe the midsummer avian diversity at the cape's habitats.

Hereford Inlet has a growing sandbar that is now home to oystercatchers and other beach-nesting birds. I do not remember it being there the last time I visited (about ten years ago). On Monday evening, we had repeated looks at black skimmers foraging there in their unique style.

At the southern end of the Wildwoods, Cape May NWR's Two Mile Beach Unit offers access to beach and dune habitats. Several sections of the beach are closed during spring and summer months to protect nesting shorebirds. When we stopped there on Tuesday morning, piping plover and least tern nests were not apparent, but several oystercatcher pairs guarded nests in the northernmost enclosure. Other highlights included a flyby brown pelican, black-crowned night herons on the Cape May Inlet jetties, and a multitude of ospreys. Ghost crabs were skittering all over the beach. A few engaged in territorial battles, and I witnessed one crab kill and eat a slightly smaller one.

On Tuesday afternoon, we spent a few hours at Villas WMA, a former golf course that has been converted into grasslands habitat. Villas is a bit off the beaten track for visiting birders, perhaps because it only opened to the public in 2006. The birds were more or less what one would expect for meadow/edge habitats – indigo buntings, eastern kingbirds, chipping sparrows, purple martins, and the like. The dragonflying, however, was excellent. Former golf course water features have become weedy ponds, perfect for dragonflies to hunt and breed. I noted nine species of dragonflies, and there were more that I could not identify. The possibilities for finding butterflies look good, too, though the site lacked enough wildflowers for a true butterfly meadow.

Wednesday morning was spent at South Cape May Meadows, a.k.a. Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge. The refuge consists of a large marsh and narrow beach managed by the Nature Conservancy. In summer, the refuge provides nesting habitat for federally-endangered piping plovers and state-endangered least terns. Both species were present last week. Piping plover chicks looked really cute. Least terns were diving and scolding at any visitors who walked along the refuge path near one of the nests. The highlight of the visit to the Meadows, though, was a life bird – two gull-billed terns. These terns have very distinctive bills, though the bills are a bit smaller than I had expected. This refuge is one that I would definitely like to visit again in other seasons, as the habitat seems very productive.

One shorebird on the refuge beach, a sandpiper of the Calidris genus, gave me some trouble. Its plumage resembled that of a semipalmated sandpiper, except that its primaries projected well beyond the tip of the tail. This would seem to indicate a Baird's sandpiper, but I am hesitant to claim a life bird based on this field mark alone. So for now, it will remain a Calidris-sp.

Wednesday afternoon included a brief walk at Cape May Point State Park, which wrapped up the birding walks for the trip. We missed birding at a few prominent sites such as Higbee Beach and Stone Harbor, along with some less-prominent ones like Hidden Valley or Rea Farm. The Hawkwatch lacked migrating hawks to watch, and the CMBO's outpost at Cape May Point was closed for the week. (The one in Goshen is a bit out of the way.)

Overall, it was a good trip, and we covered most of the county's habitat types. I am hoping to return to Cape May at some point for more birding. I understand that migration there is spectacular.

(I have edited the year list to include my most recent sightings from Cape May County.)

Many recent news stories have noted that more Americans are switching to public transportation because of higher fuel prices. Over the past six months, Americans have driven 30 million fewer miles; meanwhile, ridership on public transit is at its highest level in 50 years. This article suggests some caveats.

Most of America's public transit riders are based in a few large cities. About half of all transit commuters live in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, according to the Congressional Research Service. Collectively, these cities and surrounding areas make up roughly 70 percent of all public transportation trips in the United States.

That's not surprising, since public transportation works best in areas with at least 15 homes per acre and preferably more, Deakin said. America's love for low-density housing development makes mass transit less feasible in areas without large urban cores.

If a half-mile radius is the maximum convenient walking distance for a transit station, 7,800 workers would reside in the estimated 400 developed acres encompassing that half-mile radius, Deakin estimates. "If 25 percent take transit to get to work, that is only 2,000 transit commuters, a pretty low number for the transit station ... and work trips tend to be half of all trips made by transit," Deakin said.

"Bottom line: We can get people to select transit when it is convenient, comfortable and a good choice, but if we build all low-density neighborhoods, few people will have a reasonable transit option," Deakin said.

It is true that most Americans do not have access to good public transit – a fact that has made the current surge in gas prices so painful. This deficiency ought to be remedied as quickly as possible. Moving more commuters from cars to transit would ameliorate the effects of higher fuel costs and reduce the overall contribution of transportation to climate change. Building new transit lines, especially rail, would create opportunities to build higher-density neighborhoods and reduce the need to destroy wildlife habitat for building new subdivisions and shopping centers.

Bird news

• Magellanic penguins have declined 50% since the 1960s. The main cause appears to be food scarcity, brought on by overfishing and climate change. Oil spills have caused at least three large-scale nesting failures. Stress from ecotourism may be a factor as well.
• A flock of 200 black skimmers deserted an enclosed nesting area on a Florida beach after a single peregrine attack. The birds may have joined other established colonies.
• At least one California condor chick has been killed by wildfires near Big Sur.
  
• Golden eagles are declining in Scotland due to the use of poisoned baits.
  
• Selenium and mercury threatens birds that winter or breed around Utah's Great Salt Lake.
• The Post Express has birding tips for condo dwellers.
• New Jersey may create a special commission to preserve the Dismal Swamp.
  
• Yemen's new national bird is the golden-winged grosbeak.
  

Birds in the blogosphere

• Audubon Magazine Blog: Plovers and Pyros
• Mike's Birding & Digiscoping Blog: Winnie and ANWR
• Urban Hawks: Annus Horribilis
• Drinking Bird: Blow Up Your Field Guides
• Laelaps: Geese from barnacles
• BirdCouple: Birdng by Train
  

Environmental news

• Excessive carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to ocean acidification, since oceans absorb 40% of emissions. This could contribute to population crashes in commercially-valuable fish species.
• Flaws in the mathematical models used for the IUCN Red List could cause the models to underestimate the extinction risk for many species.
• A state court in Georgia blocked the construction of a new coal-fired power plant because the permit failed to set a limit on carbon emissions from the plant.
• A map created from satellite images documents the progress of world deforestation over a five-year period. Deforestation is linked to biodiversity loss and climate change.
• Land purchased in the Everglades deal may be difficult to rehabilitate because of sugar growing practices and lack of funds. Lack of federal funding has already hampered existing projects.
• Two conservation groups just purchased about 500 square miles of forest in Montana from a timber company.
  
• Studying dragonfly larvae could be an easy way to test water for toxic chemicals.
  

Carnivals and newsletters

• Berry Go Round #6
• Festival of the Trees #25
• BirdLife News Round-up: June 2008
  
• Birds in the News #137
  

My Birdcam took these two videos recently. They are both set at a ground-level birdbath. The bath itself is simply a shallow ceramic plate, nothing fancy.

First, a mourning dove.

Second, a hatch-year robin.


If the embedded videos will not play, you can find the mourning dove here and the robin here.

A recent study found that migratory songbirds can learn from local resident birds when they reach unfamiliar territory for the first time. In particular, birds need to learn which predators to avoid.

The research team tested whether migratory songbirds observe the anti-predator behaviour of local birds, which are familiar with local predators. One common form of this self-protecting behaviour is "mobbing": The birds approach a potential predator, rapidly changing position around its location and performing restless wing and tail movements while emitting loud, broad-frequency calls. These calls are easily recognizable and act as signals of threat.

Because migrating birds rarely participate in mobs, the researchers speculate that they may gain information about predator location, identity and degree of threat through listening to mob calls of other species residing in the area. To test this theory, they broadcast playbacks of alarm calls that were familiar (black-capped chickadee, common in North America) and foreign (blue-gray tanager, common in Central America) to birds migrating between Canada and Belize.

The Belizean resident birds responded only to the tanager calls, but migrant birds responded to both the tanagers and the chickadees.

You can find the full paper online here (subscription required).

There remains some research to demonstrate the hypothesis; the research team still wants to test the reaction of migrant birds wintering in Belize against the behavior of those same migrants along their fall migration path. Still, this is an intriguing result. It is one more reason why it is silly to use "bird brain" as an insult. Animals have much better learning capabilities than many people realize.

A question that frequently arises among birders is what happens to vagrant or extralimital birds when they fly off course. Some hold that their lives are nasty and short; others point to examples of rare birds persisting for long periods at a single location. (I tend to fall into the latter group, though I can see arguments for both.) If migrants can observe the behavior of local birds and learn from them, it provides some hope that vagrant birds might be able to do so as well.

In this Daily Show segment, Jon Stewart reports on the ignored email story from last week. If the embedded video does not work, try here. In addition, John Hodgman comments on the oil addiction.

Last week, PloS ONE published an interesting paper that argues that a diverse bird population lowers the human risk of contracting the West Nile Virus (WNV). The study compared WNV infection rates in sixty-five pairs of neighboring counties, in which one county had human WNV infections and the other did not, while both had infected birds. (One of the pairs included my home county, Middlesex, and its neighbor to the west, Somerset.)

The paper measured the inter-county contrast in human infection rates against the contrast in various measures of avian biodiversity. (Bird population data was derived from the Breeding Bird Survey.) It found that greater bird diversity correlated with fewer human infections. Avian biodiversity explained about 30% of the contrast.

The reason is something called the "dillution effect," which was first observed with Lyme disease transmission. The mechanism for the dillution effect is unclear; none of the proposed mechanisms matched up with the data in this paper's analysis. However, it seems to be related to the greater relative abundance of species that are poor hosts for the disease compared to species that are more susceptible. In the case of WNV, highly-susceptible species such as crows and robins tend to predominate in areas of lower bird diversity, so the disease will have plenty of hosts and a greater likelihood of spreading beyond birds.

Here are a few interesting points from the analysis:

1. The analysis confirms that robins play a role in spreading WNV to humans. This has been reported in other studies, including one in Washington.
2. Unsurprisingly, corvids (crows, jays) are associated with human infections.
3. Surprisingly, finches also seem to be associated with human cases of WNV. I had not heard of finch susceptibility before reading this paper.
   
4. Passerines as a group appear to be resilient in the face of WNV outbreaks, at least in the initial stages of an epidemic. This seems to contradict some previous reports, but perhaps not. The authors suggest that many passerine species may be poor hosts.
   
5. Non-passerines seem much more susceptible to WNV than previously thought, so there may be many susceptible host species outside of Passeriformes.
   

As Mike wrote, studies like this provide us with a self-centered rationale for maintaining a diverse avian population. When we promote wildlife conservation, we are also promoting our own health.

From my own persepective, it may support conserving wildlife within cities as well as outside of them. Many environmentalists and urbanists argue that urban parks should not be wildlife habitat and should be for people instead. (I do not think those goals are always in conflict, but the argument exists.) This paper provides an example of how increasing local biodiversity can be beneficial to humans in concrete ways. In the case of WNV, the dillution effect works independently of relative urbanization. This suggests that perhaps a diverse wildlife population should have a place in urban planning.

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Blog Note: I will not have internet access for the next few days, so I have prepared several posts to publish automatically. (If you do not know how to schedule posts, see here.) Though the blog will have the regular posting schedule, I will not be able to respond to comments or email until later in the week.

Last week, when Florida announced that it would buy U.S. Sugar properties in South Florida, it seemed to me that some things were being left unsaid in the initial wire reports. I was particularly concerned with the funding for the purchase, and wondered if any other problems were lurking. (Yes, the last eight years have made me very cynical, indeed.) It turns out that funding is a problem in the Everglades deal.

But the deal will also tie up much of the state's share of Everglades funding -- at a time when budget worries have delayed other projects in the restoration plan. Federal funds have been so scarce that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is co-managing the restoration, has been ordered to slash project costs.

The state typically spends about $325 million a year on Everglades projects, said Tom Olliff, the district's assistant executive director. But the debt payments on the $1.7 billion sugar deal will eat up as much as $153 million of that each year.

The water district should still have about $170 million a year to spend on other Everglades projects and land purchases, Olliff said. But some of that money must be approved annually by the Legislature, which cut Everglades funding for the budget year that begins Tuesday.

No one has drawn plans for building on the U.S. Sugar property, but any combination of new reservoirs and marshes would certainly add billions of dollars to the price tag. For example, a 16,000-acre Everglades reservoir under construction in Palm Beach County is expected to cost taxpayers about $800 million.

Restoration of natural flow from Lake Okeechobee to Everglades National Park also seems unlikely, despite initial reports.

''It's a lovely concept,'' said Carol Ann Wehle, the water management district's executive director. But ``you are never, ever going to have sawgrass marsh there.''

Planners say the sugar fields south of the lake have lost too much earth to farming, leaving a deep bowl that would prevent any water from flowing to the south without artificial pumps. Studies also have shown that converting the sugar fields to marsh would produce so much evaporation that the Everglades could wind up with less water.

In any case, Lake Okeechobee's water is simply too polluted to pour directly into the Glades. A reservoir would allow water managers to manipulate water depths and move it where it's needed depending on rainfall and seasonal conditions.

There are other issues as well; in particular, indigenous tribes living in the area do not seem to have been consulted by the state. There is plenty more discussion at the link.

The deal was still worth doing, even if it temporarily stops some of the other restoration projects. U.S. Sugar's cessation of operations will remove at least one major water user and polluter. That seems to be a step in the right direction, even if its potential takes a long time to be realized.

Last year, lead dust in the town of Esperance, Australia, killed 4,000 birds. The dust's source was a shipment of lead from Magellan Metals' Wiluna mine that passed through Esperance. A year later, the problem persists.

Dr Nic Dunlop, who contributed to the study, says it found most birds recorded lead levels 10 to 100 times higher than normal.

He says the contamination is likely to cause more bird deaths.

"Now the problem is over time, they will increasingly ingest that lead, either through preening or through their food, so it's quite likely as time goes on that we will get a second wave of impact on birds and other wildlife as a consequence of that lead," he said.

The Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan says the study is outdated.

She says the Government is constantly monitoring lead levels in the area.

"Since then we have done another comprehensive clean up at the port and since then all of the other tests that we have done all of the tests, November, December, January, February, March are all showing improvements in the outcomes in fact quite dramatic improvements," she said.

It is a very sad situation, and one that must be unsettling for the town's residents. So far I have not heard about any human casualties from lead pollution in Esperance, but I am sure that it is having an effect – if not among adults then among children. This is one reason that it is good to keep birds around: they are much more sensitive to changes in the environment, and sound the alarm when something is wrong.

Last night Bill Moyers interviewed Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) on the Bill Moyers Journal. The segment covers the 20th anniversary of James Hansen's initial warning about climate change in 1988, Boxer's conflicts with Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), and the recent demise of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

Unfortunately PBS does not make it possible to embed its videos, so you will have follow the link to the PBS website to watch it.

In yesterday's Loose Feathers, I linked to a story about how migratory birds have adjusted to climate change (or not, in some cases), according to the records at the Manomet research station. Basically, the short-distance migrants, like swamp sparrow, were able to adjust their schedules to keep pace with a warmer climate because the temperatures on their wintering grounds are pretty similar to the temperatures at Manomet, and follow similar cycles. Meanwhile, the long-distance migrants, like great-crested flycatcher, winter in the tropics and do not have the same temperature cues as a bird in the temperate zone. So they have not adjusted their schedules.

The reason this is important is that a warming climate is also changing what the birds will find when they get to their destinations. Consider the following two news reports, both issued yesterday.

First, the types of fish prevalent in Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound have changed over the past fifty years.

According to Jeremy Collie, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, the fish community has shifted progressively from vertebrate species (fish) to invertebrates (lobsters, crabs and squid) and from benthic or demersal species -- those that feed on the bottom -- to pelagic species that feed higher in the water column. In addition, smaller, warm-water species have increased while larger, cool-water species have declined....

"While we're catching more fish now, we're also catching smaller fish," said Collie, "and that corresponds with how the preferred temperatures of the fish here have changed. The fish community now is dominated by warm-water adapted species compared with what we started with, and fish that live in warmer water are smaller."

Collie added that fishing may also be a factor in the decline in fish size, since fishing removes the largest individuals from a population while leaving the smaller ones. However, he believes that climate is "the dominant signal." Sea surface temperature in the area of the trawls has increased by 2 degrees Centigrade since 1959, and the preferred temperature of the fish caught in the trawls has also increased by 2 degrees C.

Second, plants in Europe are climbing mountains at a rate of 29 m per decade.

Professor Lenoir, an ecologist at AgroParisTech, France, said the team wanted to establish whether "fingerprints of climate change were already apparent in ordinary ecosystems".

In order to do this, the team of French and Chilean researchers compared the distribution of forest species between 1905 and 1985 with their distribution between 1986 and 2005....

"We used 171 species commonly found over French mountains, which are part of Mediterranean, temperature and mountainous forest ecosystems between 0m to 2,600m above sea level.

"We found a significant change in species' altitudinal distribution towards higher elevation of about 29 metres per decade.

"Out of the 171 species, most are shifting upwards to recover temperature conditions that are optimal for their development and reproduction."

These may serve as examples of how local ecosystems are changing rapidly in the face of warmer climates. Similar trends occur in phenomena more closely related to the timing of bird migration. A warmer spring may prompt plants to sprout, flower, and leaf more quickly. This in turn will affect any associated insects – either pollinators or leaf-eaters. The insects will either hatch and breed earlier, or keep to their schedules and have less to eat as a result.

Birds that time their migrations to take advantage of floral nectar (hummingbirds) or abundant insects (flycatchers and other insectivores) will find food scarcer than it used to be. Flowers and insects may already be past their peak by the time the birds arrive. Adjusting their migration schedules is absolutely crucial to their survival in a warmer climate.

Bird news

• A paper in Science may make our field guides obsolete. Genetic analysis by the Early Bird project of 169 bird species, representing all major groups, revealed that much of current bird taxonomy is wrong and that many bird groups that appear to be similar evolved separately. For example, falcons are more closely related to parrots and songbirds than to hawks and eagles. The most thorough account of the findings that I have seen so far is at Living the Scientific Life. Science Daily has a good write-up, too. National Geographic illustrates some of the new sister clades.
• Scientists at Manomet on Cape Cod analyzed data for 32 bird species and found that eight of them migrated past the observatory much earlier than they did 38 years ago. These eight are short-distance migrants coming from elsewhere in the U.S. and can adjust their migration schedules to keep up with earlier springs. Birds that winter in Central or South America have not adjusted as well because they do not have the same temperature cues.
  
• A preliminary study in 2007 at Judith Gap Wind Energy Center found 1,206 bats and 406 birds died from turbine-related causes. The wind farm is the largest in Montana. ABC has a round-up of recent work on mitigation measures to prevent wind farm deaths.
  
• Agribusiness and ethanol lobbyists are pushing the federal government to allow farmers to plant corn on land that is currently in the Conservation Reserve Program. The CRP is the largest federal land conservation program and benefits many species of birds.
• White storks have benefited from a reintroduction program in Alsace and Lorraine. Twenty-five years ago, only 9 stork pairs were left in the Upper Rhine Valley; now there are 270 pairs.
  
• Eight captive California condors had to be evacuated from the Ventana Wildlife Society due to a nearby wildfire.
• The white-winged flufftail is an endangered species about which little is known, including whether it migrates. The lack of information frustrates conservation action plans.
  
• The RSPB is working with hunting groups to reduce raptor killings on private lands.
• Illinois is re-evaluating its state list of threatened and endangered species.
• The Guardian has a gallery of the most aggressive birds.
• Another gallery shows a heron grabbing and eating a duckling.
  
• Here is a profile of the naturalist at Cheesequake State Park (New Jersey).
• The CLO has free resources available for teachers and parents who want to do citizen science projects in urban areas.
  

Birds in the blogosphere

• Bug Girl: Aquatic Mercury in Food webs
• Picus Blog: Mississippi Kites in Newmarket, NH
  
• Rigor Vitae: English Sparrow Update (on predation by other birds)
• 10,000 Birds: Green Herons and their Groovy Necks
• Ecobirder: Yellowstone Barrow's Goldeneye
• Birdfreak: Bird Conservation - Prothonotary Warbler
• BES Group: White-throated Kingfisher: Non-iridescent colours
  
• Birds and Things: English Sparrows Seen As A Nuisance
• Zen Birdfeeder: Adirondack Loon Census July 19th (volunteers needed!)
  

Environmental news

• California has announced a plan to cut state greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
  
• Brazil seized 3,100 cattle that were grazing on illegally-cleared rainforest land.
• A sugar cane biofuels project in Kenya threatens to destroy the country's most diverse wetlands. The Tana Delta wetlands are home to 345 species of birds and support the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and fishermen.
• One result of Florida's purchase of U.S. Sugar lands is that it removes a political obstacle from Everglades restoration.
  
• A proposed coal-fired power plant in rural Virginia has drawn heavy opposition from residents.
• A study of the impact of acid rain on microorganisms in Adirondack lakes found that high acidity reduced overall bacterial diversity, but increased some rarer forms of bacteria.
• According to the Energy Information Administration, expanding offshore drilling would do little to change gasoline prices.
  
• James Hansen: Twenty Years Later
  

Carnivals and newsletters

• I and the Bird #78
• Tangled Bank #108
• Carnival of Environmental Issues #24
  
• Birds in the News #136
  

The latest I and the Bird is online at It's Just Me.

Spring is accompanied by an explosion of birdsong that lasts well into the summer. Every morning for the past few months I have woken to the sound of a catbird singing outside my window. We are all familiar with the role birdsong plays in the early breeding season. Males sing to win and defend their territories and, in turn, attract females to mate with them. As the breeding season progresses, continued singing by adults helps juvenile birds learn to sing. It turns out that late season singing has one more function: it helps fledglings find appropriate breeding habitat for the following year.

That was the conclusion of a recent study involving one of my favorite birds, the black-throated blue warbler (Dendroica caerulescens). The researchers wanted to test whether social cues, such as late season birdsong or the presence of fledglings, helped other birds determine which sites had the best potential for breeding.

They set up 54 test sites in White Mountain National Forest in places with inappropriate habitat (to eliminate the possibility that birds followed vegetation cues rather than social cues). At the end of the breeding season in 2006, each site was given one of three treatments: left alone (a control group); song playbacks with male decoys (location cues); song playbacks with male decoys, plus female decoys attending fledgling decoys with with playbacks of begging calls (public information).

That summer, the researchers checked all three types of sites for the presence of black-throated blue warblers that might be looking for future breeding habitat. Sites with an artificial social cue were more likely to receive visits from fledgling warblers than the control sites. Both males and females were observed at the test sites.

The following year (2007), researchers conducted point counts at the test sites to check for warbler activity. Male warblers were far more likely to set up territories at sites where they had heard playback of territorial songs or fledgling calls the year before than at control sites. Females seemed to follow the presence of males; females were observed only at test sites where a male warbler was present.

Since warblers were equally likely to return to sites with location cues (song playback) and public information (song playback and dummy nests), the researchers surmised that late-season birdsong alone was a reliable indicator of good nesting habitat. To test this, researchers checked 60 known warbler territories for singing males.

Song frequency within territories was positively correlated with reproductive success, but only towards the end of the period observed.... By late in the breeding season (31 July), singing was 5.1 times (95% CI: 1.89-22.28) more likely on territories that successfully fledged young than those that did not. Conspecific song in the post-breeding season was therefore a reliable indicator of breeding success.

This result may be of interest to birders who volunteer for breeding atlases or other types of nest surveys.

Birdsong turns out to be a complex and powerful communication tool. For a short-lived species such as the black-throated blue warbler, which has to migrate thousands of miles between its wintering and breeding grounds, individual birds have relatively few chances to produce offspring. Reliance on a social cue like birdsong helps young birds avoid making some nesting mistakes in their first breeding season. They thus can produce more offspring over the course of their lives. It also holds advantages for the species as a whole, since local populations will be able to adapt more quickly to changes in their environment.

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Matthew G. Betts, Adam S. Hadley, Nicholas Rodenhouse, and Joseph J. Nocera, "Social information trumps vegetation structure in breeding-site selection by a migrant songbird." Proceedings of The Royal Society B (online edition, published June 17, 2008). doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.0217

The Supreme Court issued its verdict in the Exxon Valdez case today. The justices reduced punitive damages from $2.5 billion to $507.5 million. That works out to about $15,000 per plaintiff.

"The punitive damages award against Exxon was excessive as a matter of maritime common law," wrote Justice David Souter in the majority opinion. "In the circumstances of this case, the award should be limited to an amount equal to compensatory damages."

The court was divided five to three.

The 32,677 plaintiffs in the case have been waiting for their compensation since 1994, when a jury in Anchorage returned a $5 billion punitive-damages award against Exxon Mobil Corp. The company has been appealing the verdict since then. In 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cut the award to $2.5 billion. Exxon appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the case on Feb. 27.

Business groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had hoped that the Supreme Court would use the Exxon Valdez case as a way to curb what they believe are large punitive damages against corporations.

Former Alaska governors, the current governor, the congressional delegation, supertanker captains, environmentalists, state lawmakers, Alaska Natives and experts in maritime law all joined with the 32,677 plaintiffs in asking that the Supreme Court uphold the $2.5 billion verdict.

This is clearly a big win for ExxonMobil, which has used its financial advantages to delay paying punitive damages for fifteen years while whittling down its size to the point that it is only a tenth of what the jury awarded.

See also: Exxon Valdez spill by the numbers (via)

Update: Here are reactions from residents of Cordova, Alaska, home port of many of the fishermen affected by the spill.

Despite all that we have seen over the past seven (long) years, these reports never fail to amaze me:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

In addition to the economic benefits of emissions reductions, the email also included politically inconvenient analysis of the Clean Air Act. It concluded that the E.P.A. could regulate at least some greenhouse gases under current law, while the White House was arguing that the Clean Air Act gave no such authority and that new legislation would be required.

It has become pretty apparent at this point that this administration's goal is simply to run out the clock on greenhouse gas reductions and leave the problem for the next administration to solve. Still, refusing to even open an email, much less answer it, strikes me as particularly petty.

Yesterday the state of Florida announced that it would purchase 187,000 acres in the Everglades from U.S. Sugar, the largest domestic sugar company, for $1.75 billion. While the state and the company have agreed to the sale in principle, most of the details will not be completed for another 75 days.

Under the proposal, expected to take 75 days to finalize, U.S. Sugar Corp. would sell some 300 square miles along with two massive refineries, 200 miles of railroad and other assets to the South Florida Water Management District.

The company would then continue farming for six years under a lease with the state before ending operations. The district hopes to swap some of the company's holdings with those of other sugar growers, opening a massive swath south of Lake Okeechobee to construct reservoirs and pollution cleanup marshes that would resolve two of the restoration effort's biggest problems -- the water is still too polluted and there isn't enough of it to restore the natural flow of the River of Grass.

Bob Buker, president of U.S. Sugar, said he was saddened at the thought of a deal that would effectively end his company's long history of farming in the Everglades, but also heartened that it could resolve some of the state's most serious environment issues.

The significance of the deal is that it will allow the state to reconnect Everglades National Park with Lake Okeechobee. Reducing agriculture in the region should reduce pollution levels right away, and further pollution reductions will follow as restored wetlands filter harmful chemicals. According to the L.A. Times, the purchase will eliminate the need for building "intricate dams, canals and pumps" to control water flow, which should save money for other projects. Of course, habitat restoration should help stabilize local bird populations. Overall the purchase seems like a winner.

A massive amount of land is changing hands in return for a massive amount of money. One thing I cannot help but wonder is where that money is coming from. In recent years, Florida has suffered from even worse fiscal management than New Jersey. According to the Miami Herald, funds for the purchase will come out of other Everglades restoration projects, but which ones is not yet clear. The L.A. Times reports the payments will be "$50 million in cash and $1.7 billion in certificates of participation to be sold on Wall Street." Either way, that aspect bears watching.

The mouth of the Columbia River is home to the largest colony of Caspian terns in the world. At least 9,900 pairs of terns nested on a sandy island there last year. Unfortunately, the Columbia River is also home to endangered salmon and steelhead. Terns eat millions of the juvenile fish each year as the fish migrate towards the Pacific Ocean. So wildlife managers are trying to relocate the tern colony to other sites.

One reason for the super-colony at the mouth of the Columbia River, Roby said, is that the birds' historical nesting sites in the western United States have been destroyed by human activities. The draining of marshland habitat in some locations, and the flooding of historical nesting sites in others, has decimated their favored nesting habitat -- bare sand islands.

Now, working with a plan developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Corps and NOAA Fisheries, the OSU-led team is starting to restore alternative nesting colonies for Caspian terns. In addition to the Crump Lake site, the Corps created an artificial island in Fern Ridge Reservoir in the Willamette Valley, and plans to build three half-acre islands in the Summer Lake Wildlife Area in southern Oregon this summer and next. The plans at Summer Lake include the construction of a half-acre floating island made of recycled plastic with a coarse sand and gravel surface.

Crump Lake and Summer Lake are historical nesting sites for terns, Roby said, but Fern Ridge is not. And thus far, the terns have been slow to embrace Fern Ridge as a nesting site....

The Caspian tern management project also calls for establishing and/or restoring three alternative nesting sites in the San Francisco Bay area, where the OSU-led team also has a research crew.

If the project succeeds, the colony at the mouth of the Columbia River will still exist, but will be about one-third of its current size. So far the project has moved 135 of the 9,900 pairs to the new nesting site at Crump Lake, enough for the linked article to describe it as a success. It is too early, though, to judge how well the project will work. One problem is that we do not yet know how well terns will adapt to the new nesting locations. Terns bred there in the past, but local conditions such as food availability and nest predation may have changed since then. The linked article mentions gulls as a potential nest predator at the Crump Lake site, where they are more numerous than they are at the Columbia River colony.

A second potential problem is suggested by the first quoted paragraph above. The current situation at the mouth of the Columbia, with a large colony of terns preying on two endangered populations, is largely man made. Habitat changes elsewhere caused nesting terns to relocate to the Columbia River. The fish populations' decline is human-caused, as well; dams and other obstacles block many waterways that formerly served for spawning. Relocating terns could have unpredictable effects on prey populations at the new sites. If a local prey population crashes, another relocation project will be required.

Via the Caroline County Bird Club, I just came across this live osprey webcam from Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware. Unlike many other online raptor webcams, this webcam streams live video, so that you can hear sounds and watch the birds move around. The parent osprey is calling as I write this. Viewing the video requires a Quicktime plugin.


Also: During the feeding session, one nestling was definitely getting a lot more fish than the others.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a constitutional challenge to the border wall's environmental waivers.

Without comment, the justices refused to consider pleas that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff overstepped his constitutional authority by waiving laws and regulations in order to expedite construction of 670 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chertoff, invoking authority that he said he was granted by the REAL ID Act of 2005, has waived more than 30 laws in the administration's goal to complete the fencing by Dec. 31. The cabinet secretary has told Congress "it would be impossible" to meet the deadline without invoking the waivers.

The case in question before the high court focused on a two-mile section of fencing in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. A broader challenge to Chertoff's waiver authority has been filed a federal court in El Paso, but fence opponents acknowledged that the Supreme Court decision was a stunning setback in their efforts to block construction.

It is unclear to me whether wall opponents have any other legal recourse at this point. Moral suasion does not seem to work with this administration, and a legislative remedy seems unlikely. So, in the absence of further obstacles, it seems that construction will go forward.

I have written before about the dangers the wall poses to endangered wildlife along the U.S.-Mexico border, including the Sabal Palm Audubon Center. No Border Wall has more on the environmental impact.

These are duck specimens in the natural history display at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. It is part of several large collections (containing hundreds of photographs) recently uploaded to Flickr by the Smithsonian Institution. Many photographs (such as this collection of cyanotypes) illustrate objects from the collections. Others document life around D.C., such as this aerial view from 1932 and this three-wheeled postal motorcycle. And then there are many portraits of artists and scientists, such as Charles Darwin and Asher Durand.

Since these are federal government collections, and many date to the 19th century, the images in the photostream are in the public domain. So this could be a good resource for bloggers looking for images.